Crypto-Beasts, Cthulhu, and Classic Books

Last night was the two-hour premiere of SyFy's Destination Truth, and true to form it provided an entertaining mix of travelogue and monster hunt. However, as the years roll by, the travelogue segments appear increasingly staged rather than a genuine encounter with other cultures. I'd prefer it if SyFy would let the travelogue sections of the show expand and reduce the amount of time spent watching people stumble around in night vision screaming at each other, but that's just me. There's now a whole genre of watching people scream at each other in the dark. As it is, it lets me fast forward through the show and hit the highlights in under half an hour.

Last night, Destination Truth went in search of Vietnam's Bigfoot, which was not particularly high on my list of unexplained world mysteries. However, the way cryptozoological creatures weave their way through mythology and folklore is of interest, and its one of the themes running through my upcoming book Cthulhu in World Mythology. In that book, I offer a rather silly hunt for the "historical Cthulhu," but there is plenty of real history and myth on which I drew in creating my parody book.

That's one of the reasons that as we count down to the September publication date for Cthulhu in World Mythology, my print-on-demand line, JasonColavito.com Books, will be releasing classic reprints of important books that investigate the real life beasts and monsters of fact and fantasy that I drew upon in imagining the "historical Cthulhu."

The first two of these classic reprints are now available:

Cory's Ancient Fragments collects the Greco-Roman testimony of Near Eastern mythology and belief, including the story of Oannes, the fish-man hybrid that Robert Temple argued was an ancient astronaut from the Sirius star system. Sea Monsters Unmasked explores the role of the octopus in creating such monsters as the Kraken, one of Cthulhu's direct literary ancestors.

I've done my best to make both volumes both more visually appealing as well as significantly less expensive than the scan-and-print reprints of other on demand publishers. I think that the Sea Monsters Unmasked jacket design is some of my best work.

As we move through the summer, I'll be releasing a few more reprints of classic titles that help to flesh out the real life background for Cthulhu in World Mythology.