Visions is a beautiful limited edition hardcover from Mythos Books containing 12 stories by Richard Lupoff. Page count is 256, not including the table of contents and introduction by Peter Beagle. List price is $40 but there is a hefty discount at Amazon, and you can get free shipping in the US. Cover art is provided by Steven Gilberts who has illustrated several Cthulhu mythos titles; my favorite art of his is for Copping Squid (at least currently). The depiction of a noisome alien landscape is just right for the mood of the book. Visions may be viewed as a companion to the collection Terrors published in 2005 by Elder Signs Press. The production quality is just first rate, as expected from Mythos Books. I really like that they provide a detailed publication history; I did not notice and typographical errors. The introduction by Peter Beagle is very affectionate, and Mr. Lupoff himself writes brief introductory notes on each tale, putting them in context.

Collectors of Cthulhu mythos fiction will need a copy, as there are relevant stories printed here that are not available elsewhere. However, unfortunately, I was mostly lukewarm to the prose. I never wrote a review but I ended up with a similar opinion of Terrors. The more I think about it, the less I like Brackish Waters. Here are the contents, with some brief comments. Skip, if you don't like even minor spoilers.

Hebrews Have No Horns
There Are Kings
Steps Leading Downwards - These first three stories are about Abraham ben Zaccheus, a supernatural investigator in San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century, and his strong-of-body-if-not-of-mind assistant John O'Leary. O'Leary narrates the stories and we get some heavy handed Irish brogue-isms and humor related to his ethnicity, ben Zaccheus' ethnicity and O'Leary's general cluelessness. There is a debt to classic pulp tales, perhaps to Anton Zarnak and a humor similar to the Lucifer Jones stories of Michael Resnick. At least There Are Kings is clearly Cthulhu mythos.

Ankareh Minu - This story is set years in the future of the first three, where ben Zaccheus' granddaughter, Rebekkah, is working on the police force and living with fellow officer and O'Leary's grandson, Liam. They investigate a series of cases of spontaneous human combustion and trace it back to its roots. Not bad, I liked this better than the first three.

Petroglyphs - An eastern professor comes out to the old west post Civil War town of Sour Creek to investigate some ancient petroglyphs. Perhaps they show some aliens. While I liked this story well enough, like some others here, there was a deal too much exposition and character development for what was, in essence, three pages worth of plot. I think that's the part of writing the author seems to like best.

Brackish Waters - I first read Brackish Waters in Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth back in 2005. It didn't sit well with me then and it still gives me heartburn. The author is interested in the Port Chicago explosion in 1944, an episode of WWII which is not well known now, probably suppressed due to racial overtones. Conspiracy theorists say there was an unexpected (or even deliberate) detonation of a nuclear weapon. The story itself is set in this time and in the best prose in the book, depicts a college professor slowly turning into a Deep One, not really understanding what is happening to him. He then sees some Deep Ones attach a device to the bottom a ship, which then produces a nuclear detonation, ending him and the story. The ending came out of left field and really had nothing to do with all the exposition and character development, absorbing as that was (this is a recurring issue in this fiction). What hacked me off was we then get a few paragraphs about how bad race relations were and how Port Chicago may have depicted a government test of the atom bomb on human subjects, who were expendable because they were black. The more current introduction is more reasonable, but hell, if that's the bit of history that interested you, why not write a piece that directly deals with it? Why put in the Deep One LENGTHY build up and then have it meaningless in context? I have detected a whiff of officious lecturing about ethnic relations in Lupoff's fiction before, and this came across as the same theme slapped in the reader's face. Do what you will; I am not revisiting this story again.

A Freeway for Draculas - This is a dark fantasy piece set in a 1960's IBM-like town, where a worker sees the gradual warping of reality or else is losing his own sanity. It's a decent enough read.

The Peltonville Horror - A young couple, caught out on the road in the hinterlands in bad weather, stumble into a rite that seems to be summoning a Lovecraftian type horror. Like most other stories here, I found it OK.

Simeon Dimsby's Workshop - A part time writer of short stories gradually publishes a body of genre fiction that attracts the notice of a famed genre publisher, and is offered a hardcover collection. He goes to meet the publisher and cover artist, and things don't really work out. This was my favorite story in Visions.

Villaggio Sogno - I could swear I read this story somewhere before. It is a lovely little bit of bygone urban fantasy, as two country girls looking for a book end up in a rater unique shop. Villaggio Sogno is very pleasant reading.

Tangaroa's Eye - This could have been a decent South Seas sailing yarn, but there was enough lecturing on race relations that I didn't like it all that much. Mr. Lupoff makes some superficial use of Maroi sea mythology.

Snow Ghosts -This wistful story of changing times and changeless memories is a fitting close to the collection; it probably, with Villaggio Sogno, reflects the author at his best.

So what to do? Genre collectors should get the hardcover, which is a lovely book. Cthulhu mythos fanatics need a copy, even though there are not boat loads of return on the investment. If you are idly curious or new to Lupoff I doubt this is the place to start. With caveats noted above, I very much enjoy some of Mr. Lupoff's prose. ( )