Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

[Sapphire Guard]

A couple of people have done these on the forums, and I've generally found them enjoyable, so I thought I'd try my hand. Picked up a compilation of his short stories the other day so I thought I'd give it a try. I know basically nothing about these beyond the basic premise (try not to go insane as you encounter Old Ones),and but I've never read them despite seeing references everywhere. No unmarked spoilers please. First up, Dagon,

[Douglas]

I haven't read any actual Lovecraft, but by reputation it supposedly uses the Apocalyptic Log (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ApocalypticLog) trope a lot. I'd be amused to see summaries of just how ridiculously dedicated each log writer is to continuing writing the log even while being devoured by some cosmic horror or other.

[Thrudd]

The Dagon collection is a series of lesser known short stories of his. There are a few good ones in there, but also a few of the uncomfortably racist ones. His more famous stories generally thought to be of quality are the novels and novellas like Call of Cthulhu, Shadow Over Innsmouth and At the Mountains of Madness.

[Eldan]

Hmm.

You know, I have a The Complete Fiction of HP Lovecraft collection of over 1000 pages that I've been trying to get through. Might as well go along. I've never made it more than half way through.

And nah. he doesn't do Apocalyptic logs as much. There's a lot of logs, sure, but they are mostly written after the fact by the survivors. Lovecraft's reputation for everyone going insane and dying is overexaggerated. They usually panic, lose their **** and end up in hospital for a bit, sure, but not as portrayed in the RPGs or anything.

A few examples:

From those I remember that I read lately, The Rats in the Walls is written by the main character in an asylum after he found out his family's history and probably killed the archaeologists who were with him. In The Festival, the narrator jumps into a river and is washed away just before the cult can forcefully initiate him into their horrible rites. The Call of Cthulhu is based on a professor's research regarding a weird statue, some police files and an interview with a sailor who was found drifting at sea.

And so on.

[Sapphire Guard]

You know, I have a The Complete Fiction of HP Lovecraft collection of over 1000 pages that I've been trying to get through. Might as well go along. I've never made it more than half way through.

What I have isn't that extensive, but I since it's probably in the public domain I can find some of the rest on the internet. But anyway, sorry for taking so long to read five pages.



I am writing this under appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more

That right there? That's how you open a story. I know it's a trope, but in this instance that particular line really works. It's so polite and apologetic about it.

So, our narrator was aboard a ship that was captured by the germans during WW1. They were treating him (or her, but probably him.) perfectly well, but he decided to escape in a little boat anyway on principle. Probably he should have had a destination in mind, as one morning he wakes up aground on a bed of black slime and rotting fish. He assumes it's some kind of weird seismic activity that made a new island. So he decides to try to find the edge as the land dries out a bit.

(I'm having flashback to The Life of Pi a bit, wouldn't mind seeing this filmed. So after a few holedays walk, he finds a hump and climbs it, and then a valley. At which point he sees a monolith on the other side. Our narrator is vaguely uneasy this whole time, but on the balance is taking this quite well. He doesn't understand exactly what's up, but he's still more interested than horrified and decides to investigate. There are hieroglyphics and sea creatures he can't identify, and he's about to dismiss them as some random ancient god when a worshipper arrives, that is also a strange sea creature, and our narrators fails his sanity roll.


I think I went mad then.

Helpful. He blindly flees and wakes up in hospital, having been found adrift in his boat. He investigates, realises quickly enough that nobody will believe him. He's haunted by the visions of that thing, especially during a certain phase of the moon, and becomes a morphine addict to try to forget. It doesn't work, but does ruin the rest of his life. Until:


I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. God, that hand! The window! The window!

And that's that. Either a hallucination, or the real creatures, but our narrator isn't the luckiest person around. He is very matter of fact about everything, but is conscious that nobody will believe him, so stays mostly quiet. Short, simple, basically the story pop culture expected. Fairly basic and conventional as these stories get, our narrator takes a lot of hardship in his stride, but his mind cracks quickly enough on encountering this sea creature.

Not too much to say about this, just a poor unfortunate very politely and dispassionately giving way to madness and despair. The character is mostly given through the writing style. This particular line is pretty sad


So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or contemptuous amusement of my fellow men.

but there's really not much to talk about here. Farewell, nameless narrator, you shall not be forgotten.


A short, conventional intro. A few impactful lines, but nothing all that special.

Next, The Nameless City

[Eldan]

My book gives a few lines of context to each story. For Dagon:


Written in 1917*, "Dagon" is one of Lovecraft's most forward looking stories. Many of its features - a land mass suddenly emerging from the depths of the ocean; a monster who may be one of an entire race of creatures dwelling on the underside of the world; the narrator's psychological devastation at the monster's mere existence - foreshadow "The Call of Cthulhu" and later stories in which the supernatural has been replaced by the scientifically plausible. But, as in Poe, it is the narrator's emotional trauma that is at the heart of the tale. The story was Lovecraft's first to be published in Weird Tales in 1923.

*Lovecraft was 27, then


One of Lovecraft's very first. In my book, only the fourth after The Alchemist, The Beast in the Cave and The Tomb.
A lot of what lovecraft wrote in the 1910s and 1920s just isn't very good. Much more than later works, a lot of it suffers from basically ending in "and then I saw something. It was horrible. The end".

That said, the Nameless City is from 1921 and going straight there jumps over a few I quite like: Celephaïs, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Cats of Ulthar...

Honestly, those that i like from this period are those that aren't written in the style he's famous for. There's basically two different styles. On the one hand, he wrote what is a bit more gothic horror, with ghouls and sorcerers and weird people set in what was modern times, and the more fantastical and romantic, set in pseudo-Greek legend or the dream world. I much prefer the second.

[Sapphire Guard]

I'm going by the book I have for the moment, might keep going after that depending on how things go




When I drew nigh the nameless city, I knew it was accursed. Another decent opening

Helpful. So unlike our last story, this narrator is actually seeking out the place he visits, despite knowing rumours about it. He's some kind of history buff or archeologist, wants to know who once lived here.

Par for the course, he is put off by odd unnatural proportions, but keeps exploring anyway, and discovers some kind of temple built into a cliff. It's a low roofed wide spot that is not built for humans, but our narrator assumes this is for religious reasons and keeps exploring like the good protagonist he is. His camel is scaed by something and he checks on it, finding strange sudden gusts of wind. He follows one coming out of a cave and finds a main temple with a passage behind it leading deep underground. His torch goes out, but of course he keeps going anyway. Eventually, light happens somehow and he finds strange mummified reptilian creatures in glass cases along the corridor. Said creatures also feature in the artwork along the walls, and our narrator assumes they're gods of the city of some kind. There's a history of the city in mural form on the wall, where the lizard people slowly die out as the city becomes desert, and apparently burrow deep into the world and abandon their bodies, as well as a cheery scene of the lizards tearing a human apart.

At the end of the hall are more steps down into a wall of glowing mist. He doesn't know what to think, but eventually
Wonder drove out fear and he keeps exploring.

The wind picks up, as it seems to do at sunrise and sunset, so he prepares for it. Eventually the wind tries to suck him into the glowing mist, and he makes his first few sanity checks. I'm actually not clear on whether our narrator escapes or is sucked down into the mist, he sees reptilian spirits, and the door clangs shut but I can't tell from the text which side the narrator is on by then.

This story is similar to the last one, but we get much more information on the history of the place and out narrator is a little bit mentally tougher. Lovecraft is a very visual writer, and I find I'm not the ideal reader, I have to double back now and again to remind myself of what's going on. So, the city of the lizard people dried out, and they burrowed underground and eventually became incorporeal spirits, with
a vindictive rage all the stronger because it was largely impotent. Nice, that grounds things a bit.Not some ancient omnipotent god, just angry spirits with very limited powers.

