
H.P. Lovecraft's Philosophy of Horror (2014) - networked
https://newrepublic.com/article/119996/hp-lovecrafts-philosophy-horror
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cstross
Article focuses too much on Cthulhu, not enough on Lovecraft's other interests
-- his early and enduring fascination with poetics (he seems to have been a
bit of a 19th century hipster, permanently disgruntled about being born a
century too late to be Edgar Allen Poe) and with astronomy (during his
lifetime the scale of the cosmos expanded shockingly with the use of
photographic plates for astronomical observations, the development of
spectrophotometry, and the discovery of other galaxies and then the red shift
and the Hubble constant) -- indeed, the universe increased during his life in
both volume, contents, and age by about the same extent that Moore's Law has
impacted computing performance over the past 40 years.

Still a hugely influential writer in SF/horror, despite his highly regrettable
(read: bigoted) and misanthropic outlook. I attribute his enduring relevance
to his fiction providing the opposite of a science fictional sense of wonder:
he brought a sense of cosmic dread at our insignificance in the face of an
uncaring universe front and center, and in the post-nuclear age this resonates
loudly.

~~~
TillE
> permanently disgruntled about being born a century too late

In fact Lovecraft wrote a whole short story, "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel
Johnson", mocking himself about this.

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pmoriarty
It's interesting to witness Lovecraft's work rise from being considered
obscure, poorly written schlock to mainstream greatness. Much the same
happened with Philip K Dick. It took many decades, but their work is now part
of the canon. It always makes me wonder what other great, underappreciated
writers are out there right now, who we might not learn about for another
fifty years.

~~~
npongratz
I'm no literary or intellectual property expert, but I have attributed
Lovecraft's rise with the fact[0] that the Cthulhu mythos is a) entertaining
and well-written, and b) effectively exists in the public domain, and c) is
one of the last unique narratives that legally exist in the public domain,
allowing anyone to legally help grow the corpus.

In other words, writers don't have to pay licenses or royalties for use of the
universe, and their stories can enjoy the benefit of being framed by the
previously-written canon without being pigeonholed. I would think this can
help grease the wordsmith's skids.

[0] I don't know if any of this is true or factual, I'm very open to
corrections and other interpretations!

~~~
armenarmen
A good point, antipope actually covered it awhile back.

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/06/they-
too...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/06/they-took-our-
myths.html)

~~~
npongratz
Ah! Thank you very much! I almost certainly internalized the sentiments of
this essay when it was posted, and unintentionally forgot the source. I really
appreciate the link!

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javajosh
Lovecraft is as anthropocentric as any author because he is writing for a
human audience, and his characters are all human. His concern was less about
an unrelenting materialism and more about _the human reaction to unrelenting
materialism_. Otherwise he would have written essays about it rather than
stories.

Interesting read, though. I had no idea Lovecraft wasn't well-known in his
time. Certainly he'd have been pleased, I think, to have known of his future
fame.

