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Athammaus

Athammaus

The Hyperborean cycle is a series of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith that take place in the fictional land of Hyperborea (present-day Greenland). The cycle is included in the Cthulhu mythos because various elements in Smith's work are borrowed by other mythos authors, H.P. Lovecraft in particular. The Hyperborean cycle is a unique branch of the Cthulhu mythos because it mixes cosmic horror with an Iron age-style setting. Adding to the peril is the rapidly approaching ice age, which threatens to wipe out all life on the Hyperborean continent. Azathoth is the supreme deity of the cycle, followed by Cxaxukluth, Azathoth's spawn. A host of other deities, many of whom are related to Azathoth, play important roles in the cycle; foremost is the toad-god Tsathoggua, who dwells in Mount Voormithadreth. Many of these beings would later appear in the works of other mythos authors such as Lin Carter and Robert M. Price. =Hyperborea= Hyperborea is a legendary continent in the Arctic. Before it was overwhelmed by the advancing ice sheets of the Pleistocene age, Hyperborea was warm and fertile, with lush jungles inhabited by the last remnants of the dinosaurs. A race of yeti-like bipeds known as the Voormi once populated Hyperborea, but were wiped out by the pre-human settlers that migrated here from the south. These pre-humans built the first capital of Hyperborea at Commoriom. Later, they moved to Uzuldaroum when prophesies foretold of Commoriom's doom.

Gods of Hyperborea

Tsathoggua

:Main article: Tsathoggua The early settlers of Hyperborea at first worshipped the toad-god Tsathoggua, the patron deity of the Voormi. Later, they turned to more conventional deities – primarily, Yhoundeh, the elk-goddess.

Yhoundeh

Yhoundeh (the elk-goddess) is the name of the deity worshipped in the waning days of Hyperborea. A ban was soon placed on Tsathoggua's cult, enforced by Yhoundeh's inquisitors. As the Hyperborean civilization drew to a close, Yhoundeh's priests fell out of favor and the populace returned to the worship of Tsathoggua. Yhoundeh is said to be the fissal spawn of the elk-spirit Zyhumé, who dwells beneath Voormithadreth in the Cavern of Archetypes. According to the Parchments of Pnom, Yhoundeh is the wife of Nyarlathotep, avatar of the Outer Gods.

Cities of Hyperborea

Commoriom

Commoriom was the first seat of power in Hyperborea, established by the pre-human migrants from the south. In its heydey, Commoriom was a grand city, built of marble and granite and marked by a skyline of altitudinous spires. Legend has it that the populace fled Commoriom when the White Sybil of Polarion foretold of its destruction. However, Athammaus, headsman of Commoriom, disputes this claim and attributes the abandonment to the increasingly loathsome depredations of the horrid outlaw Knygathin Zhaum.

Uzuldaroum

Uzuldaroum became the capital of Hyperborea after the populace left Commoriom. The city lies a day's journey from the former capital. It was the last population center in Hyperborea before glaciers overtook the continent.

Geographical locations in Hyperborea

Eiglophian mountains

The Eiglophian mountains are a terrifying range of ebon peaks, said to be "glassy-walled", and are believed to be honeycombed with hidden tunnels. The Eiglophian mountains cross the middle of the Hyperborean continent, with one range stretching to the south and another to the east. ----

Mount Voormithadreth

Mount Voormithadreth is a four-coned extinct volcano and is the tallest peak in the Eiglophian mountains. It is the dwelling place of various horrors, including the toad-god Tsathoggua and the spider-god Atlach-Nacha (his colossal web is here, too).

Y'quaa

The gray-litten cavern of Y'quaa is the dwelling place of Abhoth, the Source of Uncleanliness. It is indirectly connected with the Cavern of Archetypes. Atlach-Nacha originated here. Y'quaa might be the true home of the enigmatic Ubbo-Sathla.

The Cavern of Archetypes

The cavern of the Archetypes is a vast cavern inhabited by the spectral archetypes of all life on this earth. Nug and Yeb reside here. This bizarre place may have been the original dwelling-place of Yig and Mappo no Ryûjin. The archetypes are most likely the spawn of Ubbo-Sathla.

Notable denizens of Hyperborea

The Voormi

The Voormi are the bestial humanoids that once occupied Hyperborea. After being largely wiped out by pre-human settlers, the Voormi's most savage members were restricted to caves in the upper slopes of the Eiglophian mountains. Before Hyperborea's fall, the remaining Voormi were hunted for sport. ----

Citizens

Athammaus

Athammaus was the headsman of Commoriom before its fall. He was also one of the last to leave the city when the population fled to Uzuldaroum. Afterwards, he recorded a chilling testament of Commoriom's final days. Athammaus was descended from a long line of headsman. A consummate professional, Athammaus always took great pride in his skill and never shirked his official duty. His career came to an abrupt end when he faced the task of executing the outlaw Knygathin Zhaum. (Moreover, it is likely that Athammaus became an unwitting pawn in Knygathin Zhaum's sinister designs.)