These stories would make great short films. Interestingly enough, these are fairly low key encounters, no Old Ones have actually shown up so far (unless Dagon was that entire island)

[An Enemy Spy]

I would say that he did make it out. Lovecraft stories typically(maybe always, I haven't read them all) written by the actual character in the story, so that means they have to survive at least long enough to write the document, though whether they survive much longer than that is another story altogether.

[Thrudd]

I'm going by the book I have for the moment, might keep going after that depending on how things go



Another decent opening

Helpful. So unlike our last story, this narrator is actually seeking out the place he visits, despite knowing rumours about it. He's some kind of history buff or archeologist, wants to know who once lived here.

Par for the course, he is put off by odd unnatural proportions, but keeps exploring anyway, and discovers some kind of temple built into a cliff. It's a low roofed wide spot that is not built for humans, but our narrator assumes this is for religious reasons and keeps exploring like the good protagonist he is. His camel is scaed by something and he checks on it, finding strange sudden gusts of wind. He follows one coming out of a cave and finds a main temple with a passage behind it leading deep underground. His torch goes out, but of course he keeps going anyway. Eventually, light happens somehow and he finds strange mummified reptilian creatures in glass cases along the corridor. Said creatures also feature in the artwork along the walls, and our narrator assumes they're gods of the city of some kind. There's a history of the city in mural form on the wall, where the lizard people slowly die out as the city becomes desert, and apparently burrow deep into the world and abandon their bodies, as well as a cheery scene of the lizards tearing a human apart.

At the end of the hall are more steps down into a wall of glowing mist. He doesn't know what to think, but eventually and he keeps exploring.

The wind picks up, as it seems to do at sunrise and sunset, so he prepares for it. Eventually the wind tries to suck him into the glowing mist, and he makes his first few sanity checks. I'm actually not clear on whether our narrator escapes or is sucked down into the mist, he sees reptilian spirits, and the door clangs shut but I can't tell from the text which side the narrator is on by then.

This story is similar to the last one, but we get much more information on the history of the place and out narrator is a little bit mentally tougher. Lovecraft is a very visual writer, and I find I'm not the ideal reader, I have to double back now and again to remind myself of what's going on. So, the city of the lizard people dried out, and they burrowed underground and eventually became incorporeal spirits, with . Nice, that grounds things a bit.Not some ancient omnipotent god, just angry spirits with very limited powers.

These stories would make great short films. Interestingly enough, these are fairly low key encounters, no Old Ones have actually shown up so far (unless Dagon was that entire island)



A majority of the stories are not about "old ones", but just creepy supernatural situations. This collection containing some of his less popular ones, a lot of them just sort of end with no real point other than "there was a weird thing and I was scared."

We're used to our horror stories escalating in some way. once the spooky thing is revealed, some action happens: people die, there's a chase, something. In a lot of his stories, the reveal is the whole point. What might happen afterward is for your imagination, it is apparently enough to know of the existence of the creepy thing.

[Winter_Wolf]

Yeah, HPL lived a long time ago, the bar for weird was in a very different place. Can you imagine if a small group of people from his day arrived in the US today by say time travel? They'd lose it. Imagine how much more HPL would focus on the abhorrence of fish-monsters if you showed him pictures of the things that actually live in the deep oceans, like anglerfish.

If memory serves, one of his bios mentions being heavily influenced by the likes of Lord Dunsany and it shows in several of his works. Not having read Lord Dunsany, I'll take the biographer at his word. There's a few later on you'll get to that are a pageantry of imagery but don't particularly have a strong moving plot or horror elements.

I have the Necronomicon compilation of his works, so it's missing a few of his stories, but between that and the three other compilations I have I think I have them all by now.

[BWR]

If memory serves, one of his bios mentions being heavily influenced by the likes of Lord Dunsany and it shows in several of his works. Not having read Lord Dunsany, I'll take the biographer at his word. There's a few later on you'll get to that are a pageantry of imagery but don't particularly have a strong moving plot or horror elements.


Having read Dunsany, I can confirm that HPL was heavily influenced. Basically, his dream short stories are Dunsanian.

[Thrudd]

Yeah, HPL lived a long time ago, the bar for weird was in a very different place. Can you imagine if a small group of people from his day arrived in the US today by say time travel?


That is actually the premise of one of his stories in the "Dagon" collection.
He catches a glimpse of a future New York, and is horrified and disgusted seeing futuristic technology and people living on skyrise platforms, and worst of all, everyone he saw wasn't of pure Anglo European descent! Cue horror screams - The End.

Yes, that is really the whole story. We learn nothing about the future society, other than white people aren't there, and that is meant to be the shocking horror.

[Winter_Wolf]

That is actually the premise of one of his stories in the "Dagon" collection.
He catches a glimpse of a future New York, and is horrified and disgusted seeing futuristic technology and people living on skyrise platforms, and worst of all, everyone he saw wasn't of pure Anglo European descent! Cue horror screams - The End.

Yes, that is really the whole story. We learn nothing about the future society, other than white people aren't there, and that is meant to be the shocking horror.

And here I thought I had all his stories. What's it called?

[Thrudd]

And here I thought I had all his stories. What's it called?

I think that one was called "He". I looked it up, and forgot the first part of it with the 18th century man-out-of-time that showed the narrator how to look through time. But the story is still one of the clearest examples to me of Lovecraft's racism.

[SaintRidley]

I think that one was called "He". I looked it up, and forgot the first part of it with the 18th century man-out-of-time that showed the narrator how to look through time. But the story is still one of the clearest examples to me of Lovecraft's racism.

And even then, it's less clear an example than "The Horror at Red Hook" and what he named his cat. The man was astonishing in his degree of racism, even if you filter out differing norms from his time period.

[J-H]

Following. The only Lovecraft story I've ever read was "The Colour from Outer Space," in an anthology in college.

I did, however, run across this (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cb.aspx) a few years ago - a 5-author collaborative story including Lovecraft, the guy who wrote Conan, and three others. It's very, very easy to tell the styles and themes of the authors apart!

[Thrudd]

And even then, it's less clear an example than "The Horror at Red Hook" and what he named his cat. The man was astonishing in his degree of racism, even if you filter out differing norms from his time period.

Yes, he was. It is way more than just a "product of the times". It was vile. It makes it hard for me to even enjoy his other stories where the topic isn't the story's focus. The dream world stories, At the Mountains of Madness, Shadow over Innsmouth, Dunwich Horror and Cthulhu are about the only works of his I would call "good", and even those have explicitly racist elements denigrating and implying or outright stating that "interbreeding" is the mark of corruption, degeneracy and evil, and the evil cultists are usually non-anglo or mixed-race.

[An Enemy Spy]

Following. The only Lovecraft story I've ever read was "The Colour from Outer Space," in an anthology in college.

I did, however, run across this (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cb.aspx) a few years ago - a 5-author collaborative story including Lovecraft, the guy who wrote Conan, and three others. It's very, very easy to tell the styles and themes of the authors apart!

Lovecraft: With horror, he realized that he was the monster!

Howard: And it was badass!

[Bohandas]

Hmm.

You know, I have a The Complete Fiction of HP Lovecraft collection of over 1000 pages that I've been trying to get through. Might as well go along. I've never made it more than half way through.

And nah. he doesn't do Apocalyptic logs as much. There's a lot of logs, sure, but they are mostly written after the fact by the survivors. Lovecraft's reputation for everyone going insane and dying is overexaggerated. They usually panic, lose their **** and end up in hospital for a bit, sure, but not as portrayed in the RPGs or anything.


They usually end up in the nuthouse, but due to their recounting of what actually happened to them being interpreted as insanity, not due to them being actually insane.

