For Robert Bloch’s birthday, I’m going to spend a few minutes looking at one of his early short stories, “The Brood of Bubastis”. It was published in the March 1937 issue of Weird Tales. It’s one of Bloch’s early Lovecraftian telas. That’s the cover to the right. Another amazing Margaret Brundage cover.

Bloch was born on April 5, 1917 and passed away in 1994. We was a prolific author in the horror, fantasy, mystery, and science fiction fields.

“The Brood of Bubastis” is your typical Lovecraft plot, although it’s better executed than most. Here’s the setup.

SPOILER ALERT.

An unnnamed narrator is going to visit an old college friend the firend’s estate in Cornwall. The two have always had an interest in the outre’ and the occult. They begin discussing the possibility of Egyptians colonizing the Cornish coast, The friend promises to show the narrator proof sthe next day.

They get up early the next mornign and go trudging across the moor to t he coast, where they descend a steep path halfway to the beach, where there is a ledge. The ledge is in front of a cave.

The friend tells the narrator that the people who colonized this area were involved in trying to make a human-animal hybrid. They open some mummy cases. The cases are filled with mummies from failed experiements. There is a man with a snake’s head growing out of his forehead. There are a variety of human-animal hybrids.

They then go into an inner chamber where the bones aren’t so old. Around a black altar lie a number of bones, all of them fresh. Nove have ever been mummified. The friend tries to subdue the narrator and force him onto the altar. That’s when the Bubastis the cat goddess  shows up and takes charge of everything.

The narrator escapes with hiw life. The friend is not so lucky.

That’s all I’m going  to say about the plot of the story.

“The Brood of Bubastis” has only been reprinted twice since it was first published. The first was isn the paperback collection Fear and Trembling. The other was in a Chaosium collection. Mysteries of the Worm. Sadly the ISFDB doesn’t know  of any other dates the story may have been printed in a reprint anthology or collection.

Fear and Trembling is not a bad little collection. It is one that would probably be worth going back and rereading. It contains a cross-section of Bloch’s work from early in his career to the time the book was published.

“The Brood of Bubastis” is somewhat predictable, but Blockh makes the story he tells entertaining. Keep in mind that Bloch was still a teenager when he wrote it.

Let’s hope he has another collection waiting in the wings.

For me. Bloch is one of the best writers working in the field in the last century. He deserves to have his memory kept alive. I always keep my eye out for a Bloch book I don’t (yet) have. And even if I do have it, I will usually pick up a spare.