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Doc Friday posted:I haven't read Lovecraft's works in quite a while. Anyone have a particularly good story to suggest? The Colour Out of Space is his finest work by some distance. On the more obscure side of things, Beneath the Pyramids was impressively scary and atmospheric for a celebrity tie-in about Harry Houdini being menaced by scary Egyptians.
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Jan 8, 2015 00:57
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Personally, I felt The Shadow Out Of Time was one of his weakest. You could see the twist coming a mile away, to the point where trying to sell it as a twist felt rather silly, and he didn't adequately convey why we should be scared by all this as he did in his other stories. Mind you, I also felt that The Shadow over Innsmouth had a moderately happy ending. Dude overcomes his racism, reconnects with his estranged family, and becomes a rad immortal fishman. 
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Jan 8, 2015 02:14
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Nanomashoes posted:Lovecraft is actually a really terrible writer, and a massive racist to boot, and should just be forgotten forever like every other weird tales writer. I disagree. The Weird Tales crew were, by and large, poor writers and massive racists, but their influence on the genre grants them enormous historical importance. It's the same reason why you can't ignore Birth of a Nation despite it being literal Klan propaganda.
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Jan 10, 2015 01:28
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Borneo Jimmy posted:How exactly was Robert E Howard a bad writer? Honestly, his prose was pretty clunky, and he was even worse than Lovecraft at getting distracted by his peculiar racial attitudes to the detriment of his stories (that is to say, their views were fairly equally horrible, but Lovecraft was capable of writing decent horror that had nothing to do with howling xenophobia or an elaborate racial hierarchy, which Howard really struggled with). Other writers have done far better work on the same themes - Fritz Leiber is the obvious example from roughly the same time period.
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Jan 11, 2015 02:24
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Yeah, Lovecraft mostly just ignores women in his stories. You don't see the constant, active terror and loathing for them that you do for black people or clam chowder.
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Jan 17, 2015 01:05
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Nuclear Tourist posted:I'm not sure I see the point of posthumously shaming white, male authors from the early 1900's because they had opinions that were stupid or don't fall into today's standards of political correctness. Hemingway was a machismo chauvinist. Joyce was a major league perv. Jack London was a xenophobe. Lovecraft was a xenophobe (part of his life, at least). They were all fantastic storytellers, as well as products of the time they lived in. Nah, Lovecraft was way more racist than was justifiable by merely being a product of his time. Dude had panic attacks in mixed-race crowds. There were quite a lot of citizens of New York who didn't have that. Hell, he moved there right in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance, when black culture was becoming a genuinely celebrated part of American society. poo poo, there were older writers from far more racist states who were infinitely less racist than him - look at Mark Twain. As for why this is relevant, it's because Lovecraft is a massively influential writer who's shaped a great deal of the horror and science-fiction genres. It's important for writers to recognise the racist subtext (and outright text) of so much of his work so they don't keep uncritically recycling it, which is kind of a problem for genre fiction - see also, how fantasy keeps aping its forefathers' phenomenally regressive assumptions, and E. E. 'Doc' Smith's legacy of fascism in space opera.
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Jan 17, 2015 13:04
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Rough Lobster posted:Yeah Lovecraft was Racist As gently caress, and definitely More Racist Than The Average Joe when he was alive, and his racism bears mentioning, but... Maybe so, but I sort of feel it's brought up so often because it has to be - genre fiction has a real problem with the unexamined or poorly-examined conventions underpinning it. Kind of like with anime fans and their 'no, it's OK that this show's main love interest is an eleven-year-old in a thong and nipple-pasties, because she's secretly eight hundred years old' bullshit, or the shitstorm the gaming community is currently going through. Nerds can be sheltered as gently caress, and while it may seem obvious that the stuff they're consuming can get pretty dodgy, it's genuine news to many of them that often requires a good dose of hammering in.
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Jan 17, 2015 17:36
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:
On eugenics, Lovecraft was definitely a fan - The Shadow over Innsmouth, for instance, is entirely about how miscegnation is loving horrifying, and genetic corruption is a recurring horror theme in his work. The most notorious example, of course, was the payoff to Medusa's Coil: quote:In the end I drove on without telling anything. But I did hint that gossip was wronging the poor old planter who had suffered so much. I made it clear—as if from distant but authentic reports wafted among friends—that if anyone was to blame for the trouble at Riverside it was the woman, Marceline. She was not suited to Missouri ways, I said, and it was too bad that Denis had ever married her.
