This collection of Weird Western stories has several crossovers. In "Stuff of Dreams," set in March 1875, Haakon Jones is lured into a blizzard by a beautiful red-golden haired
girl. It is suggested that Ithaqua may have caused the blizzard. The girl is clearly Atali, the title character of Robert E. Howard’s
Conan story "The Frost Giant’s Daughter." It is possible that the frost giant
and Ithaqua (from August Derleth’s Cthulhu Mythos story of the same name) are
the same being. In "Belfry's in Your Bats!," set in August 1876, Jones thwarts a bizarre plot
on the life of President Grant. He is assisted by a Secret Service agent named
Jim who dresses in a tight suit and vest, and carries an explosive material in
his boot heel. Jim is Jim West from The Wild Wild West. In "A Knight Does Not a Pawn Make," set in 1877, Jones finds himself on the opposite side of a range war from an expensive
hired gun. The man is unnamed, but dresses all in black, has a holster
decorated with a silver chess knight, charges $1000 for his services, quotes
classical authors, and gives his address as the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. The hired gun is Paladin
from the television series Have
Gun – Will Travel. In "Surf City, Here I Come," set in 1889, Jones is a passenger aboard a ship that encounters the island of R’lyeh in the
South Seas. Haakon fights the Deep Ones and briefly glimpses Cthulhu. In "The House of a Thousand Mirrors," also set in 1889, Jones nearly loses his soul to a witch’s enchanted mirrors in Deadwood. The mirrors are clearly
meant to be those seen in Robert E. Howard’s Kull story "The Mirrors of Tuzun
Thune." In Howard’s story, Tuzun Thune is assisted by a girl. Rick Lai
speculates that the witch who encountered Haakon Jones is an older version of
that same girl. In "Action on Arkham's Boot Hill," set in 1904, Jones visits Arkham, Massachusetts, where he meets Miskatonic University
student Ward Phillips. A character named Ward Phillips appeared in H.P. Lovecraft and E.
Hoffmann Price’s "Through the Gates of the Silver Key." Phillips was based on
Lovecraft himself, whose full name was Howard Phillips Lovecraft. If Lovecraft
and Price’s Phillips is the same person as the Phillips who encountered Haakon
Jones, he must be a few years older than Lovecraft, who was only fourteen years
old in 1904.
The Crossover UniverseTM is a companion blog to the books Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1-2 by Win Scott Eckert, and the forthcoming Crossovers Expanded Volumes 1-2 by Sean Levin. Material excerpted from Crossovers Volumes 1 & 2 is © copyright 2010-2014 by Win Scott Eckert. All rights reserved. Material excerpted from Crossovers Expanded Volumes 1 & 2 is © copyright 2014-present by Sean Levin. All rights reserved.
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Isn't there some kind of link between Haakon Jones and Indiana Jones?
ReplyDeletePossibly - Haakon has a son named Henry who was raised in England, who might have been intended to be Indiana Jones' father, but that doesn't work chronologically, as Matthew Baugh pointed out in the Twisted Trails of the Wold West article.
ReplyDeleteThat was probably what I was thinking of. Maybe they were related some other way.
ReplyDelete