A Color Out of Space, A Shadow Out of Time: H.P. Lovecraft & His Work

The purpose of this essay is to explore Lovecraft's philosophies and work, and explain how an even greater body of work -- known as the Cthulhu Mythos.

by J. Edward Tremlett (Original World of Darkness | The Mythos Project | Resources)

"Only a cynic can create horror -- for being every masterpiece
of the sort must reside a driving daemonic force that despises
the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces
and mock them." -- H.P. Lovecraft.

H.P. Lovecraft's work sits in a very interesting niche: is there any other writer in the 20th Century who has had his creations so blatantly used by other writers?

A great deal of 20th century horror has been influenced by Lovecraft's work, yes, and this is to be expected as he remains this century's chief writer of the weird tale. However, the gentleman's body of work seems to be a bucket from which many a writer has filled their cup: placing copies of The Necronomicon within their evildoers' hands and the names of his hideous, shambling monstrosities on their lips. All of it adds to the great body of work known as the "Cthulhu Mythos," which, like one of Mr. Lovecraft's Shoggoths, seems ready and willing to absorb anything in its path.

But what exactly is the Cthulhu Mythos? Was it a planned story arc on Lovecraft's part? A great scheme cooked up betwixt he and his writer colleagues? Or is it just a term that has been applied to anything "Lovecraftian" that uses the specific names, places and concepts that Lovecraft and his initial group of fellows wrote of? Where does it start, and where will it ever end?

These sorts of questions have been keeping Lovecraft scholars quite busy: the amount of scholarly study devoted to his work as a horror writer is exceeded only by that which is given unto Edgar Allan Poe. It's a field of study that is worth perusing if only to gain a better understanding of the man, his life, his work, and how those things were all bound to one another.

The purpose of this essay is to explore Lovecraft's philosophies and work, and explain how an even greater body of work -- known as the "Cthulhu Mythos" -- came to mushroom from it both before and after his death. It will show that the so-called "mythos" is really an artificial grouping of things from various authors' tales, and that, from Lovecraft's pen at least, that grouping is dwarfed by the signifigance of those tales.

The Unknown Mind

In a sense, it almost goes without saying that Lovecraft would write of odd things, he being such an odd person himself. A brief biography, HERE, will give details of his life, so we need mention but little of it in this central essay. His philosophies, however, should be understood, and we should also see where they factor into his writings before we try to understand their larger scope as the cornerstone of a so-called "mythos."

H.P. Lovecraft was, in many ways, a man displaced in time. He would have been much happier had he been a colonial subject of the English King in the 17th or 18th centuries. He was obsessed by antiquity, and held social, political and artistic views more suited to those earlier times. This traditionalist sense shows up in his writing quite a bit: he has a penchant for describing the old, with a particular reverence for decaying grandeur and places long since gone from the land but alive in story and song.

Despite the traditionalist streak, Lovecraft shared none of the piety that accompanied the times he loved; he was an unapologetic atheist who described himself as a "Mechanist Materialist." This philosophy held that the universe was a creatorless mechanism that, once set into motion, needed no further prodding to keep it going. There was no life after death, no spirit, and nothing outside of the measurable, material universe of energy and matter.

He described his philosophy in writing as "Cosmicism": a state where mankind, which could not be regarded as the special creation of any deity, could only have its self-worth, and views, rebuffed or utterly ignored by the cosmos at large. Outside of its Earthly environs, mankind was of no real importance to the rest of the universe. Mankind's struggle to confront the alien, and the beyond, and assert its "rightful place" amongst them, could only end in death or madness.

We must also note that Lovecraft was in possession of the sort of low-key racism often inbred by well-to-do, Northern communities of his time. It was not a crusading racism, nor was it a violent one, but it was there and must be recognized for what it was. His work should not be discarded out of hand because of it, but neither should his personal prejudices be denied or swept under the rug to mollify the politically correct.

