Upper Rubber Boot Books

symptoms involve the development of significant craniofacial deformities

19 June 2018

H. P. Lovecraft’s fictional town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, featured in his famous story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” forms the background for two stories in Broad Knowledge: Angela Slatter’s “The Song of Sighs” and Megan Chaudhuri’s “First mouse model of Innsmouth Fish-man Syndrome draft 2 USE THIS VERSION – edits by MK.doc.”

“The Song of Sighs” was first published in Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth and also appeared in New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird. In it, Professor Vivienne Croftmarsh teaches at a school for orphans, since, despite her almost complete amnesia, she retains her academic knowledge. As a hobby, she translates ancient poems of some unknown religious origin, which turn out to be, as you may have guessed, related to Lovecraft’s lore. The mystery of the school’s missing principal gradually gives way to a horrific truth about her past.

Humans and mice are biologically very similar, making mice valuable to scientists studying human diseases. (If you’d like to know more about mouse models, see “Mouse models of human disease: An evolutionary perspective” or “Current advances in humanized mouse models.”)

Toxicologist Megan Chaudhuri’s story “First mouse model of Innsmouth Fish-man Syndrome draft 2 USE THIS VERSION – edits by MK.doc” (from which today’s title is taken) is written as a draft of a scientific paper by a graduate student at Miskatonic University, with corrections from her principal investigator. It’s a darkly humorous tale of needle sticks, impending doom, and pregnant mice fashioning tiny nooses out of nesting materials.

 

About the Authors

A toxicologist by training and a writer by inclination, Megan Chaudhuri lives outside Seattle with one spouse and two cats. Her fiction has appeared in Analog, Crossed Genres, GigaNotoSaurus, and other venues.

Angela Slatter is the author of the urban fantasy novels Vigil and Corpselight, as well as eight short story collections, including The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, Sourdough and Other Stories, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and A Feast of Sorrows: Stories. She has won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, a Ditmar, and six Aurealis Awards. Vigil was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award 2018. Find her at www.angelaslatter.com.

Entry filed under: Anthology, Fiction, News. Tags: Angela Slatter, Megan Chaudhuri, women up to no good.