cthulhu mythos, BotNS

don doggett · 02 Jun 2005, 14:37 · from 2005-June.txt.gz

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From: kingwukong at yahoo.com (don doggett)
Date: Thu Jun  2 14:37:00 2005
Subject: (urth) cthulhu mythos, BotNS
Message-ID: <20050602213656.36325.qmail at web32402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

I googled to see if this had been touched on in the
archives and I didn't find anything, but forgive me if
I'm going over old ground.  I'm in the process of
reading a collection of short stories by August
Derleth, set in Lovecraft's universe.  The stories are
quite good so far, and it seems to me that perhaps
Derleth, rather than Lovecraft, was a greater
influence on Wolfe regarding the nature of Abaia and
the rest and their conflict with the Hiero's.  The
very fact of a conflict seems to bear this out as
Derleth sets the Great Old Ones (Cthulhu etc) against
the Elder Gods who, interestingly enough, reside in
Orion.  There is no such dichotomy in Lovecraft, to
the best of my knowledge.  There is also mention of
some of these creatures living forward in time and
plenty of references to something thundering in places
beneath the earth (the resemblance to the mines of
saltus is uncanny).  Another persistent theme I have
noticed in Derleth's stories is the ability of
forbidden knowledge to corrupt.  The simple reading of
passages from the Necronomicon or the other evil texts
from these stories is often enough to set a character
on the path to his doom.  This makes me wonder about
Severian's possession of the Lives of the 17
Megatherians (isn't that one of the books in his
sabertache?) and where his loyalties lie.

Don

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