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Jan 17, 2015 17:45
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Racism chat: hmmm... I think this is something that really depends on where and when you look. It's pretty incontrovertible that HPL held some views that were racist (even in his own time) and this coloured his outlook on society, politics and literature. But we also have to consider HPL's racism as essentially fearful conservativism of a semi-recluse who was deeply wedded to an Anglo-Saxon colonial period and concerned about the loss of that history and privilege to immigrants and non-whites. His racism was essentially hostility towards social change. HPL was also very genteel in person and wasn't abusive face-to-face (so "manners" or "cowardice", dependent on how you interpret that). His racism and anti-semitism is also a product of resentment of his poverty and lack of recognition as a writer, which forced him to live the life of a hack rather than a gentleman writer. It is a transference of frustration. Not that this makes his views more acceptable. Contemporaries such as HG Wells actually advocated eugenics as a social platform. I'm not sure HPL ever did that (though feel free to correct me on that!).
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Stravinsky posted:What the heck, why does this forum have such a hard on for finding scifi/fantasy writers problematic? quote:In the end I drove on without telling anything. But I did hint that gossip was wronging the poor old planter who had suffered so much. I made it clear—as if from distant but authentic reports wafted among friends—that if anyone was to blame for the trouble at Riverside it was the woman, Marceline. She was not suited to Missouri ways, I said, and it was too bad that Denis had ever married her. It's not like we exactly have to go looking for it when Lovecraft's involved.
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Jan 18, 2015 15:01
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anilEhilated posted:As long as you're aware of it, it shouldn't interfere in your enjoyment of his work. You are aware that there are people who find racism in their sci-fi horror unpleasant and distracting, right? Not everyone can go 'oh, that silly Lovecraft, look at him call black people subhuman like it ain't no thing'. It's legit to criticise an author for their literary flaws or say your enjoyment was diminished because of those literary flaws, and Lovecraft's racism, along with his sometimes torturously florid prose, is one of his biggest and most criticised flaws as a writer. It's like doing a Dan Brown thread where you're not allowed to bring up his constant, hilarious research errors.
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Jan 18, 2015 19:18
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It is certainly interesting, at least, to look at how you handle Lovecraft's unique and enthralling cosmic-horror 'we are alone and insignificant in a universe filled with ghastly, hungry monsters' atmosphere without bringing along the racial baggage of those ghastly, hungry monsters mostly being stand-ins for black people (and occasionally the Chinese). Certainly, the 'sinister alien heritage stuff' gets really uncomfortable when you remember what it was originally a metaphor for. I thought The Colour Out of Space actually did a half-decent job of that, mind you - it helped that the alien was just so alien that it wasn't an obvious stand-in for Creepy Howie's particular phobias, and was treated with a certain solemn respect rather than just gut-churning terror.
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Jan 18, 2015 20:03
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NovemberMike posted:Right, but one of the unique things about Lovecraft is that his fears and insecurities allowed him to tap into some common, very human insecurities. Take The Shadow Over Innsmouth. If you follow Lovecraft at all it's very obvious that the story can be summarized as "miscegenation is bad mmk" but it's possible to reject the racist aspects and still enjoy the story as a great piece of atmospheric horror that flirts with the idea of hidden monsters living among us. Modern audiences won't tend to make the leap between fish people and black people, which removes a lot of the aspects of the stories that have a possibility of creating real problems. You do sort of have to examine why 'hidden monsters living among us' is scary, though. Most of how Lovecraft articulated it in TSOI was 'they're ugly, have weird customs, and are perverting our noble Aryan culture and bloodline', which doesn't really shift far from the racist subtext. With, say, vampires, it's a problem because they're serial killers, and they've been used for every sort of symbolism out there, from a cruel, decadent aristocracy through rampaging drug addicts to manifestations of rape culture or predatory homosexuality. 'Monsters among us' isn't really enough - for horror to be scary, it has to tap into particular social and personal anxieties, and if the social anxiety you're playing to is sufficiently unpleasant/bigoted, like with evil lesbian vampire stories or Lovecraft's hysterical anti-miscegnation tracts, then you deserve to be called out for the kind of poo poo you're trying to stir. Deep One civil rights movement, represent.
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Jan 18, 2015 22:11
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Bendigeidfran posted:I always liked Lovecraft's less horrific writings better. Stuff like The Strange High House in the Mist or The Silver Key. There's a pervasive sense of wonder and admiration in them that a lot of people overlook in favor of his better-known stories. I don't think the idea that "humanity is scum in an uncaring reality" is universal to his works at all: it's a melodramatic statement made by characters who are overwhelmed by something beyond their control. Curiosity about mysterious things is a beautiful thing in his lighter writings, and it's made more beautiful by the dangers that could lurk in the shadows. Plus his authorial voice is a lot less abrasive and hateful when he's writing about things he actually likes. True, the sense-of-wonder stories are a definite plus in his work. I wouldn't peg the architecturechat as particular to his horror works, though - it was something he really loved and was interested in, and gets outright pornographic at times. It's a big part of how he liked to stimulate his sense of wonder. In fact, there's a fair few critics who've suspected that's why you don't see much about women in his work - who needs human females when you have sexy New England wood panelling?
