Calling all Fiends.

[stufarq]

Re-read "He" and "The Horror of Red Hook" for the last bit.

Tying it loosely back to the point of the thread, Lovecraft categorised himself himself as an atheist, and his horror stories reflect that. No God, no meaning to life, and man just a speck in the universe at the mercy of beings completely unfathomable, truly alien, with no discernible motives or recognisable emotions. I think that's what makes his stories so chilling.

I don't think I've ever read those two, which would account for my not remembering!

While I get what you're saying about Lovecraft's view of humanity's insignificance, I don't think that's what made them chill me personally. I think that, despite the shortcomings of his prose and his sometimes hilarious melodramatic tendencies, he somehow had a way of making them seem absolutely real (as with the example I gave from ATMOM). No matter how ridiculous the ideas or the telling, you believed that the narrator was recounting horrors that they'd actually seen and that haunted them forever after or even drove them insane. In fact, perhaps those very shortcomings added to that feeling: these weren't well crafted works of fiction but the rougher edged and sometimes deranged accounts of real people.

[Quiff Boy]

on the subject of which...

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/04/ge ... uce-brown/

Interview with Bruce Brown, Author of the Howard Lovecraft Graphic Novel Series

Nothing like a good children’s story about a boy and his pet, Cthulhu.

Wow, did I really just say that? That is the story presented in Bruce Brown’s Howard Lovecraft graphic novel series. I recently had a blast reading through the first book in the series, Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Mountain. In fact, this is probably the only version of Lovecraft that would not completely warp my seven-year-old’s mind. We both really enjoyed the artwork and the story so much that we had to pick up the second book, Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom. I believe that fans of Lovecraft will get the connections made in the stories, probably by the titles alone.

I caught up with author Bruce Brown (hoping to get a sneak peak into the next book) and here is what he had share about his young adult series:

etc

[Silver_Owl]

Sounds good. I might check that out.

Another great take on the myth is Neonomicon. Worth a read.

[markfiend]

Anything by Alan Moore is worth a read. As I'm sure you'll agree.

[Silver_Owl]

Anything by Alan Moore is worth a read. As I'm sure you'll agree.

Indeed.

[EvilBastard]

Interview with Bruce Brown, Author of the Howard Lovecraft Graphic Novel Series

Nothing like a good children’s story about a boy and his pet, Cthulhu.

Wow, did I really just say that? That is the story presented in Bruce Brown’s Howard Lovecraft graphic novel series. I recently had a blast reading through the first book in the series, Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Mountain. In fact, this is probably the only version of Lovecraft that would not completely warp my seven-year-old’s mind.

Yeah, but what's the point in introducing your delicate offspring to Lovecraft if his mind won't be warped by the experience? If you don't find him practicing necromancy with a few select friends at his 10th birthday party, or telling his teachers that "Yog Sothoth says that I don't have to do my French homework" when he's 13 then I'm afraid you've failed as a parent.

[Silver_Owl]

Interview with Bruce Brown, Author of the Howard Lovecraft Graphic Novel Series

Nothing like a good children’s story about a boy and his pet, Cthulhu.

Wow, did I really just say that? That is the story presented in Bruce Brown’s Howard Lovecraft graphic novel series. I recently had a blast reading through the first book in the series, Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Mountain. In fact, this is probably the only version of Lovecraft that would not completely warp my seven-year-old’s mind.

Yeah, but what's the point in introducing your delicate offspring to Lovecraft if his mind won't be warped by the experience? If you don't find him practicing necromancy with a few select friends at his 10th birthday party, or telling his teachers that "Yog Sothoth says that I don't have to do my French homework" when he's 13 then I'm afraid you've failed as a parent.

[stufarq]

Yeah, but what's the point in introducing your delicate offspring to Lovecraft if his mind won't be warped by the experience? If you don't find him practicing necromancy with a few select friends at his 10th birthday party, or telling his teachers that "Yog Sothoth says that I don't have to do my French homework" when he's 13 then I'm afraid you've failed as a parent.

You're why social workers were invented.

[EvilBastard]

Yeah, but what's the point in introducing your delicate offspring to Lovecraft if his mind won't be warped by the experience? If you don't find him practicing necromancy with a few select friends at his 10th birthday party, or telling his teachers that "Yog Sothoth says that I don't have to do my French homework" when he's 13 then I'm afraid you've failed as a parent.

You're why social workers were invented.

No argument from me on that - I've spent the last 10 years trying to get my nephews interested in gambling, girls, high-velocity rifles and ballistic physics, and yet they remain steadfastly uncorrupted and horrifyingly normal. I blame the parents - the children have never shown any interest in dry ice, black leather, lasers, strobes, or drum machines, they're encouraged to listen to Floyd, Marillion , and Zep, and can sing all the lyrics to ACDC's "It's a long way to the top (if you wanna rock n'roll)".
My biggest concern, and the one that will precipitate my call to social services, is that when they're 20 years old they will "rebel" by getting squarecuts and signing up for chartered accountancy courses at the local tech.

[stufarq]

It's years since I've read any (although I may have to reread them now) but I don't remember the racism.

Reread The Rats In The Walls the other day and I see it now - the name of the cat!

[markfiend]

It's years since I've read any (although I may have to reread them now) but I don't remember the racism.

Reread The Rats In The Walls the other day and I see it now - the name of the cat!

A pure guess here but is it similar to the name of the dog in the Dam Busters?

[stufarq]

It's years since I've read any (although I may have to reread them now) but I don't remember the racism.

Reread The Rats In The Walls the other day and I see it now - the name of the cat!

A pure guess here but is it similar to the name of the dog in the Dam Busters?

Had to Google it but yes. It's that with "-Man" on the end. Apparently it was a common name for dogs back then.

I'm a couple more stories in now (the excellent Pickman's Model and The Call Of Cthulhu itself) and there are occasional references to half-breeds and the like - the sort of thing that was considered acceptable at the time but it's mostly ignorant and patronising rather than mocking or hateful. It's Hergé and Ian Fleming rather than Bernard Manning or Nick Griffin.

[DeWinter]

"Rats in the Walls" isn't the worst example, n@gger was considered an acceptable word in the time of writing.
Wait until you get to "He", and "The Horror At Red Hook" though. It's pretty blatant what he thinks of multiracial New York, and it's very similar to what you'll hear about London now.

[markfiend]

Yes, it's very weird to our ears to hear the N word but I suppose it was a natural name for someone to give a black cat or dog back then. I'd imagine it wasn't done with malice, but with a kind of jolly thoughtlessness.

I seem to recall a storm-in-a-teacup when there was a suggestion that the remake of the Dam Busters movie was to be Bowdlerised by renaming the dog. (Actually it's referenced in that Wiki link.)

As for Lovecraft's racism, it's the milieu in which he lived. Eugenics, for example, was a fashionable idea in the pre-war years; it was only after seeing where the Nazis went with it that eugenics lost its intellectual respectability.