What Lurks Beyond - The Undying Strength of Lovecraft

Every child is terrified of the dark at some point in their life. It's only natural really, and entirely understandable. For some it's what it represents, somewhere they shouldn't be and were never intended to go. For others it's the idea of what lurks out there, with things creeping about beyond the safety they know. For others, it's imply a different world. A place where they cannot truly rely upon their eyes, where things seem distorted in the half-light of the moon and even the most familiar icon or item is utterly alien to them. This is something many horror writers and creators try to recapture, but the most well known among them is the man who typified the idea of fearing the unknown: Howard Philip Lovecraft. Yesterday was his birthday and, for all the times we have mentioned him, now seems like a good chance to sit down and look into his universe. Specifically to delve into what helped propel his creations into public consciousness, and to truly stand the test of time.

If you are one of the few who does not recognise his name, this was one of a few writers who pioneered the Cthulhu Mythos. He was the one who pushed many of its core concepts and created many of its major figureheads, big tales, and even thought up the gigantic squid-faced half-dragon thing himself. He can be considered one of the early writers to truly experiment with the idea of alien races, blending them in with the horror genre and often depicting them through sorcery. In the way that The Voyage of the Beagle can be associated with everything from Star Trek to Alien, you can effectively find ideas or trace influences of things Lovecraft helped devise in a wide variety of science fiction narratives.

Yet, perhaps the most curious thing about Lovecraft's works (aside from the blatant racism on display in an unfortunate number of them) is how he depicted his monsters. Hell, how he even depicted his universe is worth considering, as for the most part, many of his creatures 
were vast beyond human comprehension and yet not inherently malevolent. While the insanity they inspire, the horrifying deaths and even the impending doom which seems to forever approach the Earth are all core to the Mythos, most simply do not care about the dominant species of this world. Humanity is, for them, a thing of idle curiosity or a race even entirely beneath their notice. To some we're a simple byproduct of an experiment gone wrong, to others simply a backwards race to be rendered extinct and eventually be forgotten, while for most we are no more interesting to them than an ant is to us.

Such a concept, the idea that the monsters of such works, was utterly disinterested in humanity could have easily been a dud. After all, who wants to read about a ghost story where the ghost itself simply does not give a damn about its victims, or even recognises that they're there? However, Lovecraft focused upon the idea of the unknown and his own personal terrors to push a few fascinating concepts: That they are not out of place, but we are. Earth is, after all, just one small corner of the cosmos and that's an idea most narratives stick to save for the far flung future. However, Lovecraft seemed to bring up the idea that the rest of the universe is made of infinitely sterner stuff than us. That most of it is so utterly beyond our understanding, that so few of our concepts, laws or even realities hold water out there, that everything is deadly. What makes these things dangerous isn't that they're hunting us, it's that merely being caught in their wake is enough to utterly destroy anyone unfortunate enough to stumble across them.

A personal favourite when it comes to examples of this is The Shunned House, where the very corpse of a forgotten greater thing poses a truly staggering threat to almost anyone who stumbles across it. It's not even conscious by this point, and does little more than rot away underground, but the things it creates in its wake prove to be dangerous enough for it to be the major villain of the piece. Equally, you then have other examples where the other creatures either do not care or their threat is a mere byproduct of their presence. The Colour Out of Space turns a visual spectrum, and a formless thing formed of it, into a foe worthy of a John Carpenter film which deforms everything about it. The Dunwitch Horror focuses less upon outside threat itself getting in than how humans have abused its power for their own ends, cultivating and controlling it at will. From Beyond simply exposed humans to creatures which existed beyond their perception, and thrust them into a universe so deadly that the very act of drawing one predator's attention would grantee death. Even The Shadow Out of Time features a race of literal body-snatchers whose only interest in humanity is their history, ideas and stories, but turns them into a very twisted and horrifying parasitic force working across the eons.

