Shoggoths in Bloom

"Shoggoths in Bloom" is a short story by Elizabeth Bear that originally appeared in the March 2008 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. The shoggoths of the title are the creatures introduced in H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, but unlike Lovecraft's shoggoths, Bear's have always been known to science. Bear's story won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.
The story is set in November 1938 in the fictional town of Passamaquoddy, Maine. It focuses on Professor Paul Harding, a Black academic who is studying the little known life-cycle of the shoggoth. It occurs against the background of racism in the United States and looming war in Europe. 
==Characters==
*Professor Paul Harding: A professor of some sort of biological science; his work focuses on the lifecycle of the shoggoth. He served in the Great War in a non-combat role because "colored soldiers mostly worked supply." Afterwards, he lives in Harlem, where "he remembers the riots and the music, and the sense of community," then goes to college in Alabama, which he associates with segregated restaurants and "the excuses he made for never leaving the campus." He gets a Ph.D. from Yale, "the first school in America to have awarded a doctorate to a Negro." He is in a tenure-track position at Wilberforce University, a historically black school in Ohio. Harding is described as "an educated man, well-read," with a "close-cropped beard."
*Burt Clay: A Passamaquoddy fisherman hired by Harding to take him out on Passamaquoddy Harbor to study the shoggoths. Like Harding, he is a veteran of the Great War. He rescues Harding when the latter is forced to jump into the water to get back to the boat when the weather suddenly turns stormy. He is married; his boat is the Bluebird.
*Nathan Harding: Harding's grandfather, a "buffalo soldier"--that is, a soldier in one of the African-American US Army units formed in 1866 to fight in the Indian Wars, particularly the 10th Cavalry.Wikipedia, "Buffalo Soldier". He is described as an "African-born ex-slave who fought on both sides of the Civil War," having deserted after being sent to serve in his master's stead in the Confederate Army. His grandson "remembers beaded ridges of hard black keloid across his grandfather’s back, the shackle galls on his wrists."
*Professor John Marshland: Harding's colleague and mentor at Yale University.
==Publication History==
After its initial appearance in Asimov's Science Fiction, "Shoggoths in Bloom" was anthologized is several "best of" collections, including The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (Night Shade Books, 2009), The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction (Infinivox, 2009), Year's Best Fantasy 9 (Tor, 2009), The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009 Edition (Prime Books, 2010), and The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume (Prime Books, 2010). It was also included in The Best of Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean Press, 2020).
The story was selected for the Lovecraftian anthologies The Book of Cthulhu (Night Shade Books, 2011) and New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird (Prime Books, 2011).
It has been into French as "L'éclosion des Shoggoths" (appearing in Bifrost #89, 2018) and into Italian as Shoggoth in fiore (Delos Digital, 2019).
==References==
Category:Elizabeth Bear works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works