Eibon

Eibon was a sorcerer and priest of Zhothaqquah (Tsathoggua). He holds renown as the writer of the Book of Eibon, a tome that, among other things, chronicles Eibon's life, and includes his magical formulae and rites of Zhothaqquah. He lived in a five-story, five-sided tower made of black gneiss that stood beside the sea on Mhu Thulan. Eibon disappeared shortly after Yhoundeh's premier inquisitor, Morghi, came to his black tower with a writ for his arrest. When the inquisition came knocking, Eibon fled to Cykranosh (the planet Saturn) through a magic panel given to him by Zhothaqquah. Eibon was never again seen on Earth after that. (When Morghi vanished close on the heels of Eibon, many believed that he was in league with the sorcerer all along and so is largely responsible for the decline in the worship of Yhoundeh.)

Satampra Zeiros

Satampra Zeiros was the master thief of Uzuldaroum. His exploits are legendary. He lost his right hand during a failed venture to loot the deserted city of Commoriom (though his companion Tirouv Ompallios suffered a worse fate).

References

Bibliography

The following short stories are considered part of Smith's Hyperborean cycle.
- Coming of the White Worm, The (1941)
- Door to Saturn, The (1932)
- House of Haon-Dor, The (1933) [story fragment]
- Ice-Demon, The (1933)
- Seven Geases, The (1934)
- Tale of Satampra Zeiros, The (1931)
- Testament of Athammaus, The (1932)
- Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles, The (1958)
- Ubbo-Sathla (1933)
- Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan, The (1932)
- White Sybil, The (1935)

Books

- Harms, Daniel. The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Chaosium, Inc., 1998. ISBN 1-568-82119-0.
- Smith, Clark Ashton and Will Murray. The Book of Hyperborea. Necronomicon Press, 1996. ISBN 0-940884-87-9.

Web sites

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External links

- [http://www.eldritchdark.com/misc/hyper/hyper-a-f.html#GlossA Glossary of Hyperborean terms] ---- Category:Fantasy series Category:Clark Ashton Smith

Short stories

A short story is a form of short fictional narrative prose. Short stories tend to be more concise and to the point than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Because of their brevity, successful short stories rely on literary devices such as character, plot, theme, language, and insight to a greater extent than long form fiction. Famous modern English-language short stories include The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, "The Dead" by James Joyce, To Build A Fire by Jack London, and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. Short stories have their origins in the prose anecdote, a swiftly-sketched situation that comes rapidly to its point, with parallels in oral story-telling traditions. With the rise of the comparatively realistic novel, the short story evolved as a miniature, with some of its first perfectly independent examples in the tales of E.T.A. Hoffman and Edgar Allan Poe.

History

Short stories date back to the oral story-telling traditions which produced such notable tales as Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey. Tales such as these were told in a rhyming, poetic format, with the rhymes acting as a mnemonic tool for people to remember the story. Short sections of these tales focused on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The overall arch of the story would only emerge through the telling of multiple sections of the tale. Two ancient forms of short stories which did not exist within a larger narrative format are the fable and the anecdote. Fables, which tend to be folk tales with an explicitly expressed moral, were said by the Greek historian Herodotus to have been invented by a Greek slave named Aesop in the 6th century BCE (although other times and nationalities are also given for Aesop). These ancient fables are known today as Aesop's Fables. The other ancient form of short story, anecdotes, were popular during the years of the Roman Empire. Anecdotes functioned as a sort of parable, a brief realistic narration that embodies a point. Many of the surviving Roman anecdotes were later collected in the Gesta Romanorum in the 13th or 14th century. Anecdotes remained popular in Europe well into the 18th century, when the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley were published. In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to transition into written stories in the early 14th century, most notably with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Both of these books are composed of individual short stories (which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fictions) set within a larger narrative story (a frame story), although the frame tale device was not adopted by all writers. At the end of the 16th century, some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic "novella" of Matteo Bandello (especially in their French translation). During the Renaissance, the term novella was used when referring to short stories. The mid 17th century in France saw the development of a refined short novel, the "nouvelle", by such authors as Madame de Lafayette. In the 1690s, traditional Fairy tales began to be published (one of the most famous collections was by Charles Perrault). The appearance of Antoine Galland's first modern translation of the Thousand and One Nights (or "Arabian Nights") (from 1704; another translation appeared in 1710-12) would have an enormous influence on the 18th century European short stories of Voltaire, Diderot and others.

Modern short stories

Modern short stories emerged as their own genre in the early 19th century. Early examples of short story collections include the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales (1824-1826), Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales (1842), Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1836), and Guy de Maupassant's La Maison Tellier (1881). In the later part of the 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong market demand for short fiction between 3,000 and 15,000 words in length. Among the famous short stories to come out of this time period was Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov. In the first half of the 20th Century, a number of high-profile magazines, such as The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's, and The Saturday Evening Post, all published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short stories was so great, and the money paid for them so high, that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short story writing to pay off his numerous debts. The demand for short stories by print magazines hit its peak in the middle of the 20th century, when in 1952 Life Magazine published Ernest Hemingway's long short story (or novella) The Old Man and the Sea. The issue containing this story sold 5,300,000 copies in only two days. Since then, the number of commercial magazines that publish short stories has declined, even though several well-known magazines like The New Yorker continue to feature them. Literary magazines also provide a showcase for short stories. In addition, short stories have recently found a new life online, where they can be found in online magazines, in collections organized by author or theme, and on blogs.

