MarzAat

Raw Feed (2005): “Cool Air“, H. P. Lovecraft, 1926.

Written in 1926, the same year as his touchstone story “The Call of Cthulhu”, this is Lovecraft in the old vein he seemed to have abandoned after finding his voice in the latter story.

It’s set in a generic, unnamed metropolis, and I get the impression that it’s Lovecraft’s attempt to update Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Case of M. Valdemar”.

Both stories feature doctors trying to defeat death by an act of will.

If I recall correctly, the Poe story had a doctor hypnotizing a man so that his will preserved his consciousness and body after death. Here a doctor preserves himself and his life after death by means of refrigerating his room. Of course, it doesn’t work — indeed, the man is already decaying before the motor of his refrigerator breaks down.

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