danny_lammas

Actually on that note lantern, I think and some members of my Call of Cthulhu table top roleplay community would agree that there is something sinister, about the standard Lovecraft picture.

Danny.

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"He came to me in a tragic dream of doom and I shall dream of Tropis, now and forever more. That is my gift and my curse, to dream of a place I shall never know."

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kenewbie

I have never seen a 4 page thread with this little content before.

And I just made it worse!

k

ClancyBoy

I just stumbled on this.


"The Kraken" (1830)

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.


Inspiration for the Cthulhu mythos? They look remarkably similar.

...except that Cthulhu dreams and this kraken doesn't.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

Dabnorfish

One of the central points, in my opinion, to much of Lovecraft's work is the idea of how utterly insignifcant we, as a race, are. That's the scariest part of it all.

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lin

Nyarlethotep, the crawling chaos.
I ran into HPL in school and read them at night in bed. It's the only stuff I ever read that I considered scary. Monsters are one thing, even if you beleive in them. But the Old Gods and Cthulu shit...it's unprovable, vast, and utterly utter. Aiyeeeee!

ClancyBoy

That, and "degenerate Eskimos."

I will never get tired of saying or typing that.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

lin

I think of it everytime I hear a mechanic say, "You just blew a seal."

Thoth

Lovecraft is my favorite author. Some do not like his verbiage but there is no dispute he knew how to create atmosphere.
The film adaptations have been less than stellar.
I am waiting for Cthulhu to come out soon.

Currently, I am working on a series of short tales inspired by his imagination.

WriterDude

I'm a big fan of Lovecraft and have all three of the H. P. Lovecraft Omnibus books which collect pretty much all he wrote from "At the mountains of madness", "Re-animator", "Shadows over Innsmouth, "Rats in the walls", "Call of Cthulhu", "The Thing on the doorstep", "The Unnamable" and so on. I know it's slow, there's not much dialogue at all and he could perhaps have cut down a bit on the descriptions. But on the same time, he creates a certain mood no other author have ever managed to get close to. Unlike other authors, Lovecraft's work feels much more real than theirs. If I were to compare it to movies, I'd say his work is like Blair Witch Project. In many ways it's a slow, boring movie where nothing really happens, but at the same time it feels quite real all the way. Besides, because you don't actually see what happens to the three students, your mind makes up it's own ideas that's far more terrifying than what's possible to show in a movie. The worst part isn't what you see, but what you don't see. Lovecraft nailed it spot-on.

And how can you say most horror fans hate the most influental horror writer the entire last century? Do you realize how stupid that sounds? Everyone is inspired by him, and no one likes him? Riiiight. And what about all the movies based on his work? There's even a sweet silent, black and white fan-made movie based directly on "The Call of Cthulhu", and it's brilliant. I recommend it to everyone, fan or not. And then there are the games, both tabletop and computer games.

As for Necronomicon, the short version is it's one of the most wanted non-existant books there is. It doesn't exist. Lovecraft made his entire Cthulhu Mythos and based all books on it, so he needed a way to contact them and release ancient spells and things like that. The result was the Book of the Dead, aka Necronomicon. It was made by human flesh and written in blood, and contained spells to resurrect demons and things like that. But it does not exist. Sure, you can buy it in pretty much any decent bookstore (I have copy right next to the Lovecraft Omnibuses), but it's a fake. It looks and feels like the actual Necronomicon, but it's fake, fake, fake. It isn't real any more then the Necronomicon in the Evil Dead movies are real. It is sweet to have it in the bookshelf, though.

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Czar Nosferatu

I agree. I loved his writing but it got so damn boring, and I normally don't care if a book is like that, but I still couldn't take how slow it was. However he is pretty creepy. I read the Rats in the Walls and it frickin scared me.

Czar Nosferatu

The Necronomicon was an invention of Lovecraft's. He didn't study it, he created it.

lin

That's what you people believe.

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lin

You;ll think different when the Old Ones are gobbling up your family tree and Nyarlethotep is wearing your guts for garters.

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Non Serviam

Listen up, sunshine. Which part of "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" don't you understand?

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Kira the wanderer

I've been trying to start Lovecraft, but am unsure which comes first. I want to read the story of Cthulhu, yet I know that he is in several Lovecraft stories. Which is the first novel that has him in it?