By Jason McClain (@JTorreyMcClain)

Dealing with depression from both sides presents an interesting quandary.  As a friend to people that may be suffering from it, you want to be there, you want to support them, but when people are depressed they just aren’t that interesting.  A quote in the opening paragraph of Roger Ebert’s All the Lonely People says it best, “You know what a bore is, Travis. Someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship.”

On the other side, when you are depressed, getting out of bed seems like a chore, let alone leaving the house.  If that’s the way you feel, no wonder when you go out and about and try to socialize and lift your spirits, the only thing you’re thinking about is your couch, since going to sleep in your bed at 5 pm feels wrong no matter what your mental state of mind.  You know you’re a bore, but you don’t care or don’t understand how people don’t see it and you just have to occupy yourself until 10 pm somehow, so you can sleep for ten hours.  You never know, tomorrow might be better.

It doesn’t feel like there is a difference between depression and melancholia, and doing a quick bit of research, considering depression is used in the definition of melancholia, I’d say no difference.  There’s even a combination of the two into melancholic depression.  So would they look the same?  Could you tell the difference between melancholia and depression?  Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia gave me a quick “no” as the answer to that question.

Charles Corbet's depiction of Melancholia (1910)

I’ve never been married, but having been to weddings, probably not too much like the one in Melancholia, but definitely in the ballpark, I understand the urge to go take a long bath.  I understand going for a walk on a golf course.  There’s something nice about going to be alone when no one is around rather than being alone with hundreds of people surrounding you.  It’s why the bed or bath is such a welcome sight.  It’s why you continually look at your watch wondering what the perfect time to excuse yourself without hurting anyone’s feelings is.  If you can hold out for one more song, one more hit from the 80s, one more choreographed dance song, you can leave and walk to your room, drive home or just run, literally and figuratively.

I’m trying to think of another film that captures that feeling so well.  Looking at the profile of major league pitcher Taylor Buchholz and his bout with depression, you see a couple of the same symptoms in the performance of Kirsten Dunst (and the writing behind her acting): extreme irritability and the inability to laugh.  If we saw the back story that led to her wedding, I’m sure we’d also get a glimpse of her faking happiness to such a degree that her future groom truly believed she loved him and wanted to marry him.  Only at the reception did he finally see something different, as she couldn’t fake it any more.  Most everyone encouraged her to do so for various reasons, not least of which, because of all the money being spent by her future brother-in-law (played very well by Kiefer Sutherland.)

As you battle with faking it, with your irritability, your self-criticism and an occasional malaise, forgetting the bed and just sleeping every day and night on the couch seems like the perfect solution because you can go to sleep and wake up with the TV to keep you company.  That could be the result of loneliness, which is a separate thing, as this analysis of the Community episode Advanced Dungeons & Dragons points out, but can feel and look the same.  In fact, author Casey Jones puts it very succinctly, “Depression is anger pointed at yourself.  Loneliness… man, that’s just despair.”  The question becomes, what if your depression causes your loneliness or you’re depressed and angry with yourself because you can’t make or keep friends?  They can feed off of each other and I would say there is probably some high correlation between the two things.

As you can see from the collection of links (and the upcoming ones) I want to see how others deal with these same issues. I want to watch Melancholia even though I know it is going to be heavy.  I want to read Darkness Visible to see about William Styron’s struggle to overcome depression.  I want to read about how Rob Delaney learned to cope with it and come to grips to taking medication to help him.  I want to read about Stanley Jefferson, former major league player and New York City policeman who was on duty in Manhattan during 9/11.  I want to see or read about the ways they learned to cope or how they struggle to find a way to cope, from watching endless amounts of TV, to baths, to drinking or to just finding something to fill up every moment of your time so that you don’t have to think about anything.

Edvard Munch (1891)

Maybe you’re the same way, you like to see these things too as it helps to know that you have company. Maybe there are other people that consider watching every episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent on USA Network replays over a jam-packed month to be a worthwhile pursuit.  Maybe it’s because you see hope in some of the stories and you can feel hope for the stories of others because you pushed through that stage of depression yourself.

On the other hand you may not want to know how some people suffer.  You don’t even want to see hints of it because those views might generate powerful emotions within you that you can’t hide.  You don’t want to think about it in others because it will remind you of what you see in yourself, the fear, the anxiety, the worry.  You might break down and cry in front of someone and generate more anger at yourself for showing weakness like Buchholz.  Then again, you can try like he did to be around people, regular people, happy people so that you can forget all of those things that are wrong with you and you can pretend to be happy and maybe, just maybe, that dream of happiness will come true.  It’s possible.  As much as we think we know about the human mind and body, we still learn more and more every day and maybe a study will show that happiness rubs off.  You can sense it and feel it and happiness of others becomes whole in you. You at last become whole again.

Albrecht Durer's Melancholia (1514)

Still, the opposite of that is not to be around those happy people, cheerfully going about their daily lives because then you see the emptiness in your own.  By being around them it reminds you about how unhappy you are and so then you close yourself off, you seclude yourself because the pain of seeing people is too much.  Sometimes it feels better to feel sad; to know there is something wrong with you and to know it needs to be addressed.  Wallowing in it makes it more visible in your own mirror and may motivate you to do something about it.  You shut yourself off to find this point in yourself and then the loneliness enters your life.  Then a different vein of self-loathing exists for your depression to tap into and a different cycle starts anew.

I slipped into using the second person in this essay pretty easily because I realized that doing so made writing about it easier.  I never know what a different day will bring.  Maybe it’s a day I want to be around people. Maybe it’s a day where I don’t.  Maybe it’s a day where the idea of even taking off my clothes to shower seems like a chore.  Maybe it’s a day where buying new underwear sounds so much easier than sorting clothes, carrying them to the washer, carrying them to the dryer and then putting them away.  Maybe it’s a day when I write 2000 words on a subject and reward myself with video games.  Maybe it’s a day where I just play video games and criticize myself for not writing anything.  Maybe it’s a day I play video games and feel happy because I just have fun. Maybe it’s ten days in a row and the only thing I wrote was emails.  Maybe even emails get tough to write.  Maybe I’ll just watch 12 hours of Psych, Doctor Who or the whole run of Spaced and laugh a little bit, for once.  When I say “you” I mean me, though I do know a few examples of friends that do or have dealt with depression and or loneliness.  I’ve dealt with it a few ways myself.  It’s trying to find the way to deal with it the best.  So, like Kirsten Dunst’s character, maybe I’ll work in baths.  I’ve tried long showers.  They help some.  Every day leads me closer to a solution as I work through ways to overcome my own depression and my solutions are definitely better than a meteor coming to strike the Earth, I’m sure.  Definitely sure on that one.  For with the dawn of a new day, there’s always hope that it will be better.

Thead here.

Not bad. Could be a lot worse.

H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft, circa 1934.

Born	Howard Phillips Lovecraft August 20, 1890(1890-08-20) Providence, Rhode Island, United States
Died	March 15, 1937(1937-03-15) (aged 46) Providence, Rhode Island, United States
Resting place	Swan Point Cemetery, Providence
Pen name	Lewis Theobold, Humphrey Littlewit, Ward Phillips, Edward Softly
Occupation	Short story writer, Editor, Novelist, Poet
Nationality	United States
Ethnicity	English-American
Alma mater	Hope High School, Providence
Period	1917-1936
Genres	Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Weird Fiction, Gothic fiction
Literary movement	Cosmicism, Weird fiction
Notable work(s)	“The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Shadow Out of Time”, “At the Mountains of Madness”
Spouse(s)	Sonia Greene(1883-1972)

Signature

Lovecraft’s guiding aesthetic and philosophical principle was what he termed “cosmicism” or “cosmic horror”, the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally inimical to the interests of humankind. As such, his stories express a profound indifference to human beliefs and affairs. Lovecraft is best known for his Cthulhu Mythos story cycle and the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore.^[2]

Although Lovecraft’s readership was limited during his lifetime, his reputation has grown over the decades, and he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft—as with Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th century—has exerted “an incalculable influence on succeeding generations of writers of horror fiction”.^[3] Stephen King called Lovecraft “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”^[4][5] King has even made it clear in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for King’s own fascination with horror and the macabre, and was the single largest figure to influence his fiction writing.^[6] His stories have also been adapted into theater, film, and have inspired an award-winning role-playing game.

Life and career

Early life

Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890, at 9:00 a.m. in his family home at 194 (later 454) Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. (The house was torn down in 1961.) He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a traveling salesman of jewelry and precious metals, and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, who could trace her ancestry in America back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631. His parents married, the first marriage for both, when they were in their thirties, unusually late in life given the time period. In 1893, when Lovecraft was three, his father became acutely psychotic in a Chicago hotel room while on a business trip. The elder Lovecraft was taken back to Providence and placed in Butler Hospital, where he remained until his death in 1898. Lovecraft maintained throughout his life that his father had died in a condition of paralysis brought on by “nervous exhaustion” due to over-work, but it is now almost certain that the actual cause was paresis due to syphilis.^[7] It is unknown whether the younger Lovecraft was ever aware of the actual nature of his father’s illness or its cause, although his mother likely was.

