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'''''Strange Eons''''' is a novel by [[Robert Bloch]] published in 1978. It is a homage to [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s work and consists largely of references to it. These references are loosely tied together but never given a unifying explanation.
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'''Strange Eons''' is a novel by [[Robert Bloch]]. It consists largely of references to [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraft]] novels and short stories, which it neither expands on nor explains very much (for example, we are still left wondering what those odd things were that killed Harley Warren, and Bloch -- rather than telling us -- has one of his characters die in a similar fashion and doesn't explain that).
Albert Keith, who has a collection of various objects including a shrunken head, sees a large painting of a dog-like creature holding a dead man and just has to buy it. His friend Simon Waverly arrives at his house and realizes the painting is the same as the one from "Pickman's Model". As unfolding events become increasingly strange and disturbing, Keith discovers that Lovecraft's fiction may really be something more.
 
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*[[Added Alliterative Appeal]]: Bloch seems to like using this sort of phrase, such as "mountainous mass of masonry" and "frantic furry forms".
*[[Anyone Can Die]]: There are multiple protagonists throughout the book, and almost all of them die, as well as many other characters.
*[[Anyone Can Die]]: The viewpoint characters of the first two chapters -- Albert Keith and his ex-wife Kay -- both die, as well as many others.
*[[The Bad Guy Wins]]: Mark becomes Cthulhu at the end and destroys everything.
*[[Death by Childbirth]]: Kay Keith is said to have died this way during the [[Time Skip]] after giving birth to Mark Dixon. SupposedlyThis justifiedis insupposedly thatbecause Mark's father is Cthulhu, but he appears to be shaped exactly like a normal human until Nyarlathotep shines the crystal on him.
*[[Decoy Protagonist]]: Keith seems like he's the protagonist in the first chapter, but at the end of it he dies. The second chapter is from Kay's point of view, but the third and last switches to Mark and reveals that she is also dead.
*[[Decoy Protagonist]]: The viewpoint characters are arguably all this, except Mark at the end.
*[[Dying Dream]]: Subverted. Mark thinks he's having one of these when he's taken away by the fish people, but it's real.
*[[Emotion Eater]]: According to {{spoiler|the fake}} Orin Sanderson, the Great Old Ones created humans to feed on their emotions, especially fear.
*[[Hollywood Silencer]]: The gunrevolver usedJody to blow off the top ofshoots Fred Elstree's headwith is totally silent.
*[[Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad]]: Mark.
*[[Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad]]: Mark is the result of Kay being made the "bride" of Cthulhu.
*[[Informed Attribute]]: KayAfter Keith,shooting Jody and finding herself lying on the second protagonistfloor, thinksKay tois herselfsurprised thatbecause she's "not "the fainting sortkind" after we see her faint for the first time. She then goes on to do itfaint several more times.
*[[Literary Allusion Title]]: The title is part of a couplet from the Necronomicon, found in "The Nameless City" and "[[The Call of Cthulhu]]": "That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die". One of the last lines in the book is "Death died", though it's nevernot stated what this means.
*[[Nuclear Option]]: Cthulhu is successfully nuked, but Mark becomes his replacement.
*[[Time Skip]]: Mark is introduced in the last chapter after one of these, since he doesn't exist yet in the earlierbefore chaptersthat.
*[[You Dirty Rat]]: The rats Kay finds in the underground passageway seem to be up to no good, but she runs away and shuts the door before they can do anything to her.
 
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[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Horror Literature]]
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Robert Bloch]]
[[Category:Pages Original to All The Tropes]]
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