Elements and characteristics

Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually, a short story will focus on only one incident, has a single plot, a single setting, a limited number of characters, and covers a short period of time. In longer forms of fiction, stories tend to contain certain core elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting, situation and main characters); complication (the event of the story that introduces the conflict); rising action, crisis (the decisive moment for the protagonist and their commitment to a course of action); climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point of the story with the most action); resolution (the point of the story when the conflict is resolved); and moral. Because of their short length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern. For example, modern short stories occasionally have an exposition. More typical, though, is an abrupt beginning, with the story starting in the middle of the action. As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a climax, crisis, or turning-point. However, the endings of many short stories are abrupt and open and may or may not have a moral or practical lesson. Of course, as with any art form, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary by author.

Length

Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that it must be able to be read in one sitting. Other definitions place the maximum word length (or number of words in the story) at 7,500 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words (at one extreme) and no shorter than 1,000. Stories shorter than 1,000 words fall into the flash fiction genre. Fiction surpassing the maximum word length parameters of the short story falls into the areas of novelettes, novellas, or novels.

Genres

Short stories are most often a form of fiction writing, with the most widely published form of short stories being genre fiction such as science fiction, horror fiction, detective fiction, and so on. The short story has also come to embrace forms of non-fiction such as travel writing, prose poetry and postmodern variants of fiction and non-fiction such as ficto-criticism or new journalism.

Examples of classic short stories

- [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html A Rose for Emily] by William Faulkner
- [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/heming.html The Snows of Kilimanjaro] by Ernest Hemingway, the classic stream-of-consciousness short story
- [http://www.underthesun.cc/Classics/Jackson/lottery The Lottery] by Shirley Jackson
- [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/goodman.html A Good Man Is Hard to Find] by Flannery O'Connor
- [http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html The Gift of the Magi] by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
- [http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/tell-tale-heart.html The Tell-Tale Heart] by Edgar Allan Poe
- [http://art-bin.com/art/or_weltypostoff.html Why I live at the P.O.] by Eudora Welty

Other resources

- [http://www.storysouth.com/millionwriters.html Million Writers Award for best online short story of the year]
- [http://titan.iwu.edu/~jplath/sschron.html Chronology of American short stories]
- [http://www.short-stories.co.uk Large online library of contemporary and classic short stories]
- [http://www.the-short-story.com/en/index.html Also an online library of contemporary and classic short stories]
- [http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/results?title=short+stories Short Story eTexts] at Project Gutenberg
- [http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/results?subject=short+stories More Short Story eTexts] at Project Gutenberg
- [http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=109851 Jewish Chassidic Stories]

Greenland

:For the town in New Hampshire, see Greenland, New Hampshire. Greenland (Greenlandic: Kalaallit Nunaat, meaning "Land of the Greenlanders"; Danish: Grønland, meaning "Greenland") is a self-governed Danish territory. An Arctic island nation located in the continent of North America, both geographically and ethnically; politically and historically, however, Greenland is closely associated with Europe. The Atlantic Ocean and Iceland lie to Greenland's Southeast; the Greenland Sea to the East; the Arctic Ocean to the North; Baffin Bay and Canada to the West. Greenland is the world's largest island, and is the largest dependent territory by area in the world. It also contains the world's largest national park. About 81 percent of its surface is covered by ice, known as the Greenlandic ice cap. Nearly all Greenlanders live along the fjords in the south-west of the island, which has a milder climate. Most Greenlanders have both Kalaallit (Inuit) and Scandinavian ancestry, and speak Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) as their first language. Greenlandic is spoken by about 50,000 people, which is more than all the other Eskimo-Aleut languages combined. A minority of Danish migrants with no Inuit ancestry speak Danish as their first language. Both languages are official, with the West Greenlandic dialect forming the basis of the official form of Greenlandic. There is an on-going diplomatic sovereignty dispute between Canada and Greenland (represented internationally by Denmark) over the tiny Hans Island. Greenland was one of the Norwegian Crown colonies until 1815, when it formally became a Danish colony, although Norway and Denmark had been in a personal union for centuries (see Denmark-Norway). Greenland became an integral part of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1953. It was granted home rule (hjemmestyre) by the Folketing (Danish parliament) on May 1 1979. The law went into effect the following year. The Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II, remains Greenland's Head of state.