Lovecraft at approximately age nine

After his father’s hospitalization, Lovecraft was raised by his mother, his two aunts (Lillian Delora Phillips and Annie Emeline Phillips), and his maternal grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, an American businessman. All five resided together in the family home. Lovecraft was a prodigy, reciting poetry at the age of three and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his reading, providing him with classics such as The Arabian Nights, Bulfinch’s Age of Fable, and children’s versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. His grandfather also stirred the boy’s interest in the weird by telling him his own original tales of Gothic horror.

This drawing shows an image of Providence likely when Lovecraft was a child

Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child, at least some of which was certainly psychosomatic, although he attributed his various ailments to physical causes only. Due to his sickly condition, he barely attended school until he was eight years old, and then was withdrawn after a year. He read voraciously during this period and became especially enamored of chemistry and astronomy. He produced several hectographed publications with a limited circulation beginning in 1899 with The Scientific Gazette. Four years later, he returned to public school at Hope High School (Rhode Island). Beginning in his early life, Lovecraft is believed to have suffered from night terrors, a rare parasomnia disorder; he believed himself to be assaulted at night by horrific “night gaunts.” Much of his later work is thought to have been directly inspired by these terrors. (Indeed, Night Gaunts became the subject of a poem he wrote of the same name, in which they were personified as devil-like creatures without faces.)

HP Lovecraft’s family

His grandfather’s death in 1904 greatly affected Lovecraft’s life. Mismanagement of his grandfather’s estate left his family in a poor financial situation and they were forced to move into much smaller accommodations at 598 (now a duplex at 598-600) Angell Street. In 1908, prior to his high school graduation, he himself claimed to have suffered what he later described as a “nervous breakdown”, and consequently never received his high school diploma (although he maintained for most of his life that he did graduate). S. T. Joshi suggests in his biography of Lovecraft that a primary cause for this breakdown was his difficulty in higher mathematics, a subject needed to master to become a professional astronomer.

Whipple Van Buren Phillips, Lovecraft’s grandfather

Lovecraft wrote some fiction as a youth but, from 1908 until 1913, his output was primarily poetry. During that time, he lived a hermit’s existence, having almost no contact with anyone but his mother. This changed when he wrote a letter ,to The Argosy a pulp magazine, complaining about the insipidness of the love stories of one of the publication’s popular writers, Fred Jackson.^[8] The ensuing debate in the magazine’s letters column caught the eye of Edward F. Daas, President of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA), who invited Lovecraft to join them in 1914. The UAPA reinvigorated Lovecraft and incited him to contribute many poems and essays. In 1917, at the prodding of correspondents, he returned to fiction with more polished stories, such as“The Tomb” and “Dagon”. The latter was his first professionally-published work, appearing in W. Paul Cook‘s The Vagrant (November, 1919) and Weird Tales in 1923. Around that time, he began to build up a huge network of correspondents. His lengthy and frequent missives would make him one of the great letter writers of the century. Among his correspondents were Robert Bloch (Psycho), Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian series).

The Vagrant Num.11  (November, 1919)

In 1919, after suffering from hysteria and depression for a long period of time, Lovecraft’s mother was committed to Butler Hospital just as her husband had been. Nevertheless, she wrote frequent letters to Lovecraft, and they remained very close until her death on May 24, 1921, the result of complications from gall bladder surgery.

Sarah Susan Phillips, mother of Lovecraft, death on May 24, 1921

Marriage and New York

A few weeks after his mother’s death, Lovecraft attended an amateur journalist convention in Boston, Massachusetts, where he met Sonia Greene. Born in 1883, she was of Ukrainian-Jewish ancestry and seven years older than Lovecraft. They married in 1924, and the couple relocated to Brooklyn and moved into her apartment. Lovecraft’s aunts may have been unhappy with this arrangement, as they were not fond of Lovecraft being married to a tradeswoman (Greene owned a hat shop). Initially, Lovecraft was enthralled by New York, but soon the couple were facing financial difficulties. Greene lost her hat shop and suffered poor health. Lovecraft could not find work to support them both, so his wife moved to Cleveland for employment. Lovecraft lived by himself in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn and came to dislike New York life intensely.^[9] Indeed, this daunting reality of failure to secure any work in the midst of a large immigrant population—especially irreconcilable with his opinion of himself as a privileged Anglo-Saxon—has been theorized as galvanizing his racism to the point of fear, a sentiment he sublimated in the short story “The Horror at Red Hook”.^[10]

1921. Reinhart Kleiner, Sonia Greene et H.P.Lovecraft before marriage.

HP Lovecraft’s Brooklyn apartment, as it exists today.169 Clinton Street

A few years later, Lovecraft and his wife, still living separately, agreed to an amicable divorce, which was never fully completed. He returned to Providence to live with his aunts during their remaining years.

 Return to Providence

Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived in a “spacious brown Victorian wooden house” at 10 Barnes Street until 1933. The same address is given as the home of Dr. Willett in Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”. The period after his return to Providence — the last decade of his life — was Lovecraft’s most prolific. In that time he produced almost all of his best-known short stories for the leading pulp publications of the day (primarily Weird Tales), as well as longer efforts, such as “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward“ and “At the Mountains of Madness“. He frequently revised work for other authors and did a large amount of ghost-writing, including “The Mound”, “Winged Death”, “The Diary of Alonzo Typer” and for Harry Houdini “Under the Pyramids” (also known as “Imprisoned With the Pharaohs”).

Lovecraft’s Victorian house at 10 Barnes Street, Providence

Lovecraft considered himself a “New Deal Democrat”, and was an ardent supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His political views can be considered as “moderately socialist.”^[11]

10 Barnes Street, Providence nowadays

Despite his best writing efforts, however, he grew ever poorer. He was forced to move to smaller and meaner lodgings with his surviving aunt. He was also deeply affected by his former correspondent Robert E. Howard’s suicide. In 1936, Lovecraft was diagnosed with cancer of the small intestine,^[12] and he also suffered from malnutrition. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence.

Lovecraft’s final home from May 1933 until March 10, 1937.The Samuel B. Mumford House (1825) – 65 Prospect Street – Looking East-South-East.

In accordance with his lifelong scientific curiosity, he kept a diary of his illness until close to the moment of his death.

The original grave marker bearing H.P. Lovecraft’s name.

Gravestone of H. P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument (41°51′14″N 71°22′52″W). That was not enough for his fans, so in 1977 a group of them raised the money to buy him a headstone of his own in Swan Point cemetery, on which they had inscribed Lovecraft’s name, the dates of his birth and death, and the phrase “I AM PROVIDENCE”, a line from one of his personal letters.

 Themes

Several themes recur in Lovecraft’s stories:

Forbidden knowledge

The central theme in most of Lovecraft’s works is that of forbidden knowledge.^[13] Some critics argue that this theme is a reflection of Lovecraft’s contempt of the world around him, causing him to search inwardly for knowledge and inspiration.^[14] In Lovecraft’s works the search for forbidden knowledge drives many of the main characters. In most of his works this knowledge proves Promethean in nature either filling the seeker with regret from what they have learned, destroying them psychically, or completely destroying the person who holds the knowledge.^{[13][15][16][17][18][19]}

 Non-human influences on humanity

The beings of Lovecraft’s mythos often have human (or mostly human) servants; Cthulhu, for instance, is worshipped under various names by cults amongst both the Eskimos of Greenland and voodoo circles of Louisiana, and in many other parts of the world.

These worshippers served a useful narrative purpose for Lovecraft. Many beings of the Mythos were too powerful to be defeated by human opponents, and so horrific that direct knowledge of them meant insanity for the victim. When dealing with such beings, Lovecraft needed a way to provide exposition and build tension without bringing the story to a premature end. Human followers gave him a way to reveal information about their “gods” in a diluted form, and also made it possible for his protagonists to win paltry victories. Lovecraft, like his contemporaries, envisioned “savages” as closer to the Earth, only in Lovecraft’s case, this meant, so to speak, closer to Cthulhu.

Inherited guilt

Another recurring theme in Lovecraft’s stories is the idea that descendants in a bloodline can never escape the stain of crimes committed by their forebears, at least if the crimes are atrocious enough. Descendants may be very far removed, both in place and in time (and, indeed, in culpability), from the act itself, and yet, from however remote the past, blood will out (“The Rats in the Walls”, “The Lurking Fear”, “Arthur Jermyn”, “The Alchemist”, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, “The Doom that Came to Sarnath” and “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”).

Fate

Often in Lovecraft’s works the protagonist is not in control of his own actions, or finds it impossible to change course. Many of his characters would be free from danger if they simply managed to run away; however, this possibility either never arises or is somehow curtailed by some outside force, such as in “The Colour Out of Space” and “The Dreams in the Witch House”. Often his characters are subject to a compulsive influence from powerful malevolent or indifferent beings. As with the inevitability of one’s ancestry, eventually even running away, or death itself, provides no safety (“The Thing on the Doorstep”, “The Outsider”, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, etc.). In some cases, this doom is manifest in the entirety of humanity, and no escape is possible (“The Shadow Out of Time”).

