(2) H.P. LOVECRAFT – CHTHULU MYTHOS

 

Does any other literary fantasy or SF mythology have the pre-eminence, or even more so capture the paranoid modern zeitgeist, as Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos?

Lovecraft took the worldview of modern science and turned it into a source of cosmic horror, creating that genre of fantasy or SF horror.

“His famous cosmology, created almost single-handedly, did not celebrate science and progress, but was instead full of otherworldly monsters and blind, raving deities…all of his work resonates with the terror of the newly-discovered magnitude of the universe…Einstein’s theory of relativity opened a door into teleportation, time travel, and alien geometry, and radically altered peoples’ notion of space-time itself, while the discovery of pre-Cambrian fossils and Wegener’s then-new-and-controversial hypothesis of continental drift brought the notion that the Earth was far older than previously believed…All of this was subtly addressed in Lovecraft’s stories of alien horror, and of the remains of ancient civilizations lost to the abyss of geological deep time”.

Our science and technology are but a candle held up to the storm – worse, as developed by writers using the Cthulhu Mythos such as Charles Stross, they may actually draw the notice of entities that were best left not noticing us (and tend to drive us mad if we notice them). Or, as Stross observed elsewhere, it was a potent metaphor for such terrors as Cold War fears of nuclear warfare – as almost otherworldly forces of destruction lurking beneath the surface ready to be unleashed by unfeeling beings.

Although in fairness, Cthulhu is taken out by a steamship to his head in his original appearance in The Call of Cthulhu. Try doing that with pre-industrial technology.

TV Tropes observes how Lovecraft’s cosmic horror is an inversion of the philosopher Leibniz’s optimism “that the entire world could be described by reason, and that this is the best of all possible worlds”. For Lovecraft, “each new discovery only increased humanity’s knowledge of its own ignorance and insignificance, encouraging a nihilistic atmosphere, and this is perhaps the central theme of Lovecraft’s incisive fiction”. Interestingly that same comparison between Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds” and Lovecraft’s horror in James Morrow’s Blameless in Abaddon.

Lovecraft didn’t coin the term Cthulhu Mythos for his mythology – for that matter, I’m not sure how consistent or systematic his mythology was throughout his works. He was all about the vibe of it, with details changing between individual works. However, aptly enough, his creation had a life of its own, as developed and used by other writers, as encouraged by Lovecraft himself.

TV Tropes stated the premise of the Cthulhu Mythos best – “Humanity exists within a small flickering firelight of sanity and reason in a cold and utterly senseless universe full of ancient and terrible things with tentacles and too many eyes. Our science doesn’t properly describe the workings of the universe – ignorance really is bliss because even trying to understand the horrid truth of reality will surely drive you to madness. Our planet was owned by all manner of unknowable alien beings long before we crawled out of the primordial muck, and guess what? They want it back, which means doing a little pest control…”

It is for this mythology that Lovecraft ranks the second top spot of my special mentions – and more generally that he is “is considered perhaps both the greatest and most notorious of all American horror fiction writers, rivalled only by his idol Edgar Allan Poe”.

Fortunately, his mythology transcends Lovecraft himself, as there’s the matter of that notoriety – which remains for somewhat problematic reasons. There’s also the quality of his writing, with the style or execution of his prose often falling short of the dark grandeur of his cosmic horror – Lovecraft was notorious for his purple prose, and enthusiasm for more archaic expressions such as eldritch.

And then there is the fact that “much of his work is informed by a powerful fear and disgust for anything outside the limited sphere of an urban White Anglo-Saxon Protestant of his time” – or more bluntly, he “was “afraid of everything that wasn’t his home town of Providence, Rhode Island”.

Even so, his Cthulhu Mythos remains definitive for me of fantasy in general. As I noted in my previous entry, if I was to simply fantasy down to just two elements, it would be a fusion of fairy tale and the Cthulhu Mythos. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad description or tagline for The Lord of the Rings – fairy tale meets Cthulhu Mythos. If only Tolkien had written that essay…

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT CTHULHU-TIER?)