Looking at his work, in fact, we can see that his sense of xenophobia is where a lot of the horror comes from. He writes of the plight of mankind, which is caught in the gulfs of unintelligible and mysterious cosmic forces that are so mightily above it that a man might as well be an ant to a human. And this has parallels with the plight of Western Civilization, as seen by a man who viewed the modern, well-meaning "melting pot" sensibility as pure hogwash. Horror comes from outside, where understanding is impossible and things are better left unasked and unopened, and horror happens when the understandable (Western, genteel, and White civilization) meets or is beset upon by the unintelligible (slovenly european and 3rd-world immigrants, the yellow peril, etc.).

And we should also note that, towards the end of his life, Lovecraft began to soften his views quite a bit, at least in theory. In one letter, he regrets having been a miserable, old, stuck-in-his-ways Tory all his life. In a later one, however, he hopes that the authorities in the Indian colonies would use poison gas on the native Indians. Some habits die very slowly, it seems.

It is around this time that his earlier works have their cosmic scope abraded away. In The Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time, we find out that the nigh-hoary, all-powerful races of old weren't totally alien: in fact, they can be shown to have had quite a few traits in common with humanity. There are still those cosmic gulfs and great vistas of eldritch and alien horror, but closer to home we find that some of what we feared is not as fearsome as we might have thought. This is a vast departure from his earlier works; it would have been interesting to see how the "de-mythologizing" would have developed had he not died shortly thereafter.

Early Influences

When considering the genesis of what is called the Cthulhu Mythos, we must recognize that the whole warp and woof of the matter cannot be laid squarely at Mr. Lovecraft's feet.

Like any writer, Lovecraft learned to write by first learning how to read, and what he read would have a profound influence on his output. In addition to the classical works that he devoured in his grandfather's stately library, he took great influence from weird writers both before and during his time: Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany and Robert Chambers were particular favorites.

Lovecraft learned from Machen how to add seeming realism to a tale by giving clear, documentary evidence. He was quite firm in the notion that, to be effective, weird fiction must have a firm basis in fact. To succeed, weird stories should be possible supplements, as opposed to blatant contradictions, of the universe and its workings.

A great deal of his writing, then, contained bits of true scientific information and mention of real-life events. He made use of letters, articles and manuscripts in the work, trying to evoke the sense of seeming veracity that epistolary documents could give a story. And he also made consistent mention of his own literary inventions within his works to create a stable framework to base these tales upon: his towns of Arkham and Kingsport, Miskatonic University, and so on.

And on a related note, we should note of the convention Lovecraft learned from Chambers: how to effectively create belief in that framework in the mind of reader. This is most notably illustrated by Lovecraft's invention, constant referral to, and extensive quoting from The Necronomicon, which was much in the same vein as Chamber's The King in Yellow. Lovecraft constructed a very authentic-sounding history to the book, going so far as to mention translators and different editions. That many people today still believe that book to have been real is testament to how well he learned his lessons from Chambers' work.

And then there is Lord Dunsany, who is purported to be Lovecraft's strongest contemporary influence. Dunsany's "The Gods of Pegana" encouraged Lovecraft to write his dream-based stories, which often went far out of the realm of horror and could rightfully be called fantasy. The Baron's works gave him an idea for an artificial pantheon, one that is often alluded to in his Dreamlands tales and has elements of both classical myth and mind-numbing horror to it.

The Big Question

That said, one of the major problems with trying to codify the nature of the so-called "Cthulhu Mythos" is that, in truth, there is no such thing to be found in Lovecraft's own writing.

Lovecraft refers to "cycles" of stories, such as the "Cthulhu" and "Yog-Sothoth" cycles, and his tales often refer to specific people, places and things. It is true that towards the end of his writing career Lovecraft connected some earlier tales with more recent ones: an example of this can be found in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, where the Deep Ones are worshipping the Dagon found in the early, short story "Dagon." However, this was a very late development, and hardly proof of a consistent, underlying scheme on his part.