 Civilization under threat

Lovecraft was familiar with the work of the German conservative-revolutionary theorist Oswald Spengler, whose pessimistic thesis of the decadence of the modern West formed a crucial element in Lovecraft’s overall anti-modern worldview. Spenglerian imagery of cyclical decay is present in particular in “At the Mountains of Madness“. S. T. Joshi, in “H.P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West“, places Spengler at the center of his discussion of Lovecraft’s political and philosophical ideas.^[20]

Lovecraft wrote to Clark Ashton Smith in 1927: “It is my belief, and was so long before Spengler put his seal of scholarly proof on it, that our mechanical and industrial age is one of frank decadence” (see China Miéville‘s introduction to “At the Mountains of Madness”, Modern Library Classics, 2005). Lovecraft was also acquainted with the writings of another German philosopher of decadence: Friedrich Nietzsche.^[21]

Lovecraft frequently dealt with the idea of civilization struggling against dark, primitive barbarism. In some stories this struggle is at an individual level; many of his protagonists are cultured, highly-educated men who are gradually corrupted by some obscure and feared influence.

In such stories, the “curse” is often a hereditary one, either because of interbreeding with non-humans (e.g., “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” (1920), “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931) or through direct magical influence “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”. Physical and mental degradation often come together; this theme of ‘tainted blood’ may represent concerns relating to Lovecraft’s own family history, particularly the death of his father due to what Lovecraft must have suspected to be a syphilitic disorder.

In other tales, an entire society is threatened by barbarism. Sometimes the barbarism comes as an external threat, with a civilized race destroyed in war (e.g., “Polaris”). Sometimes, an isolated pocket of humanity falls into decadence and atavism of its own accord (e.g., “The Lurking Fear”). But most often, such stories involve a civilized culture being gradually undermined by a malevolent underclass influenced by inhuman forces.

There is a lack of analysis as to whether England’s gradual loss of prominence and related conflicts (Boer War, India, World War I) had an influence on Lovecraft’s worldview. It is likely that the “roaring twenties” left Lovecraft disillusioned as he was still obscure and struggling with the basic necessities of daily life, combined with seeing non-European immigrants in New York City.

 Race, ethnicity, and class

Racism is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft’s works which “does not endear Lovecraft to the modern reader” and comes across through many disparaging remarks against the various non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures within his work. Lovecraft did not seem to hold all White people in high regard, but rather he held English people and people of English descent above all others.^[22][23][24] While his racist perspective is undeniable, some critics argue that it does not necessarily detract from his ability to create compelling philosophical worlds which have inspired many artists and readers.^[12][24] In his writings and personal life he argued for a strong color line for the purpose of preserving race and culture.^{[12][22][23][25]} These arguments occurred either through direct statements against different races in his work and personal correspondence,^{[10][12][22][23][24]} or allegorically in his work using non-human races.^{[16][22][26][27]} Reading Lovecraft’s work, his racial attitude was seen as more cultural than biological, showing sympathy to others who assimilated into the western culture and even marrying a Jew whom he viewed as “well assimilated”.^{[12][22][23][27]} While Lovecraft’s racial attitude has been seen as directly influenced by the time, a reflection of the New England society he grew up in,^{[22][23][24][28][29]} this racism appeared stronger than the popular viewpoints held at that time.^[24][27] Some researchers note that his views failed to change in the face of increased scientific and social change of that time which invalidated many of his strongly held views.^[12][22]

 Risks of a scientific era

At the turn of the 20th century, man’s increased reliance upon science was both opening new worlds and solidifying the manners by which he could understand them. Lovecraft portrays this potential for a growing gap of man’s understanding of the universe as a potential for horror. Most notably in “The Colour Out of Space”, the inability of science to comprehend a contaminated meteorite leads to horror.

In a letter to James F. Morton in 1923, Lovecraft specifically points to Einstein‘s theory on relativity as throwing the world into chaos and making the cosmos a jest. And in a 1929 letter to Woodburn Harris, he speculates that technological comforts risk the collapse of science. Indeed, at a time when men viewed science as limitless and powerful, Lovecraft imagined alternative potential and fearful outcomes. In “The Call of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft’s characters encounter architecture which is “abnormal, non-Euclidian, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours”.^[30] Non-Euclidean geometry is the mathematical language and background of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and Lovecraft references it repeatedly in exploring alien archeology.

Religion

Lovecraft’s works are ruled by several distinct pantheons of deities who are either indifferent or actively hostile to humanity. Several, particularly those of the Cthulhu Mythos, indulge upon alternate mythic human origins in contrast to those found in the creation stories of existing religions, expanding on a natural world view. Protagonist characters are usually educated men, citing scientific and rationalist evidence to support their non-faith. “Herbert West–Reanimator“, reflects on the atheism common within academic circles. Also in “The Silver Key” the character Randolph Carter attempts after losing access to dreams to seek solace in religion, specifically Congregationalism, but does not find it and ultimately loses faith.

Lovecraft himself adopted the stance of atheism early in his life. In 1932 he wrote in a letter to Robert E. Howard: “All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don’t regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.”^[31]

Influences on Lovecraft

Some of Lovecraft’s work was inspired by nightmares of his own. As he studied many scientific advances of biology, astronomy, geology, and physics, Lovecraft was more and more confounded and fueled his skepticism on humanity. His interest started from his childhood days when his grandfather would tell him Gothic horror stories. The influence of Arthur Machen, with his carefully constructed tales concerning the survival of ancient evil into modern times in an otherwise realistic world and his beliefs in hidden mysteries which lay behind reality, looms large.

“The White People” (written 1899; published 1904) written by Arthur Machen.

Lovecraft was also influenced by authors such as Gertrude Barrows Bennett (who, writing as Francis Stevens, impressed Lovecraft enough that he publicly praised her stories and eventually “emulated Bennett’s earlier style and themes”), Oswald Spengler, Robert W. Chambers (writer of “The King in Yellow”, of whom Lovecraft wrote in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith: “Chambers is like Rupert Hughes and a few other fallen Titans — equipped with the right brains and education but wholly out of the habit of using them”).

The biggest influence was Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft had many similarities with Poe; they both lost their fathers at a young age, loved poetry, and used archaisms (language pertaining to an earlier generation) in their writing. They both went against the contemporary styles and created their own worlds of fantasy.

Furthermore, Lovecraft’s discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany with their pantheon of mighty gods existing in dreamlike outer realms, moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of imitative fantasies in a ‘Dreamlands’ setting.

Another inspiration came from a totally different kind of source; the scientific progress at the time in such diverse areas as biology, astronomy, geology, and physics, all contributed to make Lovecraft see the human race seem even more insignificant, powerless, and doomed in a materialistic and mechanical universe. Lovecraft’s materialist views led his fiction to espouse his philosophical views; his fiction therefore consists of a stance or worldview which may be termed cosmicism. Lovecraft was a keen amateur astronomer from his youth, often visiting the Ladd Observatory in Providence, and penning numerous astronomical articles for local newspapers. His astronomical telescope is now housed in the rooms of the August Derleth Society.

This took on a dark tone with the creation of what is today often called the Cthulhu Mythos, a pantheon of alien extra-dimensional deities and horrors which predate humanity, and which are hinted at in aeon-old myths and legends. The term “Cthulhu Mythos” was coined by Lovecraft’s correspondent and fellow author, August Derleth, after Lovecraft’s death; Lovecraft jocularly referred to his artificial mythology as “Yog-Sothothery”.

Lovecraft considered himself a man best suited to the early 18th century. His writing style, especially in his many letters, owes much to Augustan British writers of the Enlightenment like Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift.

He also cited Algernon Blackwood as an influence, quoting “The Centaur” in the head paragraph of “The Call of Cthulhu”. He also declares Blackwood’s “The Willows” to be the single best piece of weird fiction ever written.^[32]

“The Willow”,  Sidney Stanley Illustration

Among the books found in his library (as evidenced in Lovecraft’s Library by S. T. Joshi) was “The Seven Who Were Hanged” by Leonid Andreyev and “A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder” by James De Mille.

Lovecraft’s style has often been criticised by unsympathetic critics, yet scholars such as S. T. Joshi have shown that Lovecraft consciously utilised a variety of literary devices to form a unique style of his own – these include conscious archaism, prose-poetic techniques combined with essay-form techniques, alliteration, anaphora, crescendo, transferred epithet, metaphor, symbolism and colloquialism.

 Lovecraft’s influence on culture

Lovecraft was relatively unknown during his own time. While his stories appeared in the pages of prominent pulp magazines such as Weird Tales (eliciting letters of outrage as often as letters of praise from regular readers of the magazines), not many people knew his name. He did, however, correspond regularly with other contemporary writers, such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, people who became good friends of his, even though they never met in person. This group of writers became known as the “Lovecraft Circle”, since they all freely borrowed elements of Lovecraft’s stories – the mysterious books with disturbing names, the pantheon of ancient alien entities, such as Cthulhu and Azathoth, and eldritch places, such as the New England town of Arkham and its Miskatonic University – for use in their own works (with Lovecraft’s blessing and encouragement).

