Remastering The Mythos: Questions For Ruthanna Emrys
When Ruthanna Emrys first read H.P. Lovecraft's classic story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," she already knew the basics: It's about a creepy New England harbor town populated by strange, froggy-looking people who turn out to be monstrous, sacrificing humans to their dark gods under the sea.
"But I was shocked when the story started with a government raid that sends the frog-monster people to concentration camps," Emrys tells me in an email conversation. "It wasn't that Lovecraft himself could write this as [much as] that for almost 80 years, people had read this story and sympathized with the protagonist who calls down that raid. My own sympathy was squarely with the interned frog-monsters," she adds.
That shock and sympathy formed the seed of a short story called "," featuring Aphra Marsh, an Innsmouth survivor, still recovering from her losses and making a life for herself in late-1940s San Francisco. In her, Emrys continues Aphra's story as she grapples with working for the same government that killed her family.