Indeed, the idea that Mr. Lovecraft sat down to pen an elaborate, interconnected "mythos" within his own work is not supported by that gentleman's epistolary accounts of his fiction. Had he been planning such a thing, one would think he would have written his colleagues concerning the idea: he did not, and that leads one to believe that such a conceit did not occur to him.

If Lovecraft did indeed "create" the Cthulhu Mythos, then it was formed from the influential connections between Lovecraft and those he took influence from, and gave influence to. Again, we cannot point to a deliberate act on Lovecraft's part to create a vast Mythos to bear his creation's name, but we also cannot deny that Lovecraft sat at a hub of like-minded writers who kept in close contact with one another and traded ideas quite a bit. That he blended ideas of others with those of his own and in some cases tied more than one author's work down to his own, or that of others, seems in the spirit of the give-and-take attitude he and his fellow writers enjoyed rather than part of some self-aggrandizing scheme.

Tying the Cords Together

How the Mythos, as it is understood today, came together is a tale that spans more than a century in itself. It starts with Lovecraft's previously-mentioned weird tale influences, and ends with writers who, depending on your perspective, either continued his tradition or committed acts of gross plagiarism on his work.

Though Lovecraft made mention of Carcosa on Lake Hali, on a planet circling the star Aldebaran, those places were first written of by Ambrose Bierce. Robert Chambers would later contribute to Bierce's work concerning Carcosa, also creating the dreaded script of "The King in Yellow," which inspired Lovecraft's The Necronomicon, The Pnakotic Manuscripts and other eldritch tomes of dire import. We should also note just how closely Machen's "The Great God Pan" matches Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" in theme and mood.

Then we must add the efforts of Lovecraft's fellow writers. In the course of their epistolary contact with one another they traded a lot of ideas back and forth. This literary give-and-take resulted in a good deal of the "Mythos" recognized today.

Clark Ashton Smith created the prehistoric civilization of Hyperborea, which Lovecraft referred to quite often. Smith also created Tsathoggua, Abhoth and Atlach-Nacha, and made mention of the Book of Eibon. Frank Belknap Long created the Hounds of Tindalos, the Space Eaters, and Chaugnar Faugn, whose introductory story was based on one of Lovecraft's vivid dreams.

Other members of Lovecraft's circle were authors who are better known for other, more popular works. It was Robert Bloch -- perhaps best known for writing Psycho -- who made the books De Vermiis Mysteriis and Cultes des Goules and contributed the Star Vampire. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, penned tales of the Unausprechlichen Kulten, and the mad poet Justin Geoffrey, writer of The People of the Monolith. Lovecraft referred to Howard's Cimmerian era in his tales much as he referred to Smith's Hyperborea.

We should also consider Lovecraft's ghost-writing work, done during the time when his own, signed work was being rejected by Weird Tales. He would often write the entire text of a story based on one or two ideas from the person whose name wound up going under the byline. In fact, Zealia Bishop's "The Curse of Yig" and "The Mound," and Hazel Heald's "The Horror in the Museum" and "Out of the Aeons," were at least ninety percent Lovecraft's doing.

In these stories that Lovecraft revised, many of the stories of other writers come together. Bishop's stories were set in the Southwest, which is where we can find Tsathoggua, both worshipped by races of subterranean humans. The deity Ghatanothoa from "Out of the Aeons" is introduced by way of Howard's Unausprechlichen Kulten, and both are linked to Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth.

The further codification of the Cthulhu Mythos, as we have come to understand it, seems to have been mostly the work of writer August Derleth. Derleth was a friend and colleague of Lovecraft's, and, with Donald Wandrei, founded Arkham House to keep Lovecraft's works in circulation after his death in 1937. In addition to his own Lovecraftian works, Derleth wrote many posthumous "collaborations" where he would take something that Lovecraft had started and left undone and finish it on his own.

