Please Personally Tell Me What Lovecraftian Horror Is

[Therumancer]

Lovecraftian horror, at its most basic, is the realization that the universe is so vast that humans are as insignificant as specks of dust. Add unimaginably ancient and powerful aliens to whom humans are little more than bacteria to the mix, and you've got it in a nutshell.

That's the best way to sum it up. Also, as other people have touched on, the protagonist is severely out of their depth throughout the story. They are never capable of grasping the situations they are in, let alone dealing with it by the end. You'll get no happy endings here folks; the bad guys (if they are indeed "bad" or just merely indifferent) don't get their come-uppance.

H.P. Lovecraft also has a very specific writing style that's as dark and dismal as they get. Get used to seeing the words "cyclopean" and "non-euclid" thrown around a lot.

Yes and no. Truthfully I think Chaosium's take on things has influanced people's take on the mythos and Lovecraftian Horror a bit more than it probably should have.

To be honest the basic definition you and others are using, about the scale of the threat, and the seeming irrelevence of humanity, is true. However in actual practice it should be noted that like Steven King's writing the outcome of conflicts with these beings and their mechanitions is a mixed bag. Sometimes the good guys/protaganists win, some times they lose. Lovecraft's writing is actually full of some very heroic, pulpy, action with crusading scientists leading expeditions, and last minute saves. The Deep Ones for example are pretty much eradicated by the US military once they are discovered and presumably this included their god Dagon. Other moments have included running a great old one rising from the depths over with a steamship (and ultimatly taking it out), and another case where a giant rampaging monster is fried like an egg by an electrified roller coaster track.

While Lovecraft was the father of the mythos, weird tales of the era were hugely incestuous and as a whole the Cthulhu mythos was also written in, and co-created by guys like Robert Howard (Of Conan fame) and other period luminaries with whom Lovecraft collaberated. They even had a game of sorts going on where they would take turns writing and kill off each othes's surviving protaganists for a while.

It could be argued that the degree of grimness we see now comes from Chaosium which had the RPG rights and helped popularized the stories for new generations, as well as penning some of their own, but to be honest I never felt they pefectly captured the essence. I always felt Lovecraft's writing was "wierd tales" in the true sense, as opposed to being genuinely scary. Especially seeing as for all the posturing about the irrelevence or humanity and the sheer enormity of an utterly hostile universe, those pesky humans seem to always wind up staving off doom for another day, and what's more also are required for many of these imprisoned baddies to break free. I've always kind of felt there is supposed to be a bit of a message
in that.

 

[Jared Jeanquart]

A word of warning: Lovecraftian horror dates from a time period when people were only just starting to REALLY get how huge the universe was. The idea of a millions-of-years-old planet and billon-year-old universe full of uncountable stars was new, and represented a huge, terrifying gap in our knowledge. Physics was adrift, with all this relativity and quantum shit, it was starting to look like the newtonian view of the universe was laughably infantile, and the true state of things might simply be beyond our understanding.


"You exist because we allow it. You will end,Nowadays, we can enjoy and marvel at the vast wonderfulness of the cosmos (see: Carl Sagan), but the horror can still be there. Look at Alien and Prometheus. Even Halo has it, thanks to the Flood (or, that's how I saw them anyways. They're extragalactic in origin) The Reapers had it, but lost some of it as time went on.

"Rudimentary creatures of flesh and bone. You fumble at my mind, incapable of understanding."
because we demand it. This exchange is over."

 

[Olas]

Sometimes I think Lovecrafts legacy, especially among nerds, overshadows his actual work. But in general all his writings, even the many that don't feature unimaginable space monstrocities, all have the common theme of tearing down the human perception of superiority and showing that we truly are little more than bags of meat and fat.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Oh, one other thing, at the end of almost every Lovecraft story, the main character decides to hide all evidence of what was going on, rather than have humnaity find out.

This gets really tiresome after awhile, especially when the terrible monsters in that story aren't immune to bullets.

Or the end of Colour out of Space, which ends with "I'm not going to drink from the water, but I won't warn any of the other people who do"...that's a really fucking terrible attitude.

 

[RedDeadFred]

The end of this video gives an example of what one of the horrifying monstrosities from Lovecraft might look like. Notice how her eyes burn just from looking at it.

His horror basically emphasizes how meaningless our existence. There is a massive universe out there and we are incredibly insignificant.

 

[Old Father Eternity]

Lovecraft can't compare to the monstrosities that Japan has done with his material

He is not just doing barrel rolls in his grave, he is sincerely hoping the eldritch abominations are real and take offence.

