Travel Between Worlds in the Lovecraft Mythos

[Palanan]

I’ve only read a handful of Lovecraft stories, and most of what I know about space travel in the Lovecraft mythos comes from the adaptations of his creatures in the Pathfinder Bestiaries.

I gather that there are some creatures capable of extremely fast travel between stars, though apparently not faster than light. And there are other creatures capable of casting their racial consciousness through time and space, though apparently not their physical bodies.

Are there also portals, as we would understand the modern use of the term? If so, does Lovecraft ever clarify their workings, or is it just alluded that various creatures came through somehow?

And are there other methods of interstellar travel other than what I've touched on here?

[Tvtyrant]

I’ve only read a handful of Lovecraft stories, and most of what I know about space travel in the Lovecraft mythos comes from the adaptations of his creatures in the Pathfinder Bestiaries.

I gather that there are some creatures capable of extremely fast travel between stars, though apparently not faster than light. And there are other creatures capable of casting their racial consciousness through time and space, though apparently not their physical bodies.

Are there also portals, as we would understand the modern use of the term? If so, does Lovecraft ever clarify their workings, or is it just alluded that various creatures came through somehow?

And are there other methods of interstellar travel other than what I've touched on here?

Dreams: you can dream yourself to other worlds.

Graveyards: In one of the stories a character literally climbs a tower and comes out in a graveyard on Earth. It implies that this leaves no way back to the afterlife.

Summoning rituals: Lots of stuff doesn't live elsewhere but lives in forms that can only be interacted with through a ritual. This is the literal version of another dimension or plane of existence instead of just another universe. Creatures that are time or space, etc.

[HandofShadows]

Graveyards: In one of the stories a character literally climbs a tower and comes out in a graveyard on Earth. It implies that this leaves no way back to the afterlife.

The story is the "The Outsider" and the person is not climbing a tower to another world.

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The POV character is climbing up from the depths under a city and is actually a ghoul.

There are a number of species that have natural interstellar flight or use gates. several of them such as the Elder Things have actual starships.

[Tvtyrant]

The story is the "The Outsider" and the person is not climbing a tower to another world.

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The POV character is climbing up from the depths under a city and is actually a ghoul.

There are a number of species that have natural interstellar flight or use gates. several of them such as the Elder Things have actual starships.

Are you sure?

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I thought he specifically referenced seeing the sky above him before he started climbing. It has been a few years but I always read it as a dead person climbing out of hell.

[Caledonian]

There is really very little that is clear and explicit. However, in "The Dreams in the Witch House", the protagonist is having nightmares in which (among other things) he moves through higher dimensions of space and at one point finds himself in a strange place with three suns in the sky, presumably another planet. (The 'dreams' are of course far more real than he is willing to acknowledge.)

[HandofShadows]

Are you sure?

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I thought he specifically referenced seeing the sky above him before he started climbing. It has been a few years but I always read it as a dead person climbing out of hell.

Check for yourself.

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While he is dead, it's undead.

[Sapphire Guard]

There's one story where allowing aliens to put your brain in a jar might allow you to travel through space, but the circumstances are very, very suspicious.

[Eldan]

There is really very little that is clear and explicit. However, in "The Dreams in the Witch House", the protagonist is having nightmares in which (among other things) he moves through higher dimensions of space and at one point finds himself in a strange place with three suns in the sky, presumably another planet. (The 'dreams' are of course far more real than he is willing to acknowledge.)

There's more to it than that, even. He also mentions that Keziah Mason, the titular Witch, was apparently doing something with equations and geometry that remind him of Einstein's work. In the 18th century.

So it's pretty clearly some kind of time-space-dimensional travel.

[Fyraltari]

If so, does Lovecraft ever clarify

Nope. That's kind of the whole point, really. In Lovecraft's writings, everything that goes on with aliens, gods and black people is incomprehensible for our feeble minds.

Are you sure?

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I thought he specifically referenced seeing the sky above him before he started climbing. It has been a few years but I always read it as a dead person climbing out of hell.

Lovecraft was deeply materilistic. There is no afterlife in his works. There are ways to escape your own death by turning into a variety of undead things or being brought back from essential salts by a dark sorceror, but the consciousness just stops when you die.

[Kitten Champion]

I honestly can't think of a single mention of any kind of spacecraft, and I don't think the question of light-speed travel was something Lovecraft actually considered in any way.