Amongst Derleth's other creations were Cthugha (his fire elemental), the sand-dwellers, the Tcho-Tcho people, and Ithaqua (borrowed from Robert Chamber's creation of the Wendigo). He also added to Bierce and Chamber's Carcosa stories by adding Hastur, a great thing which was trapped beneath the surface of Lake Hali, and also happened to be the air elemental in Derleth's mythos.

Derleth acted as a solidifying agent: trying to draw the loose cords of the Mythos together to form a cohesive whole. This has been a cause for much controversy amongst Lovecraft's fans, particularly those who think his protege's efforts in this matter were detrimental to the work of the man he was trying to honor (see "Notions of the Mythos and later deevolution" below). All the same, a great debt is owed Mr. Derleth for keeping Lovecraft's name and works alive long after his death.

Starting in the 1960's, the Mythos had its own British Invasion of sorts. Ramsey Campbell -- himself influenced by Derleth's work -- produced a series of Lovecraftian stories set in England's Severn Valley, introducing Y'golonac, Glaaki and the Insects from Shagghai. Fellow Briton Brian Lumley came along in the 70's, creating the Cthonians and the G'harne Fragments.

In the 80's and on through the 90's, Chaosium Inc. produced its award-winning Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, which helped solidify the idea of a cohesive Cthulhu Mythos for a whole new generation of Lovecraft fans. Although Derleth's creatures and creations were left in, the principal author of the RPG excised a lot of his ideas concerning the "war in Heaven," the "good" gods and the elemental significance of Cthugha, Cthulhu, Hastur and Nyarlathotep. Various supplements have also included creatures and beings created by other, Lovecraftian authors who have contributed to the "Mythos."

Notions of the "Mythos" and later deevolution

As stated earlier, Lovecraft's concept of the weird tale was based around a central tenet: that the universe at large was not only stranger than we ever imagined, but that it was stranger than we could ever imagine.

This world, as he wrote of it, was a dark and fathomless place where mankind's treasured notions had little or no meaning. Decency, love, honor and piety were notions that were probably akin to mankind alone. Expecting inhuman entities to share in such notions was foolish to say the least.

In fact, Mr. Lovecraft held a great deal of scorn for those pulp writers who ascribed all-too-human feelings to alien races and civilizations. In his philosophy the truly alien should be alien not only in appearance, but in thought and deed as well. And this is, again, why his stories The Shadow out of Time and The Mountains of Madness are such vast departures from his earlier work -- they show that while these alien or ancient races that shared our world with us may have been alien in thought and deed, they were not as completely alien as he'd made them out to be in earlier references.

But in spite of what came later, in most of his work Lovecraft's creations can be said to be beyond what we could call "good" or "evil". They simply are what they are, and do what they do. Our notions of what ought and ought not to be done matter little outside of our own tiny planet, and these creations play by entirely different rules.

They are horrifying to us much as the insane killer is horrifying, as opposed to a man who simply wishes to rob us. The man with a gun who seeks to rob us is a terrifying thing, yes, but we can ascribe reasoning and motive to his actions. We can also predict what he is likely to look like and avoid such people, and have ideas on where he is most likely to strike and avoid such places. And should we encounter him, we know that if we hand over our wallet and do what he says, the chances are good we'll live through the experience. And we will know terror.

With an insane killer, however, we have nothing to fall back on. The appearance of the man and the places he will strike are up in the air. His reasoning and motives are either nonexistant or too insane to fathom. And should we be caught by such a person we will have no idea what is going to happen at all: we could be smiled upon one moment and slaughtered the next. And we will know horror, at least so long as we live.

Lovecraft showed us cosmic horror by placing those great unknowns onto even greater entities. Suddenly it's no longer a man with a knife who claims that God told him to skin you alive -- now it is a strange, polymorphous thing the size of a New England state whose every twitch destroys acres of land. It cannot be understood. It cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be pleaded with and, worst of all, it may have no idea that the things it's stepping on are living, thinking beings. It might view us with as much concern as an elephant would show to an ant; it may not even be able to think at all.

