I'd rather hear more about Azathoth or Yog Sothoth as Entities themselves. The Outer Gods hold so much more weight then the Elder Gods and the mystery behind them is so much more terrifying.
Especially considering the fact that once Azathoth awakens reality itself will be warped for he is the blind idiot god of all Chaos
Aye... i loved Lovecraft too, when i was younger {still like his style}
Cthulhu itself isn't the most powerful/scariest thing, like the poster before me said already. It's just his location and presence making him important: He is HERE ON EARTH. He just sleeps, but his dream salone seep through the veil into our reality, influencing and maddening us; tearing at the veil. {Which shall never fall, because when we see behind it, we see what WE really are... and what the universe really is}
Everything about it. Everything. It was also the first example of horror/sci-fi mix to hit the media as a whole. It was the birth of a whole genre which we take for granted. HP Lovecraft was a fictional pioneer and deserves the respect given to him.
one time, I tried to get into the mythos by reading the books, so I went to the library to read a few. They were completely indecipherable. Each one had a first page that required a computer at hand just to look up every other word because it was some other monster that I didn't know about. I'm not going to do that, so I'm just going to replace all the stuff that isn't properly explained with highschool girls making duck faces.
I don't remember the name of some book of which I only read the first page several years ago. it was something the creeping some monster. It was one of the shorter ones.
So to anyone who is a big fan of Lovecraft, or just likes the idea of Cthulhu... what am I missing? What is so special about Cthulhu and why are the stories about him considered the benchmark for all sci-fi horror stories.
Well, for starters, the idea that we are small, unimportant insects in the universe of living gods is appealing to some readers. In TRUE Mythos lore it is stated that we are powerless against the cosmic entities that are so alien that we can't even describe them and their qualities, agendas.
There were many authors before H.P.Lovecraft that flirted with this vision, but his approach was so revolutionary, that it inspires some of us to this day. It may be controversial to say so, but Lovecraft practicaly evicted us - the Mankind - from the throne of most important, ummmm, things in whole Creation. A throne that organized religions erected, mind you. So for some he is equal to Copernicus only in field of cousciousness.
Cthulhu is not that great. Some of most important, iconic stories that are regarderd pillars of Mythos are void of his presence. Sure, he is one f*g, indestructible giant with ability to influence and control Mankind even when dead/asleep, but there are more monstrous, powerful beings than him.
It's not about Cthulhu. It's about the Vision.
(By reading it you effectively lowered your sanity and gained some sort of phobia, enjoy)
For one, the style of horror it establishes is one of atmosphere and tension rather than gore, shock, and jump-at-you. I also never found the written works to be all that frightening, but then again literature is the least captive and least direct form of media absorption. If you get too tense, you can always stand up and eat a sandwich, pet the cat, get an oil change, or somesuch.
This style of tension-building is used in the best types of thriller/horror works. One where the greatest fears are those unknown to the viewer/reader/player. It's all about pacing and anticipation, and the occasional feeling of helplessness in the player or character adds to that loneliness and despair.
That, and works with Lovecraftian influences or outright themes have tended to be quite good. In games, you have a couple of the Silent Hills, Eternal Darkness, Mass Effect, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Aquaria, Guillermo Del Toro's new scifi franchise, and so on. Literature has it quite often, as does film. There's even the euro-game Arkham Horror, which approaches the mythos from a cooperative standpoint and is a very fun and excellent game.
I've never read Lovecraft, but I'd like to give it a try.
Do you need to start at the beginning of his boks to get the full effect, or can they be read out of sequence?
Most horror stories have a protagonist who, though things are tough and screwed up, he/she has at least SOME chance of figuring things out, getting out alive, saving the day, etc. Also, even if the protagonist DOESN'T make it out, the horror is usually on a personal scale, and the world goes on unaffected.
The Cthulhu mythos and Lovecraft's stories don't always adhere to this formula. A lot of the times the protagonist is confronted with horrible realities, such as the fact that humanity is just an insignificant blip on the radar of greater beings. These beings could, and would, destroy humanity in an instant if it suited them. These revelations drive the protagonist insane because they fly in the face of every human rationalization of our existence. The horror is more on a world-spanning or even galaxy spanning scale.
I don't remember the name of some book of which I only read the first page several years ago. it was something the creeping some monster. It was one of the shorter ones.
Are you sure? Are you sure it wasn't just made up from whole cloth, instead?
By "shorter," what exactly do you mean? Lovecraft tended towards short stories. Are you sure you even have the right author? Did you mistake a collection for a full novel? Perhaps a glossary for his actual story? Do you, in fact, judge people's works by how difficult a read the table of contents is?
This post is partially facetious. I leave it to you, dear reader, to spot where.
I don't wish to cause offence to anyone who's like really into the Cthulhu mythos for whatever reason. I'm not trying to be confrontational I'm just struggling to understand.
For those who asked: Lovecraft made some very cool short stories, they sometimes refer to each other but the order in which you read them isn't that important.