As a comparison, If you've ever seen Evil Dead 2 what happens is generally comparable to the scene in Evil Dead 2 where the professor's daughter and her entourage walk in on Ash with a bloody chainsaw and the dismembered parts of the first round of demon-zombies and naturally assume that he's some kind of deranged serial killer.

[LaZodiac]

And even then, it's less clear an example than "The Horror at Red Hook" and what he named his cat. The man was astonishing in his degree of racism, even if you filter out differing norms from his time period.

As someone I follow on the internet once said.

"To Lovecraft, 'horrific creatures from beyond the reaches of time and space' describes the Scotts. He was exceptionally racist, for his time."

[Lethologica]

They do say to write what you know. And given Lovecraft's worldview, he knew horror of the unknown and unfamiliar like nobody else.

[Bohandas]

Lovecraft: With horror, he realized that he was the monster!


...and then John was a zombie

[LaZodiac]

They do say to write what you know. And given Lovecraft's worldview, he knew horror of the unknown and unfamiliar like nobody else.

Honestly aside from a few of his stories I've found his work fairly dry, honestly. The people who have later populated his works in the Yogsothothry/Cthulhu Mythos (your choice, I prefer the former honestly) are what made it the cultural icon it is today. Cthulhu is a big ole scary super monster with non ecludian shapes. They also put him back to sleep by running over his forehead with a boat.

Also, obligatory link to the cthulhu anime. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PxnTy6CcCU)

[Fri]

I like his dream cycle of kadaths stories more anyway. Cats are awesome.

[Sapphire Guard]

And we continue.


This shapes up like another suicide note, and we also have our first narrator that has a friend. St John, now a 'mangled corpse', which is among the reasons that our narrator is cradling his revolver.

Once upon a time, he was a bored young man looking for a purpose in life, and as true friends do, they took up the noble pastime of grave robbing. Over the course of this, they find themselves in a graveyard in Holland, which is described as
That mocking, accursed spot which brought us to our hideous and inevitable doom. Colossal bats also feature. This grave was of someone found torn apart by some unknown creature, and as they dig him up there is some half heard distant baying noise. Surely not important.

Anyway, in the grave is an oddly well preserved skeleton wearing a jade green amulet with a picture of a crouching winged hound. Interestingly, they actually recognise the markings as being of
the corpse eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia, courtesy of the 'Mad Arab' Abdul Azhazred. He was mentioned in The Nameless City as well, as the writer of the Necronomicon, the book that has been referenced by everyone everywhere since. Mystery bats converge on the grave as they leave.

So our noble questors return to England, where they live in a lonely manor house the better to be haunted anyway, only something keeps knocking on the doors and windows. One night, our narrator hears a knocking on his door when in bed, and assuming it's his friend, he invites them in. The response is this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3BPx2lt6E0). And Naturally his friend knows nothing about it, and similar stuff starts happening with their ghost sometimes speaking Dutch. Being into the occult, the friends are both scared and intrigued by all this, but even now

Mostly we held to the theory that we were jointly going mad, and the thought that this was a real haunting is more exciting than anything else. They bear up for a while, but eventually the thing gives in and tears the narrator's friend St John apart on his way back from the train station after dark. Our narrator arrives in time for his last words and to see the bat wings. The narrator buries him on the grounds of the manor and orates a 'devilish ritual' because St John would want him to.

Not wanting to live alone in the manor, he destroys their collection of evil stuff (but not the amulet) and moves to London, but is still stalked by a shadowy thing and decides to return the damn thing to the grave it came from. It ends up being stolen from him, but he goes back to the graves anyway. He digs up the grave and finds the skeleton, newly covered in blood and pieces of people, baring fangs, and holding the damned amulet. Then the skeleton starts barking, and our friend finally fails his Sanity Check and blindly flees. He can hear the thing in the distance and takes out his revolver...

And that's that. Somewhat like the other stories, but our narrator is already involved in the occult to a degree and as such is harder to crack than the others. Also, he had a friend.

Interestingly enough, even though the monster is a winged hound, a lot of the story beats are vampiric. Mention of bats, entering the house with an invite, a corpse with fangs, attacks after dark... A band of thieves unwisely steal said amulet and end up torn apart. No messing with the corpse eating cult of Leng, may that be a lesson to you all.



Not seeing much of that racism you're all talking about so far. This Mad Arab is probably not much more insane than the average narrator especially as the foreword claims it is Lovecraft's own alter ego, and in the Nameless City the locals know better than the narrator does. Not saying it doesn't happen or anything, but it hasn't struck me much so far.

Next, The Festival. Sounds fun.

[Winter_Wolf]

And we continue.



Not seeing much of that racism you're all talking about so far. This Mad Arab is probably not much more insane than the average narrator[spoiler] especially as the foreword claims it is Lovecraft's own alter ego, and in the Nameless City the locals know better than the narrator does. Not saying it doesn't happen or anything, but it hasn't struck me much so far.

Next, The Festival. Sounds fun.

:bug-eyes: Wow, are you going to be in for a "treat". HPL could be the poster child for at least a couple of hate groups. It's, well, kind of pitiful. By which I mean I actually pity the man a little for being so blatantly scared of non WASP. Still enjoy his writings, though. If I were ever to have met the man in person and he acted like he wrote, pretty sure I'd have to break his nose. Speaking as someone generally opposed to violent acts.

The Hound was a pretty enjoyable short, and gets progressively more gruesome the more times you read it. The Festival is kind of "eh". You can kind of see some relationship between it and the likes of Rats in the Walls or The Horror at Red Hook. You might need to squint a little.

[Eldan]

Okay. I said I'd post this info here. Let's see.

Firs, you had Dagon. Between Dagon and the The Nameless City, you have a few good ones. The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Cats of Ulthar, Celephais... a lot of dream stories.


The Nameless City was written in January 1921 and was first published in the Wolverine (November 1921). Lovecraft had surprising fondness of it and continually attempted to secure its publication in a professional magazine, but it was repeatedly rejected, finally appearing (with numerous misprints) in Fanciful Tales (Fall 1936). It is noteworthy for the first mention of Abdul Alhazred in Lovecraft's work, and the first citation of his "unexplainable couplet". Its use of bas-reliefs to tell the istory of an alien species was handled in a much superior fashion in At the Moutains of Madness. The mention of Irem, the City of Pillars is taken from an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica

Between the Nameless City and the Hound, you have The Quest of Iranon, The Outsider, The Music of Eric Zann, Herbert West and a few others that I don't remember as much good.



Written in September 1922, "The Hound" has been roudnly criticized for being excessively florid and overwritten; but it is clear the story is deliberately written in a flamboyant and self-parodic manner. The tale is noteworthy for the first citation of the Necronomicon, whose author is now explicitely Abdul Alhazred. It was inspired by an incident in Brooklyn on September 16, , in which Lovecraft went to the cemetary of the Dutch Reformed Church (hence the Dutch setting of the tale), and chipped off a piece of a crumbling headstone. As an exercise in grisliness, it would be difficult to surpass. The story first appeared in Weird Tales (1924).

Between the Hound and The Festival, you get The Rats in the Walls and The Unnameable. The second is pretty much a parody: it's about two writers sitting on a haunted graveyard in New England, with one mocking the other that too much of the horror stuff he writes about is "Unnameable" and "Indescribleable" and therefore not really fit for a written medium. They discuss if anything can be indescribeable, then get attacked by an Unnamable creature they can't describe.

According to his fictional biography, Abd al-Hazred, as the Arabian8 translations apparently render his name, was a mystic in Sanaa (Yemen) in the 8th century. He discovered dark ancient secrets in Babylon and Memphis, as well as the Rub al-Khali, the Empty Quarter, where he apparently found the lost city of Irem. Later in his life, he wrote the Kitab al-Azif. Al-Azif is an Arabic word for various nocturnal sounds in the deserts, from insects, the sand and the wind over the dunes, that is ascribed to demons. He died in Damascus, eaten by an invisible creature on the open street, shocking onlookers.
The book was later translated to Greek, Latin and German as the Necronomicon, with most copies lost. Though apparently, it lost most of its magical power in the process of repeated translation, but still works to summon and describe various nasties.