Not that I have an encyclopedic memory of Lovecraft's work or anything and it's a wide mythos outside of him, but even in stories where you'd think it would come up it doesn't. Like the Mi-Go for instance, which you might assume would have flying saucers or something conceptually similar, fly through space by literally flapping their special space wings instead. I think Cthulhu does something similar.

[Morgaln]

In general, there are no hard rules on what does and doesn't work in Lovecraft's stories. His work isn't one concise body of stories that interconnect, each story has its own logic. So you have things like:

Mi-Go and Elder Things that fly through the aether
The Great Race of Yith that projects only its minds across time and space
The color out of space that falls to earth in a kind of egg locked in a meteorite (it's implied that it can also move through space somehow)
Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkins who can travel by entering another dimension using geometry


Spaceships are never mentioned since Lovecraft's creatures rarely use technology. Overall, Lovecraft wasn't big on actually explaining how things work, since that would be actively counterproductive to the feelings he wanted to provoke. So at best you get the magic equivalent of techno-babble.

[Tvtyrant]

Check for yourself.

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While he is dead, it's undead.

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Literally nothing in that story implies he is in a cavern. He lives in a castle surrounded by a moat and a forest, he mentions the sky and the moon before he gets out, there is no cavern imagery at all. I can see coming to that conclusion but the story hardly screams "guy crawling out of a pit." With the forest he mentions it being darker as you walk away from the castle, which makes no sense underground.

[comicshorse]

[QUOTE=Kitten Champion;24523090
Not that I have an encyclopedic memory of Lovecraft's work or anything and it's a wide mythos outside of him, but even in stories where you'd think it would come up it doesn't. Like the Mi-Go for instance, which you might assume would have flying saucers or something conceptually similar, fly through space by literally flapping their special space wings instead. I think Cthulhu does something similar.[/QUOTE]

I think sorcerers can summon and bind Night-Gaunts, who also travel interstellar space by flapping their wings, to carry them through space.

[Fyraltari]

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Literally nothing in that story implies he is in a cavern. He lives in a castle surrounded by a moat and a forest, he mentions the sky and the moon before he gets out, there is no cavern imagery at all. I can see coming to that conclusion but the story hardly screams "guy crawling out of a pit." With the forest he mentions it being darker as you walk away from the castle, which makes no sense underground.

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He explicitly says that he had never seen the moon, stars or sun outside his books before. He has little to no light source so he assumed their was an ‘unseen sky’ above the darkness he saw while looking up.

[DavidSh]

Lovecraft was deeply materilistic. There is no afterlife in his works. There are ways to escape your own death by turning into a variety of undead things or being brought back from essential salts by a dark sorceror, but the consciousness just stops when you die.

Except that is at least one character who has died in real life, yet lives on in the dream world, in Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Kuranes, I think is his name in the dream world.

[The Hellbug]

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He explicitly says that he had never seen the moon, stars or sun outside his books before. He has little to no light source so he assumed their was an ‘unseen sky’ above the darkness he saw while looking up.

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I'm pretty sure the underground part is some sort of dream. The POV character is a ghoul crawling out of a tomb and visiting the castle where they lived in life. I say this because they mention that it looks familiar--which I took to be similar to the castle they climbed out of. They call it 'maddeningly familiar' and point out that 'well-known towers had been demolished; whilst new wings existed to confuse the beholder'. Thus, while the narrator never mentions that they are the same, the recognition and the dream-like state of the original castle as well as the narrator being a ghoul imply to me that the beginning was some kind of dream-in-undeath until they awakened and visited their old home, which had been changed in however much time had passed since their death.

[Fyraltari]

Except that is at least one character who has died in real life, yet lives on in the dream world, in Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Kuranes, I think is his name in the dream world.

No, time flows differently in dreams. The man is dreaming as he dies and is prolonging that dreams indefinitely. He says that he can't wake-up because if his dream ends he will truly die. He isn't dead but dying.

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I'm pretty sure the underground part is some sort of dream. The POV character is a ghoul crawling out of a tomb and visiting the castle where they lived in life. I say this because they mention that it looks familiar--which I took to be similar to the castle they climbed out of. They call it 'maddeningly familiar' and point out that 'well-known towers had been demolished; whilst new wings existed to confuse the beholder'. Thus, while the narrator never mentions that they are the same, the recognition and the dream-like state of the original castle as well as the narrator being a ghoul imply to me that the beginning was some kind of dream-in-undeath until they awakened and visited their old home, which had been changed in however much time had passed since their death.

