Lovecraftian horror

Lovecraftian horror is a sub-genre of horror fiction which emphasizes the cosmic horror of the unknown (in some cases, unknowable) over gore or other elements of shock, though these may still be present. It is named after American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937).

Origin

Lovecraft refined this style of story-telling into his own mythos that involved a set of supernatural, pre-human, and extraterrestrial elements. His work was inspired by and similar to previous authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Algernon Blackwood. The hallmark of Lovecraft's work was the sense that ordinary life was a thin shell over a reality which was so alien and abstract in comparison that merely contemplating it would damage the sanity of the ordinary person.

Lovecraft's work was also steeped in the insular feel of rural New England, and much of the genre continues to maintain this sense that "that which man was not meant to know" might be closer to the surface of ordinary life outside of the crowded cities of modern civilization. However, Lovecraftian horror is by no means restricted to the countryside; 'The Horror at Red Hook', for instance, is set in a crowded ethnic ghetto.

Themes of Lovecraftian horror

Several themes found in Lovecraft's writings are considered to be a component of a "Lovecraftian" work:

• Anti-anthropocentrism, misanthropy in general. Lovecraft's works tend not to focus on characterization of humans, in line with his view of humanity's insignificant place in the universe, and the general Modernist trend of literature at the time of his writings.
• Preoccupation with viscerate texture. The horror features of Lovecraft's stories tend to involve semi-gelatinous substances, such as slime, as opposed to standard horror tropes such as blood, bones, or corpses.
• Antiquarian writing style. Even when dealing with up-to-date technology, Lovecraft tended to use anachronisms as well as old-fashioned words when dealing with such things. For example, he used the term "men of science" rather than the modern word, "scientist" and often spelled "show" as "shew".
• Detachment. Lovecraftian heroes (both in original writings and in more modern adaptations) tend to be isolated individuals, usually with an academic or scholarly bent.
• Helplessness and hopelessness. Although Lovecraftian heroes may occasionally deal a "setback" to malignant forces, their victories are temporary, and they usually pay a price for it. Otherwise, subjects often find themselves completely unable to simply run away, instead driven by some other force to their desperate end.
• Unanswered questions. Characters in Lovecraft's stories rarely if ever fully understand what is happening to them, and often go insane if they try.
• Sanity's fragility and vulnerability. Characters in many of Lovecraft's stories are unable to mentally cope with the extraordinary and almost unreasonable truths they witness or hear. The strain of trying to cope, as Lovecraft often illustrates, is too impossible to bear and insanity takes hold.
• Questionable parentage. Relatives of characters are typically depicted as paranormal or abnormal, whereas intimate relations in general are often represented as foreboding and sinister.

Collaborators and followers

Much of Lovecraft's influence is secondary, as he was a friend, inspiration, and correspondent to many authors who would gain fame through their creations. Many of these writers also worked with Lovecraft on jointly-written stories. His more famous friends and collaborators include Robert Bloch, author of Psycho; Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian; and August Derleth, who codified and added to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Subsequent horror writers also heavily drew on Lovecraft's work. While many made direct references to elements of Lovecraft's mythos, either to draw on its associations or to acknowledge his influence, many others drew on the feel and tone of his work without specifically referring to mythos elements. Some have said that Lovecraft, along with Edgar Allan Poe, is the most influential author on modern horror. Author Stephen King has said: "Now that time has given us some perspective on his work, I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."

By the late 20th century, Lovecraft had become something of a pop-culture icon, resulting in countless reinterpretations of and references to his work. Many of these fall outside the sphere of 'Lovecraftian horror' proper and are not discussed here; see instead Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture.

Literature and art

Lovecraft's work, mostly published in pulp magazines, has never had the same sort of influence on literature as his high-modernist literary contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, his impact is still broadly and deeply felt in some of the most celebrated authors of contemporary fiction. The fantasias of the Argentinian short story writer and essayist Jorge Luis Borges display a marked resemblance to some of Lovecraft's more dream influenced work, and Borges dedicated his story, "There Are More Things" to Lovecraft. The controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq has also cited Lovecraft as an influence and has written a lengthy essay on Lovecraft entitled H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life in which he refers to the Cthulhu cycle as "the great texts".