[Bohandas]

Not seeing much of that racism you're all talking about so far. This Mad Arab is probably not much more insane than the average narrator especially as the foreword claims it is Lovecraft's own alter ego, and in the Nameless City the locals know better than the narrator does. Not saying it doesn't happen or anything, but it hasn't struck me much so far.

Next, The Festival. Sounds fun.

The racism's more to be found in his republished letters. His genre offsets the racism a bit; you get a lot of ethnic villians but due to this being cosmic horror the villain's also usually the only one who has any sort of firm understanding of what's going on - and occasionally also has access to advanced alien technology - while the white protagonist is stumbling around in the dark

[LaZodiac]

The racism's more to be found in his republished letters. His genre offsets the racism a bit; you get a lot of ethnic villians but due to this being cosmic horror the villain's also usually the only one who has any sort of firm understanding of what's going on - and occasionally also has access to advanced alien technology - while the white protagonist is stumbling around in the dark

I'm actually fairly sure one of his short stories is just "oh oops it was a black person".

[Thrudd]

The racism's more to be found in his republished letters. His genre offsets the racism a bit; you get a lot of ethnic villians but due to this being cosmic horror the villain's also usually the only one who has any sort of firm understanding of what's going on - and occasionally also has access to advanced alien technology - while the white protagonist is stumbling around in the dark
There is plenty found in his stories as well. We've talked about a couple already and they are coming up in the collection being discussed right now. It's less in what specific role they play in the story, and more about how they are described and why they occupy those roles that the racism is revealed. It is not to do with capability, and more to do with how the author/narrator uses denigrating and dehumanizing language to refer to people that are not pure WASP and attributes their existence with a lack of or corruption of civilization and goodness in general. It is in the overall themes that weave through many stories of attributing "mixed breeds" and intermingling of races with immorality, doom, collapse and horror.

[Eldan]

I'm actually fairly sure one of his short stories is just "oh oops it was a black person".

There's the one where the main protagonist researches his family history and why there's so many suicides and unexplained fires in it and finds out that his great-grandfather (or something along those lines) mated with an ape creature from Africa, so his bloodline isn't wholly human. At which point he tries to commit suicide and burn the house down.

[LaZodiac]

There's the one where the main protagonist researches his family history and why there's so many suicides and unexplained fires in it and finds out that his great-grandfather (or something along those lines) mated with an ape creature from Africa, so his bloodline isn't wholly human. At which point he tries to commit suicide and burn the house down.

Pffthaha okay so that's AWFUL but it's also...kind of hilarious if you think about it.

[Bohandas]

There is plenty found in his stories as well. We've talked about a couple already and they are coming up in the collection being discussed right now. It's less in what specific role they play in the story, and more about how they are described and why they occupy those roles that the racism is revealed. It is not to do with capability, and more to do with how the author/narrator uses denigrating and dehumanizing language to refer to people that are not pure WASP and attributes their existence with a lack of or corruption of civilization and goodness in general. It is in the overall themes that weave through many stories of attributing "mixed breeds" and intermingling of races with immorality, doom, collapse and horror.

My point still stands about the genre offaetting it. The ethnic characters don't just practice primitive brutal primitive religions that advocate cannibalism and human sacrifice, they practice brutal primitive religions that advocate cannibalism and human sacrifice and are also objectively correct.

[Kantaki]

Pffthaha okay so that's AWFUL but it's also...kind of hilarious if you think about it.

Because the implication seems to be that this keeps happening in this family?:smallamused:

[Thrudd]

My point still stands about the genre offaetting it. The ethnic characters don't just practice primitive brutal primitive religions that advocate cannibalism and human sacrifice, they practice brutal primitive religions that advocate cannibalism and human sacrifice and are also objectively correct.

I don't think Lovecraft's nihilism and belief that civilization is doomed mean that his depictions are not racist: just because the stories express hopelessness and depict the "bad guys" winning doesn't negate his repeatedly stated revulsion with the "mongrel races". It can't just be seen as the opinion held by a specific fictional character, either, it is language and point of view which pervades multiple characters and stories, and in some cases the narrator's horror and revulsion is not just at something happening to which the "mongrel people" are involved, but at the very presence of those people. Lovecraft may have understood there was no stopping the waves of immigration and the inevitability of the "melting pot" diversification and interbreeding of people in his beloved country. But he did not like it one bit, it was a horror to him and represented the end of all that was good and decent.

[Winter_Wolf]

Pffthaha okay so that's AWFUL but it's also...kind of hilarious if you think about it.

And it's explicitly a great ape. And white. And there's a few more details which make it slightly less guffaw worthy. Or more, depending on how you want to look at it. I happen to like the story, just about short enough not to be a long grind. You can (and I did) literally skip somewhere on the order of 30-50 pages in the middle of "At the Mountains of Madness" and it makes no difference at all to the story. The man really needed an editor.

[BeerMug Paladin]

And it's explicitly a great ape. And white. And there's a few more details which make it slightly less guffaw worthy. Or more, depending on how you want to look at it. I happen to like the story, just about short enough not to be a long grind. You can (and I did) literally skip somewhere on the order of 30-50 pages in the middle of "At the Mountains of Madness" and it makes no difference at all to the story. The man really needed an editor.

In my opinion, Lovecraft's main strengths were in creative conceptual ideas and hitting a certain tone. You do not need a good story or good pacing for those to be successful elements.

I generally think he was a pretty bad writer, actually, but he has had a big impact on the horror genre for good reason. He was the Steven King of his day.

[MorgromTheOrc]

I think the main problem lies in that he isn't racist in the modern sense of prejudice against someone of a different color, but in the old school racism towards someone of a different country or culture, so technically more general xenophobia. He wasn't necessarily afraid of people of African or Asian decent, or anyone non-white. But specifically anyone not his kind of white and exact culture.

I've always saw this as a symptom of his terrible home life. I also always interpreted Shadow Over Innsmouth as a cautionary tale on not just migration, but especially trade with foreign entities, if you pay attention to the origins of the mixed bloodlines in the town. Though I still love the story.

And while I don't agree with his way of thinking, I do appreciate that his hiding these themes in fantastic works shows that he must've at least understood that his opinions were controversial, and so he just tries to put forward his thoughts and not the specific prejudice behind them. And even though in this case he was wrong, the principal of being suspicious of unknown things isn't always entirely misplaced, at least to a more reasonable extent you should always be cautious in life, it doesn't really come across to me as a political thing but rather in me it helped foster a calm Batman-like paranoia that helps someone as scientificly minded as myself keep an open mind to all things.

I always said that, "While Batman didn't grow up into a man that believes in vampires, if there was anything that suggested there might be vampire attacks in Gotham, you just know he would carry some garlic in his utility belt."

[KillingAScarab]

I generally think he was a pretty bad writer, actually, but he has had a big impact on the horror genre for good reason. He was the Steven King of his day.Yep, he died alone, relatively unknown by the world and penniless, just like Stephen Ki-- oh.


I think the main problem lies in that he isn't racist in the modern sense of prejudice against someone of a different color, but in the old school racism towards someone of a different country or culture, so technically more general xenophobia. He wasn't necessarily afraid of people of African or Asian decent, or anyone non-white. But specifically anyone not his kind of white and exact culture.People equated ethnicities to races in that time. Either way, he was quite sure that miscegenation was a terrible idea, except when the groups of people who mixed bloodlines to create his ancestors did so, because he believed they created a master race. Which presumably he also believed wasn't just a retroactive justification for colonialism.

