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Carcosa is a fictional city in Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1886). The ancient and mysterious city is barely described and is viewed only in hindsight (after its destruction) by a character who once lived there.
American writer Robert W. Chambers borrowed the name "Carcosa" for several of his short stories featured in the 1895 book The King in Yellow , inspiring generations of authors to similarly use Carcosa in their own works.
The city was later used more extensively in Robert W. Chambers' book of short stories published in 1895, titled The King in Yellow . Chambers had read Bierce's work and borrowed a few additional names from his work, including Hali and Hastur.
In Chambers' stories, and within the apocryphal play titled The King in Yellow, which is mentioned several times within them, the city of Carcosa is a mysterious, ancient, and possibly cursed place. The most precise description of its location is the shores of Lake Hali, either on another planet, or in another universe.
For instance:
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
Lake Hali is a misty lake found near the city of Hastur. In the fictional play The King in Yellow (obliquely described by author Robert W. Chambers in the collection of short stories of the same title), the mysterious cities of Alar [1] and Carcosa stand beside the lake. Like Carcosa, it is referenced in the Cthulhu Mythos stories of H.P. Lovecraft and the authors who followed him.
The name Hali originated in Ambrose Bierce's "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1886) in which Hali is the author of a quote which prefaces the story. The narrator of the story implies that the person named Hali is now dead (at least in the timeline of the story).
Several other nearly undescribed places are alluded to in Chambers' writing, among them Hastur, Yhtill, and Aldebaran. "Aldebaran" may refer to the star Aldebaran, likely as it is also associated with the mention of the Hyades star cluster, with which it shares space in the night sky. The Yellow Sign, described as a symbol, not of any human script, is supposed to originate from the same place as Carcosa.
One other name associated is "Demhe" and its "cloudy depths" − this has never been explained either by Chambers or any famous pastiche-writer and so we do not know what or who exactly "Demhe" is.
Marion Zimmer Bradley (and Diana L. Paxson since Bradley's death) also used the names "Hali" and "Lake of Hali" in her Darkover series.
Bierce may have been inspired by the then-contemporary genocide of the similarly named Circassian peoples.
Later writers, including H. P. Lovecraft and his many admirers, became admirers of Chambers' work and incorporated the name of Carcosa into their own stories, set in the Cthulhu Mythos. The King in Yellow and Carcosa have inspired many modern authors, including Karl Edward Wagner ("The River of Night's Dreaming"), Joseph S. Pulver ("Carl Lee & Cassilda"), Lin Carter, James Blish, Michael Cisco ("He Will Be There"), Ann K. Schwader, Robert M. Price, Galad Elflandsson, Simon Strantzas ("Beyond the Banks of the River Seine"), Charles Stross (in the Laundry Files series), Anders Fager and S. M. Stirling (in the Emberverse series).
Joseph S. Pulver has written nearly 30 tales and poems that are based on and/or include Carcosa, The King in Yellow, or other elements from Robert W. Chambers. Pulver also edited an anthology A Season in Carcosa of new tales based upon The King in Yellow, released by Miskatonic River Press in 2012. [2]
John Scott Tynes contributed to the mythology of Chambers' Carcosa in a series of novellas, "Broadalbin", [3] "Ambrose", [4] and "Sosostris", [5] and essays in issue #1 of The Unspeakable Oath [6] and in Delta Green .
In Paul Edwin Zimmer's Dark Border series, Carcosa is a city where humans mingle with their nearly immortal allies, the Hastur.
In Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus! Trilogy , Carcosa is connected with an ancient civilization in the Gobi Desert, destroyed when the Illuminati arrived on Earth via flying saucers from the planet Vulcan.
In maps of the world of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire , a city named Carcosa is labeled on the easternmost edge of the map along the coast of a large lake, near other magical cities such as Asshai. In The World of Ice and Fire , it is mentioned that a sorcerer lord lives there who claims to be the sixty-ninth Yellow Emperor, from a dynasty fallen for a thousand years. [7]
In the satirical novel Kamus of Kadizhar: The Black Hole of Carcosa by John Shirley (St. Martin's Press, 1988), Carcosa is the name of a planet whose weird black hole physics figures in the story. [8]
Swedish writer Anders Fager's "Miss Witt's Great Work of Art" features a Stockholm-based coterie known as "The Carcosa Foundation" that worships Hastur.
In David Drake's Lord of the Isles series, Carcosa is the name of the ancient capital of the old kingdom, which collapsed a thousand years before the events of the series. [9]
In S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series, Carcosa is the name of a South Pacific city inhabited by evil people led by the Yellow Raja and the Pallid Mask.
In Lawrence Watt-Evans' The Lords of Dûs series, a character known as the Forgotten King, who dresses in yellow rags, reveals that he was exiled from Carcosa. [10]
In writer Alan Moore's Neonomicon , drawn by artist Jacen Burrowes, the character Johnny Carcosa is the key to a mystical Lovecraftian universe.