History

Greenland was home to a number of Paleo-Eskimo cultures in prehistory, the latest of which - the Early Dorset culture - disappeared around the year 200. Hereafter, the island seems to have been without humans for some eight centuries. Icelandic settlers found the land uninhabited when they arrived ca. 982. They established three settlements near the very Southwestern tip of the island, where they thrived for the next few centuries, disappearing after over 450 years of habitation. The name Greenland comes from those Scandinavian settlers. In the Norse sagas, it is said that Eiríkur Rauði (Erik the Red) was exiled from Iceland for murder. He, along with his extended family and slaves, set out in ships to find the land that was rumored to be to the northwest. After settling there, he named the land Greenland in order to attract more people to settle there. The fjords of the Southern part of the island were lush and had a warmer climate at that time, possibly due to what was called the Medieval Warm Period. These remote communities thrived and lived off farming, hunting and trading with the motherland, and when the Scandinavian monarchs converted their domains to Christianity, a bishop was installed in Greenland as well. The settlements seem to have coexisted relatively peacefully with the Inuit, who had migrated southwards from the Arctic islands of North America around 1200. In 1261, Greenland became part of the Kingdom of Norway, which was part of the Kalmar Union and later of the dual monarchy of Denmark-Norway. After almost five hundred years, the settlements simply vanished, possibly due to famine during the 15th century in the Little Ice Age, when climatic conditions deteriorated, and contact with Europe was lost. Bones from this late period were found to be in a condition consistent with malnutrition. Some believe the settlers were wiped out by plague or exterminated by Inuits. Other historians have speculated that Basque or English pirates or slave traders from the Barbary Coast contributed to the extinction of the Greenlandic communities. Denmark-Norway reasserted its latent claim to the colony in 1721. The island's ties with Norway were severed by the Treaty of Kiel of 1815, through which Sweden gained control over mainland Norway while Denmark retained all of their common overseas possessions (which at that time included small territories in India, West Africa and the West Indies, as well as lands in northwestern Europe). Norway occupied and claimed parts of (then uninhabited) Eastern Greenland in the 1920s, claiming that it constituted Terra nullius. Norway and Denmark agreed to settle the matter at the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1933, where Norway lost. Greenland was also called Gruntland ("Ground-land") on early maps. Whether Green is an erroneous transcription of Grunt ("Ground"), which refers to shallow bays, or vice versa, is not known. During World War II, Greenland was on its own, the connection to Denmark having been cut on April 9, 1940 when Denmark was occupied by Germany. Through the cryolite from the mine in Ivigtut, Greenland was able to pay for goods bought in the United States and Canada. The manner in which Greenland had been run prior to the war was altered. The Sirius Patrol, guarding the Northeastern shores of Greenland using dog sleds, was founded in 1941 and participated in defeating the Germans, which gave Denmark a better position in the postwar turmoil. In 1953 Greenland was made an equal part of the Danish Kingdom. In 1979 Greenland took one step further when home rule was granted. During the War Eske Brun was governor and ruled the Island via a 1925-law concerning the governing of the Island where, under extreme circumstances, the governors could take control. The other governor Aksel Svane was transferred to the USA as leader of the supply to Greenland commission.

Politics

Greenland's Head of State is the Danish Monarch, currently Margrethe II. The Queen's government in Denmark appoints a Rigsombudsmand (High commissioner) representing the Danish government and monarchy. Greenland has a 31 member elected parliament. The head of government is the Prime Minister, who is usually the leader of the majority party in Parliament. It is notable that Greenland is not part of the European Union, despite Denmark itself being a member state.

Geography

European Union European Union The total area of Greenland measures 2 099 988 km², of which the ice sheet covers 1 799 992 km² (85,7%). The coastline of Greenland is 24,430 miles long (39,330 km), about the same length as the Earth's circumference at the Equator. All towns and settlements of Greenland are situated along the ice-free coast, with the population being concentrated along the Western coast. Of the 18 municipalities, 15 are in West Greenland (Aasiaat, Ilulissat, Kangaatsiaq, Qasigiannguit, Qeqertarsuaq, Upernavik, Uummannaq in the northern part, Maniitsoq, Nuuk, Paamiut, Sisimiut in the central part, and Ivittuut, Nanortalik, Narsaq, Qaqortoq in the southern part), 2 in East Greenland (Ammassalik, Illoqqortoormiut) and 1 in North Greenland (Qaanaaq). Northeastern greenland, part of North Greenland, is not part of any municipalitiy, but is the site of the world's largest national park, Northeast Greenland National Park. At least four scientific expedition stations and camps had been established in the ice-covered central part of Greenland (indicated as pale blue in the map to the right), on the ice cap: Eismitte, North Ice, North GRIP Camp and The Raven Skiway. Currently, there is a year-round station, Summit Camp, on the ice cap, established in 1989. The radio station Brondlund Fjord was, until 1950, the northernmost permanent outpost of the world. The extreme north of Greenland, Peary Land, is not covered by an ice cap, because the air there is too dry to produce snow, which is essential in the production and maintenance of an ice cap. If the Greenland ice cap were to completely melt away, Greenland would most likely become an archipelago. Between 1989 and 1993, U.S. and European climate researchers drilled into the summit of Greenland's ice sheet, obtaining a pair of two-mile (3.2 km) long ice cores. Analysis of the layering and chemical composition of the cores has provided a revolutionary new record of climate change in the Northern Hemisphere going back about 100,000 years and illustrated that the world's weather and temperature have often shifted rapidly from one seemingly stable state to another, with worldwide consequences.