He mellowed a little later but... Lovecraft also didn't particularly like people. Even his potential audience (http://blog.hrc.utexas.edu/2015/01/27/fellows-find-h-p-lovecraft-letter/).


We have millions who lack the intellectual independence, courage, and flexibility to get an artistic thrill out of a bizarre situation, and who enter sympathetically into a story only when it ignores the colour and vividness of actual human emotions and conventionally presents a simple plot based on artificial, ethically sugar-coated values and leading to a flat denouement which shall vindicate every current platitude and leave no mystery unexplained by the shallow comprehension of the most mediocre reader. That is the kind of public publishers confront, and only a fool or a rejection-venomed author could blame the publishers for a condition caused not by them but by the whole essence and historic tradition of our civilisation.



And while I don't agree with his way of thinking, I do appreciate that his hiding these themes in fantastic works shows that he must've at least understood that his opinions were controversial, and so he just tries to put forward his thoughts and not the specific prejudice behind them.You may want to take a look at the correspondence he had with people. He wrote a lot of letters where he complained about, among other things, Chinese immigrants in New York City. Nothing I'm going to repeat.

Also, wait until you get to "The Rats in the Walls."


I always said that, "While Batman didn't grow up into a man that believes in vampires, if there was anything that suggested there might be vampire attacks in Gotham, you just know he would carry some garlic in his utility belt."There is more than one story where Batman fights Dracula. Aside from the direct-to-video animated movie The Batman vs Dracula (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Batman_vs._Dracula), there was The Batman & Dracula trilogy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_%26_Dracula_trilogy) of Elseworlds stories.

[Eldan]

There's some wonderful stretching and tip-toeing in the complete lovecraft edition I have. LIke how they say about The Horror of Red Hook:

Though some readers may be put off by suspicions of racism.

[MorgromTheOrc]

Yep, he died alone, relatively unknown by the world and penniless, just like Stephen Ki-- oh.

People equated ethnicities to races in that time. Either way, he was quite sure that miscegenation was a terrible idea, except when the groups of people who mixed bloodlines to create his ancestors did so, because he believed they created a master race. Which presumably he also believed wasn't just a retroactive justification for colonialism.

He mellowed a little later but... Lovecraft also didn't particularly like people. Even his potential audience (http://blog.hrc.utexas.edu/2015/01/27/fellows-find-h-p-lovecraft-letter/).




You may want to take a look at the correspondence he had with people. He wrote a lot of letters where he complained about, among other things, Chinese immigrants in New York City. Nothing I'm going to repeat.

Also, wait until you get to "The Rats in the Walls."

There is more than one story where Batman fights Dracula. Aside from the direct-to-video animated movie The Batman vs Dracula (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Batman_vs._Dracula), there was The Batman & Dracula trilogy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_%26_Dracula_trilogy) of Elseworlds stories.

I didn't mean that they didn't relate it to ethnicity, just that they cared equally about bloodlines within the same ethnicity. And as far as the correspondence, I was more than aware of that, I don't care what he chooses to do in letters to friends. How he presents himself to outside readers is what matters, and my points still stand there.

Oh and on Batman, that's the main reason that the phrase works, Batman didn't grow up believing in the supernatural, but he was prepared anyways and it payed off. Incidentally the Batman vs. Vampires storylines are some of my favorite and the reason I chose them when I first said it years ago when describing to someone my outlook on life.

[Sapphire Guard]

I was far from home, and the spell of the great eastern sea was upon me.

Another great opening line. This time, our narrator is returning to his ancestral home at "Yuletide" to perform a ritual that that takes place once every century, a legend he has heard. We also get this line


Mine were an old people (...) And they were strange, because they had come as dark furtive folk from opiate southern gardens of orchids, and had spoken another tongue before they learnt the tongue of the blue eyed fishers.


Hmm. If not for the conversation just now, I probably wouldn't have noticed it. But anyway.
The village is oddly silent for Christmas-time, but our narrator assumes the locals are too religious to celebrate. Somehow, our narrator has really really specific instructions as to which house to go to from this legend, and he knocks on the lit up one. It's answered by an old man that seems to be mute, but carries a wax tablet to communicate.

He's brought to a damp, cold waiting room and begins to get nervous. The mute old man, he realises, seems to actually be wearing a mask that looks like skin. The books in the waiting room are all old and mouldy, and include our old friend the Necronomicon, which apparently everyone recognises but no one knows much about, translated to Latin. Our narrator apparently flicks through it while he's waiting, because ancient tomes by mad poets make for great waiting room reads. At eleven the old man puts on a hooded cloak and brings our narrator out, to where everyone in town is assembling in similar dress. They go to the church, and our narrator waits for everyone else to go in before following as he doesn't want to be last inside. They end up going into a deep cavern and as far as a river. There are giant mushrooms and a pillar of green fire that seems to be the subject of the worship.

Someone playing an instrument unseen changes their tune, and summons your standard Lovecraftian indescribable creatures, although webbed feet and wings are mentioned.

Mr. Old mute man tries to get our narrator to get on a monster, and he hesitates. The man tries to prove he is who he is by using a watch the narrator knows to be buried with an ancestor in 1698. Eventually, one of the monsters gets restless and when the man moves to stop it, his mask falls away.
Whatever is under it triggers our narrator to jump into the river to escape. He comes to in the local hospital, in a a modern town, after having apparently fallen over cliffs and into the sea the night before. He gets moved to an Asylum in Arkham, where he actually is well cared for, surprisingly enough. Then again, they give him a copy of the Necronomicon, and we get our first quote. It's too long to reproduce, but the gist is that mysterious tunnels are bad places, when wizards die they corrupt the graves and
things learn to walk that ought to crawl

So, what do we make of this? Our narrator is specifically lured to this town to perform some kind of ritual, he does not seek it out intentionally or randomly get unlucky like the others so far. He is rather well informed on his family history, being aware that
They had hanged four kinsmen of mine for witchcraft in 1692, which is a long time to remember something like that. He remembers this legend, which
only the poor and the lonely remember

So my best guess for what happened, insofar as you can understand a Lovecraft story, is that those hanged wizards were buried, and either resurrected themselves or some demon or monster inhabited their bodies. And they need our narrator for... a new body? Old mute man's mask passes muster at first glance but the narrator sees through it, and becomes increasingly concerned as time passes. Actual human skin?

Blind flight seems to serve our narrators well in these stories, but this guy holds together fairly well, he makes sure he goes last, which saves his life as the rest of the people aren't around to stop him. He's a little more careful about his personal safety than usual, although maybe he has more cause to be suspicious than the others.


Next up, we have the one, the only Call of Cthulhu,, folks! Looking forward to it.

[Bhu]

What I have isn't that extensive, but I since it's probably in the public domain I can find some of the rest on the internet. But anyway, sorry for taking so long to read five pages.


http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/ they are available yes

[Thrudd]

Next up, we have the one, the only Call of Cthulhu,, folks! Looking forward to it.

Oh, were you not reading "Dagon & other Macabre Tales"? When you said you had a compilation of short stories that started with Dagon, I assumed that's what it was. Unless you're just skipping over most of it to get to Cthulhu, which is understandable. If you're going to get around to the novella "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath", you might also want to go back to the collection and read "Polaris", "The White Ship", "The Cats of Ulthar", "Celephais", "The Other Gods", and "The Quest of Iranon".

[An Enemy Spy]

If you'd like greater insight into Lovecraft's work, why not ask the man himself? (https://www.youtube.com/user/lemurbouy)

[Sapphire Guard]

Oh, were you not reading "Dagon & other Macabre Tales"? When you said you had a compilation of short stories that started with Dagon, I assumed that's what it was. Unless you're just skipping over most of it to get to Cthulhu, which is understandable. If you're going to get around to the novella "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath", you might also want to go back to the collection and read "Polaris", "The White Ship", "The Cats of Ulthar", "Celephais", "The Other Gods", and "The Quest of Iranon".