After Lovecraft’s death, the Lovecraft Circle carried on. August Derleth in particular added to and expanded on Lovecraft’s vision. However, Derleth’s contributions have been controversial to say the least; while Lovecraft never considered his pantheon of alien gods more than a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the ‘good’ “Elder Gods” and the ‘evil’ “Outer Gods” (such as Cthulhu and his ilk), which the ‘good’ Gods were supposed to have won, locking Cthulhu and others up beneath the earth, in the ocean etc. Derleth’s Cthulhu Mythos stories went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements of fire, air, earth and water – an artificial constraint which required justificatory contortions on Derleth’s part since Lovecraft himself never envisioned such a scheme.

Lovecraft’s fiction has been grouped into three categories by some critics. While Lovecraft did not refer to these categories himself, he did once write, “There are my ‘Poe’ pieces and my ‘Dunsany pieces’ – but alas – where are any Lovecraft pieces?”^[33]

• Macabre stories (approximately 1905–1920)
• Dream Cycle stories (approximately 1920–1927)
• Cthulhu Mythos/Lovecraft Mythos stories (approximately 1925–1935)

H. P. Lovecraft is now noted as significant figure in 20th century horror fiction. His writing, particularly the so-called “Cthulhu Mythos”, has influenced fiction authors worldwide, and Lovecraftian elements can be found in novels, films, movies, music, video games, comic books (e.g. the use of Arkham Insane Asylum in The Batman comic book series), and even cartoons. Many modern horror and fantasy writers, including Stephen King, Bentley Little, Joe R. Lansdale, Alan Moore, Junji Ito, F. Paul Wilson, Brian Lumley, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Neil Gaiman, have cited Lovecraft as one of their primary influences. Beyond direct adaptation, Lovecraft and his stories have had a profound impact on popular culture and have been praised by many modern writers. Some influence was direct, as he was a friend, inspiration, and correspondent to many of his contemporaries, such as August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber. Many later figures were influenced by Lovecraft’s works, including author and artist Clive Barker, prolific horror writer Stephen King, comics writers Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Mike Mignola, film directors John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, and Guillermo Del Toro, horror manga artist Junji Ito, and artist H. R. Giger.^[34]

Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote his short story “There Are More Things” in memory of Lovecraft. Contemporary French writer Michel Houellebecq wrote a literary biography of Lovecraft called “H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life“. Prolific American writer Joyce Carol Oates wrote an introduction for a collection of Lovecraft stories. The Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft’s work in 2005, essentially declaring him a canonical American writer.^[35][36][37] French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari made reference to Lovecraft in “A Thousand Plateaus” and called the short story “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” one of his masterpieces.^[38]

He has also been a significant influence on speculative realism, a recent continental philosophy movement,^[39] with admirers from Graham Harman (who has connected the cognitive style of Husserl to Lovecraft and has developed what he describes as “weird realism”) to Iranian writer Reza Negarestani.^[40][41]

In music, examples of Lovecraftian influence include the psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft (who shortened their name to Lovecraft and then Love Craft in the 1970s) who released the H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft II albums in 1967 and 1968 respectively. The drum and bass artist Zardonic has an album titled “Lovecraft Machine” ^[50] and a song named after the fictional monster Cthulhu. The metal band Metallica who recorded a song inspired by “The Call of Cthulhu”, an instrumental entitled “The Call of Ktulu”,^[42] a song based on “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” titled “The Thing That Should Not Be”,^[43] and a song based on Frank Belknap Long‘s “The Hounds of Tindalos”, titled “All Nightmare Long”;^[44] Black Sabbath‘s “Behind the Wall of Sleep”, which appeared on their 1970 debut album and is based on Lovecraft’s short story “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”; The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets whose entire repertoire is Lovecraft-based; The Mountain Goats song called “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” on their 2008 album Heretic Pride; black metal band Nehëmah has songs inspired by Lovecraft including “Creeping Chaos”, “The Great Old Ones”, “Dead But Dreaming in the Eternal Icy Waste”, and “The Elder Gods Awakening” on their 2004 album Requiem Tenebrae; melodic death metal band The Black Dahlia Murder also has produced several songs based on the Cthulhu Mythos, “Throne of Lunacy” and “Thy Horror Cosmic”; progressive metal band Dream Theater‘s song “The Dark Eternal Night” is based on the story “Nyarlathotep” by Lovecraft; Morbid Angel also features songs that uses the Mythos; Mark E Smith, lead singer of The Fall, is a known fan of Lovecraft’s work, and the song “Spectre Vs Rector”, a ghost story, contains the lyric “Yog Sothoth rape me lord”; and UK anarcho-punk band Rudimentary Peni make repeated references in their song titles, lyrics and artwork, including the album Cacophony, all 30 songs of which are inspired by the life and writings of Lovecraft.^[45] In the Iron Maiden album Live After Death, the band mascot, Eddie, is rising from a grave, where can be read “H.P. Lovecraft” and a quote from the The Nameless City: “That is not dead which can eternal lie yet with strange aeons even death may die.”.

A Cthulhu Six String Guitar

The Lovecraftian world has also made its mark on gaming. Chaosium first made its mark as a publisher of games based on Lovecraft’s Mythos. The role-playing game Call of Cthulhu has been in print for 30 years (currently in its sixth major edition) and has garnered consistent praise for the high quality of its campaign and adventure supplements. Two collectible card games are Mythos and Call of Cthulhu, the Living Card Game. In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game an archetype, the Arcana Force, are based on his works. Several computer horror adventure games are influenced heavily by Lovecraft such as Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Shadowman, Alone in the Dark, Chzo Mythos, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Dead Space, “Splatterhouse” “Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder”, “Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage”, and the Penumbra series. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has several references to Lovecraft, such as the boss C’thun and the boss Yogg-Saron. All of these bosses in Warcraft are labeled “Old Gods”. The first-person shooter Quake also references Lovecraft – even having a boss called the Shub-Niggurath. Also, whilst not always Lovecraft based at their essence, references to his work are common in other games such as Fallout 3, Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse, and Blood.

 Lovecraft as a character in fiction

Aside from his thinly-veiled appearance in Robert Bloch’s “The Shambler from the Stars”, Lovecraft continues to be used as a character in supernatural fiction. Examples include:

• Bradbury, Ray: In an early version of the story “The Exiles”, published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Volume 1 No. 2 (Winter-Spring 1950), and later to become part of Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, Bradbury uses Lovecraft as a character, making a brief (600-word) appearance, eating ice cream in front of a fire and complaining about how cold he is. The passage was excised from all subsequent versions of the story.
• Lupoff, Richard A.: Lovecraft’s Book (1985)
• Barbour, David and Richard Raleigh. Shadows Bend (2000)
• Cannon, Peter: The Lovecraft Chronicles (2004)

 Survey of the work

For most of the 20th century, the definitive editions (specifically At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, The Dunwich Horror and Others, and The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions) of his prose fiction were published by Arkham House, a publisher originally started with the intent of publishing the work of Lovecraft, but which has since published a considerable amount of other literature as well. Penguin Classics has at present issued three volumes of Lovecraft’s works: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, and most recently The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. They collect the standard texts as edited by S. T. Joshi, most of which were available in the Arkham House editions, with the exception of the restored text of “The Shadow Out of Time” from “The Dreams in the Witch House”, which had been previously released by small-press publisher Hippocampus Press. In 2005 the prestigious Library of America canonized Lovecraft with a volume of his stories edited by Peter Straub, and Random House’s Modern Library line have issued the “definitive edition” of Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” (also including “Supernatural Horror in Literature”).

The H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Plaque was unveiled on 19-August-1990 by The Friends of H. P. Lovecraft; and officially dedicated on 20-August-1990 by The City of Providence, Brown University, and The Friends of H. P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft’s poetry is collected in The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Night Shade Books, 2001), while much of his juvenilia, various essays on philosophical, political and literary topics, antiquarian travelogues, and other things, can be found in Miscellaneous Writings (Arkham House, 1989). Lovecraft’s essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, first published in 1927, is a historical survey of horror literature available with endnotes as The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature.

 Letters

Although Lovecraft is known mostly for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of his writing consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history.

He sometimes dated his letters 200 years before the current date, which would have put the writing back in U.S. colonial times, before the American Revolution (a war which offended his Anglophilia). He explained that he thought that the 18th and 20th centuries were the “best”; the former being a period of noble grace, and the latter a century of science.

Lovecraft was not a very active letter-writer in youth. In 1931 he admitted: “In youth I scarcely did any letter-writing — thanking anybody for a present was so much of an ordeal that I would rather have written a two hundred fifty-line pastoral or a twenty-page treatise on the rings of Saturn.” (SL 3.369–70). The initial interest in letters stemmed from his correspondence with his cousin Phillips Gamwell but even more important was his involvement in the amateur journalism movement, which was initially responsible for the enormous number of letters Lovecraft produced.

Despite his light letter-writing in youth, in later life his correspondence was so voluminous that it has been estimated that he may have written around 30,000 letters to various correspondents, a figure which places him second only to Voltaire as an epistolarian. Lovecraft’s later correspondence is primarily to fellow weird fiction writers, rather than to the amateur journalist friends of his earlier years.

Lovecraft clearly states that his contact to numerous different people through letter-writing was one of the main factors in broadening his view of the world: “I found myself opened up to dozens of points of view which would otherwise never have occurred to me. My understanding and sympathies were enlarged, and many of my social, political, and economic views were modified as a consequence of increased knowledge.” (SL 4.389).

