HP Lovecraft fans?

How did I miss this thread?

I blame my work.


Anyway, I am certainly a big fan of the Old Gent from Providence, despite his flaws.
As for whether I 'play the game'... let's just say that my name appears in the rulebook.
I also helped write some of the lyrics to a couple Thickets' songs.

Yes, you may BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP AZATHOTH, THE DAEMON SULTAN!
 
Giz said:
I did know someone at University that thought a friend of his had a Greek copy of the Necronomicon!!! Wouldn't believe it was a hoax, kept looking at me as if I was mad!
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Show him the Simon Necronomicon.

Besides, I've been collecting the Penguin editions for some time. The other day I bought the third. They are supposed to have the most correct texts and there's interesting notes.

The omnibus editions should be avoided at any cost. Partly beacuse of the mangled texts and partly beacuse of the totally un-lovecraftian cover art. Like splatter for senile demented 12-year olds?
 
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I've always like The Shadow out of Time. I've seen it described somewhere as one of the best science fiction stories ever written, but I can't remember where - it must have been about 50 years ago.

With the CGI facilities available now, they could make some good films from Lovecraft's stories.

I can remember looking through library catalogues for the Necronomicon, not that I believed it existed but to see if anyone had managed to insert a card for it without it being detected by the library. It would be difficult these days with computerised records, of course.

Leon
 
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Bikewer said:
I read a bio of ol' HP, and he was not a particularly pleasant individual, apparently. Racist, white-supremacist, and perhaps "rather more dependent on mum than one should be".

His books are full of descriptions of "half-caste Laskars", sub-men, degenerates, and so forth....

Of course, that may be the product of the times, there was still more than a bit of thought to the effect that the White European Male was the epitome of evolution....
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He was quite liberal compared to a lot of popular writers of the time.

Leon
 
leon_heller said:
He was quite liberal compared to a lot of popular writers of the time.

Leon
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But did they let basis of racism, i.e. fear, fuel the art with the same beautiful results as Lovecraft? ;) And the Dunwich Horror sports truly degenerated anglosaxons. I doubt that Lovecrafts more or less aristocratic longings wouldn't made him popular with the white supremacists of today that still can't get their act together.

I recommend Houllebecq's H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life.
 
All this talk of Lovecraft has made me wish I never traded in my computer game of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

So when I saw it secondhand today in our local game shop I couldn't resist buying it and it's just as good as I remember from playing it the first time around :D.
 
Bikewer said:
Been a fan of ol' HP for many years. One of my faves is The Lurker at the Threshhold...Possibly due to the fact that I read it alone down in the country, with the accompanyment of bullfrogs and whipporwills....(read to see why!)
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I think I was 12 when I read that. The more unearthly stories didn't bother me that much, but that one seriously creeped me out.
 
Well, this thread is a bit aged, but I just finished reading ST Joshi's Lovecraft: A Life and felt like talking about HPL. I've never found another writer who's stories ranged so much in quality. It's hard to believe the same guy who wrote melodramatic, wooden, racist trash like "The Horror at Red Hook" also made great stuff like "The Colour Out of Space" and "The Music of Erich Zann".

The main thing I like about his writing is the underlying philosophy of Cosmic Indifferentism. There was no fiction writer before him (that I know of) who so mocked the idea that humans are the center of the universe. In Lovecraft, humans mistakenly worship alien beings who don't care about them at all as gods. In one story life on earth was created by a race of superior beings as a joke. It's interesting stuff, and definitely ahead of it's time.
 
Father Dagon called this thread up from the depths of hell itself! A stinking, fetid stench accompanied its rise and all had to turn away or retch in fear. Gradually it faded, but cambion called it up once more to wreak its evil havoc on this corrupt and fetid world.

Ah crap! I used "fetid" twice. Damn!
 
arthwollipot said:
Father Dagon called this thread up from the depths of hell itself! A stinking, fetid stench accompanied its rise and all had to turn away or retch in fear. Gradually it faded, but cambion called it up once more to wreak its evil havoc on this corrupt and fetid world.

Ah crap! I used "fetid" twice. Damn!
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I find that rather eldritch!
 
Great threat resurrections, batman!

I must say that I am a big fan of Lovecraft. "The Rats in the Walls" is my favorite. His stories are the one thing I can point to and say that Theosophy did something good: it influenced his writing.

His over-the-top racism throughout the stories is a bit cringeworthy, especially to modern sensibilities. However, I can forgive him for it because he was such an imaginative writer.
 
A big Lovecraft fan here. If you've got a local Barnes & Noble, stop by and look into a copy of H. P. Lovecraft: The Fiction where you will find EVERY story by HPL penned for the princely sum of 13 bucks!

Oh, and get ahold of The Call Of Cthulhu silent movie! The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society also has produced a series of Old-Time-Radio-Style adaptations of At the Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, and a couple of others. That, and they're working on a film version of "A Whisper In Darkness."
 
On the racism thing - I have no way of knowing whether any of the gentlman spoken of were racist, but can give loads of examples of others who wrote the same type of thing. One reason could be th rest of the pop culture of the times containing bundles of those stereotypes - many of which were used to avoid trouble by those being stereotyped (like big grin, shuffle, "yassuh , suh" and equivalents for Blacks/AAs). Thorne Smith used them in his comic fantasies and - to a lesser extent, Seabury Quinn in his not-at-all comic ones (Jules de Grassin IIRC) and they were even seen in films made by Blacks for Blacks. ([period referred to here is mid 19-teens to mid/late 30s])
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Not only is the author excellent, but the '60s rock group of the same name was great.

http://www.scaruffi.com/vol2/hplovecr.html

~~ Paul
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2nd that! Wish i still had their first 2 albums. Good 3 part harmonies, as I recall, and an interesting cover of "Get together", that hippy anthem made popular by the Youngbloods. You're the first person I've ever heard a mention of them from.

(Damn, you must be old!)
 
As a side note, Seabury Quinn was a forerunner to Ghostbusters - his protagonist applied science to dealing with the supernatural fiends that infested the town in which he was living - as Ghostbusters did much later.
 
fuelair said:
On the racism thing - I have no way of knowing whether any of the gentlman spoken of were racist, but can give loads of examples of others who wrote the same type of thing. One reason could be th rest of the pop culture of the times containing bundles of those stereotypes - many of which were used to avoid trouble by those being stereotyped (like big grin, shuffle, "yassuh , suh" and equivalents for Blacks/AAs). Thorne Smith used them in his comic fantasies and - to a lesser extent, Seabury Quinn in his not-at-all comic ones (Jules de Grassin IIRC) and they were even seen in films made by Blacks for Blacks. ([period referred to here is mid 19-teens to mid/late 30s])
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The problem with Lovecraft is that his racism was even considered excessive in his time. Some of his correspondence and poems are particularly cringeworthy ("On the Creation of *******" is one of the most vile things I've ever read). He even remained a staunch anti-Semite when three of his best friends AND HIS WIFE were all Jewish. It's bizarre.

But at the end of the day, I forgive the guy. His writing makes up for that one personality flaw.
 
I think that's going to be next on my list. Never actually read any HPL. I did get to hear a pretty good adaptation of The Dunwich Horror over Halloween weekend,though. The public radio station in my area plays old radio drama shows on Satuday and Sunday nights,and that was run.
 
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