 

[Old Father Eternity]

Oh, one other thing, at the end of almost every Lovecraft story, the main character decides to hide all evidence of what was going on, rather than have humnaity find out.

This gets really tiresome after awhile, especially when the terrible monsters in that story aren't immune to bullets.

Or the end of Colour out of Space, which ends with "I'm not going to drink from the water, but I won't warn any of the other people who do"...that's a really fucking terrible attitude.

True perhaps but what do we humans often do when confronted with we are not ready for, something we are not supposed to be poking at, let alone know of. It is like the attempts to play 'god' it never ends well, it is where the *for the greater good* part factors in.

 

[Xpheyel]

Lovecraft can't compare to the monstrosities that Japan has done with his material

Hey, he does have a thousand other forms you know. Chirpy japanesse girl could be one of them. Maybe the scariest one.

 

[TAdamson]

There are generally some common elements to a lot of Lovecraftian horror. Feel free to look for:

- Terrible beings so grotesque and alien they can hardly be described

- A protagonist who finds himself gripped by madness by the story's end

- Talk of other worlds or dimensions, generally replete with monstrosities that could break through and annihilate humanity at any given time

- A strong emphasis on the fact that humanity in general is fleeting and pointless

I'm just throwing some themes from the top of my head here. You should look up some slightly more in-depth descriptions to get a better idea.

Don't forget the racism.

Okay, okay, I know it's not a defining feature but Lovecraft himself was a racist dick and the cosmic horrors he described were allegories for nice, clean, Christian, whitefolk being contaminated or overrun by filthy natives or the otherwise different.

 

[Winthrop]

It bridges modern horror (things trying to kill you horribly) with classical horror (Hopelessness and the futility of life) in a very well done way. Also tentacles.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Lovecraftian horror, at its most basic, is the realization that the universe is so vast that humans are as insignificant as specks of dust. Add unimaginably ancient and powerful aliens to whom humans are little more than bacteria to the mix, and you've got it in a nutshell.

That's the best way to sum it up. Also, as other people have touched on, the protagonist is severely out of their depth throughout the story. They are never capable of grasping the situations they are in, let alone dealing with it by the end. You'll get no happy endings here folks; the bad guys (if they are indeed "bad" or just merely indifferent) don't get their come-uppance.

H.P. Lovecraft also has a very specific writing style that's as dark and dismal as they get. Get used to seeing the words "cyclopean" and "non-euclid" thrown around a lot.

Yes and no. Truthfully I think Chaosium's take on things has influanced people's take on the mythos and Lovecraftian Horror a bit more than it probably should have.

To be honest the basic definition you and others are using, about the scale of the threat, and the seeming irrelevence of humanity, is true. However in actual practice it should be noted that like Steven King's writing the outcome of conflicts with these beings and their mechanitions is a mixed bag. Sometimes the good guys/protaganists win, some times they lose. Lovecraft's writing is actually full of some very heroic, pulpy, action with crusading scientists leading expeditions, and last minute saves. The Deep Ones for example are pretty much eradicated by the US military once they are discovered and presumably this included their god Dagon. Other moments have included running a great old one rising from the depths over with a steamship (and ultimatly taking it out), and another case where a giant rampaging monster is fried like an egg by an electrified roller coaster track.

While Lovecraft was the father of the mythos, weird tales of the era were hugely incestuous and as a whole the Cthulhu mythos was also written in, and co-created by guys like Robert Howard (Of Conan fame) and other period luminaries with whom Lovecraft collaberated. They even had a game of sorts going on where they would take turns writing and kill off each othes's surviving protaganists for a while.

It could be argued that the degree of grimness we see now comes from Chaosium which had the RPG rights and helped popularized the stories for new generations, as well as penning some of their own, but to be honest I never felt they pefectly captured the essence. I always felt Lovecraft's writing was "wierd tales" in the true sense, as opposed to being genuinely scary. Especially seeing as for all the posturing about the irrelevence or humanity and the sheer enormity of an utterly hostile universe, those pesky humans seem to always wind up staving off doom for another day, and what's more also are required for many of these imprisoned baddies to break free. I've always kind of felt there is supposed to be a bit of a message
in that.