Today there are five publishing houses that have released letters from Lovecraft, most prominently Arkham House with its five-volume edition Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft I (1911–1924), Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft II (1925–1929), Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft III (1929–1931), Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft IV (1932–1934), Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft V (1934–1937) (Those volumes, however, severely abridge the letters they contain). Other publishers are Hippocampus Press (Letters to Alfred Galpin et al.), Night Shade Books (Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei et al..), Necronomicon Press (Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett et al.), and University of Tampa Press (O Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow). S.T. Joshi is supervising an ongoing series of volumes collecting Lovecraft’s unabridged letters to particular correspondents.

Ohio University Press also published “Lord of a Visible World — An Autobiography in Letters” in 2000 which presents his letters according to themes, such as adolescence and travel. It was edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz.

Copyright

There is controversy over the copyright status of many of Lovecraft’s works, especially his later works. Lovecraft had specified that the young R. H. Barlow would serve as executor of his literary estate,^[46] but these instructions had not been incorporated into his will. Nevertheless his surviving aunt carried out his expressed wishes, and Barlow was given charge of the massive and complex literary estate upon Lovecraft’s death.

Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, with the John Hay Library, and attempted to organize and maintain Lovecraft’s other writing. August Derleth, an older and more established writer than Barlow, vied for control of the literary estate. One result of these conflicts was the legal confusion over who owned what copyrights.

All works published before 1923 are public domain in the U.S.^[47] However, there is some disagreement over who exactly owns or owned the copyrights and whether the copyrights apply to the majority of Lovecraft’s works published post-1923.

Questions center over whether copyrights for Lovecraft’s works were ever renewed under the terms of the United States Copyright Act of 1976 for works created prior to January 1, 1978. The problem comes from the fact that before the Copyright Act of 1976 the number of years a work was copyrighted in the U.S. was based on publication rather than life of the author plus a certain number of years and that it was good for only 28 years. After that point, a new copyright had to be filed, and any work that did not have its copyright renewed fell back into the public domain. The Copyright Act of 1976 retroactively extended this renewal period for all works to a period of 47 years^[48] and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 added another 20 years to that, for a total of 95 years from publication. If the works were renewed, the copyrights would still be valid in the United States.

The European Union Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection of 1993 extended the copyrights to 70 years after the author’s death. So, all works of Lovecraft published during his lifetime, became public domain in all 27 European Union countries on 1 January 2008. In those Berne Convention countries who have implemented only the minimum copyright period, copyright expires 50 years after the author’s death.

Lovecraft protégés and part owners of Arkham House, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, often claimed copyrights over Lovecraft’s works. On October 9, 1947, Derleth purchased all rights to Weird Tales. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in Weird Tales. Hence, Weird Tales may only have owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft’s tales. Again, even if Derleth did obtain the copyrights to Lovecraft’s tales, no evidence as yet has been found that the copyrights were renewed.^[49]

S. T. Joshi concludes in his biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, that Derleth’s claims are “almost certainly fictitious” and that most of Lovecraft’s works published in the amateur press are most likely now in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft’s works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir of his 1912 will: Lovecraft’s aunt, Annie Gamwell. Gamwell herself perished in 1941 and the copyrights then passed to her remaining descendants, Ethel Phillips Morrish and Edna Lewis. Morrish and Lewis then signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting Arkham House to republish Lovecraft’s works but retaining the copyrights for themselves. Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were then renewed after the 28-year period and, hence, it is likely that these works are now in the public domain.

Chaosium, publishers of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, have a trademark on the phrase “The Call of Cthulhu” for use in game products. Another RPG publisher, TSR, Inc., original publisher of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, included in one of that game’s earlier supplements, Deities & Demigods (originally published in 1980 and later renamed to “Legends & Lore”), a section on the Cthulhu Mythos; TSR, Inc. later agreed to remove this section at Chaosium’s request.

Regardless of the legal disagreements surrounding Lovecraft’s works, Lovecraft himself was extremely generous with his own works and actively encouraged others to borrow ideas from his stories, particularly with regard to his Cthulhu mythos. He actively encouraged other writers to reference his creations, such as the Necronomicon, Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. After his death, many writers have contributed stories and enriched the shared mythology of the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as making numerous references to his work. (See Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture.)

 Locations featured in Lovecraft stories

Lovecraft drew extensively from his native New England for settings in his fiction. Numerous real historical locations are mentioned, and several fictional New England locations make frequent appearances. (See Lovecraft Country.)

 Historical locations

• Pascoag, Rhode Island in “The Horror at Red Hook”
• Chepachet, Rhode Island in “The Horror at Red Hook”
• Red Hook, Brooklyn in “The Horror at Red Hook”
• Gainesville, Florida in “The Statement of Randolph Carter”
• Binger in Caddo County, Oklahoma (“The Mound“)
• Copp’s Hill, Boston, Massachusetts
• Red Line (MBTA)
• Pawtuxet (now Cranston, Rhode Island)
• Newburyport, Massachusetts
• Ipswich, Massachusetts
• Dunedin, New Zealand
• Bolton, Massachusetts
• Marblehead, Massachusetts
• Salem, Massachusetts
• Brattleboro, Vermont
• Albany, New York
• Many locations within his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, including the (then purportedly haunted) Halsey House, Prospect Terrace and Brown University‘s John Hay Library and John Carter Brown Library.
• Danvers State Hospital, in Danvers, Massachusetts, which is largely believed to have served as inspiration for the infamous Arkham sanatorium from “The Thing on the Doorstep”.
• Catskill Mountains, New York
• New York City, New York
• Kilderry, Ireland
• Nome,Alaska
• Noatak,Alaska
• Fort Morton, Alaska, in “The Horror in the Museum”
• New Orleans, Louisiana, in “The Call of Cthulhu”, including a mention of Tulane University.
• Newport, Rhode Island

 Fictional locations

• Miskatonic University in the fictional Arkham, Massachusetts
• Dunwich, Massachusetts
• Innsmouth, Massachusetts
• Kingsport, Massachusetts
• Aylesbury, Massachusetts
• Martin’s Beach
• The Miskatonic River
• The fictional Central University Library at the real University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina. According to Lovecraft there is a copy of the Necronomicon here, but the University of Buenos Aires never had a central library.

 Bibliography

Further reading

• The Strange Sound of Cthulhu: Music Inspired by the Writings of H. P. Lovecraft (ISBN 978-1-84728-776-2), written by Gary Hill.
• Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe (ISBN 0-8131-1728-3), by Donald R. Burleson, PhD, a longtime scholar on Lovecraft and acquaintance of S. T. Joshi, is probably the only book analyzing Lovecraft’s literature from a deconstructionist standpoint. University Press of Kentucky, November 1990.
• The Gentleman From Angell Street: Memories of H. P. Lovecraft ( ISBN 978-0-9701699-1-4), written by Muriel and C. M. Eddy, Jr. is a collection of personal remembrances and anecdotes from two of Lovecraft’s closest friends in Providence. The Eddys were fellow writers, and Mr. Eddy was a frequent contributor to Weird Tales.
• Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos (ISBN 0-586-04166-4), written by Lin Carter in 1972, is a survey of Lovecraft’s work (along with that of other members of the Lovecraft Circle) with considerable information on his life.
• The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos by S. T. Joshi (Mythos Books, 2008) is the first full-length critical study since Lin Carter’s to examine the development of Lovecraft’s Mythos and its outworking in the oeuvres of various modern writers.
• The first full-length biography was Lovecraft: a Biography (ISBN 0-345-25115-6), written by L. Sprague de Camp; published in 1975, it is now out of print.
• Frank Belknap Long’s Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside (Arkham House, 1975, ISBN 0-87054-068-8) presents a more personal look at Lovecraft’s life, combining reminiscence, biography and literary criticism. Long was a friend and correspondent of Lovecraft, as well as a fellow fantasist who wrote a number of Lovecraft-influenced Cthulhu Mythos stories (including The Hounds of Tindalos).
• A newer, more extensive biography is H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (ISBN 0-940884-88-7) written by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi. An alternative is Joshi’s abridged A Dreamer & A Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time (ISBN 0-85323-946-0). An unabridged reprint in two volumes of Joshi’s biography, newly retitled I Am Providence:”, was published in 2010 by Hippocampus Press.
• An English translation of Michel Houellebecq‘s H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (ISBN 1-932416-18-8) was published by Believer Books in 2005.
• Other significant Lovecraft-related works are An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia by Joshi and David S. Schulz; Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue (a meticulous listing of many of the books in Lovecraft’s now scattered library), by Joshi; Lovecraft at Last, an account by Willis Conover of his teenage correspondence with Lovecraft; Joshi’s A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft.
• Andrew Migliore and John Strysik’s Lurker in the Lobby: The Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft and Charles P. Mitchell‘s The Complete H. P. Lovecraft Filmography both discuss films containing Lovecraftian elements.
• Lovecraft’s prose fiction has been published numerous times. The corrected texts were released by Arkham House in the 1980s, and many other collections of his stories have appeared, including Ballantine Books editions and three popular Del Rey editions. The three collections published by Penguin, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, and The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories, incorporate the modifications made in the corrected texts as well as the annotations provided by Joshi.
• Lovecraft’s ghost-written works are compiled in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, edited again by Joshi.
• Some of Lovecraft’s writings are annotated with footnotes or endnotes. In addition to the Penguin editions mentioned above and The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature, Joshi has produced The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft as well as More Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, both of which are footnoted extensively.
• An Epicure in the Terrible (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991), edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi is an anthology of 13 essays on Lovecraft (excluding Joshi’s lengthy introduction)on the centennial of Lovecraft’s birth. The essays are arranged into 3 sections; Biographical, Thematic Studies and Comparative and Genre Studies. The authors include S. T. Joshi, Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, Jason C. Eckhardt, Will Murray, Donald R. Burleson, Peter Cannon, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Steven J. Mariconda, David E. Schultz, Robert H. Waugh, Robert M. Price, R. Boerem, Norman R. Gatford and Barton Levi St. Armand.
• “H. P. Lovecraft: Alone in Space,” chapter 3 in Emperors of Dreams: Some Notes on Weird Poetry by S. T. Joshi (Sydney: P’rea Press, 2008: ISBN 978-0-9804625-3-1 (pbk) and ISBN 978-0-9804625-4-8 (hbk)), discusses some of Lovecraft’s weird poetry.
• The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America: From H.P. Lovecraft to Leslie Marmon Silko edited by Amy H. Sturgis and David D. Oberhelman (Mythopoeic Press, 2009: ISBN 978-1887726122).
• Poole, W. Scott. Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-60258-314-6.
• Anderson, James Arthur. Out of the Shadows: a structuralist approach to understanding the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (The Milford Series, Popular Writers of Today, Vol. 75 Wildside Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-80953-002-1 A close reading of Lovecraft’s fiction.