I recommend:
Call of Cthulhu
Shadow over Innsmouth
The Haunter of the Dark
or if you prefer something with a "happy ending":
The Dunwich Horror
Since I'm in a good mood today I'm giving you the homepage where you can read his stories for free: http://www.hplovecraft.com/ (or http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/) try to enjoy and do tell me if you liked the stories.
Now BACK to the orginial topic:
To be honest I actually hate reading books (or short-stories). I prefer reading manuals, wikipedia or forum threads (as long as they are interesting) But there was something that piqued my interest, something that really fascinated me while I read the first passage of "Call of Cthulhu"
It was this:
H.P.Lovecraft said:
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Well, as a Great Old One, technically Cthulhu was more of a worshipper of these gods, a priest capable of comprehending and appreciating the agendas of such entities or concepts, which are of course far beyond the ken of mortal minds.
OT: I understand your confusion at Cthulhu being so popular. As a fan of Lovecraft and the authors that defined most of the original Cthulhu Mythos, I cringe at the current work made based on Lovecraft's Mythos- alot of it really misses the mark. For that matter, I felt that even August Derleth was beating a (that is not dead which can eternal lie) dead horse.
Having said that, exploring the idea that man is not in control of his environment, nor even of his own mind, is a favourite horror concept of mine. Try reading some of the already suggested stories. Or, watch "In The Mouth of Madness", or "The Thing", both by John Carpenter, or Stuart Gordon's "Dagon"( which is a retelling of the story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth")
I never found Lovecraft scary, madness holds no fear for me I'm not perfectly sane at any rate so eh. And a unfathomable super being is at this point in fiction old hat. Of course I had already know alot about the Chaos gods of warhammer 40k which make Cthulhu look like a scared child.
To call it old hat as if it were playing upon something else is really kind of disrespectful, seeing as it is the hat that all other hats are based upon. And as for the entire "Chaos Gods" taken from Cthulhu by the way - it came first in the time line, so it trumps all those trying to steal their style... and their various races that can be taken out by a bunch of guys with chainsaw sword while not being able to look behind them or scratch their own nose - sans chain-blade - does not quite make me quake in my boots.
As for the "not scared save for Frankenstein" Well... Victorian Horror as it were, comprised of the traditional monsters... played upon fables, folklore, and old scary stories. But the greatest part, as mentioned above, was bringing rationale to the mix.
The difference was, the rational in Lovecraft's work was that there was little to no rational. And before that, besides the Greek's very few actually tried saying that "God" was not "God" but a race of, as paraphrased before, "God-like abilities given to Dragons crossed with Krakens." - Which: That is always an artistic portrayal... imagine something along the lines of a space brain and a million octopuses all clumped together with giant eyes and scaled portions, and the only thing people could come up with upon that description - which is still a 'only what a human could perceive' was what someone drew, labeled Cthulhu, and everyone just kind of said 'good enough, yeah lets just draw that from now on.' - is it was very against the idea of what a "God" was back then. All prior forms of "God" or "Gods" were man shaped, or at least appeared somewhat human.
The Elder Gods, were comprised of an entire pantheon of beings that created and twisted the universe upon itself. Simply by existing. Most of them, did not intentionally seek out or do any particular malevolence... it wasn't that they were trying to make people go insane, it just happened. They floated through space, and just altered reality. Water became flammable, people would turn inside out or suddenly start looking like abstract paintings, the world would invert, dissolve or shift simply by having one of the Elder Gods in the same general galaxy as it.
Cthulhu was just one that was focused on, and the most stories written about. But others were written about. And it has spread to other mediums.
Think about the Silver Surfer for a moment. A person, taken from a world. Forced to travel ahead of a planet eating demi-god beast, that devours life and energy to continue living.
Now, take Nyarlathotep.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep is what effectively inspired the Silver Surfer, and a great portion of the stories of Lovecraft use him as an avatar and way of explaining what is going on. His job, for the most part: Go ahead to inhabited planets in the path of the old ones and kind of let them know that they should expect for their world to unravel (as mentioned above) and to not totally freak out. You know, nearly exactly what the Silver Surfer does. Only, without that whole rebelling against Galactis.
Well, as a Great Old One, technically Cthulhu was more of a worshipper of these gods, a priest capable of comprehending and appreciating the agendas of such entities or concepts, which are of course far beyond the ken of mortal minds.
For that matter, I felt that even August Derleth was beating a (that is not dead which can eternal lie) dead horse.
Ok I seriously Geeked out like the lovecraft fan boy that I am with that reference. DAMN YOU ABDUL ALHAZRED AND YOUR AWESOME NON-EXISTENT BOOK!!
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die"
Anyway you do make a rousing argument on Cthulhu's part. After all he is the preacher for these great entities and the fact that he himself is so incomprehensible only adds to the terror of the Entities of which he must translate.
Scary shit indeed.
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