 

 

(1) FAIRY TALES

 

“Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already because it is in the world already…What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of (evil). The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St George to kill the dragon” – G.K. Chesterton

Unfortunately, the term fairy tale tends to be used dismissively for stories only for children – although the best children’s literature arguably speaks to all ages – or even pejoratively for obvious fanciful falsehoods or “happily ever after” wishful thinking.

To that, one could argue that such preconceptions don’t even apply to those stories commonly called fairy tales, except in their modern incarnations, particularly their modern cinematic and television adaptations. Perhaps such preconceptions might be avoided by one of their alternative names – of which my favorites are wonder tales or the German term marchen – but the term fairy tale is too deeply ingrained in popular consciousness or imagination.

Whatever the name, a fairy tale is a “short story that belongs to the folklore genre” or a “specific type” of fantastic folktale. Ironically, not many fairy tales actually feature fairies – the fairy in the name of fairy tale refers more to fairy as a place or setting, the fairy lands or otherworlds of folklore and mythology but taking on a more generic meaning as a place of magic. Such stories do indeed typically feature magic and enchantments as well as “mythical or fanciful beings”, fairies or otherwise, although some stories such as Bluebeard don’t have any explicit magic or supernatural elements.

“Fairy tales were originally intended for all ages, but for a long period of time, they were only written or presented as children’s stories”, particularly in their cinematic adaptations by Disney. Many fairy tales were extraordinarily dark in their original form – some to the point of verging on horror – and some remain so in their modern versions, even if only by way of lingering hints or subtext. Ironically again, there is a countervailing trend within popular culture to revert fairy tales to their darker and edgier roots – or to subvert them as more adult deconstructions (or reconstructions), as well as parodies or satires (or the trope of “fractured fairy tales”).

The demarcation between fairy tales and legends or fables can be fuzzy. Fairy tales tend to be distinguished from legends by some degree of belief in historicity or veracity for their events, location or people. By contrast, fairy tales tend to be more timeless – “once upon a time” – and set in their own space distinct from our own world. Fables tend to focus more on the moral of a story as their definitive element.

“Fairy tales are found in cultures all over the world” and with “widespread variants”, but “only a tiny handful of them are widely known in modern culture”. They have a span to match their geographic scale – “many of today’s fairy tales have evolved from centuries-old stories that have appeared with variations, in multiple cultures around the world”. Fairy tales in literary form are relatively modern, mostly evolving from their predecessors in oral form or tradition. This makes “the history of the fairy tale…particularly difficult to trace because often only the literary forms survive”, but even so some fairy tales may date back thousands of years to the Bronze Age or the beginnings of civilization and writing itself.

“What fairy tales do share is a distinct and consistent set of narrative conventions. They usually take place “once upon a time”, in a setting that’s familiar but usually broadly generic, with few (if any) references to real people, places or events…typically told in an extremely spare and laconic style, using archetypical characters and locations”. That style was cited by Italo Calvino as a prime example of “quickness” in literature.

JRR Tolkien famously used the term for literary fantasy, including his own, in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” – an essay well worth reading for its philosophy of literary fantasy and Tolkien’s own writing. Like others who have pointed out that even traditional fairy tales tended not to involve fairies as such, Tolkien defined fairy tales as “stories about the adventures of men in Faerie, the land of fairies, fairytale princes and princesses, dwarves, elves, and not only magical species but many other marvels”. However, by either definition of fairy tale, it is worth remembering that Tolkien’s definitive literary fantasy, “The Lord of the Rings” (and even more so “The Hobbit”), would qualify as (extended) fairy tales – with elves, dwarves, goblins and trolls that have all been regarded as types of fairies.

Indeed, fairy tales remain definitive for me of fantasy in general – if I were to simplify fantasy or at least my tastes in it down to just two elements, it would be as a fusion of fairy tales and my next special mention entry.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT ONCE UPON A TIER?)