 Notes

 References

• Dziemianowicz, Stefan (July 12, 2010), “Terror Eternal: The enduring popularity of H.P. Lovecraft”, Publishers Weekly,
• Extract from H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq
• “H.P. Lovecraft’s Afterlife” by John J. Miller of the Wall Street Journal
• Sante, Luc (October 19, 2006), “The Heroic Nerd”, The New York Review of Books (New York) 53 (16): 37

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Antipope preparing to fire his laser eye.

Over at the 122nd Cadian, writer Antipope mentioned an article written in the magazine Kathimerini, which is published in Greece. The article in question was basically a hit piece against Warhammer 40k and its fans.

Now in America, we’ve encountered this kind of journalistic garbage before. Back in 1982, an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons player named Irving Pulling committed suicide. His mother, Patricia Pulling, believed that her son’s roleplaying hobby had something to do with it, and this in turn started what some deem the “moral panic” of the roleplaying community. She started the Bothered about Dungeons and Dragons (BADD) group, which pretty much ended in 1997 after she passed away from cancer.

Nor was this the only controversy around gaming. Besides the short lived BADD, we still deal with activist (though no longer attorney) Jack Thompson, who continues to lead the charge against violence in the video game industry.

Kathimerini‘s charges against Warhammer 40k players range between questioning their intelligence and referring to them as social losers and and lack of female players to going so far as to suggest that they are influenced by the so-called “extreme right” of politics.

To the former charges of being nerds, I would simply respond with a lone middle that I’m sure the writers of Kathimerini can devise the meaning too. But to the latter charges, I feel it necessary to say more.

Let me start with the question of “there are no female players” to which I reply is incorrect and complete bull. Sarah Cawkwell is about to release her new novel from the Black Library. Our friend Dorian loves the psychology of the fluff, while Raye Raye does some amazing Night Lords miniature over on her blog.

As both a fan of the Warhammer 40k tabletop game and the novels they produce, I am quite cross with the journalists not only for the insults to Warhammer 40k fans, but also for the underhanded stab at America and its players as well. In this case, Kathimerini‘s editors chose to take a response from a lone player who claimed to have seen swastikas tattooed on the body of an American player. I had absolutely no idea that the poor body art choices of one player automatically condemn the entire American fan community.

I find it even more amusing that a tabletop game about a completely fictional universe, which some could argue traces its roots to fascism or even Nazism, is cause for any alarm. Have you seen Hollywood and the entertainment industry? We have dozens if not hundreds of movies, books, comics and games directly about Nazis, fascism and World War II.

Just because he looks like a member of the gestapo doesn't mean he's popular. Just ask the Guardsmen he executed.

There’s Saving Private Ryan, The Dirty Dozen,  Schindler’s List and Inglourious Basterds just to give you a start. Both the movie and especially the graphic novel V for Vendetta used themes of fascism. David Fincher himself admitted that Fight Club involved the use of fascism. There’s Day of Defeat and some of the Call of Duty titles.

It sometimes feels like much of the entertainment industry is desperate to prove itself the quintessential expert on fascism and Nazism, or at least on killing them. So just why the hell these writers feel the need to pick on us in particular is beyond me.

And non-fictionally speaking, scholars, politicians, pundits and talking heads go on and on about what fascism is and who is basically a Nazi. And some scholars admit that plenty of first world countries have embraced certain aspects of fascism either economically or in public policy (or both), even if they reject the entire package. And yes, some claim that even America has become fascist.

But I digress. The fact is that the writer and editors of this particular piece over at Kathimerini were determined to find the latest outrage or topic for the 2 minutes of hate.  It was a sad attempt to create nontroversy, slandering Games Workshop, The Black Library and their fans not just in Greece but all over the globe.

Perhaps the last thing I have to say about this is the coincidence, the beating heart of Warhammer 40k has to do with the inherent strong of a centralized, monotheistic religion against varying forms paganism. And these pagan religions just happen to be followers of daemons, a Greek term for nature spirits, which is a frequent source of contention within the stories depending upon ones view at the time.

I just find it amusing that this author’s piece just happens to skip over the fluff despite its distant relation to Greek classical mythology, in their rush to bash us.

If the writer and editors could find time in their busy schedules of inoculating Warhammer 40k fans from ever reading their magazine again to notice this blog post, then I hope they’d take me up on the offer to buy them a copy of Horus Rising. I would relish an opportunity for them to join a few nerds in understanding the pain staking details they work upon to make their figures incredible to look at. And perhaps a few moments to actually play the game.

And when they finish, perhaps recognize that they, in a mean spirited sense, chose to step on a harmless and fun hobby. And feel it necessary to apologize to Antipope, Games Workshop, The Black Library and the Warhammer fans across the world.

And perhaps having learned from this lesson, recognize that a good journalist wouldn’t stoop to cheap shots like what they pulled here.

Oh and PS, Antipope has asked me to air our grievances to Kathimerini. I have done so,  I invite you all to help us. Read Antipope’s article and respond to Kathimerini at syntaxi@kathimerini.gr or pistoles@kathimerini.gr. Thanks!

* Update: It’s also pretty close to Slate’s “Best Of” list..

7. Paradigms of Human Memory

This was the clip show parody, and one of the episodes I was most intrigued by when I started watching the show. It’s a good example of how Community is different from anything else on television, while still being really, really funny.

Instead of rehashing older material, they featured flashbacks to entirely new adventures.  And those adventures are actually referenced in later episodes. It’s a ballsy satire of a sitcom staple, which entirely defeats the purpose of a clip show, by requiring an absurd and expensive amount of work in the creation of multiple new sets and costumes. Though it also results in fifteen minutes of consistently hilarious sight gags.

The story reveals new details about the characters, with one particular announcement revealing that something big’s been going on behind the scenes for the entire season. The decision to make a parody of a youtube video that currently has 70,000 hits might be a symptom of the reasons Community has such low ratings, but the payoff is fantastic.

6. Remedial Chaos Theory

This episode’s really funny, while pulling off a difficult structure showing multiple realities resulting from the consequences of one seemingly random action.  What makes it so effective is what it uncovers about each of the characters, and the effects that their absence can have on the group dynamic. It’s also priceless how some jokes slowly build from a set-up in one universe to a payoff in the next. The biggest downside is that in an episode that’s so detailed and revealing that it’s meant to be rewatched, it’s annoying that Abed’s “six timelines” comment is repeated so many times.

5. Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas

It was a send-up of Christmas claymation specials, that actually worked as an argument for Christmas, complete with a villain with a plot to destroy the holiday. I loved that something could hurt the usually dispassionate Abed so much that he has a complete and total mental breakdown. It took the character in a different direction, for a reason that was seeded in the first episodes.

The music gags and set designs were great. And while it was Abed’s episode, the rest of the group had some poignant moments as well, with some realizing what was at stake and others doing some serious self-reflection.

4. Modern Warfare

The first Paintball episode, and the highlight of the freshman season. It was a set-up of action movies that has some cool moments and actual character development. As later episodes would also demonstrate, substituting bullets for paintballs turns out to be a winning formula.

When the school devolves into post-apocalyptic chaos, it results in some of the best sight gags in the show. It’s a gimmick episode that turns out to be quite consequential, with a new development on a relationship that’s been set-up in the first episode.

3. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

It was a bit sappy to have the group getting together to help a stranger, even if the guy was depressed and suicidal. But then there was a legitimately moving twist, and everything made sense.

This episode balances some touching moments (“We’re done feeling sorry for Neil”) with some of the best sight-gags the show’s ever had: Chang’s walking hate crime (technically it’s not, but it makes sense for another character to come to that conclusion), and Annie role-playing as Hector the well-endowed to seduce an elf maiden. And Chevy Chase is pretty persuasive at playing mean.

1/2. A Fistful of Paintballs/ For a Few Paintballs More

While it was meant to be aired as a one hour special, I’d consider these as two separate episodes, parodying independent items (spaghetti westerns, Star Wars/ modern action movies) with largely distinct A-plots. The first episode is more about Annie’s relationship with Pierce, while the second episode is about the entire school coming together in a combat situation. It’s not shocking that the episodes are credited to two different writers.

This is still the highlight of the series. It’s never been more fun. Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons may have been slightly better at the serious stuff, but this two-parter holds its own in that category, as a lot of character threads come to a head, and much of the cast gets their crowning moments.

There’s a trend with the best episodes of Community, as these work simultaneously as spoofs and as examples of what is being imitated. Dan Harmon, Joe Russo and company could probably make entertaining big-budget action films if they wanted to. It’s our gain that they’re working on a low-rated sitcom instead.

So, I’ve finally read through the first edition players handbook and I’m going to post some highlights. This isn’t a system or book review, just some things that jumped out at me.

The book is short by modern standards. It’s a mere 120-ish pages and 60 of those are spell descriptions. The remaining 60 pages are mostly class and race descriptions and not a whole heck of a lot else. It’s about as long as the Labyrinth Lord manual, so not a huge pain in the ass to read especially if you skip the spells.

But Labyrinth Lord is a complete game in one manual and the PHB feels like one of those custom campaign handouts people make sometimes. Like a book of spell descriptions for the players so they’d have them handy during play, and a few notes about the campaign. Everything else is in the Dungeon Masters Guide & Monster Manual and there’s a warning that players wont find the game as much fun if they peek in those books! Often it tells you not to worry about something because your referee will have charts for it. Saving throws for example.

]]> http://actionsuitalert.com/2011/10/20/the-official-advanced-dungeons-dragons-coloring-album/ Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:20:30 +0000 Myles Patrick http://actionsuitalert.com/2011/10/20/the-official-advanced-dungeons-dragons-coloring-album/ http://darkjade68.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/dungeons-dragons-an-inspiration/ Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:03:13 +0000 darkjade68 http://darkjade68.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/dungeons-dragons-an-inspiration/ ~Dungeons & Dragons~

I remember as a young boy, my brother and I went into a Hobbies Shop, and it had all sorts of Dungeons & Dragons Cast Iron Mini’s (Figures). Glass cases full of them. And as we got closer to the back of the store, we could hear voices coming from a back room. As we (or maybe just me) inched our way back towards the back of the store, the back room became visible…. In it, there was a longggg table, with several 20 to 30 year old men sitting at it. Layed across this table was a huge map, which had graph paper like squares on it. And atop it, ten to twenty, to thirty or more of Dungeons & Dragons cast iron mini’s, all custom painted. In addition, sprawled here and there were the the glorious Dungeons and Dragons Dice. That was it, I was hooked.

From that day forward, I wanted a room like that, a table like, a map like that, dice like that, and people like that to play with…

Sadly, that would not be the case. As I was very shy when I was young, and many of the people who indeed played Dungeons & Dragons were, well, they didn’t like me. In fact, I’m not even sure they liked one another? As in my experience, most, or at least a lot, of Dungeons & Dragons players seemed more interested in arguing about Rules, then actually playing. This would have drove me mad, should I have been there.

And so, I went through my Junior High Years, and High School Years hearing remote mentionings of people playing, but never actually got a chance to play… At least not yet.

When I was 17, my brother got a girlfriend, and the three of us started to hang out a lot. It was at that point that I finally decided if I was ever going to play Dungeons and Dragons I’d have to learn it, and run it myself.

Now I would have loved to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but being that I wasn’t much of a reader, I instead started with Basic Dungeon & Dragons. Basically, it had the same Core Rules, but a whole lot less rules over all. And so I read it through, and we Created Characters, which was one of the coolest things I had ever done. Talk about fun.

I believe initially I started with the Maps and NPC’s (Non Player Characters) they provided, and we were off. What a blast we’d have, sitting around eating Doritos, and drinking Pepsi. Quickly we moved onto Expert Dungeons & Dragons.

We were flying right along, as I remember my brother’s first character, a Dwarf, was killed by a brick whilst looking up a fireplace. Yes, you don’t start with much health at Level One, so be you ware.

At this point I had gotten fluent enough at running and playing games to start to bring in/incorporate Advanced Dungeons & Dragons into the mix.

This improved the game play ten fold. Partly because of the A D & D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) Monster Manuals, which were packed with all sorts of different Beasties, as well as Custom Monster Charts which would be used for specific areas.

The three of us played for a good 3 or 4 years, and also brought in a 4th person, my brother’s best friend. Talk about ferociously involved, this guy loved it… Though he did like to “Practice Roll”, and when he’d get a good roll, he’d act like that was his attack. lol. Oh well, I didn’t let him get a way with it… For I was the Dungeon Master.

Beyond the glorious Game Play experienced, as Dungeon Master, I was given the opportunity not only to create a multitude of lands, and maps and storyline’s. But I also created an enormous amount of characters, in which I would then portray during play.

As it turns out, this was an extremely beneficial experience in regards to ending up being a Writer. One that I’m sure I draw upon when Writing, and/or Creating Stories or Character’s. Dialog is probably my biggest strength when it comes to Writing, at least in my opinion.

At some point life intervened, and we no longer played Dungeons & Dragons, and it was missed. As at the end it had escalated from Doritos and Pepsi, to full blown Rib Dinners, in the spirit of playing.

It wasn’t until maybe 9 or 10 years later that I actually picked it up again. I had gotten into a Production of Hamlet (Theater, that’s a story for another time), and as it turned out, several of the Actor’s used to play Dungeons & Dragons. When they found I used to run games, they started to prod me towards running one for them. I suppose it was always harder to find a Dungeon Master, than it was a Player. And so I started running them again, and it was like old times, but even better.

Better in a sense that all of the players had jobs, so the food jumped up to KFC, and/or Chinese Food.

It was great, the main guy that prodded me to run a game would pick up KFC, or Chinese or the like on the way to my Apartment, and we’d all pay him when he got there. What we’d do is all sit at the Dinner Table and talk about our Real Life, work, Theater, whatever… And Feast Away.

But come game time, no one was allowed to speak of the “Outside World”. It added an all new enjoyable element to it.

Bottom Line, Dungeons & Dragons was, and is great. In fact, even now, I’m ready and willing  to run a Whole New Campaign…

Want In?*

DarkJade-

*Special thank goes out to Gary Gygax, Creator of Advanced Dungeons & Dragson

Gary is no longer with us, Here’s to you Gary

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But is there any kind of general consensus as to switching around between different retro-clones and other retro games? Just curious.

The game begins with a man waking up in a strange mortuary, with no idea how he got there. Actually, he can’t remember a thing at all, not even his name. He quickly enlists the helping a talking skull named Morte who floats in the air. The two make their way out of the mortuary and into the city, where The Nameless One hopes to discover the reasons behind his lack of memories and his seeming immortality. Along the way, you’ll discovery some truly bizarre locations and equally bizarre characters. Much of the game is very heavily based on dialog, it’s even possible to talk your way out of many encounters, rather than resorting to violence. The game even goes so far as to have no penalty for being killed in combat. The Nameless One will simply respawn at a set location. You might be tempted to think that this makes for a very easy game, but that’s really not the case at all.

In a way, Planescape: Torment is almost more of an adventure game than it is an rpg [not of the point-and-click variety, of course], in that the game has a great focus on story and characters than it does on combat. Some will no doubt see this as a negative, but I see this as a positive. There are plenty of RPGs with great combat in them, if that’s what you’re truly looking for, but there are scant few RPGs with such amazing writing. The time it would have taken to put in a more complex combat system would have taken away from that writing, or at least placed less emphasis on it.

Unlike other RPGs, there are no traditional dungeons. The game takes place almost entirely in within populated areas, it’s just that some of those areas happen to have monsters or thugs in them. Sometimes you’ll even be attacked in broad daylight by thugs, right in front of dozens of people. It’s not all that common, but it happens. The plus side to this is that there’s virtually no dungeon crawling or pointless grinding to deal with, with I see as a plus.

The gameplay is real-time, point-and-click based combat seen in many other Black Isle titles like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. It’s possible to recruit seven different characters, but only five can accompany the main character. It’s clear from the outset that combat is not the main focus of this game, but that doesn’t mean that the combat is just thrown in with no regard. It works very well and there is some depth to it in terms of controlling a party of character in real-time and using their various talents to get through each battle you come across. The combat gets the job done and doesn’t get in the way.

Another area where the game truly shines is in the sound and music. Both of these elements are blended perfectly to create the feeling that you are actually in the places that you see on the screen. While walking through the city you can hear people talking and shouting to one another as their voices blend into a droning din, walk past a bar and you can hear the drunken patrons inside, and so on, all this is done to infuse the world with life. The music weaves through the sound in just the right way, fading when you’re just walking around and suddenly jumping to the forefront when battle is afoot. Although Black Isle was originally going to use a soundtrack by musician Lustmord, his soundtrack was pulled three weeks before the game was to be released so that Fallout-compose Mark Morgan could create an entirely new soundtrack that took the music of the game in a different direction.