No, I'm reading this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/912625.The_Whisperer_in_Darkness?from_search=true

(Anyone know why the buttons (quote, spoilers, etc) are gone? Is that just me?

Anyway, onward. I understand so many references now!




The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents

Nice. He's great about opening lines. This opener is all about how the narrator doesn't want anything to understand the things he has, which is why he is writing such a detailed account of it.

Our narrator was the executor of the estate of a mysteriously dying professor, and came across a lock box in his personal effects, which turned out to be about a period in 1925 where insanity spiked among poets and artists. It came to his attention when a student came to him with strange dreams about weird geometry and the phrase 'Cthulhu fhtagn'

Lovecraft seems to really love the word 'Cyclopean', it comes up a fair bit.

The professor took an interest in this because in 1908 he heard from a police officer about a human sacrifice cult that were chanting some of those words. The cultists, and I am now seeing some of this racism you've been talking about, was broken by the police after some disappearances, and some of them explained.

It's always interesting to see the original source of something and the pop culture version. Chtulhu isn't reallly a great old one, he's the Saren to their Reapers, something like a herald or a gatekeeper.

Our narrator thinks this is weird, but doesn't pay much heed until he sees an article about a mariner in New Zealand, carrying a stone idol of Cthulhu.

According to the survivor, they came across a crew of evil looking people and were fired on when they refused to turn back, so they killed them all and landed on a nearby island where something killed all of them. The survivor subsequently got the hell out of dodge and moved back to his native Oslo, so our narrator follows. He has also died mysteriously by then while leaving a long account of his experiences, which our narrator takes.

This island is deeply unsettling to the adventurers, but they press on anyway and find a mysterious door with the depiction of the idol on it. They semi accidentally open it, and darkness that is a 'positive quality', which is a really great description, I have to admit, it's a thing in itself rather than the absence of light. Something else also comes out,which isn't described beyond being gelatinous and green, and two of the crew fail their sanity rolls just looking at it. The rest flee, and three die of clawing, while one man just falls. They reach the boat, but Cthulhu can swim, and after the other guy fails his sanity check the last sailor elects to ram Cthulhu with the ship. Chtulhu bursts apart on impact, in that scene you sometimes see in vs threads. It reforms a few seconds later, but by the then the steamship has put too much distance between them. It must have done something, though, because it then doesn't take over the world.

The narrator then decides to leave his account in the professor's box, because even though Cthulu's revival failed, the cult has assassinated several people that know too much and he decides he's probably next, so he ends with a note to his executor not to investigate this document if they find it.

Like I said already, the most interesting thing about this is how different pop culture Cthulhu is from Lovecraft Cthulhu. This story is a big green gelatinous thing with claws, sometimes described as a squid dragon, that explodes on heavy impact and regenerates. It needs to be unsealed, but didn't fully break free this time for unclear reasons, maybe the steamboat knocked it out or broke its concentration or something. Several of the sailors make their sanity rolls in its presence, although that just means they get clawed to death.



Next, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

[Winter_Wolf]

HPL is good at opening lines. The execution doesn't always pan out, but he can pull off a great opening.

By the way, I have not seen that collection before. I suspect the newer collections are just recombining partial lists of works to milk the most out of a dead man's writing. But it could be handy to all be on the same literal page when talking specifics (page X, lines Y-Z). I should dig out my Necronomicon collected works and read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

[An Enemy Spy]

From what I understand, I think Cthulhu went outside, looked around and said "nope, not time yet." and went back to wait for the stars to be right for the Great Old Ones' return.

[Fri]

The equivalent I always use is this.

Cthulhu woke up at the middle of the night because some annoying buzzing, bleary-eyed he stepped on some cockroach, which really annoy and inconvenience him, but he looked at his alarm clock, notice it's still 3 am, and went back to sleep.

[Sapphire Guard]

HPL is good at opening lines. The execution doesn't always pan out, but he can pull off a great opening.

By the way, I have not seen that collection before. I suspect the newer collections are just recombining partial lists of works to milk the most out of a dead man's writing.

Yup, probably.


From what I understand, I think Cthulhu went outside, looked around and said "nope, not time yet." and went back to wait for the stars to be right for the Great Old Ones' return.

The equivalent I always use is this.

Cthulhu woke up at the middle of the night because some annoying buzzing, bleary-eyed he stepped on some cockroach, which really annoy and inconvenience him, but he looked at his alarm clock, notice it's still 3 am, and went back to sleep.

I do like these interpretations, but he also did seem to be sending out the dream summons deliberately.

[Dusso]

Maybe you would be interested to check out a new game Lovercraft Tales being developed. It's based loosely on "Whisperer in darkness". You can play a free demo and support the production of the game right now.

[Bohandas]

And it's explicitly a great ape. And white.

This is making me imagine a videogame called "Honkey Kong"

edit:
can I say that? the filter doesn't censor it.

[Bohandas]

From what I understand, I think Cthulhu went outside, looked around and said "nope, not time yet." and went back to wait for the stars to be right for the Great Old Ones' return.

Or got pulled back because the stars were not yet right


Lovecraft seems to really love the word 'Cyclopean', it comes up a fair bit.

Also "eldritch" and "antediluvian"

[Winter_Wolf]

This is making me imagine a videogame called "Honkey Kong"

edit:
can I say that? the filter doesn't censor it.

Man that's funny. If he was wearing a cowboy hat and carrying an acoustic guitar he could be called "Honkey Tonk Kong".

I've been to Nashville, TN a couple of times.

[Eldan]

Like I said already, the most interesting thing about this is how different pop culture Cthulhu is from Lovecraft Cthulhu. This story is a big green gelatinous thing with claws, sometimes described as a squid dragon, that explodes on heavy impact and regenerates. It needs to be unsealed, but didn't fully break free this time for unclear reasons, maybe the steamboat knocked it out or broke its concentration or something. Several of the sailors make their sanity rolls in its presence, although that just means they get clawed to death.


There is actually a bit more. Lovecraft made a sketch of what he imagined Cthulhu to look like, most depictions are based on that.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Cthulhu_sketch_by_Lovecraft.jpg

[Fri]

That honestly looks like something secured from the only surviving journal of a man who stabbed twenty people yelling about squid dragon, before disappearing mysteriously, leaving a house fire.

[Winter_Wolf]

That honestly looks like something secured from the only surviving journal of a man who stabbed twenty people yelling about squid dragon, before disappearing mysteriously, leaving a house fire.

Mission accompanied, then. From HPL's point of view anyway.

[Sapphire Guard]

This one gets pretty long, so I might have to break it up. But first, an announcement.

This one was really, really good. I've been a bit snarky up to now about how many of these follow a formula, and this one kind of does as well, but the reason for that is because a lot of thought has gone into how something like this would work.

Charles Dexter Ward was (extremely reluctantly) committed to an insane asylum in Providence by his family due to an unprecedented condition that befell the hapless soul. His body aged, digestion atrophied, a mysterious mole appeared, and various other odd stuff. He became extremely intelligent, but suffered wide ranging memory loss. He mysteriously escaped the asylum after a visit from the family doctor, leaving behind a strange blue powder. He had been a history buff before this, until suddenly manifesting a detailed knowledge of the past history and becoming more interested in the modern day.

In his historical efforts, he had begun dabbling in the... occult, shall we say, and in particular sought out the grave of an ancestor in the 1700s, and eventually found some of his papers. This ancestor, one Joseph Corwen, arrived from Salem. Ward, researching his own family history, discovered that his ancestor had suffered some kind of disgrace, to the point where his widow used her maiden name and the rest of the town tried to expunge him from history.

