Howard, Jonathan L

Entry updated 1 July 2024. Tagged: Author, Game.

(? - ) UK game designer, involved with the Broken Sword sequence of occult-conspiracy Adventures (which see), and author who began to publish fiction of genre interest with "Between the River and the Road" (June 2001 Realms of Fantasy). The eponymous Antihero of the darkly humorous Johannes Cabal sequence, introduced in "Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day" (Spring 2004 H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror), conducts obsessive research into reviving the dead, as in H P Lovecraft's Herbert West – Reanimator (February-July 1922 Home Brew as "Grewsome Tales"; vt March 1942-November 1943 Weird Tales; 1977 chap). The first series novel, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (2009), is a comic Pact with the Devil story [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] set in a slightly retro or Alternate-World England. Johannes Cabal the Detective (2010) enters Steampunk mode with murder aboard a great Airship lifted by "Laithwaite gyroscopic levitators" (see Antigravity; Imaginary Science) and traversing a Ruritanian-flavoured Europe. Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute (2011) records a physical expedition into the Dreamlands of the Dream Cycle stories written by H P Lovecraft under the influence of Lord Dunsany.

Of direct sf interest is the Young Adult Russalka series, set on the remote, now-independent, ocean-dominated colony planet of that name (see Colonization of Other Worlds): Katya's World (2012), in which young submarine navigator Katya Kuriakova meets various perils Under the Sea, including a world-threatening Monster; and Katya's War (2013), with the human colony plunged into a debilitating civil War. [DRL]

Jonathan L Howard

born

works

series

Johannes Cabal

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (London: Headline, 2009) [Johannes Cabal: illus/Snugbat: hb/Mark Burckhardt]
Johannes Cabal the Detective (London: Headline, 2010) [Johannes Cabal: illus/Snugbat and Graham Bleathman: hb/Michael Windsor]
Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute (London: Headline, 2011) [Johannes Cabal: illus/Snugbat: hb/Michael Windsor]
The Death of Me (New York: Tor, 2013) [story: ebook: first appeared 10 September 2013 Tor.com: Johannes Cabal: na/Greg Ruth]
Ouroboros Ouzo (Los Gatos, California: Smashwords, 2014) [story: ebook: Johannes Cabal: na/]
The Brothers Cabal (New York: St Martin's Press, 2014) [Johannes Cabal: hb/Michael J Windsor]
The Fall of the House of Cabal (New York: St Martin's Press, 2016) [Johannes Cabal: hb/Michael J Windsor]

Russalka

Katya's World (London: Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry, 2012) [Russalka: pb/Lee Gibbons]
Katya's War (London: Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry, 2013) [Russalka: pb/Lee Gibbons]

Carter and Lovecraft

Carter & Lovecraft (New York: St Martin's Press, 2015) [Carter and Lovecraft: hb/Irvin Serrano]
After the End of the World (New York: St Martin's Press, 2017) [Carter and Lovecraft: hb/]

Whittle and Grant

The Shadow on the Glass (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Aconyte, 2024) [Whittle and Grant: pb/]

individual titles

Kyth the Taker (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Air and Nothingness Press, 2017) [coll: pb/]

links

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