The character, writing, and dialog are among the best that will find in any videogame, and the sound and music are no slouch either, Black Isle really went all out with this one and it shows. RPGs since Planescape: Torment have come out have attempted to recreate that depth and that degree of choice in the dialog trees, but most just haven’t even gotten close. Will companies like BioWare, Obsidian, and Bethesda bring RPGs back to this level of detail in the near future? Well, perhaps, but until they do, and even if they don’t, you can always keep playing the one that set the standard in the first place.

IL DMG!

Il mio personale incontro con Greyhawk fu vergognosamente precoce. Ai tempi giocavamo già a D&D, ma come prevedibile le nostre prime avventure si ambientavano a metà via tra il setting di Mystara (o qualcosa che la ricordava vagamente… ricordo solo alcuni accenni al mondo nei manuali di Holmes – i famosi basic, expert, companion, master e immortal per intenderci) e mondi inventati di sana pianta, ma mai avevamo approfondito il concetto di “setting”. L’avventura era un organismo autosufficente e indipendente (tornerò in futuro su questo concetto, perchè ritengo che questo approccio al gioco fosse sostanzialmente corretto) e l’idea di relegare la fantasia nel mondo creato da un altro mi sembrava stupida e limitativa.

Fu nel 1987, duante l’inaugurazione di un centro commerciale nella mia città, che per la prima volta incontrai Greyhawk, anche se a malapena sapevo che si trattasse di quel mondo. Quel giorno presi il coraggio a due mani (avevo solo 11 anni) e chiesi ai miei genitori di comprarmi questo enorme volume tutto scritto in lingua Inglese. Il primo impatto fu violentissimo! L’inglese non lo conoscevo per nulla, e appena riuscivo a fare parallelismi tra le statistiche con l’edizione del “Basico” che avevo a casa. Era tutto molto piu complesso (aggiungiamoci che Gygax scriveva in un inglese ben lungi dall’essere semplice). Con l’aiuto di un dizionario Inglese-Itaiano (che possiedo ancora!) mi tuffai in quello che ancora oggi ritengo sia uno dei piu bei manuali di GDR mai scritti. Era il DMG di Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, quello con la copertina con il mago vestito di verde (la seconda ristampa), con la montagna di tesori dietro la schiena, e la grande chiave dorata al collo. E l’immancabile costina arancione.

A quei tempi il setting era ancora fortemente ibrido, e compenetrava fortemente nel regolamento. Gli incantesimi portavano nomi di importanti maghi di Greyhawk, gli artefatti alla fine del libro portavano lughe descrizioni che si rifacevano alla storia delle Flanaess. Si parlava di Vecna, di Kas “dalle mani insanguinate”, di Leuk ‘O e di Kwalish.

Per qualche tempo introdussi elementi sparsi di Greyhawk nelle mie avventure. Il fichissimo Greyhawk Adventures introduceva nuovi incantesimi, la scheda del terrificante Mago della Valle, nuovi mostri e dozzine di oggetti magici, per non parlare delle divinità che divennero il pantheon per le mie avventure. Era tutto molto caotico, ma decisamente divertente! Non conoscevo Greyhawk (a quel tempo a malapena avevo visto la scatola base) ma ne ero completamente affascinato. Verso la fine degli anni ’80, poco dopo l’uscita della seconda edizione, finalmente incontrai quello che sarebbe stato il mio primo, vero, solido gruppo di gioco. Si giocava a Greyhawk finalmente, con tanto di mappe, nazioni e personaggi realmente inquadrati in un mondo coerente e non solo PNG usa e getta! Ancora oggi custodisco alcuni dei personaggi che cominciai a usare in quelle sessioni di gioco. Solo qualcuno di questi morì, per mia fortuna. Il gioco purtroppo era estremamente “high powered” (caratteristiche tirate usando il metodo “Unearthed Arcana”… se qualcuno sa a cosa mi riferisco) e in effetti mi trovavo un po’ a disagio per non potere esplorare a fondo il potenziale di role playing dei miei PG. Soprattutto, mi mancava lo storytelling accurato. Non è davvero una critica. Quelle avventure erano marcatamente high fantasy e un accento pesante era stato messo sulla dinamicità degli eventi. Si giocava in maniera avventurosa, dove tutta l’attenzione ricadeva nell’azione, e avendo io il feticcio della descrizione accurata, ne sentivo la mancanza. Sentivo che ci sarebbe stato bisogno di un cambio, cosa che avvenne a metà anni ’90.

Piu o meno nel 1996-1997, incominciò la mia Terza Era di GDR. Dal 1992 avevo in realtà incontrato anche un secondo gruppo di gioco, con il quale giocavamo sempre in Greyhawk. Un Greyhawk duro e puro come scritto nel boxed set, e poco dopo nel magnifico From the Ashes. Dopo un periodo in cui giocavo in parallelo in due setting di Greyhawk completamente diversi tra loro, prendemmo la travagliata decisione di far convergerele le realtà. Gli eventi cataclismici che avevano sconvolto le Flanaess nel “gruppo 1″ (un PG sfuggito al controllo del DM aveva conquistato l’80% del mondo, con tanto di situazioni di ucronia allucinanti… M-16 e carri armati nella penisola dei barbari… cose cosi) furono ridimensionati, cosi da permettermi di trasferire diversi PC dal gruppo 1 al gruppo 2. Il gruppo 2 si rivelò essere ancora oggi il miglior gruppo di gioco a cui abbia partecipato. Decidemmo di fissare l’anno di gioco (fino ad allora indefinito) con l’inizio delle Guerre di Greyhawk. Diverse avventure simultanee  cominciarono nell’anno 583 CY, in un Greyhawk fortemente customizzato, con alcuni eventi radicalmente diversi da quelli del mondo “canonico”. Un paio finirono, altre furono troncate sul nascere. I nostri personaggi iconici caddero nell’oblio. Entro il 2000, prima dell’uscita della terza edizione, tutto si spense.

Nel 2005, dopo una lunga pausa dal mondo del GDR, tornai timidamente a Greyhawk con un paio di gruppi di gioco che si sfaldarono altrettanto rapidamente. Ero arrugginito, e “vecchio dentro”. Le sessioni di gioco grigie e pallose.

Quest’anno però, il 2009, il ritorno a Greyhawk è stato netto e definitivo. Al momento ci sono ben 4 avventure aperte, di cui una “online”, una un cui gioco, e due in fase di sviluppo. Il lavoro dietro a questo revival è notevole, ma estremamente piacevole. Ho ripreso in mano le schede di dozzine di NPC e PC delle vecchie campagne, e sto scrivendo una storyline del “mio” Greyhawk. Allo stesso tempo stando attento a intaccare quanto meno possibile quello che è ritenuto “canon” dai puristi di Greyhawk.

L’anno è il 596 CY. Tredici anni sono passati dagli eventi narrati in quelle lontane avventure. Alcuni personaggi sono cambiati, alcuni sono rimasti immutati. Il mondo sta ricucendo le ferite dopo tre anni di guerre violentissime.

Si riparte!

Vulcan Stev’s fantasy prophecy
Since before the umbra songs of the deep whales have said;
“Only when the hollow guard falls and the laughing machine prevails.
When the soulless tormentor reinforces their defenses and as the towns free their bonds.
Vulcan Stev will annex the Rast. They will romance the nomad.
Peace will reappear.”

What does it mean?  I’m sure it has something to do with Twitter and Oprah’s recent release of the Oprahoids thereon.

Feel free to share yours.

…So much hate…

However, if you do sling dice, then the following link should make you smile…or cringe…

The 101 Worst Players to ever have in a game

So I figured I’d download one of them old classics – I’ve already played the Fallout games (albeit I should replay them now) and I have yet to play Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment. Innocent little old games. How big can they be, I think. I check.

Let us check Wikipedia now. How many CDs would these games come on? 1 should be more than enough for a pre-2000 game, I conclude. After all, these games didn’t have 16x AA or ulta-real textures to worry about. Ah, Planescape: Torment – 4 CDs, with 2 extra since later releases.

Baldur’s Gate? 5 CD-ROMs (a DVD is also available). Now, I normally wouldn’t have a problem with 1-DVD games. But seriously, this game came out in 1998. Didn’t they have some sort of audio compression tools back then?

I suppose that leaves Icewind Dale, which packs in 2 CDs (which is still more than I had expected). I guess I will give this one a try sometime soon, or blast it and go back to good old Fallout, which I am going to have to replay anyways, considering Bethesda’s ambitious third installment is in the line.

I’ve just learned that the great game designer Gary Gygax died today at the age of 70. This makes me sadder than I would have imagined.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that I owe much to Gygax’s flagship game, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Indeed my imagination, which is probably my most treasured gift, has been immeasurably expanded thanks to AD&D. Some of my fondest memories of youth are centered on that incredible and classic role-playing game.

Rest in peace, Ernest Gary Gygax.

And thank you.

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