Strange Eons
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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.
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...
Tropes used in Strange Eons include:
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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.
- 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. This is supposedly because Mark's father is Cthulhu, but he appears to be exactly like a normal human until Nyarlathotep shines the crystal on him.
- 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 Orin Sanderson, the Great Old Ones created humans to feed on their emotions.
- Hollywood Silencer: The revolver used to blow off the top of Fred Elstree's head is totally silent.
- Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad: Mark.
- Informed Attribute: Kay Keith, the second protagonist, thinks to herself that she's "not the fainting kind" after we see her faint for the first time. She then goes on to do it 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 not 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 before that.
- 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.