Monday, June 20, 2016

(Kickstarter) Heroes of Red Hook

Oscar Rios and Golden Goblin Press are proud to announce their first-ever Kicstarter for one of their fiction collections, Heroes of Red Hook.

From the Kickstarter...
Heroes of Red Hook is a collection of cosmic horror tales taking place during the Jazz Era with a very important focus. The protagonists of this anthology are members of the various under represented demographic in Lovecraftian fiction. Our heroes and heroines are the outsiders who are most often blamed (wrongly so) for the actions of various alien horrors of the mythos. Our stories put the spotlight on ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, independent free thinking women, those with special needs, and members of the LGBT community. This collection features people struggling to overcome not only the horrors beyond mankind’s understanding, but an oppressive society seeking to deny them basic human rights.

The vast majority of the fans of Cosmic Horror Fiction struggle to reconcile their love for the genre with inherent racism of the original works of its creator, H.P. Lovecraft. Many of us are disturbed that bigots and hateful groups treat Lovecraftian fiction a manifesto to support their racism.They point to stories like The Horror at Red Hook and say, “See there, that is what’s wrong with the world.” They point to places like Brooklyn, and all they see is taint, corruption, and shadows.



As a male apparently swimming in the Scrooge McDuck vat of gold coins which is white privilege, and someone who has studied history, I don't find Lovecraft any more racist than dozens of other writers in the era.  In fact, I've known enough people who were adults in the twenties, whose racism was so far worse than anything Lovecraft wrote that the worst lines attributed to The Horror at Red Hook would be the closest things to compliments they would give.  Racism is an inherent part of the 1920's.  Your delicate modern-day social sensibilities can not whitewash over that fact. 

What we do have are seventeen different stories with a wide-variety of protagonists being put together by Oscar and Golden Goblin Press.  I haven't taken up any of their previous fiction collections, but Kickstarter material has never disappointed and I would have pledged to this whether it was typical Lovecraft protagonists, a immense and diverse variety of characters that will appear in this addition, or, to go back to Scrooge McDuck, if all the characters were anthromorphic ducks. 

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