In the HBO original series True Detective , 'Carcosa' is presented as a man-made temple. Located in the backwoods of Louisiana, the temple serves as a place of ritualistic sexual abuse of children and child murder organized by a group of wealthy Louisiana politicians and church leaders. The main characters, Rust Cohle and Marty Hart, storm the temple in the final episode of the season, where they confront a serial killer, who is the most active member of the cult. It is understood that the cult worships the "Yellow King", to whom an effigy is dedicated in the main chamber of 'Carcosa'. The series hints at a larger conspiracy that continues beyond the show, which is in line with Lovecraftian horror, as is a vision experienced by one character that underscores Lovecraftian themes like cosmic indifference. [11]
In Part 3 of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina , the barker of the traveling amusement park and carnival is named Carcosa, and the carnival in turn named, presumably, after him. Throughout the season of the show, it becomes apparent that the workers at the carnival are all mythological beings of old, with Carcosa himself being the god Pan, his true form being that of a satyr, in the show understood to be the god of madness. The arc of the season revolves partially around the attempts of the carnival workers to resurrect an older deity identified as The Green Man. Themes of madness, death, and resurrection parallel the works of Robert W. Chambers et al.
In the 1991 EP Passage to Arcturo by Rotting Christ, the song "Inside The Eye of Algond" nominates the Mystical Carcosa as part of the singer's journey.
The second song of the 2015 album Luminiferous by the American metal band High on Fire is named Carcosa.
Swedish rapper Yung Lean's third album Stranger features the closing track "Yellowman". Carcosa is mentioned in the song.
In 2016, DigiTech released a fuzz pedal called the Carcosa. The pedal featured two modes, named "Hali" and "Demhe". [12]
In the Mass Effect 3 video game, there is a planet named Carcosa.
In the Elite Dangerous video game, there is an inhabited star system named Carcosa. [13]
In 2001, the Belgian black metal band Ancient Rites released the album Dim Carcosa. The title track's lyrics consist of excerpts from "Cassilda's Song".
In the early 2000s, a Mysterious Package Company experience called The King in Yellow was introduced, heavily inspired by story and title. Later, a sequel experience entitled Carcosa: Rise of the Cult was created, obviously connected to this shared universe and connected to the original The King in Yellow.
In 2017, Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion for Arkham Horror: The Card Game titled "The Path to Carcosa" in which players investigate occurrences based on The King in Yellow.
Carcosa is mentioned in the song "Strange and Eternal" of the 2022 album Netherheaven by the American technical death metal band Revocation.
Two different publishers have used the name Carcosa.
Carcosa House was a science fiction specialty publishing firm formed in 1947 by Frederick B. Shroyer, a boyhood friend of T. E. Dikty, and two Los Angeles science fiction fans, Russell Hodgkins and Paul Skeeters. Shroyer had secured a copy of the original newspaper appearance of the novel Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss which he wished to publish. Shroyer talked Hodgkins and Skeeters into going in on shares to form the publisher which issued the Serviss book in 1947. Dikty offered advice, and William L. Crawford of F.P.C.I. helped with production and distribution. Carcosa House announced one other book, Enter Ghost: A Study in Weird Fiction, by Sam Russell, but due to slow sales of the Serviss book, it was never published.[ citation needed ]
Carcosa was a specialty publishing firm formed by David Drake, Karl Edward Wagner, and Jim Groce, who were concerned that Arkham House would cease publication after the death of its founder, August Derleth. Carcosa was founded in North Carolina in 1973 and put out four collections of pulp horror stories, all edited by Wagner. Their first book was a huge omnibus volume of the best non-series weird fiction by Manly Wade Wellman. It was enhanced by a group of chilling illustrations by noted fantasy artists Lee Brown Coye. Their other three volumes were also giant omnibus collections (of work by Hugh B. Cave, E. Hoffman Price, and again by Manly Wade Wellman). A fifth collection was planned, Death Stalks the Night, by Hugh B. Cave; Lee Brown Coye was working on illustrating it when he suffered a crippling stroke in 1977 and eventually died, causing Carcosa to abandon the project. The book was eventually published by Fedogan & Bremer. Carcosa also had plans to issue volumes by Leigh Brackett, H. Warner Munn, and Jack Williamson; however, none of the projected volumes appeared. The Carcosa colophon depicts the silhouette of a towered city in front of three moons.
In 1896–7, the Carcosa mansion was built as the official residence of the Resident-General of the Federated Malay States for the first holder of that office, Sir Frank Swettenham. It was in use as a luxury hotel, the Carcosa Seri Negara, from 1989 to 2015 and has been abandoned since then. [15] Swettenham took the name from The King in Yellow . [16]
In the Quebec-based geopolitical/live-action role-play game Bicolline , Carcosa is a kingdom in the west. It was established upon principles of freedom and is populated by pirates, nomads, escaped slaves, and religious exiles.