Lovecraft's penchant for dreamscapes and for the biologically macabre has also profoundly influenced visual artists such as Jean "Moebius" Giraud and H. R. Giger. Giger's book of paintings which led directly to many of the designs for the film Alien was named Necronomicon, the name of a fictional book in several of Lovecraft's mythos stories. Dan O'Bannon, the original writer of the Alien screenplay, has also mentioned Lovecraft as a major influence on the film. With Ronald Shusett, he would later write Dead & Buried and Hemoglobin, both of which were admitted pastiches of Lovecraft.

Comics

Lovecraft has cast a long shadow across the comic world. This has included not only adaptations of his stories, like H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu: The Whisperer in Darkness, Graphic Classics: H.P. Lovecraft and MAX's Haunt of Horror, but also the incorporation of the Mythos into new stories.

Alan Moore has touched on Lovecraftian themes, most obviously in his The Courtyard and Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths (and Antony Johnston's spin-off Yuggoth Creatures), but also in his Black Dossier where the story "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss?" mixed Lovecraftian horror with Bertie Wooster.

Gordon Rennie not only used various Lovecraft creations, like Tcho-Tcho, in his Necronauts, but he also included Lovecraft himself as a character, teaming up with an influence of his, Charles Fort, a combination that would occur again in Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained. Necronauts wasn't the first appearance of Lovecraftian horror in 2000 AD as Grant Morrison's Zenith involved the eponymous hero trying to stop the Lloigor, known as the Many-Angled Ones. Entities also called Many-Angled Ones appear in the Marvel Universe in the storyline "Realm of Kings" where they rule an alternate reality. The Marvel Universe also contains a range of Cthulhu Mythos comics, including the Elder Gods.

As well as appearing with Fort in two comics stories, Lovecraft has appeared as a character in a number of Lovecraftian comics. He appears in Tony Salmons's limited series The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft from Image and in the Arcana children's graphic novel Howard and the Frozen Kingdom from Bruce Brown. A webcomic, Lovecraft is Missing, debuted in 2008 and takes place in 1926, before the publication of The Call of Cthulhu, and weaves in elements of Lovecraft's earlier stories.

Boom! Studios have also run a number of series based on Cthulhu and other characters from the Mythos, including Cthulhu Tales and Fall of Cthulhu.

The creator of Hellboy, Mike Mignola, has described the books as being influenced primarily by the works of Lovecraft, in addition to those of Robert E. Howard and the legend of Dracula. This was adapted into the 2004 film Hellboy. His Elseworlds mini-series The Doom That Came to Gotham reimagines Batman in a confrontation with Lovecraftian monsters.

The manga artist Junji Ito was heavily influenced by Lovecraft.

Issue #32 of The Brave and the Bold was heavily influenced by the works and style of Lovecraft. In addition to using pastiches of Cthulhu, the Deep Ones, and R'lyeh, writer J. Michael Straczynski also wrote the story in a distinctly Lovecraftian style. Written entirely from the perspective of a traumatized sailor, the story makes use of several of Lovecraft's trademarks, including the ultimate feeling of insignificance in the face of the supernatural.

The Illustrated Ape magazine features a Lovecraft related web comic on its site in the gallery section. The strip is written and illustrated by Charles Cutting and uses "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" as it's basis.

Movies and television

With the advent of film, Lovecraftian horror truly became a sub-genre, not only fueling direct adaptations of Poe and Lovecraft, but providing the foundation upon which many of the horror films of the 1950s and 1960s were constructed.

One notable movie maker to dip into the Lovecraftian well was 1960s B-movie maker Roger Corman, with his Die, Monster, Die! (very loosely based on The Colour Out of Space).