Back in the 1700s, Corwen fled witchhunts and settled in Providence. He didn't appear to age after his arrival, which raised an eyebrow or two after the first few decades. He hung around in graveyards a bit more than average, and seemed to dabble in alchemy. His neighbours complained of hearing screams, and vast herds of livestock that seemed to disappear. He ran a kind of shipping empire, but not many of the crew seemed to stay long and a lot of his staff seem to hate him. Fifty years after his arrival, he's basically an outcast, and tries to keep it by donating to the town and attending church and such, which works somewhat as his sailors start to survive. His imported slaves also disappear at a high rate, although this is not known at the time. By this point the only people that will work for him are blackmailed or held in debt. Because he needed to stay in the towns good graces, Corwen then decided to marry a local eighteen year old, forcing her to break a previous engagement with a sailor, Ezra Weeden, who starts investigating him properly.

Along with a friend they discover that Corwen has built a series of catacombs, inside which interrogations seem to be happening. During a flood one year, a giant heap of bones are unearthed.
Eventually, Weeden and his friend gather enough to take to the town worthies, and they decide something has to be done about Corwen.

TO BE CONTINUED


The first half of this story is pretty slow, but what's amazing about this one is how intelligent everyone is. Corwen does the best he can, but he can't reasonably hide the extent of his operations or his agelessness. This isn't formula for the sake of following formula, this is formulsa because that is how something like this would actually work. Apparently Lovecraft himself hated this one, but I really enjoyed it.

[kraftcheese]

This one gets pretty long, so I might have to break it up. But first, an announcement.

This one was really, really good. I've been a bit snarky up to now about how many of these follow a formula, and this one kind of does as well, but the reason for that is because a lot of thought has gone into how something like this would work.

Charles Dexter Ward was (extremely reluctantly) committed to an insane asylum in Providence by his family due to an unprecedented condition that befell the hapless soul. His body aged, digestion atrophied, a mysterious mole appeared, and various other odd stuff. He became extremely intelligent, but suffered wide ranging memory loss. He mysteriously escaped the asylum after a visit from the family doctor, leaving behind a strange blue powder. He had been a history buff before this, until suddenly manifesting a detailed knowledge of the past history and becoming more interested in the modern day.

In his historical efforts, he had begun dabbling in the... occult, shall we say, and in particular sought out the grave of an ancestor in the 1700s, and eventually found some of his papers. This ancestor, one Joseph Corwen, arrived from Salem. Ward, researching his own family history, discovered that his ancestor had suffered some kind of disgrace, to the point where his widow used her maiden name and the rest of the town tried to expunge him from history.

Back in the 1700s, Corwen fled witchhunts and settled in Providence. He didn't appear to age after his arrival, which raised an eyebrow or two after the first few decades. He hung around in graveyards a bit more than average, and seemed to dabble in alchemy. His neighbours complained of hearing screams, and vast herds of livestock that seemed to disappear. He ran a kind of shipping empire, but not many of the crew seemed to stay long and a lot of his staff seem to hate him. Fifty years after his arrival, he's basically an outcast, and tries to keep it by donating to the town and attending church and such, which works somewhat as his sailors start to survive. His imported slaves also disappear at a high rate, although this is not known at the time. By this point the only people that will work for him are blackmailed or held in debt. Because he needed to stay in the towns good graces, Corwen then decided to marry a local eighteen year old, forcing her to break a previous engagement with a sailor, Ezra Weeden, who starts investigating him properly.

Along with a friend they discover that Corwen has built a series of catacombs, inside which interrogations seem to be happening. During a flood one year, a giant heap of bones are unearthed.
Eventually, Weeden and his friend gather enough to take to the town worthies, and they decide something has to be done about Corwen.

TO BE CONTINUED


The first half of this story is pretty slow, but what's amazing about this one is how intelligent everyone is. Corwen does the best he can, but he can't reasonably hide the extent of his operations or his agelessness. This isn't formula for the sake of following formula, this is formulsa because that is how something like this would actually work. Apparently Lovecraft himself hated this one, but I really enjoyed it.

I have this weird feeling that there's a wrecked ship called the Charles Dexter Ward in a game I've played recently?

Maybe it was in a book? I'm alternating between thinking it might've been in a spaceship in a book, or an actual ship in Far Harbor or Sunless Sea or something; honestly either could be making the reference.

EDIT: (I looked it up, it was a short Elizabeth Bear story I read about a year ago; I remember it being pretty decent)

[Sapphire Guard]

Sorry about my last post, it ran on for quite a while and didn't say much.

When last I posted, the town had just been notified about the strange activities of Curwen, and the most polite, genteel, careful witchhunt in literature ensued. Something flees from Curwen's farm, and it turns out to be the fresh body of a man that died fifty years before. Eventually, a raiding party of a good hundred sailors sets out to bring Curwen to justice. We don't see what happens, but the people that come back bear the hallmarks of having seen eldritch stuff.Another account shows 'flaming things' which are felled by the attackers, but no one who was actually in the raiding force would ever speak of it again. By mutual agreement the town did its best to erase him from memory.

Back in the 1920s, Mr Charles Dexter Ward uncovers a portrait of Curwen, which happens to look exactly like him except for a scar on his nose, and eventually starts looking for his ancestor's grave. Eventually, of course, he finds it, and on Good Friday, (which clearly has no significance) a mysterious ritual takes place in his house, after which he recovers his sanity somewhat.

Ezra Weeden's grave is mysteriously defaced, and a mysterious monster begins attacking people. At the same time, Ward begins associating with a mysteriously silent man named Dr. Allen, who has a large black beard that makes him difficult to identify.

One Day, the family doctor gets a letter from Charles, in which he feels under threat, and his father hired detectives to prevent him, and that Dr. Allen must be shot on sight and dissolved in acid (but not burned), and to come immediately and see him. The Doctor does, and he is not at home. Apparently, he was heard on the phone pleading with someone, and then entered the house, and then there were screams and choking noises. Nothing out of the ordinary.


Sorry, not much substantial here either. Join me next time, where I will actually say something of note, hopefully. There's a lot I can't talk about until it's fully explained, but I really liked this story, it was well thought out, the nature of how things happened and the obstacles worked, because the genre tropes don't exist yet so all the characters are confused and slowly figuring things out.


I have this weird feeling that there's a wrecked ship called the Charles Dexter Ward in a game I've played recently?]

Did everything go horribly wrong aboard?

[Bhu]

From what I understand, I think Cthulhu went outside, looked around and said "nope, not time yet." and went back to wait for the stars to be right for the Great Old Ones' return.

Lumley and a few other devotees of HPL postulate that it wasn't even Cthulhu so much as one of his spawn, because otherwise the Call of Cthulhu is basically a giant island monster ala Kong, and that isn't something that HPL would likely write.

[Sapphire Guard]

On foot of the letter, Dr Willet goes to the other house, and meets Ward, who claims to be sick and speaks in a whisper. He seems to have lost memories and gained other ones , and his handwriting has changed. He considers him insane, and begins investigating like the sailors did Ward beforehand, but before then, the bankers notice that his signature had changed. Ward is declared insane and brought to an asylum. His post is monitored, and detectives investigate, and Willet finally believes that necromancy is happening. They investigate the now missing Dr Allen, and Willet finds a catacomb, and this is where this story really shines. An old, determined Doctor goes down into the depths, alone into the dark, and looks through his papers, learns a magical formula by accident, and then stumbles across a well cover, with an undead monster inside. He briefly fails his sanity roll and drops his torch in, where the monster eats it.

And now Doctor Willet is alone in the dark in a maze of catacombs, with no way of making light, utterly terrified of stumbling into the well he uncovered, but aware that he has to move quickly, because the lights he lit on the way in are gradually going out in the distance, and if he doesn't find his way out soon he won't ever escape. He eventually has no choice to blindly run towards the light until he eventually gets back to the workshop at the base of the catacombs. And he doesn't immediately flee, this is one very brave man. He gathers more light and goes back!