That last example is also something which serves as another strength of these tales. They're far removed from many common tropes today, and even those which did influence later stories are still unique enough to stand up on their own two feet. For example, the idea of a body swap today is something all too often used for comedic effect. Freaky Friday, Marvel comics, and even a fan-favourite Farscape episode all played the very idea of it for laughs. However, when you get down to it, it could be a truly terrifying experience. The Shadow Out of Time accomplishes this by not only depositing the protagonist in a completely alien body and surrounded by things beyond his full comprehension, but later on he has to come to terms with what the thing occupying his form was doing. It turns the whole thing from possible comedy into full blown horror, and even ties it closely into a few subjects relating to time travel and even lost horrors of past civilizations.

The reason the effectiveness of these stories is so praiseworthy is thanks to, well, how so many original works fall into the unfortunate category of being unremarkable. When a tale forms a genre or even drives a new concept, the more times it is reused, reworked or even improved upon, the less the progenitors seem to stand out. You can even see this with a few relatively modern day creations, such as the xenomorphs from Alien. Re-use of the bio-mechanical insectoid look, the body horror elements or even just the basic story structure unfortunately serves to chip away at the original. While it remains a fantastic film for a multitude of reasons, more than a few audiences today are often encouraged to set up a sort of Chinese wall in their mind, blocking off the pop culture image seen before now. In some cases, it's really the only way to enjoy them, and it has become especially true of many past works, even the creations of H.G. Wells. With the works of Lovecraft though, his stories are displaced enough to avoid this effect. Each idea, every concept, was unique enough that you could hand it to someone and they would still find something fascinating within it.

To cite one obvious example, At the Mountains of Madness combined together elements which would be re-used in the Terminator, Indianna Jones, and (to offer a more literacy focused example) The Thing from Another World. Yet, until you specifically pointed this out to someone, they would rarely pick up on it. After all, both feature an apocalyptic "robot" war of sorts bringing the original creators to their knees, two scientists wondering about lost ruins filled with forgotten treasures, and ancient things in the ice which are not quite dead. Yet, in each case, the context and presentation is entirely different, as are the consequences and presentation of such events. The Thing from Another World is the work which comes closest to having true similarities with such a tale, after all, and yet the "monsters" in question have a very different end and a completely opposing mentality to the alien found in that tale.

Perhaps more so than anything else though, Lovecraft's ability to only take things so far might be what helped to keep his works alive. In each and every case, once he was finished with an idea, that was often it. While he would certainly refer back to his other monsters and even re-use them in secondary roles, he never over-exposed them in his stories. Once the tale of the Deep Ones had been told, that was it. Case closed, job done, time to move onto the next monster. This worked on several levels surprisingly, as it told the reader enough to keep them hooked while still leaving much of the information behind them untold. They were always left yearning for more, hungering to know what else was behind this species, and fearing what other unknown truths might be found within their history. This allowed readers to keep coming back for more, but the more isolated and episodic nature of his stories also kept them open to new readers and authors alike. 

Lovecraft himself, unlike many authors today, was very open to others writing extra bits about his universe. This was years before fanfiction became the landscape of wonders, grammatical nightmares and fetishes it is today obviously, but because it was so open to others it meant that his works could continue long after he was done. Furthermore, it also allowed them to escape that old infamous myth that continuity is an enemy, or the idea that a reader had to look back through volume upon volume of works to catch up. Something which is very rarely true of anything even to this day, but it is sadly what keeps harming many bigger franchises even to this day. Without this particular element, it's sadly no exaggeration to say that they would have slipped into relative obscurity.

There are certainly other elements beyond this which could be examined - and truth be told each one covered thus far would be worthy of an article unto itself - but these seem to be the core elements which have helped more so than anything else. Its other qualities, creative elements and benefits often stem from each of these in some manner or another, and without even one of them, they wouldn't still be as remarkable as they are today.

Still, if you could not read all of that, then allow me to present what defined his stories in a quote of his own. Not one of his famous ones about "fear of the unknown" or "strange eons" but a simple comment which seemed to define his take on his world oh so very well. A single line which sums up everything in his works from start to finish:

"The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind."