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Campbell Country: Difference between revisions
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Like [[Lovecraft Country]], but overseas.
Lovecraft Country is typically set in New England, home of horror writers [[H.P. Lovecraft|Howard Phillips Lovecraft]] and [[Stephen King]], and many of their respective followers/imitators. This makes it a difficult place for writers of [[Lovecraftian Fiction]] who do not have a Yankee background to write about.
The solution was suggested to British writer Ramsey Campbell by Lovecraft follower August Derleth: Create your own equivalent in a place you know, either your home country or a place you have visited. This has led to the creation of variant Lovecraftian settings appropriate to other locales.
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* ''Northfork'', Montana seems to be this sort of locale, a flat gray expanse doomed to be flooded by the building of a dam.
* ''[[Dagon]]'', the movie version of ''A Shadow Over Innsmouth'' is set on the Spanish coast ... apparently somewhere in or near Galicia.
* ''[[The Wicker Man]]'' had an interesting way of giving its setting physical isolation - it was set on the (fictional) remote Scottish island of Summerisle.
* When [[Richard Matheson]] adapted his novel ''[[Hell House]]'' to film, he moved it from its [[Lovecraft Country]] setting to the English countryside.
* ''[[Cast a Deadly Spell]]'' brings the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] to Los Angeles.
* AJ Annila's ''[[Sauna]]'' features a Medieval Nordic version of this trope.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Most obviously, Ramsey Campbell's stories set in Brichester and other fictional Gloucestershire towns. [[Wikipedia]] has an overview [[wikipedia:Ramsey Campbell|here]].
* Even before Ramsey Campbell, turn-of-the-century author [[Montague Rhodes James|MR James]] was exploring both English and continental-European patches of what could be called [[Campbell Country]].
* Most of [[Arthur Machen]]'s novellas and short stories, and his novel ''[[The Great God Pan]]'', have a rural Welsh or London background in which [[Eldritch Abomination|sinister ancient horrors]] lurk and are [[Body Horror|capable of interbreeding]] with modern people. [[H.P. Lovecraft|HP Lovecraft]] acknowledged Machen's great influence on the genesis of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]].
* [[Brian Lumley]] created a Lovecraft Country of his own in NE England, complete with a satellite colony of Deep Ones.
* The Hungarian village of Stregiocavar in [[Robert E. Howard]]'s ''[[The Black Stone]]''.
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** ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' also contains the Isle of Drear off the northern tip of Scotland, where the deadly monsters called Quintapeds are contained. In fact, Hogwarts' own location might qualify, set off as it is in an unregarded bit of Scotland (being Unplottable helps).
* [[H.P. Lovecraft|HP Lovecraft]] himself did this: ''The Rats in the Walls'' is set in England.
* [[Charles Stross]] did a neat thing with ''[[The Laundry Series]]'' (essentially [[Spy Fiction]] meets [[Cosmic Horror Story]]): the English lost city of Dunwich (which Lovecraft used as a name for a fictional town) was not lost at all, but rather the training ground for the Laundry, a secret organization that prevents "reality incursions." Apparently someone in the Laundry noticed the very odd census reports, and the citizens were relocated and the town erased off the maps. The only way to get there is with a specially-programmed GPS unit and a key for the appropriate wards.
** Stross' Dunwich is also slowly sinking into the water.
* ''Shadows Over Baker Street'' is a collection of short stories by different authors, about [[Sherlock Holmes]] investigating various Lovecraftian mysteries.
* "Tales Of The Shadowmen", a series of various anthology crossover books, has had various stories involving known literary characters (Hercule Poirot, a Doc Savage analogue, etc.) tangle with Lovecraftian creatures in various locales around Europe and elsewhere.
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* ''[[The Lost Crown]]: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure'' is {{spoiler|apparently}} set in the fictional East Anglian village of Saxton.
* Averted in ''[[Scratches]]'', which is located in Northumberland, but imported its curse-lore from the [[Darkest Africa]] trope {{spoiler|and [[Madwoman in the Attic]]}}.
* ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'' features three main locations which harbor a dark, old secret pertaining to the awakening of the [[Eldritch Abomination]]. The first is the site where Pious Augustus snags the artifact, which {{spoiler|is later visited by an Aladdin type character seeking a jewel to win a woman's heart, a slave building a tower over the location, and a firefighter putting out Iraqi oil fires}}. The second is a temple in Cambodia which {{spoiler|houses [[Eldritch Abomination]] #4, a dead, ancient god more powerful than the three primary ones of the story.}} The third is a cathedral in France, which is at the center of a {{spoiler|plot to assassinate Charlemagne and is later used as a WWI hospital where they feed the wounded to the [[Eldritch Abomination]] in the basement.}} Yeah, full of this.
* Judging from [[I Am a Humanitarian|Gregory's implied proclivities]] and the [[Police Are Useless|uselessness of the police]], ''[[Rule of Rose]]'' is set here, in some undefined part of the English countryside in the 1930's.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
[[Category:Campbell Country]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
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