Chaosium Inc. is a publisher of tabletop role-playing games established by Greg Stafford in 1975. Chaosium's major titles include Call of Cthulhu, based on the horror fiction stories of H. P. Lovecraft, RuneQuest Glorantha, Pendragon, based on Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur, and 7th Sea, "swashbuckling and sorcery" set in a fantasy 17th century Europe.
Cthulhu is a cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was introduced in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published by the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, this creature has since been featured in numerous popular culture references. Lovecraft depicts it as a gigantic entity worshipped by cultists, in the shape of a green octopus, dragon, and a caricature of human form. The Lovecraft-inspired universe, the Cthulhu Mythos, where it exists with its fellow entities, is named after it.
The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. The British first edition was published by Chatto & Windus in 1895.
Robert William Chambers was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories titled The King in Yellow, published in 1895.
Hastur is an entity of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. He wrote numerous dark fantasy and horror stories. As an editor, he created a three-volume set of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian fiction restored to its original form as written, and edited the long-running and genre-defining The Year's Best Horror Stories series for DAW Books. His Carcosa publishing company issued four volumes of the best stories by some of the major authors of the so-called Golden Age pulp magazines. He is possibly best known for his creation of a series of stories featuring the character Kane, the Mystic Swordsman.
Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. While his science fiction and fantasy stories appeared in such pulps as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Unknown and Strange Stories, Wellman is best remembered as one of the most popular contributors to the legendary Weird Tales and for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains, which draw on the native folklore of that region. Karl Edward Wagner referred to him as "the dean of fantasy writers." Wellman also wrote in a wide variety of other genres, including historical fiction, detective fiction, western fiction, juvenile fiction, and non-fiction.
Lovecraftian horror, also called "cosmic horror", or "eldritch horror" is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named after American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). His work emphasizes themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries, which are now associated with Lovecraftian horror as a subgenre. The cosmic themes of Lovecraftian horror can also be found in other media, notably horror films, horror games, and comics.
"An Inhabitant of Carcosa" is a short story by American Civil War veteran, wit, and writer Ambrose Bierce. It was first published in the San Francisco Newsletter of December 25, 1886 and was later reprinted as part of Bierce's collections Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Can Such Things Be?
The Whisperer in Darkness is a 26,000-word novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written February–September 1930, it was first published in Weird Tales, August 1931. Similar to The Colour Out of Space (1927), it is a blend of horror and science fiction. Although it makes numerous references to the Cthulhu Mythos, the story is not a central part of the mythos, but reflects a shift in Lovecraft's writing at this time towards science fiction. The story also introduces the Mi-Go, an extraterrestrial race of fungoid creatures.
The Carcosa Seri Negara is a residence located on two adjacent hills inside the Perdana Botanical Gardens, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Originally built as the official residence and guest house of the British High Commissioner in Malaya, it is now owned by the Government of Malaysia. The name is a composite of the two colonial mansions located on the compound: the residence, named Carcosa, and the guest house, now named Seri Negara (1913).
A Cthulhu Mythos anthology is a type of short story collection that contains stories written in, or related to, the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction launched by H. P. Lovecraft. Such anthologies have helped to define and popularize the genre.
The Spawn of Cthulhu is an anthology of fantasy short stories, edited by American writer Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books in October 1971 as the thirty-sixth volume of its Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. It was the fifth anthology assembled by Carter for the series.
Worse Things Waiting is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by American writer Manly Wade Wellman, with illustrations by Lee Brown Coye. It was released in 1973 by Carcosa in an edition of 2,867 copies, of which 536 pre-ordered copies were signed by the author and artist. Many of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Weird Tales, Strange Stories, Unknown, and Fantasy and Science Fiction.
"I, Cthulhu" is a short humorous story by fantasy author Neil Gaiman featuring H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu, who is dictating an autobiography to a human slave named Whateley. The story reveals much about Cthulhu's 'birth' and early life.
Joseph S. Pulver Sr. was an author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror fiction, noir fiction / hardboiled, and dark fantasy genres. He lived in Germany, and died from COPD and other issues in a German hospital on April 24, 2020.
The Shadow Matrix is a science fiction novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Adrienne Martine-Barnes in the Darkover series. It was first published by in hardcover by DAW Books in 1996. Since the book involves time travel, it falls in both the Darkover time periods that the author called "Against the Terrans: The Second Age " and in the Ages of Chaos.
Lynda Rucker is an author of horror and fantasy short stories.
The Fantasy Hall of Fame is an anthology of fantasy short works edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg. It was first published in hardcover by Arbor House in October 1983. The first British edition was issued by Robinson in trade paperback in June 1988 under the alternate title The Mammoth Book of Fantasy All-Time Greats, under which title it was reprinted by the same publisher in July 1990. A second British edition was issued by W. H. Smith in trade paperback under the alternate title Great Fantasy in 2004. This work should not be confused with the later anthology of the same title with different content edited by Silverberg alone for HarperPrism in March 1998.