And he finds another lab, where Ward was evidently interrupted in the middle of things when sent to the asylum, and accidentally says the words written on a wall. And he faints.

Unlike most eldritch abominations, this one sees fit to put Willett to bed upstairs with a helpful note in old latin about killing Corwen. He goes to confront Ward and tells this story, but gets nothing until he mentions that he summoned something, where Ward is terrified to see Willet still alive. Willet takes out the message, and Ward faints.

It comes out that Ward's associates in Transylvania and Prague are mysteriously killed. And they find that Dr Allen looks rather like Ward. Willet investigates the Ward family home, burns something, and sends Ward's father a letter, telling him that he is going to visit Ward, after which he will escape, and a year later they can put up a gravestone in a specific spot.

Then he goes to visit Ward. Ward sees in his eyes that he's here for something different this time. He mentions what he found.

"You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!"

Curwen panics and starts summoning magic, but Willett is "too quick for him" with a spell of his own, and when he's finished "Joseph Curwen now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine blueish grey dust.


This was a phenomenal story. It drags a bit in the middle, but there's so much thought put into this. What happens if a necromancer raises only part of a body? A monster. They have to be very careful, because gravestones are not necessarily accurate. Even doing everything you can to stay belowv the radar, people will notice if you live 150 years without aging.

Everyone is very clever and careful, but it is impossible for Curwen to seamlessly step into a life. He forgot about handwriting, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for a man to think the much less literate 1700s. He does his best, but it's an impossible task.

Willet travelling the maze is brilliant writing, it's so tense and powerful.

One question remains...what exactly was summoned? My first thought was Ezra Weeden, or some trap he deliberately buried in his grave, but he wouldn't speak tenth century Latin. Some unknown sorcerer from Curwen's past? Regardless, he's unusually kind for a summoned entity.

Next, The Dunwich Horror

[Frozen_Feet]

For reasons I do not recall, I presumed the one summoned to be Merlin.

[kraftcheese]

Did everything go horribly wrong aboard?
Boy oh boy did it!

From what I remember it was a living ship that wasn't alive but not quite dead either...

[GolemsVoice]

While Lovecraft was undoubtedly a massive racist (though he did marry a Jewish woman) he also plain didn't like people, period. At least he didn't like physically interacting with them, to the point where he was almost unable to work in any capacity that required interacting with them.

[GloatingSwine]

From what I understand, I think Cthulhu went outside, looked around and said "nope, not time yet." and went back to wait for the stars to be right for the Great Old Ones' return.

The Stars were not yet Right.

Also the damn kids had gotten off of his lawn.

[Yora]

He also was very clearly mentally ill. He couldn't really handle anything that was different from what he was used to.


One question remains...what exactly was summoned? My first thought was Ezra Weeden, or some trap he deliberately buried in his grave, but he wouldn't speak tenth century Latin. Some unknown sorcerer from Curwen's past? Regardless, he's unusually kind for a summoned entity.

I think that was pretty much the whole point of the ending. The three sorcerers are evil men who enslave ancient ghosts to torture them for their magical secrets. They have to fear all the spirits, even the good ones that mean no harm to the living.
Being evil is dangerous, as it makes you enemies everywhere.

I think it's a really pretty good story. It could have been much shorter, but that applies to almost everything Lovecraft wrote.

[Winter_Wolf]

Surprisingly I vaguely recall a couple of his short stories that I thought could have been a bit longer. Sadly he probably would have pushed the prose into the ultraviolet rather than advance plot or add depth to characters.

[kraftcheese]

He also was very clearly mentally ill. He couldn't really handle anything that was different from what he was used to.

Two questions:

1. What makes you say that, and what kind of mental illness do you think he had?

2. Do you think that's a valid excuse for his racism? I'd maybe understand if he had an illness that has severe psychosis as a symptom I guess?

[Wardog]

Lovecraft: With horror, he realized that he was the monster!

Howard: And it was badass!

I like how that story essentially turns into a horror story from the perspective of the aliens.

Alien centipede-worm thing: I think I'll perform a mind-swap with one of these earth-creatures in another galaxy. What could possibly go wrong?
...
*Conan the Centipede tramples the jewelled thrones of Yekub beneath his multiple feet*

[Fri]

I like how that story essentially turns into a horror story from the perspective of the aliens.

Alien centipede-worm thing: I think I'll perform a mind-swap with one of these earth-creatures in another galaxy. What could possibly go wrong?
...
*Conan the Centipede tramples the jewelled thrones of Yekub beneath his multiple feet*

Human: "Being a worm is easy"

Worm: "How I into bipedal motion"

[GolemsVoice]

Two questions:

1. What makes you say that, and what kind of mental illness do you think he had?

2. Do you think that's a valid excuse for his racism? I'd maybe understand if he had an illness that has severe psychosis as a symptom I guess?

I'll give my answer here: 1.) I can't say for certain that he actually had a mental illness, but he was extremely shy and loathed being around other people, especially close to them. He had real trouble getting intimate with his wife (as far as we know) and the marriage didn't last long. He could hardly keep a job that forced him to be in direct contact to people (like, say, a salesman). Extreme anxiety perhaps? He was also really afraid of the sea.

2.) It's not an excuse, per se, but it does explain his racism, to a certain extent. The "foreigners" where all the things he hated about people, loud, physical, dirty, impolite, uneducated, non-English. Or at least that's how he imagined them to be. That's like a hate-bingo for HPL. Now keep in mind that I do not excuse him in any way.

[Eldan]

Probably some elements of trauma to it? He came from a respected and very English New England family, until his father went, according to descriptions "psychotic" and was assigned to an asylum. Lovecraft was three years old at the time and his father was never released until he died.

He was sick through his entire childhood, rarely went out, didn't go to school. He suffered from night terrors and sleep paralysis.

THen his family lost their estate and he dropped out of high school and became a total recluse who didn't go out during the day.

Then his mother was also assigned to an asylum, for "hysteria" and depression and died there as well.

So, you know. Just as an idea where the themes are coming from.

[Sapphire Guard]

He also was very clearly mentally ill. He couldn't really handle anything that was different from what he was used to.



I think that was pretty much the whole point of the ending. The three sorcerers are evil men who enslave ancient ghosts to torture them for their magical secrets. They have to fear all the spirits, even the good ones that mean no harm to the living.
Being evil is dangerous, as it makes you enemies everywhere.

I think it's a really pretty good story. It could have been much shorter, but that applies to almost everything Lovecraft wrote.

I know, I know, you don't read Lovecraft for definitive answers, but the rest of you would know if there was one. I really enjoyed this, definitely the most impressive work so far.

[GolemsVoice]

I remember Lovecraft once wrote some advice to young writers, saying that even though the reader doesn't neccessarily have to know, the author should always know what was going on. But even Lovecraft didn't always follow that advice.

[Tvtyrant]

I like how that story essentially turns into a horror story from the perspective of the aliens.

Alien centipede-worm thing: I think I'll perform a mind-swap with one of these earth-creatures in another galaxy. What could possibly go wrong?
...
*Conan the Centipede tramples the jewelled thrones of Yekub beneath his multiple feet*

It inverts the whole "sealed evil in a can" theme. Imagine being a pacifist herbivore that accidently brought a human into your world.

[Bohandas]

I like how that story essentially turns into a horror story from the perspective of the aliens.

Alien centipede-worm thing: I think I'll perform a mind-swap with one of these earth-creatures in another galaxy. What could possibly go wrong?
...
*Conan the Centipede tramples the jewelled thrones of Yekub beneath his multiple feet*

There's also the other one where
A space alien becomes possessed by the human sorcerer Randolph Carter