-Lovecraft, the call of Cthulhu
The same theme of Lovecraft's novels is: the value of human beings in the universe is meaningless, and all exploration of the mysterious unknown will lead to a disastrous outcome. Humans often rely on the power of other powerful beings in the universe, but these beings have no interest in humans, if not malicious.
"Why do you want to publish something like Lovecraft's Crazy Mountain in the name of science fiction? Is it really that hard for you to make such nonsense? ..... If we tell such a story-for example, two people scared themselves to death by looking at a stone carving in an ancient ruin, or who was chased by something that even the author couldn't describe clearly, or who talked endlessly about such indescribable fears as five-dimensional windowless chamber and about-Soto. -are composed of the future adventure story "fantasy tan", it can only hope that god will help science fiction.
The above content is taken from the column of letters from readers in the July issue of Fantasy Tan (1936). The disgusting object mentioned in the letter is, of course, one of the two Cthulhu Myths published by H·P· Lovecraft in the same year. Not all readers reacted negatively to Lovecraft's story, but those praising comments were still drowned out by shouts of anger, confusion and despair.
In 1930s, most science fiction novels in American magazines were plots and adventure stories concocted by hired literati. They just turned a lazy ranch into a planet, and then randomly applied the same story, replacing the cattle thief with a space robber. 1936, people who are keen on science fiction are just used to jumping on starships, doing somersaults on drives faster than the speed of light (forget Einstein's theory) and blowing up Betelgeuse's eight-legged freak. They couldn't understand the atmosphere that Lovecraft painstakingly described, which made his two fearless explorers in the Antarctic wilderness babble in the face of unparalleled fear.
Lovecraft's "myth" story is essentially different from the Star Wars story advocated by Dr. Smith and his colleagues, not just focusing on the difference between plot and atmosphere. At that time, many representatives with the theme of space exploration, such as E·E· smith, Knight Schakne and Ralph Milne Farley, were born in the last century. At that time, people also believed that the operation of the universe followed the eternal Newton's law. Just like our sun, every planet is a star. When astronomers in the19th century aimed their spectrometers at space, they got reliable information. They knew that there were hydrogen, helium, magnesium, sodium and other elements on those planets, which were exactly the same as those we found in our own solar system. /kloc-at the end of 0/9, when physicists thought they had a complete understanding of the universe, was the ultimate dream of human beings to conquer the universe really such an impossible task?
1905, Albert Einstein initiated the scientific revolution of the 20th century, which will eventually crush the teachings of classical physics. With the development of relativity, quantum mechanics, subatomic particles and other fields, the universe seems to become less understandable. With Copernicus and Galileo reversing anthropocentrism, modern people begin to realize that he is not the center of the universe, but a special case of the universe. The universe and its neutron stars, quasars and black holes are all strange to us. We are strangers in the universe.
Of all the writers who published sci-fi works in magazines in the 1930s, only Lovecraft transcended the monotony of his colleagues and conveyed the mystery of the universe, the most sensitive topic in the 20th century. "All my stories," Lovecraft wrote in a letter 1927, "are based on the most basic premise, that is, the ordinary laws, interests and emotions of human beings are invalid and meaningless in the vast universe." This is a declaration, which actually summarizes the changes in modern science that were taking place at that time. At that time, those stunned physicists were surprised to find a stranger who was not bound by Newtonian mechanics. Einstein had to struggle with non-Euclidean geometry when expounding his general theory of relativity, and the non-Euclidean angle of Cthulhu's submarine city represented the same non-Euclidean geometry. The mysterious meteorite radiation depicted in The Color of Outer Space replicates the radium experiment completed by Antoine henry beck Rael and Curie in the early 20th century. Even the contemporary development of higher mathematics-chaos phenomenon-was predicted by the myth of Cthulhu. In the mythical Lovecraft Pantheon, the Supreme God is Asazo, the stupid blind god, and the master of the spiral black vortex in the ultimate chaotic space. If properly equipped with Mandelbrot's fractal theory and armand feigenbaum's constant theory, Assasso should be like a duck to water in the sequence and disturbance of contemporary chaos.
It is meaningless to talk more about the consistency between the Cthulhu myth and the scientific development in the 20th century, because these concepts borrowed by Lovecraft are not from the formal knowledge of higher mathematics, that is, the theory of relativity, but from an accidental discovery and insight into "the attack of chaos and unknown space demons". Historically, Lovecraft has been closely integrated with those social and economic elites left over from the 20th century. He is a hopeless dreamer, an outsider of his own time and the universe. Argentine writer Julio Cortazar once pointed out that "all completely successful short stories, especially science fiction, are the products of mental illness, nightmares or hallucinations that are transformed into media outside the field of neurology through objective neutralization." As far as Lovecraft is concerned, he regards the universe as a refuge for terrible miracles, which is only a vivid portrayal of his morbid outsider psychology; Just as Lovecraft is an outsider in his hometown of Providence, in the myth of Cthulhu, modern people are also outsiders, lost their way, drifting with the tide and teetering on the edge of the terrible abyss. 1936, when Lovecraft's "Crazy Mountain" was serialized in "The Legend of Wonder", those contents suggesting the vastness and mystery of the universe were dismissed as nonsense by readers, but the scientific revolution in the 20th century has confirmed the correctness of those contents. In a recent article, physicist lewis thomas said: "The greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century is the discovery of human ignorance." Remember the above sentence, stop for a while, turn to the first page of this book and read the first paragraph of the Call of Cthulhu.
