A Whole Different Kind of Fantasy

No, not that kind of fantasy, either. I write kid-friendly stuff, or at least stuff that parents would be okay with their kids reading. After all, I want my own kids to read what I write. No, I'm talking about my first exposure to one of the grandmasters, one who died young but had an enormous impact on the field of fantasy. No, not Robert E. Howard; I'm talking about the other guy: H.P. Lovecraft.

I know, it's weird that someone who has spent literal decades immersed in D&D lore and RPGs never read Lovecraft. I mean, Cthulhu? The D-series kuo-toa, who were basically Lovecraft ripoffs? The fervent recommendations from other DMs and players? How could I have skipped Lovecraft entirely?

Well, there's a simple explanation for it: I never wanted to read Lovecraft. When I was growing up, fantastic fiction was walled off into certain ghettos known as 'genres.' There was fantasy, there was science fiction, there was romance, and there was horror. And yes, there were subsets of all those genres in there, atomizing and splitting the reading public. But those four zones covered a lot of ground in fiction.

And I was never, ever a horror fan. I wanted nothing to do with it. Probably because I grew up in the 1980s, when 'horror' in pop culture was dominated by slasher flicks. Freddy and Jason had absolutely no hold on my imagination; I wanted nothing to do with them, or with anything else like them. The genre simply didn't appeal to me. Couple that with Ravenloft's original appearance, which didn't do anything for me either, and it's easy to understand why I stayed away from Lovecraft. After all, he was a 'horror' writer.

But now that I have embraced the pulps and the grandmasters of the field, my own meandering path through Appendix N took me to the shores of the ocean of Lovecraft's writing. And while I haven't read a lot of it yet, I have read a few stories, all of them his early works. Since I'm reading this stuff chronologically, it's easy to see the influence of Merritt on Lovecraft early on, although I would have to say that Lovecraft really takes it to a whole new level of weird. Merritt's adventurers tend to survive, albeit scarred, after their experiences. Lovecraft, on the other hand, breaks their brains into a million pieces and throws them together after putting them through a mental blender. And the reader gets some of that effect, too.

Even from the very first story, "The Beast in the Cave," Lovecraft is unique. It's one of the few stories I've ever read in which there is no spoken dialogue. It relates the narrator's remembrance of being lost in the Mammoth Cave. Incidentally, that's the same cave complex that was used to inspire the Colossal Cave Adventure, the first text-based adventure computer game. He relates the tale of being hopelessly lost in the dark, and he uses very effective imagery to portray the feeling of terror and hopelessness that would come from being lost in a pitch-black cave that is the largest such complex in the world, especially when some kind of wild animal is approaching you in the dark, an animal you can't see, only hear. The narrator does eventually escape, but there's a final twist that sheds light (see what I did there?) on the invisible assailant.

Several of his early stories are similar, in that they lack any spoken dialogue. It's a very different way of telling a story, one I've never imagined doing. But it works. Lovecraft, even in his early stages, was a master of descriptive weirdness. Check out this passage from "Dagon".

The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.
Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.

Creepy, isn't it? He does use the 'too horrible to describe' trope quite often, but why not? It wasn't a cliché at the time, since it hadn't been overdone at this point in time. He's drawing on inspiration from Poe as well as Merritt, and comes out with some fantastically wild stuff. Vivid descriptions of fantastic places, all narrated by men on the edge of madness.

I'm looking forward to more of Lovecraft as I slowly make my way through my pulp journey. I'm sure there will be plenty of entertainment to be had, without the jump-scares and gore that modern visual horror relies on.

Oh, it looks like the next story on the list is 'The Picture in the House.' This should be interesting.