Rod Serling's 1969-73 series Night Gallery adapted at least two Lovecraft stories, "Pickman's Model" and "Cool Air". The episode "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture", concerning the fate of a man who read the Necronomicon, included a student named "Mr. Lovecraft". Another five minute short, called "Ms. Lovecraft Sent Me", about a babysitter and her strange client, has no relevance to anything written by Lovecraft.

In the late 1970s a revival of the horror movie genre was based on the success of Stephen King and Brian De Palma's Carrie; John Carpenter's Halloween; and Dan O'Bannon and Ridley Scott's Alien. All three movies bore Lovecraftian influences to one degree or another, and their authors were deeply influenced by Lovecraft's works. Amongst the other well-known adaptations of this era are The Haunted Palace, The Dunwich Horror, and Curse of the Crimson Altar. The Shuttered Room was based on an August Derleth 'posthumous collaboration with Lovecraft.

As the 1980s and 1990s played out, Lovecraftian horror became a recognizable film staple in such varied films as the self-referential In the Mouth of Madness, Necronomicon, the comedic Re-Animator, and Carpenter's Antarctic horror The Thing. The blockbuster Ghostbusters (which novelist/screenwriter Barbara Hambly has called "marvelously Lovecraftian") is noticeably reminiscent of Lovecraft's style.

Stuart Gordon has directed several large-scale Lovecraftian movies including From Beyond (film) and Dagon (film) (the latter largely based on Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth).

Lovecraftian elements can be seen even in Chiaki J. Konaka's anime, including Digimon Tamers, in which the main antagonist, the D-Reaper, sleeps, until the time comes for it to wake and destroy the world.

A reference work that covers this field extensively is Charles P. Mitchell, The Complete H.P. Lovecraft Filmography. (Greenwood Press, 2001). ISBN 0-313-31641-4. There is also The Lurker in the Lobby by Andrew Migliore.

A much anticipated production is Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness (now in production).

Games

Despite the fact that Lovecraft despised games, his characters and settings have appeared in many video games and role-playing games. Some of these used Lovecraft's creations chiefly for name value (see Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture), but others have embraced Lovecraft's characteristic mood and themes.

Role-playing

In the early 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons drew from many of the most popular fantasy settings including those of some of Lovecraft's contemporaries. However, Lovecraftian elements in the game would wait until Dragon magazine issue #12 in 1978 with Robert J. Kuntz's, "The Lovecraftian Mythos in Dungeons & Dragons". In 1980, a hardcover collection of the various fantasy and historical pantheons available for the game was published under the title Deities & Demigods. The first and second printings contained a version of the Cthulhu Mythos, but that section was removed in the third and subsequent printings for copyright reasons.

As the game has evolved, many of the creatures (e.g. the illithid) and even gods (e.g. Tharizdun) that were introduced were inspired by Lovecraft's works, and in October, 2004, Dragon magazine published a lengthy article titled "The Shadow Over D&D: H. P. Lovecraft's Influence on Dungeons & Dragons" discussing these influences.

Dungeons & Dragons was not the only role-playing game to incorporate Lovecraftian horror. The most overt example was published in 1980 by Chaosium. Call of Cthulhu is directly based on the Cthulhu Mythos. In keeping with its source material, and unlike most other role-playing games, characters who attempt to confront its monsters directly are likely to die or be driven insane rather than succeed. This is reinforced by the game's best-known feature, a mechanism by which knowledge about Mythos entities can only be gained at a permanent cost to one's sanity. Following this role-playing game into a modern era with an emphasis on military hardware and espionage wetware is Delta Green, in which characters fight the conspiracies behind which the Mythos hides rather than facing the Mythos more directly.

Steve Jackson Games' GURPS, a genre-neutral game system, was first published in 1986 and brought diverse elements of fiction and non-fiction together across their lengthy list of published supplements which included Cthulhupunk, a licensed adaptation of Call of Cthulhu into a cyberpunk setting.