Economy

Greenland suffered economic contraction in the early 1990s, but since 1993 the economy has improved. The Greenland Home Rule Government (GHRG) has pursued a tight fiscal policy since the late 1980s which has helped create surpluses in the public budget and low inflation. Since 1990, Greenland has registered a foreign trade deficit following the closure of the last remaining lead and zinc mine in 1990. Greenland today is critically dependent on fishing and fish exports; the shrimp fishing industry is by far the largest income earner. Despite resumption of several interesting hydrocarbon and mineral exploration activities, it will take several years before production can materialize. Tourism is the only sector offering any near-term potential and even this is limited due to a short season and high costs. The public sector, including publicly owned enterprises and the municipalities, plays the dominant role in Greenland's economy. About half the government revenues come from grants from the Danish Government, an important supplement to the gross domestic product.

Demographics

Culture

The Greenland National Museum and Archives[http://www.natmus.gl] is located in Nuuk.

Miscellaneous topics

- Communications in Greenland
- Transportation in Greenland
- Military of Greenland
- Foreign relations of Greenland
- University of Greenland

References

- CIA World Factbook 2000

External links

- [http://www.nanoq.gl/english.aspx Greenland Homerule] - Official site
- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gl.html Greenland] - CIA World Factbook
- [http://www.statgreen.gl/ Statistics Greenland]
- [http://www.norden.org/web/1-1-fakta/gr_kort.htm Greenland Map] - Hi-Res Map at the Nordic Ministerial Council
- [http://www.mapsofworld.com/lat_long/greenland-lat-long.html Latitude and Longitude of Important locations in Greenland] Category:Greenland Category:North Atlantic Islands Category:Islands of Denmark Category:Special territories of the EU Category:Danish dependencies Category:Former Norwegian colonies zh-min-nan:Chheⁿ-tē ko:그린란드 ja:グリーンランド simple:Greenland th:เกาะกรีนแลนด์

Cthulhu mythos

Cthulhu mythos is the term coined by the writer August Derleth to describe the shared themes, characters, and elements in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, his protegés, and writers influenced by him. Together, they form the mythos that authors, writing in the Lovecraftian milieu, have used—and continue to use—to craft their stories. Although this mythology is sometimes called the Lovecraft Mythos—most notably by the Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi—it has long since moved beyond Lovecraft's original conception. Still, purists who wish to discuss Lovecraft's work, rather than the modifications and expansions of it written by others, consider this to be the most accurate term. Lovecraft himself occasionally referred to it as the Arkham cycle, after the main fictional town in his world, or Yog-Sothothery, after one of its primary gods.

Lovecraft and the mythos

Common themes in Lovecraft's fiction are the insignificance of humanity in the universe and the search for knowledge ending in disaster. Humans are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity.

Lovecraft's pantheon

universe When Lovecraft conceived his imaginary mythology, he apparently never laid out a definitive plan to follow. Instead, he simply launched into writing his stories, adding matter-of-fact references to the various deities and monsters of the mythos. Furthermore, Lovecraft often used these references capriciously, probably favoring drama over consistency (a noteworthy example is Lovecraft's use of Old Ones, a term whose meaning varied from story to story). Nonetheless, Phillip A. Schreffler, in his book The H. P. Lovecraft Companion, argues that by carefully scrutinizing Lovecraft's writings a workable framework emerges for a pantheon of beings (see figure at right). Not included in this chart is Nodens, a member of a separate group of deities (never expanded by Lovecraft) that were more or less benign. Lovecraft's central deities are Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth, both representing opposing cosmic principles. Azathoth, the "blind and idiotic" ruler of the pantheon, occupies the literal center of the universe, whereas Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth's co-ruler, embodies the infinite, existing in all places and in all times. Next in the hierarchy is Shub-Niggurath (whom Lovecraft mentions but never describes in his stories), representing a kind of pagan fertility god. Attending Azathoth at his court are the Other Gods, mysterious beings that dance mindlessly around Azathoth's throne in cadence to the piping of a demonic flute, and Nyarlathotep, the avatar and messenger of Azathoth and the Other Gods. Nyarlathotep is the only being that can interact intelligently with human beings, though he often manifests himself in human form to disguise his true appearance. The topmost tier of deities is served by earthbound, non-human beings. Cthulhu is regarded as the priest of the gods, while Dagon appears to be his subordinate. The lowest tier consists of the Elder Things and the Mi-go, both extraterrestrial races, and the Deep Ones, ocean-dwelling humanoids, which serve Cthulhu and Dagon. Because of the additions of later authors, the mythos pantheon has grown considerably and is now populated by deities and beings never conceived of by Lovecraft. Nevertheless, the original schema, which places Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth at the top of the pantheon, is still widely recognized by many mythos writers.

Structure of the mythos

The mythos is centered on the Great Old Ones, a fearsome assortment of ancient, powerful deities that once ruled the Earth. They are presently quiescent, having fallen into a death-like sleep at some time in the distant past. The most well-known of these beings is Cthulhu, who currently lies "dead [but] dreaming" in the submerged city of R'lyeh somewhere in the Southeast Pacific Ocean. One day, "when the stars are right", R'lyeh will rise from beneath the sea, and Cthulhu will awaken and wreak havoc on the earth. Despite his notoriety, Cthulhu is not the most powerful of the deities nor is he the theological center of the mythos. Instead, this position is held by the demon-god Azathoth, an Outer God, ruling from his cosmically-centered court. Nonetheless, Nyarlathotep, who fulfills Azathoth's random urges, has intervened more frequently and more directly in human affairs than any other Outer God. He has also displayed more blatant contempt for humanity, including his own worshipers, than almost any other Lovecraftian deity.