Even those creations of his that are more terrestrial, or less amorphous, are no less horrifying because, again, they are not truly understandable. Things happen that we cannot predict nor fully affect, and we have the choice of running or fighting, but both choices seem doomed to failure. Madness and death come on one another's heels, usually, and sometimes not even those states can save us.

And here is man, beset on all sides by these things and unable to do more than scream and go insane when faced with them. He may not even be able to see them properly, or they might attack for the oddest of reasons from literally nowhere. And that sense of helplessness, hopelessness and utter fear of the unknown and unknowable is what makes Lovecraft's horror tales so horrible, and his "mythos"-spawning work so memorable and admirable.

The problem with the later stages of the "mythos" is that many writers, both during and after his time, did not understand what he was trying to do. Lovecraftiana is not solely formed from dense, overly-descriptive prose and goopy, amorphous creatures from beyond space and time. The gulfs of the unknown between the narrator and what he is narrating must be present, as should be the utter fear of being alone against these horrors and unable to fully understand them.

One needs only look at August Derleth's works to see where a breakdown in concept mechanics occurred. Derleth created a pantheon of "good" gods, based on Lovecraft's Nodens, to counterbalance the "evil" represented by Lovecraft's less wholesome creations. He also spoke of a "war in Heaven" where these beings were cast out, and tried to assign elemental status to Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep, casting them as Water and Earth, respectively.

Some have said that Mr. Derleth's efforts to propagate the "Mythos" stemmed from his attempts to tie up his idol's loose ends. If so, then it was a task that he undertook with a bit too much enthusiasm, leading to some rather haphazard and inconclusive results. For example, if Cthulhu is a water elemental, then why is he "dead" from being trapped underwater?

But from a more aesthetic sense, these actions on Derleth's part are in direct opposition to Lovecraft's views on his literature and their meaning. The notion of having "good" gods around ready to save the protagonists' behinds deprives us of horror and turns the story to mere terror or, worse, simple gruesome adventure. And identifying these great and unknowable beings with human elemental magic is so anthropocentric as to be nauseating.

The pure, mind-numbing horror that Lovecraft succeeded in creating is seriously abrogated by Derleth's stylistic additions, and it is just as well that the author of the Call of Cthulhu Role Playing Game left a lot of them out. All the same, we cannot soundly condemn Derleth as a worthless hack hanging onto his betters' coattails. Indeed, Lovecraft fans owe Mr. Derleth a great debt for keeping his idol's works in circulation, which is more than can be said for those who ham-handedly pilfered Mr. Lovecraft's creations to ape his work or spice up their own.

Concluding: A Matter of Intent

So then we are left with the real problem with the notion of this "Cthulhu Mythos": that concentrating on it, rather than the concepts behind it, is to miss the point entirely. It doesn't matter that there is a Necronomicon, an "Elder Thing," or any such place as Yuggoth, and they could have been Dating Tips for Boys, "gelatin gone bad" or Vomitville. The names and particulars don't matter so much as what they represent.

Lovecraft's stories, for the most part, were written to make a particular point: that Man's morals and accomplishments are meaningless outside of his own sphere of influence. The creatures of the "mythos" are just amorphous, unsubtle and fictional reminders that having a gun, a language and some grasp of mathematics still won't save your behind when vastly greater powers intersect with your town square. And there are those who understand this and continue writing similar, cautionary tales -- with or without Lovecraft's creations in them -- and then there are those who didn't get the point.

Point being: those who explore the unknown and seek out hidden truths dice with hidden peril. Those of us who sit at home, read of their exploits and think "gosh, aren't we so swell" should be less proud and more humble. Real life has given us countless examples of this; Lovecraft's stories are just artistic ways of illustrating it, and the "mythos," being an artificial grouping of fictional symptoms representing real-life peril, is ever-subordinate to it.