The one that was impaled with a steam ship was actually Cthulhu. That's right, Cthulhu, that big, overhyped squid thing was taken down by the prow of a steam ship. The great old ones, as the main character of At the Mountains of Madness put it, were men. "Whatever else they were, they were men." Not that they were literally human, but that they were basically comprehensible in their motives and the way they lived their lives. They had big cities on the Earth, and were responsible for indirectly creating mankind (and directly all life on the planet) as an accident, spun off from the shoggoths they created to do manual labor for them.

Also, it has to be said: it's just not Lovecraftian until someone uses the word "Cyclopean."

 

[II2]

Don't forget the racism.

Okay, okay, I know it's not a defining feature but Lovecraft himself was a racist dick and the cosmic horrors he described were allegories for nice, clean, Christian, whitefolk being contaminated or overrun by filthy natives or the otherwise different.

Personally, I find that more quaint and lovable about his works than offensive. It makes me smile.

At any rate, I disagree (on specifics)... The filthy natives and shifty arabs were his 'allegory' for the filthy natives and shifty arabs; it was explicit. I'll grant you that they were the ones typically forming degenerate cults and worshiping ancient evils, in his stories, though.

-----

OT:

Lovecraftian horror hinges on an a broad sense of philosophical horror - that for all our achievements, conceit and civilization, we are but apes adrift on an isolated rock floating in a sea full of monsters.

His early work covered more 'familiar' horror themes; mummies, ghosts, franken-freaks and the paranormal posessing the mundane. It was in his later works that the 'Cthulhu Mythos' as it was later named became a cross-story mythological platform for his narratives and the alien and 'outer horror' concepts for which his work became more widely recognized. This lead to a pantheon of popular Lovecraft Elder Gods, Great Old Ones, Outer Gods and various alien demi-races that are part of a much greater "real history" of the cosmos, in which the earth and humans as the dominant life form are a tiny blip.

While his earlier, more "conventional" horror writing did linger the focus on what trauma paranormal encounters would leave on a person longer than most other writer's fiction (contemporary or historical), his expansion into greater mythology appropriately scaled the damage to our sanity when confronted with information and truths beyond what we can emotionally or intellectually process. Kinda taking the 'ignorance is bliss' and adding the active caveat 'knowledge is danger'. Typically, for those characters who came to a more lucid understanding of the greater picture went mad or killed themselves, being unable to convince anyone they weren't crazy and burdened by soul crushingly nihilistic truth.

In a lot of ways, he wasn't a good writer, but he did have exceptional descriptive abilities and a great imagination that has informed almost all horror in one way or another. I've read the bulk of his bibliography, but far and away my favorite remains A Shadow of Out Time... very much the embodiment of the peak of the later works I described in the above paragraph.

Anyway, I'm sure others have articulated what "Lovecraftian" is in more eloquent language than I, but there's my 0.02...

 

[ckam]

So the laconic version Lovecraftian Horror is: Stories about tentacles before Japan made it cool.

 

[Basement Cat]

A word of warning: Lovecraftian horror dates from a time period when people were only just starting to REALLY get how huge the universe was. The idea of a millions-of-years-old planet and billon-year-old universe full of uncountable stars was new, and represented a huge, terrifying gap in our knowledge. Physics was adrift, with all this relativity and quantum shit, it was starting to look like the newtonian view of the universe was laughably infantile, and the true state of things might simply be beyond our understanding.

This is a very important point.

Lovecraft was an absolute atheist. His works were founded on the concept that humanity was UTTERLY insignificant, which is the polar opposite of most religions--particularly Abrahamic ones--which make a big deal about how important humanity is. Heck, the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are all based on the fundamental idea that THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE was created by God and that humanity was created IN GOD's IMAGE.

Think about that for a moment. Really think about it.

Then throw in the factors about what Jeanquart pointed out above and you may start to get a real feeling for why people found his Cosmicism philosophy so unsettling.

A few key points about "The Cthulhu Mythos".

For one thing Lovecraft himself didn't 'design' an actual 'mythos'. The phrase "The Cthulhu Mythos" was coined by August Dereleth in reference to the general collection of aliens (Cthulhu it/himself is not a 'god' but the High Priest of a powerful alien race) and other dimensional gods/entities that appeared in his collected writings over the years.

Secondly you should know that the man who was primarily responsible for Lovecraft's writings not disappearing, August Dereleth, was a friend and colleague of his. Dereleth wrote stories based on Lovecraft's work (One of my favorites is the novel length work: The Lurker at the Threshold. read it!) but he--being a lapsed Catholic--introduced the idea of 'a war in heaven', i.e. Good guys vs Bad guys.