Derleth's involvement

Derleth had his own take on the mythos and tried to make it conform to his own Catholic values and dualism. Instead of a universe of meaninglessness and chaos, Derleth's mythos is a struggle of good versus evil. Derleth once wrote:

As Lovecraft conceived the deities or forces of his mythos, there were, initially, the Elder Gods... [T]hese Elder Gods were benign deities, representing the forces of good, and existed peacefully at or near Betelgeuze in the constellation Orion, very rarely stirring forth to intervene in the unceasing struggle between the powers of evil and the races of Earth. These powers of evil were variously known as the Great Old Ones or the Ancient Ones...
—August Derleth, "The Cthulhu Mythos"

Lovecraft was an atheist and claimed that Kant's ethical system "is a joke." Because of this, Derleth's theories about the Cthulhu mythos are inconsistent with Lovecraft's design. The mythos was never intended to be a cohesive, singular entity; instead, it should be regarded as simply a collection of ideas that can be used in separate works to provoke the same emotions. Another problem with Derleth's mythos is that the Elder Gods never appear in Lovecraft's writings; except for one or two who appear as "Other Gods", such as Nodens in Lovecraft's "The Strange High House in the Mist" (though perhaps this is an example of how "very rarely [they stir] forth"; i.e., usually never). Furthermore, the Great Old Ones, or Ancient Ones, have no unified pantheon. Indeed, the term "Ancient Ones" appears in only one Lovecraft story, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (moreover, the story is actually a collaboration between Lovecraft and his friend and correspondent E. Hoffman Price). Derleth also introduced the concept of elementals, tying the deities of the mythos to the four elements of "air", "earth", "fire", and "water". This system left gaps which Derleth filled in by creating the beings Cthugha and Ithaqua, representing the spheres of "fire" and "air", respectively. However, the system is fraught with problems. For example, Derleth classified Cthulhu as a water elemental, but if this were so, how could he be trapped beneath the ocean and how could his psychic emanations be blocked by water? Another problem is that Derleth matched the "earth" beings against the "fire" beings and the "air" beings against the "water" beings, which is not consistent with the traditional elemental dichotomy (namely, that air opposes earth and fire opposes water). To his credit, Derleth became a publisher of Lovecraft's stories after his death. Lovecraft himself was very critical of his own writings and was often easily discouraged, especially when faced with any rejection of his work. Were it not for Derleth, Lovecraft's writings and the Cthulhu mythos might have remained largely unknown.

Elements of the mythos

Overview

Tables appearing under these entries are organized as follows:
- Name. This is the commonly accepted name of the being or mythos element.
- Epithet(s), Other name(s). This field lists any epithets or alternate names. These are names sometimes mentioned in books of arcane literature, but may also be the names preferred by cults.
- Description. This entry gives a brief description of the being or mythos element.
- References. This field lists the stories in which the being or mythos element makes a significant appearance or otherwise receives important mention. A simple two-letter code is used (the key to the codes is found here). If a code appears in bold, this means that the story introduces the being or mythos element.

Beings

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Great Old Ones

:Main article: Great Old Ones (includes a table listing all the Great Old Ones in the mythos) The Great Old Ones are powerful and ancient creatures worshiped by deranged human cults. Many of the Great Old Ones are made of an unearthly substance having properties unlike normal matter. A Great Old One's influence is often limited to the planet on which it dwells. If a Great Old One is based on a planet outside the solar system, it can only extend its influence to earth when the star of its planetary system is in the night sky. In such cases, the help of cultists performing various rituals may be required. ----

Outer Gods

:Main article: Outer Gods (includes a table listing all the Outer Gods in the mythos) The Outer Gods have unlimited influence, unlike the Great Old Ones, and function on a cosmic scale. They include a subgroup known as the Lesser Outer Gods, or Other Gods. ----

Elder Gods

:Main article: Elder Gods (includes a table listing all the Elder Gods in the mythos) The Elder Gods are beings who oppose the Outer Gods and the Great Old Ones. Many consider them to be non-Lovecraftian, because they introduce a "good versus evil" dichotomy into the cosmic indifference of Lovecraft's fiction. However, others argue that these beings have no more concern for human notions of morality than the beings they oppose, and that humanity and the human world are beneath their regard. ----

Great Ones

:Main article: Dreamlands#The Great Ones The Great Ones are the so-called "gods" of the Dreamlands, but they are not as powerful as the Great Old Ones and are not even as intelligent as most humans. However, they are protected by the Outer Gods, especially Nyarlathotep. ----

Other supernatural beings

Non-human species of the mythos

Table-a (A–F)

Table-b (G–M)

Table-c (N–Z)

Cults in the mythos

Arcane literature and other media

* Reference to first appearance.

Fictional locations

* Reference to first appearance.