Video games

Video games, like films, have a rich history of Lovecraftian elements and adaptations. In 1987, The Lurking Horror was the first to bring the Lovecraftian horror sub-genre to the multiple computer platforms. This was a text-based adventure game, released by Infocom, who are best known for the Zork series.

Notable adventures games are Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet and Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice.

The 2002 game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, while not directly related to any of Lovecraft's work, borrows several of his ideas. It focuses on the members of a certain family who work to stop the encroaching evil of supernatural powerful beings known as "Ancients", who are attempting to cross the dimensional plane and destroy the world. As evidenced by the title, the fragility of the human mind is also a major component of its gameplay, as players must constantly keep their character's sanity in check. Failure to do so causes abnormal events to occur. For example, the game system will appear to shut off on its own, or a Blue Screen of Death will appear before the player can save their progress.

Once 3D computer graphics games developed, Lovecraftian influences also began to appear in them. In 1992, Alone in the Dark was published by Infogrames for the PC. It claimed to be inspired by the works of Lovecraft.

The plots of Mass Effect and its sequel focus upon sapient, extragalactic machines called "The Reapers" who are responsible for the genocide of previous spacefaring civilizations several millennia ago and are planning to return. The player is expected to thwart agents attempting to facilitate their resurgence.

The plot of Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness involves an attempt to summon a creature named Avoozl to bring permanent darkness over the world. Both the Necromonicon and the chant "Ia!" are borrowed directly from Lovecraft.

In 1995, the second installment of the X-Com series, Terror from the Deep, which featured references to Cthulhu and R'lyeh and conveyed a general sense of Lovecraftian horror atmosphere, integrated the Cthulhu Mythos into the X-Com alien invasion scheme.

In the seminal 3D first-person shooter Quake, in 1996 environments, creatures (including names such as Shub-Niggurath), and the atmosphere of the game emphasize many traditionally Lovecraftian features. The architecture of the otherworldly dimension resembles many of Lovecraft's descriptions of ancient ruins and alien worlds. The three sequels, as of 2005, contain no Lovecraftian elements, however, and have opted for a more typical science fiction and mainstream horror approach. Their monsters now include only differing types of cyborgs (mechanised alien species).

The 1998 game Half-Life involved a experiment being conducted at the top secret Black Mesa Research Facility. The experiment goes horribly wrong and causes a "resonance cascade," opening a gateway to an alien world called Xen.

In 2005 Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was released for PC. The game is a first-person shooter horror game chiefly inspired by Lovecraft's stories The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Shadow Out of Time.

In September, 2010, Amnesia: The Dark Descent was released for PC. The game features many instances of Lovecraftian influence, such as un-killable enemies (the player is powerless to fight back against their assailants and must instead run and hide), sanity (staying in the dark for too long will cause the player to become insane, but equally staying in the light will provoke attacks), and an unseen malignant force (the player is being chased by a "Shadow" that is unseen throughout the game, and is powerless to stop it).

Overall, the reception of Lovecraftian horror in video games, as with print fiction, has never achieved the same level of popularity as the high fantasy, swords-and-sorcery model games.

References

• Bloch, Robert (1973). "Poe & Lovecraft". Ambrosia (2). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Fassbender, Tom. "Interviews: Mike Mignola". Dark Horse.
• Harms, Daniel (2006). The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana: A Guide to Lovecraftian Horror. Chaosium. ISBN 1568821697.
• Jacobs, James (2004). "The Shadow Over D&D: H. P. Lovecraft's Influence on Dungeons & Dragons". Dragon (#324). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Lovecraft, H. P. (1992). Crawling Chaos: Selected works 1920-1935 H. P. Lovecraft. introduction by Colin Wilson. Creation Press.
• Smith, Don G. (2006). H.P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture: The Works and Their Adaptations in Film, Television, Comics, Music, and Games. McFarland. p. 173. ISBN 078642091X.
• Zenke, Michael. "Dreading the Shadows on the Wall". The Escapist.