Howard Phillips Lovecraft was a 19th to early 20th Century American writer, and his impact on the horror genre is immense. If you meet a writer of dark fantasy, chances are they will cite Lovecraft as an inspiration. His literary bloodline includes novelists like Neil Gaiman and Ramsay Campbell. The film and video game industries also bear his unmistakable mutations. Directors John Carpenter and Guillermo Del Toro have devoted entire careers, to giving Lovecraft’s work the visual treatment it demands. And do not forget video games. Without Lovecraft, we would not have the interactive experiences of The Sinking City, or The Dragonborn DLC for The Eldar Scrolls V: Skyrim. The tentacled face of Lovecraft’s most famous creation, the monster Cthulu, is everywhere in the dark fantasy genre. If it looks like a cephalopod, and it is being worshipped by mutated acolytes, it owes itself to the brain of Howard Philips Lovecraft.
With each storey he wrote, Lovecraft built an entire fictional world of interdimensional mysteries, demented cults and nightmarish deities. This fictional world is built on a nihilistic philosophy. He pitches the idea that human beings are totally insignificant in the cosmos. The universe is not the domain of gentle Jesus meek and mild. There is no omnipotent parent who looks out for us. There are only monstrous gods who regard us with at best indifference and at worst, sadism and malice. According to Dr Emily Zarka, this idea is best evoked in his storey At The Mountain’s of Madness, which I have not read. In the story, reports Zarka, humanities existence is revealed to be an accidental by product of an experiment by aliens.
As we read each of these stories, an existential crisis takes hold of us. The universe was not created for us. If it was created for anyone, it was created for the race of hideous titans that populate Lovecraft’s world. One such being has become synonymous with cosmic horror. Lovecraft described Cthulhu as a giant creature that can overturn an entire ship, and creates enormous waves as it moves through the sea. It has a head like an octopus, with a beard of feelers, giant bat like wings, and a body like that of a man. The god for which the Cthulhu Mythos is named first appears in the story, The Call of Cthulhu, published in the New York magazine Weird Tales in 1928. In the storey, the protagonist, Francis Weyland Thursten inherits some papers from his great uncle, who has died under mysterious circumstances. His study of the papers sets him on the trail of a cult that worships Cthulu. The investigation leads him to an account by a group of sailors who have inadvertently awakened the monstrous god. This being, we learn, is a member of a pantheon of Gods known as the Great Old Ones, who ruled the earth millions of years before humanity. For unspecified reasons, the Great Old Ones fell into a deep slumber, and their city of R’Lyeh sank beneath pacific ocean. But they had a contingency plan. They communicated with humans in dreams. In undiscovered corners of the world, uncivilised and degenerate people still worship Cthulu and his fellow Gods, in loathsome and Blasphemous rites. When enough followers have been recruited, and the correct rituals have been completed, Cthulu will reawaken and take control of the world once again.
Lovecraft’s world portrays humanity assailed by despair from two angles. There is no caring God, or benevolence to be found in religion. But neither can we be saved by scientific enquiry. In the Call of Cthulu, the protagonist finds relief in what he perceives, as humanities inability to comprehend knowledge. He warns the reader that if science is pursued to too far, we will discover things so horrifying about ourselves and the universe, that we will go mad. We are better of simply not knowing them. The only comfort the author offers is in the darkness of restful ignorance.
How Cthulhu Transcended its Creator, H.P. Lovecraft | Monstrum