Non-fictional elements of the mythos

The Cthulhu mythos incorporates many historical, astronomical, and mythological elements from the real world.
- Aldebaran, a star
- Bast, cat goddess of ancient Egypt
- Book of Dzyan
- Celaeno, a star in the Pleiades
- Dagon, the Mesopotamian fish god of vegetation and fertility
- John Dee, a historical person
- Fomalhaut, a star
- H. P. Lovecraft, as himself
- Hypnos, the god of sleep in Greek mythology
- Irem, City of Pillars, a legendary buried city from Islamic mythology (possibly the lost city of Ubar)
- Lemuria, a fabled land bridge, but a lost continent in the mythos
- Nodens, the Hunter, a Celtic deity worshiped in Britain
- Olaus Wormius, Danish antiquary cited as translator of the Necronomicon
- Pluto, identified by Lovecraft as Yuggoth
- Ponape, an island
- The Severn Valley, in England
- Tunguska, in Siberia
- The Voynich Manuscript
- Wendigo, borrowed from Native American mythology

References

Books

- Bloch, Robert. "Heritage of Horror" (1982) in The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1st ed.), Ballantine Books, 1982. ISBN 0-345-35080-4.
- Derleth, August. "The Cthulhu Mythos" in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1969.
- DiTillio, Larry and Lynn Willis. Masks of Nyarlathotep, Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1996. ISBN 1-568-82069-0.
- Harms, Daniel. The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.), Chaosium, Inc., 1998. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
- Joshi, S.T. H. P. Lovecraft (1st ed.), Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1982. ISBN 0-916-73236-3 / ISBN 0-916-73235-5 (paper). :—and David E. Schultz. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. ISBN 0-313-31578-7.
- Price, Robert M. "Introduction". The New Lovecraft Circle, Robert M. Price (ed.), New York, N.Y.: Random House, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-345-44406-X.
- Shreffler, Phillip A. The H. P. Lovecraft Companion, Westport, CT / London, England: Greenwood Press, 1977. ISBN 0-837-19482-2.
- Turner, James. "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!" in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1st ed.), Random House, 1998. ISBN 0-345-42204-X.

Web sites

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- Tremlett, J. Edward.

Notes

#Harms, "A Brief History of the Cthulhu Mythos", The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, pp. viii–ix. #Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft, pp. 31. #Although Lovecraft sometimes mentioned the "Arkham cycle" in his correspondence, he never explained its meanings; it is possible that he was referring to his stories that take place in his mythical New England setting. (Joshi & Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, pp. 50.) #Lovecraft's flippant use of Yog-Sothothery—a veiled reference to Yog-Sothoth, one of the mythical beings in his tales—probably indicates that he never took his mythos very seriously. In a letter to Frank Belknap Long in early 1931, Lovecraft wrote "that 'Yog-Sothoth' is a basically immature conception [and] unfitted for really serious literature". (Joshi & Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, pp. 51.) #Tremlett, 'The Unknown Mind', "A Color Out of Space, A Shadow Out of Time: H.P. Lovecraft & His Works". Tremlett writes: "[Lovecraft] described his philosophy in writing as 'Cosmicism': a state where mankind, which could not be regarded as the special creation of any deity, could only have its self-worth, and views, rebuffed or utterly ignored by the cosmos at large. Outside of its Earthly environs, mankind was of no real importance to the rest of the universe. Mankind's struggle to confront the alien, and the beyond, and assert its 'rightful place' amongst them, could only end in death or madness." #Price, "Introduction", The New Lovecraft Circle, pp. xviii–xix. Price writes: "One seeks forbidden knowledge, whether wittingly or, more likely, unwittingly, but one may not know till it is too late... The knowledge, once gained, is too great for the mind of man. It is Promethean, Faustian knowledge. Knowledge that destroys in the moment of enlightenment, a Gnosis of damnation, not of salvation." #Daniel Harms and S.T. Joshi note that cosmic indifference towards humanity is a key Lovecraftian theme (Harms, "A Brief History of the Cthulhu Mythos", pp. viii; Joshi, "H. P. Lovecraft", The Scriptorium, section III.) #Shreffler, "The Hierarchy of Monsters", The H. P. Lovecraft Companion, pp. 156–7. #Nodens, the Lord of the Abyss, holds a singular place in Lovecraft's writings because he is the only god to intervene on behalf of human beings. (Shreffler, pp. 158.) Examples of this may be found in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926) and "The Strange High House in the Mist" (1931). #Shreffler, pp. 158–162. #Harms, "A Brief History of the Cthulhu Mythos", pp. viii. # Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928). #Bloch, "Heritage of Horror", pp. 9. #Derleth, "The Cthulhu Mythos", Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, pp. vii. #Joshi, The Scriptorium, "H. P. Lovecraft", section II. #This quote lacks a reference. You can improve this article by providing one. # Turner, "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!", Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, pp. viii. Turner writes: "Lovecraft's imaginary cosmogony was never a static system but rather a sort of aesthetic construct that remained ever adaptable to its creator's developing personality and altering interests... [T]here was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated by the pasticheur... [T]he essence of the mythos lies not in a pantheon of imaginary deities nor in a cobwebby collection of forgotten tomes, but rather in a certain convincing cosmic attitude." #Tremlett, 'The Big Question', "A Color Out of Space, A Shadow Out of Time: H.P. Lovecraft & His Works". #Harms, "Elemental Theory", pp. 101. #Price, "August Derleth: Myth-Maker". #Bloch, "Heritage of Horror", pp. 8. #Joshi, The Scriptorium, "H. P. Lovecraft", section I. #Harms, The Official Cthulhu Mythos FAQ, "Part 2: Mythos Lore", section 2.1, "Outer Gods". #Harms, "Part 2: Mythos Lore", section 2.1, "Elder Gods". #Harms, Ibid. Harms writes: "Others consider their inclusion proper and fitting within their own interpretation of Lovecraft." Lovecraft views humanity as being insignificant in the universe; thus, the Elder Gods share little concern for humankind's fate. #Harms, "Part 2: Mythos Lore", section 2.1, "Great Ones", "Other Gods". # These beings appear in the role-playing game supplement Masks of Nyarlathotep (DiTillio & Willis). #Keith Herber, The Fungi from Yuggoth (1984). Role-playing game material. # This cult appears in Masks of Nyarlathotep (DiTillio & Willis). #Ibid. #Scott D. Aniolowski, "Mysterious Manuscripts" in The Unspeakable Oath #3, John Tynes (ed.), Seattle, WA: Pagan Publishing, August 1991. Periodical (role-playing game material).

