The problem of Cthulhu

Gwern Branwen · 19 Jun 2007, 20:11 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:11:24 -0400
Subject: (urth) The problem of Cthulhu
In-Reply-To: <135522.2581.qm at web32402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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Message-ID: <20070619201124.GA28784@localhost>

On  0, don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com> scribbled:
> I promise that this has to do with Wolfe. Honest. I
> should be doing other things, but this has been
> aggravating my brain, so forgive me if it rambles.
>
> I dig Lovecraft. I abso-frickin love the mythos and I
> enjoy reading what other writers do with it, but so
> often they fail miserably. This is ironic because HP
> Lovecraft was not a great stylist at all. That said,
> even Borges wrote that his own attempt at writing a
> Lovecraftian story was inferior to the real thing. So
> . . . Lovecraft was a lousy writer, but he had a
> fantastic idea and he understood it completely. What
> makes the Great Old Ones so terrifying is that they
> are completely alien, unknowable, invincible, and
> malevolent.  The only reason that they haven't wiped
> us out is that they are prevented by other equally
> unknowable forces who, while not actively malevolent,
> regard us as nothing particularly special. We are
> alone, unloved, helpless, and our only salvation is
> that we are by and large disregarded. That's scary
> stuff.
>      Enter August Derleth, who took over Lovecraft's
> legacy. All of a sudden the Great Old Ones are
> elementals of some sort. There's still some good stuff
> in Derleth; the Necronomicon, weird disappearances,
> madness, and a damned entertaining love story between
> two of the frog people that serve Cthulhu, but
> suddenly the forces of evil are knowable. We can
> contain them in our head and they just aren't as
> primally fear inducing.
>      Recently, I've been reading Brian Lumley's Titus
> Crow series, which directly involves the Cthulhu
> mythos. Not good. Not good at all. Lumley's a better
> writer than Lovecraft, better than Derleth too, but
> not only are the Cthulhu deities knowable, they have
> supervillian motivations. And not just that, they can
> be fought, with technology apparently. Cthulhu is now
> essentially a giant alien psychic squid. Lumley's
> Lovecraft fails for me for the same reason the various
> versions of the Necronomicon fail. They explain away
> all the mystery, and thus all the horror.
>      Now, some writer's get it right. Neil Gaiman's  A
> Study in Emerald is brilliant. It involves Sherlock
> Holmes, the Great Old Ones and a twist that is just
> incredible. And it's creepy as hell.
> And Wolfe. While they're not technically the Great Old
> Ones, Erebus, Abaia, Scylla, and the Mother, are all
> obvious analogs. Their motivations are largely
> unknowable, their nature is unknown, and for that
> reason they are majestic and terrifying. Wolfe
> understands Lovecraft, and it leads to some pretty
> creepy scenes throughout the BoTNS and several in the
> Short Sun books as well. I think no one will ever
> truly be able to explain Erebus and the rest, because
> they are meant to be unexplainable. They simply are.
> Btw, has Wolfe ever written a straight up Lovecraftian
> tale?
>
> thanks for your time
> Don

In the same vein, one of the few writers I've found who does Lovecraftiana well is strangely enough, Charles Stross.. His blend of geeky humor, Sci-fi, and the Cthulhu mythos somehow works out.
--
gwern
SAO Reno Compsec JICS Computer Terrorism Firewalls Secure Internet Connections RSP
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