Here's an excerpt from Dereleth's profile in Wikipedia:

Arkham House and the "Cthulhu Mythos"



Derleth was a correspondent and friend of H. P. Lovecraft ? when Lovecraft wrote about "le Comte d'Erlette" in his fiction, it was in homage to Derleth. Derleth invented the term "Cthulhu Mythos" to describe the fictional universe described in the series of stories shared by Lovecraft and other writers in his circle.

When Lovecraft died in 1937, Derleth and Donald Wandrei assembled a collection of Lovecraft's stories and tried to get them published. Existing publishers showed little interest, so Derleth and Wandrei founded Arkham House in 1939 for that purpose. The name of the company derived from Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, which features in many of his stories. In 1939 Arkham House published The Outsider and Others, a huge collection that contained most of Lovecraft's known short stories. Derleth and Wandrei soon expanded Arkham House and began a regular publishing schedule after its second book, Someone in the Dark, a collection of some of Derleth's own horror stories, was published in 1941.

Following Lovecraft's death, Derleth wrote a number of stories based on fragments and notes left by Lovecraft. These were published in Weird Tales and later in book form, under the byline "H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth", with Derleth calling himself a "posthumous collaborator." This practice has raised objections in some quarters that Derleth simply used Lovecraft's name to market what was essentially his own fiction; S. T. Joshi refers to the "posthumous collaborations" as marking the beginning of "perhaps the most disreputable phase of Derleth's activities".[8]

A significant number of H. P. Lovecraft fans and critics, such as Dirk W. Mosig,[9] S. T. Joshi,[10] and Richard L. Tierney[11] were dissatisfied with Derleth's invention of the term Cthulhu Mythos (Lovecraft himself used Yog-Sothothery) and his presentation of Lovecraft's fiction as having an overall pattern reflecting Derleth's own Christian world view, which they contrast with Lovecraft's depiction of an amoral universe. However Robert M. Price points out that while Derleth's tales are distinct from Lovecraft's in their use of hope and his depiction of a struggle between good and evil, nevertheless the basis of Derlerth's systemization are found in Lovecraft. He also suggests that the differences can be over stated:

Derleth was more optimistic than Lovecraft in his conception of the Mythos, but we are dealing with a difference more of degree than kind. There are indeed tales wherein Derleth's protagonists get off scot-free (like "The Shadow in the Attic", "Witches' Hollow", or "The Shuttered Room"), but often the hero is doomed (e.g., "The House in the Valley", "The Peabody Heritage", "Something in Wood"), as in Lovecraft. And it must be remembered that an occasional Lovecraftian hero does manage to overcome the odds, e.g., in "The Horror in the Museum", "The Shunned House", and 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'.

 

[Darks63]

I doubt i can state much more than some of the others who have posted but if you want to see a movie that shows lovecraftian horror pretty well check out "in the mouth madness" pretty good flick

 

[Griffolion]

Horribly vast, incredibly ancient (or ageless) monstrosities from beyond time and space that are so beyond your comprehension that merely gazing upon them is enough to turn you into a gibbering lunatic or kill you.

Ah I see, so a good real world example of this is Nicki Minaj? I'm seeing this now.

Thanks for the responses, it sounds like a barrel of laughs. Is it true that some people take it a little too seriously?

Yes, there are people who Think he was a prophet and treat his works like the Bible. You should really check his work out, as long as remember they're just stories they are really enjoyable.

Wow, I thought that was just a joke or something. That's really crazy. :/

 

[The_Echo]

Lovecraftian horror (or "cosmic horror") is essentially a mixture or nihilism and the fear of the unknown.

Lovecraft's fiction is really in the mindset of the period, which is why most people probably will not find his horror to be very horrifying these days. At the time, barely anything was known about the universe as a whole, and it was scary to think that such a vast place existed, and that we knew nothing about it.

Indescribable monstrosities litter Lovecraft's universe, largely indigenous to the depths of the ocean and far reaches of space. These creatures have powers, languages and agendas that humankind can not even hope to comprehend. They've been here since, well, forever-and-also-never (the Old Ones exist on a non-linear timeline). Their knowledge is infinitely greater than ours ever could be, and if they so much as looked at Earth funny, everything we know and love could very well stop existing altogether. The biggest reason we're still here is just because we are so insignificant, these beings rarely if ever notice or care that we're still hanging around.

In that way, Lovecraftian horror is less about "if" and more about "when." His protagonists often go mad through the realization of their hopelessness.