EPISODE13 - The Lovecraft Geek
If I wanted to introduce someone to the works of Lovecraft, which stories would you recommend? I was thinking "Call of Cthulhu" might be a good one. What are your thoughts on electronic and audio books? Which other authors that write Mythos stories would you recommend? What are your thoughts on Lovecraft's racism and ethnocentrism? What do you think the end of the world would be like when the stars do get right? Like a Godzilla movie? Do you think, had Lovecraft lived longer, he would have ventured into other genres? Do you think Lovecraft, or, more broadly, the weird tail, influence Noir? How do you feel about authors who enjoy the "stepping stones" of a captive, cult audience (the Mythos fans) when learning their craft, who in future after mainstream success, go on to deride Lovecraft fans? When I was reading Tim Ferris' "Seeing in the Dark" I found that a Native American sacrifice had been documented! The passage described the capture of a young girl by the Skidi Pawnee, her imprisonment and eventual sacrifice upon the arrival of Venus as a morning sky object. I'm sure Lovecraft would have read about it during his astronomy days. Might this have lent material to scenes in "Call of Cthulhu" describing degenerate Eskimo cults? In "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" Curwen means to say "Metatron" yet Lovecraft uses the name "Metraton." Do you agree with Joshi's preservation of this inadvertent error or do you think that had Lovecraft known the right name he would have used it and we should change Metraton to Metatron? Didn't Lovecraft regularly reuse themes and plot lines? Is it fair to see "At the Mountains of Madness" as a retelling of "The Nameless City" and "The Shadow over Innsmouth" as a retelling of "Dagon," "The Nameless City," and "The Horror at Red Hook"? Do you think that Lovecraft would have been successful as an astronomer if he had been able to master the mathematics involved? I am confused as to who wrote "The Loved Dead." Was the author C. M. Eddy or our Eldritch Howard? Are you aware of the Japanese anime/manga series Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, (translation: Crawl Up! Nyarko!)? It purports to be a combination of the Dreamquest cycle and the Cthulhu Mythos; and if you are do, do you have any opinions on it? In "The Shadow out of Time" we learn that the Yithians have "titan airships," "gigantic submarine vessel[s] with searchlights," and "huge boat-like atomic-engined vehicles which traversed the great roads" (cars, in other words). Wouldn't the Socialistic beings like the Great Race have invented public transit? Pleaslee mentions seeing "unspied and unknown monsters [that] spouted mountainous columns of foam into the vaporous sky" and, while underwater, "living horrors of awesome magnitude." Ought we to identify these with the Cthulhu spawn and/or the Deep Ones? Which Clark Ashton Smith story do you like best?