That also works. Though he isn't a ghoul even if he ends up living with them, Lovercraft's ghouls aren,'t undead but dog-headed carrion-eaters.

[The Hellbug]

That also works. Though he isn't a ghoul even if he ends up living with them, Lovercraft's ghouls aren,'t undead but dog-headed carrion-eaters.

My mistake, haven't read any of him; you get what I mean, though.

[Fyraltari]

My mistake, haven't read any of him; you get what I mean, though.

Heh. You’re not missing much.

[Caledonian]

You're missing a *great deal*. The man is considered the grandfather of modern horror for a reason. While some of his stories are lacking, others are masterpieces of the genre.

Look: go to hppodcraft.com, go to their section of "Readings", and download free readings of several of HPL's stories, then judge for yourself how good they are. (All the episodes of the show proper concerning HPL's stuff are also free, and some afterwards, which is a good... 120 episodes or so?)

You can also find his writings online, again for free, since it's probably all out of copyright. (Determining that is harder than it sounds.)

[Sapphire Guard]

I've only read a few, but the Case of Charles Dexter Ward was first rate horror.

[Eldan]

For free readings, I recommend Horrorbabble on Youtube. A good reader makes some of his longer works considerably less tedious.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I've only read a few, but the Case of Charles Dexter Ward was first rate horror.

It is probably his best, with At the Mountains of Madness coming a somewhat further second. I don't think his work has aged particularly well, though.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Manga Shoggoth
I don't think his work has aged particularly well, though.

Do you mean in terms of his well-known social issues, or in terms of genre conventions?

As far as the latter, I have the sense that what horrified people a century ago doesn't always have the same traction today. Although the few Lovecraft pieces I've read have certainly had some unsettling moments.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Do you mean in terms of his well-known social issues, or in terms of genre conventions?

As far as the latter, I have the sense that what horrified people a century ago doesn't always have the same traction today. Although the few Lovecraft pieces I've read have certainly had some unsettling moments.

I'm thinking more in terms of writing style, although the other points are equally valid. On the social issues I'm not sure that Lovecraft was any worse than the other people of his day - I've seen it argued both ways - but I don't believe in discounting a story because its mores and customs (or the author's) don't match yours.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Manga Shoggoth
...I don't believe in discounting a story because its mores and customs (or the author's) don't match yours.

Good on you for that. I very much agree.

As for the writing style, I'll have to pay more attention to that the next time I read one of his stories. I've only read a very few; the one that's clearest in my mind has to do with a German submarine commander slowly going insane as his U-boat drifts through lost ruins on the seafloor.

On a related tangent, have you seen the recent movie adaptation of Color Out of Space? Is that worthwhile?

.

[Eldan]

It's extremely cheesy, but entertaining. It has Nicholas Cage and some nice effects.

[Manga Shoggoth]

On a related tangent, have you seen the recent movie adaptation of Color Out of Space? Is that worthwhile?

It's extremely cheesy, but entertaining. It has Nicholas Cage and some nice effects.

Alas, getting me into the cinema these days (even before COVID-19) is almost impossible. I wasn't even aware there was an adaptation.

[Eldan]

It also barely runs anywhere, it's not a very widely marketed film. Had to take the train for an hour to get to a city where it ran.

[Fyraltari]

Don’t get me wrong Lovecraft as some good stories and he did create the whole cosmic horror genre which is nothing to scoff at but he is the kind of writer who works better in concept that execution. His prose is long winded to the point of boredom, his reliance on leaving the monster to the reader’s imagination sometimes means there’s nothing actually scary in the story, his protagonists are either so bland they don’t have any character, author avatars or both and in all cases generally lack any positive quality or willingness to actually do or investigate anything. And a lot of his writings have aged terribly either in case of mores or of overuse of the concept meaning that you will see the twist coming looooooong before the characters or won’t see anything wrong with it. I mean there’s a story where the terrible truth is that the narrator is one-hundred-twenty-eighth Congolese, excuse me for not being horrified. Or one where a street’s genus loci kills a bunch of communist Mexican Jews, excuse me for not being relieved. And the shadow over insmouth is at 80% an allegory for the horrors of the great replacement. That hampered my enjoyment of it somewhat, I must say.

They’re classics true, but I won’t be re-reading them any time soon.