1937 after lovecraft's death, bizarre horror stories still prevailed. When John W. Campbell took over The Legend of Surprise, Lovecraft was a few years behind. His editing ability and influence have made remarkable progress in the field of American science fiction magazines. Despite his amazing talent, he still maintains a basic design idea, that is, he has extraordinary confidence in the absolute effectiveness of technological victory, human intelligence and resourcefulness. In contrast, Lovecraft seems to be like a whimsical alien in the sky of science fiction.
Providence's lonely hermit and his mythical legacy are eternal in the eyes of his friends and admirers. Like members of a secret society, they guard their oracles and idols and safeguard the "Cthulhu myth". Among these efforts, there is a controversial imitation writing plan, which was initiated by Akam Publishing House and established in 1939.
In the 1930s, Lovecraft personally wrote stories imitating "myths" for different versions of clients, and he specifically mentioned that those stories were "(I) would never associate my name with them under any circumstances." A few years after Lovecraft's death, Francis T Laney's "myth" vocabulary began a new era in 1942. During this period, Cthulhu and his cosmic companions were carefully examined, analyzed, classified, systematized, graded and abridged. In this way, in the 1970s, an American science fiction writer proposed in a simple book about "myth" that there were "gaps" in Lovecraft's conception, and he and others had the responsibility to "fill" these "gaps" with new stories. Before Lovecraft, the story of frogs eating people had only a fairly limited market; In the decades after his death, the imitation of Cthulhu's works gradually developed into an industry with a large market share.
There are a huge number of works derived from this kind, which are "hateful rubbish" in the words of the late E Hoffman Price, but the impact on "myth" is not as heavy as those real infringements. Lovecraft's hypothesis of cosmic evolution is by no means a static system, but an idea with artistic value, which always adapts to the personality development and interest changes of its creator. Therefore, in the last 10 year of Lovecraft's life, with the Gothic taste gradually giving way to the cosmological complex, early "myths" such as "Dunwich's panic" (1928) were still firmly confined to the closed area of declining New England, and only six years later, in the "shadow of incompatibility", Lovecraft began to make people. Similarly, when Lovecraft finally began to lose interest in horror novels in the 1930s, people can see from the comparison that in Dunwich's Panic, the god in the "myth" is still a demon entity with spells, while in Out-of-step Shadow, the alien creature has become an open and out-and-out socialist, which directly reflects Lovecraft's suddenness. If he lived to the 1940s, this myth would continue to develop with the change of its creator. For the imitator behind the author, there is no hard and fast system to apply.
Furthermore, the essence of "myth" lies neither in countless fictional gods nor in those banned books that have been sealed for a long time, but in a convincing attitude towards the universe. Universe is a term repeatedly used by Lovecraft when describing his important aesthetics: "I choose horror novels because they are most in line with my tendency-I want to realize my strongest and most lasting desire at once, and fantasize that these annoying restrictions of time, space and natural laws can magically stop or violate us forever and frustrate our curiosity about infinite space ..."
In a sense, all Lovecraft's mature works are composed of cosmic miracle stories, but in the last 65,438+00 years of his life, when he began to give up Dunsany-style exoticism and New England black witchcraft and turned to explore the mysterious and chaotic theme of outer space, he wrote a lot of works called "Cthulhu Myth" by later generations. In other words, "myth" represents those cosmic miracle stories of Lovecraft, in which the author has begun to turn his attention to the cosmic world of modern science; On the other hand, the gods in the "myth" embody such a universe that is aimless, indifferent and strange beyond words. Therefore, those who have created a poor imitation of "myth" for many years should understand that "myth" is not an effortless formulaic expression and a series of vocabularies, but a universal mentality.
The Cthulhu fairy tale included in this book is one of the few successful works of this kind. The first few may seem to be vulgar works of popular culture now, but the rest are quite wonderful, such as the stories from Robert Bloch (Notes on Abandoned Village), Fritz Laibl, Ramsey Campbell, Colin Wilson, Joanna Lars and Stephen King, which particularly embody the style of H·P· Lovecraft and make their own contributions to spreading the "myth".
Richard A. Lubov, the author of the last novel in this book, gave us more things: he not only wrote the excellent "myth" story of "discovering the Gurico Zone"; Besides Lovecraft, he is also the only author I have ever seen who conveys the innovative meaning of breaking the tradition. In this outstanding work, lubov not only used the essential "myth" terminology, created the most basic atmosphere of the cosmic miracle, but also reproduced the exciting splendor of those "myth" prototypes. If you want to know why 1936 is excited, open the book "Discovering the Gurico Zone" and look at its opening. It can be seen that Lovecraft's life is like being cursed, and disease, pain and poverty have always surrounded him-which undoubtedly shaped the dark side of his personality and led to his works always full of madness, terror and evil. All kinds of blows and pains are intertwined, and finally the Cthulhu myth system flows out of his works.
The most famous is Cthulhu, which sleeps in the underwater city of Roo-Lee-ah in the South Pacific. When the positions of many stars are correct, Roo-Lee-ah will float from the bottom of the sea, and Cthulhu will wake up and bring disaster to the earth. ",they are the root of all evil, magic, secret instruments, is unexplored. They come from other planets and bring life to the earth-but they are by no means kind, they create life just for slavery! They are as powerful as gods, so they have become the origin of all myths on earth. Humans have no power against them. Once they wake up, mankind will only perish! Even those who try to explore their secrets or accidentally come into contact with them in the novel will be swallowed up by endless fear after a glance, and then go completely crazy or die.