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Jan 19, 2015 23:35
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Another thing to remember is that by the time he began to relax in terms of personal and social (and political) attitudes he had almost stopped writing fiction. So those changed attitudes don't make it into the stories. Also, to be honest, there isn't much impetus to put in inclusive, progressive and positive views into a horror story. (At least, these are not views that really adapt well to horror story tropes, especially the ones that HPL adhered to or invented.) So the slowing of his production then dealing with cancer meant that there wasn't much chance to see HPL's intellectual development in his fiction over his last years. I don't know his letters well enough to speak on that aspect. I'd disagree. Progressive horror writers have stuff they're scared of and want the audience to be scared of too (see China Mieville's work, for example), and personal (as opposed to social) fears like psychological/body horror are rich and mostly apolitical fields.
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Jan 20, 2015 12:28
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Bendigeidfran posted:I'd even say that the root of horror is vulnerability, which you don't normally associate with wealthy stoic Aryan scientists. You can mine a tremendous amount of fear from, say, a monster that acts like an abusive partner or the constant threat of starvation and social ostracization. Folk-tale monsters themselves probably emerged from the abject terror and poverty of pre-modern life. And something like Carrie or pregnancy-related horror can easily open itself to a progressive themes. And, well, vampires, like I mentioned earlier. Literal blood-sucking aristocrats who treat the lower classes like cattle. Even the fact that they don't tend to get much sunlight fits, if you remember where the term 'blueblood' comes from.
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Jan 20, 2015 16:01
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Hunterhr posted:Ibid is pretty funny. Did Lovecraft write any other satire like that? 'The Unnameable' is a good-natured send-up of his own style of writing.
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Aug 13, 2015 10:57
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Personally, I think it's a little more interestingly freaky when people's attempts to harness eldritch horrors for their nefarious ends actually work. I mean, one of the principles of Lovecraftian cosmic horror is that the big scary monsters often don't care about us, and the violence they inflict is nothing more than an elephant crushing an ant's nest in its sleep. Now imagine all that bizarre, horrific power with a human's intelligence, malice, and petty-mindedness. Forget Hitler and company getting eaten by Cthulhu - what if their mad ideas had actually borne fruit? Imagine an immortal Fuhrer, shrunken and pallid, gnawing on the bones of the dead as his shoggoth legions roll across Asia, sweeping away the lesser races and leaving nothing but an empty, glassy plain in their wake. Imagine the Eternal Man of Steel, the slave-drones of Russia networked together under his unbreakable will as he turns his two hundred million eyes to the stars beyond. Imagine the Tennou expressing his divinity to the Chinese and Korean barbarians with an army of slavering youkai, as the Tokko scoop out the impure thoughts of the worker caste and hang them on display in Tokyo's public gardens, dripping shreds of brain-matter still attached, as a warning to others. Horror, both real and fictional, derives from the human imagination. It's a powerful tool to use.
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Sep 6, 2015 00:37
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Call of Cthulhu: I'd be real hesitant about classing Rats in the Walls under 'not too much racism', unless you want to make the argument that it's about the exceptionally racist protagonist getting his worldview overturned by his own ultra-white family's history of savagery. The Outsider, The Music of Erich Zann, and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (if you fancy something longer) are much better options if you want compelling, atmospheric Lovecraft works that are relatively light on the racism (the first two have none at all that I remember). The Color Out of Space is superb, though, the absolute gold standard in Lovecraft. Definitely read that.
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Oct 26, 2016 13:15
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Fair enough. I haven't heard it in a while. Not to keep ragging on you here, but I'm amazed that so many people put forward The Rats In The Walls as one of Lovecraft's less objectionable stories and forget about the cat. Not to mention that there's a far less charitable read of the story than the one I offered - that it was written in a moment of panic after Lovecraft realised that he had inadequately Teutonic Welsh ancestry.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:32
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Applesnots posted:Lovecraft has the ability to create and use some good adjectives. He doesn't create them. They're just very obscure and archaic. 'Squamous', for example, means 'scaly', and 'rugose' means 'wrinkly'.
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Jun 3, 2017 08:57
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skasion posted:Have any latter-day weird fiction types tried to retell At the Mountains of Madness from the point of view of the Old Ones? Those guys truly did have the worst day of all time, even by HPL's standards, so much so that even his narrator feels for them. Even if it wasn't a literal retelling but just a group of human scientists waking up from cryostasis or whatever to find future entities dissecting them, not realizing that millions of years have passed, trying frantically to pick through the ruins of their civilization before ultimately getting slaughtered by their artificial slaves run amok -- seems like a great premise. Mind you, you’d probably want to address that they’re the kind of exploitative, imperialist asshats who only a particular kind of person could truly love, and that to modern eyes, much of what happens to them is a kind of dark cosmic karma. Now, if you really wanna go next-level with this poo poo, how about a look into the glorious shoggoth revolution? Workers of the cosmos, unite, you have nothing to lose but your forms!
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Nov 25, 2017 02:17
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