H.P. Lovecraft
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“For I have always been a seeker, a dreamer, and a ponderer on seeking and dreaming...”
― H.P. Lovecraft, defining what is to be, at core, an elegan/tg/entleman
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was a writer of horror fiction for 1920s pulp magazines. He pioneered the idea of "cosmic horror", in which the horror arises not from prosaic fears of death and dismemberment but from the idea that the universe itself is utterly alien and indifferent to us, full of incomprehensible horrors that our minds are ill-equipped to cope with because some asshat didn't make it OSHA-compatible. This idea replaced the traditional spooks, werewolves, vampires and psychos with tentacled monstrosities from beyond space and time, dark gods sleeping beneath the ocean, secretive cults carrying out terrible rites to bring their masters back to the world of the living, and the simple fact that the entirety of human existence was pathetically insignificant by comparison to everything else out there in the universe.
Essentially; Cosmic Horror's shock value came from the fact that infinitely powerful fallen ancient evils exist and we can't to stop them. You can banish a ghost or kill a werewolf with a silver bullet; but his monsters can't be stopped. They're essentially immortal gods, you are at their mercy, and their plans cannot be stopped at all. Worst of all is that you know this; you know they exist and their plans down to the very letter, but you also realize you can't do anything about it, its like knowing the details of an impending apocalypse and realizing nothing can stop it. Its this feeling of inescapable hopelessness and insignificance that makes it uniquely terrifying.
His influence can be felt throughout our culture - Mind Flayers in D&D, the insidious cults and corrupting influence of the gods of Chaos in Warhammer, and of course Call of Cthulhu. Lovecraft himself was largely a reclusive soul and a prolific writer of letters. He also had some controversial (atleast for today) viewpoints about blacks and other demographs, a lot of which are evident in his writings. He corresponded with many of the other authors of the time, including Robert E. Howard (Conan), Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, and even a young Robert Bloch (Psycho). Many of his correspondents wrote pastiches of his distinctive style of horror. In fact, Bloch and Lovecraft each wrote stories in which the other made an appearance - and died in a suitably gruesome way. This in turn helped some authors borrowing many ideas and notions from Lovecraft and added them to their works as well, the most famous example would be the Conan universe which is also set in the Mythos that Lovecraft created although in this case a much much ealier time.
Influences on Tabletop Gaming
Not counting the games directly based on his work:
- Any number of D&D monsters -- Mindflayers, though inspired by an image of tree roots growing from beneath a skull, gradually became stand-ins for Cthulhu and his spawn, gibbering mouthers are low-grade shoggoths, kuo-toa are much like the Deep Ones minus their strange breeding habits, etc.
- The Jabberslyth in Warhammer Fantasy (shoggoths)
- The concept of Chaos in both the Warhammer Fantasy and 40,000 settings owes much to his work, in conjunction with Michael Moorcock.
- Magic the Gathering's entire Eldrazi set, as cheesy as it was, was about the Old Ones awakening.
- The Pathfinder RPG gets a lot of mileage out of Lovecraftian themes, like the stuff about aboleths creating the human race, the Vault Keepers, Aucturn the Stranger, and the Dark Tapestry. Eventually, many Mythos figures, including the C'ster himself, made appearances as pants-shittingly dangerous endgame bosses, and their creatures got (mostly pretty good) write-ups as encounter-able monsters.
- Xoriat, the Realm of Madness, home of the Daelkyr, from the Eberron setting is pure Lovecraftian horror.
- While Genestealers originally took their inspiration from the horror movie Alien, their cults are most definitely reminiscent of Shadow of Innsmouth mixed with the more apocalyptic cults devoted to alien gods.
See Also
Cthulhu Mythos and works based on it, including:
Other /tg/-relevant sci-fi authors:
- H.G. Wells
- Robert Heinlein
- Isaac Asimov
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Philip K. Dick
Matthew Ward*BLAM* Heresy!