External links

- [http://www.hplovecraft.com/ The H.P. Lovecraft Archive]
- [http://lovecraft.cjb.net The ULTIMATE Cthulhu Mythos Book List], listing of all mythos novels, anthologies, collections, comic books, and more
- [http://www.clare.ltd.new.net/cryptofcthulhu/ Crypt of Cthulhu], online version of the magazine
- [http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cthulhic.html cthulhic], entry in the Jargon File
- [http://www.cthuugle.com/ Cthuugle], the H.P. Lovecraft search engine
- [http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/lurker.htm The Lurker at the Threshold of Interpretation: Necronomicon Hoaxes and Paratextual Noise]
- [http://members.fortunecity.com/johnsilence/issue.htm Mythos Online], short stories relating to the Cthulhu mythos
- [http://www.necfiles.org/Mythos.htm The Official Cthulhu Mythos FAQ], by Daniel Harms
- [http://www.epberglund.com/RGttCM/contents.htm Reader's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos], maintained by E.P. Berglund
- [http://www.shoggoth.net/ Shoggoth.net], a Cthulhu mythos blog
- [http://www.templeofdagon.com/ The Temple of Dagon], general Lovecraftian information and repository for Cthulhu mythos stories by modern writers
- [http://www.macguff.fr/goomi/unspeakable/home.html Unspeakable Vault (of Doom)], WebComic drawn by French artist Francois Launet
- [http://yog-sothoth.com Yog-Sothoth.com], a discussion site about the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game

H.P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy and horror fiction, noted for giving horror stories a science fiction framework. Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, but his works have become quite important and influential among writers and fans of horror fiction.

Biography

Lovecraft was born on 20 August 1890 in his family home at 454 (then 194) Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. His father was Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a traveling salesman of jewelry and precious metals. His mother was Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, who could trace her ancestors in America back to their arrival in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Unusual for the time, both were in their 30s when they married, and it was the first marriage for both. Howard was their only child. When Lovecraft was three his father became acutely psychotic at a hotel in Chicago, Illinois, where he was on a business trip, and was brought back to Butler Hospital in Providence, where he remained for the rest of his life. His affliction was general paresis. Lovecraft was thereafter raised by his mother, two aunts (Lillian Delora Phillips and Annie Emeline Phillips), and his grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, with whom they lived until his death. Lovecraft was a child prodigy, reciting poetry at age two 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 young Howard's interest in the weird by telling him original tales of Gothic horror. Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child and was said by his biographer (L. Sprague de Camp) to have suffered from a rare disease known as poikilothermism, the result of which made him always feel cold to the touch. He attended school only sporadically but he read much. He produced several hectographed publications with a limited circulation beginning in 1899 with The Scientific Gazette. Whipple Van Buren Phillips died in 1904, and the family was subsequently impoverished by mismanagement of his property and money. The family was forced to move down the street to 598 Angell Street, accommodations which were much smaller and less comfortable. Lovecraft was deeply affected by the loss of his home and birthplace and even contemplated suicide for a time. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1908, as a result of which he never received his high school diploma. This failure to complete his education — his hopes of ever entering Brown University dashed — nagged at him for the rest of his life, and he in fact maintained that he was a highschool graduate. Lovecraft wrote fiction as a youth, but then set it aside for some time in favour of poetry and essays, before returning to fiction in 1917 with more polished stories such as The Tomb and Dagon. The latter was his first professionally published work, appearing in Weird Tales in 1923. Also around this time he began to build up his 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 the young Forrest J. Ackerman, Robert Bloch (Psycho) and Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian series). Lovecraft's mother also was committed to the Butler Hospital, where she died from surgical complications on May 21, 1921. Shortly after, he attended an amateur journalist convention where he met Sonia Greene. She was Ukrainian, a Jew, and, having been born in 1883, seven years older than Lovecraft. They married in 1924, and the couple moved to the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Lovecraft's aunts may have been unhappy with this arrangement. Lovecraft himself rather disliked New York life. A few years later he and Greene agreed to an amicable divorce, and he returned to Providence to live with his aunts during their remaining years. Due to the unhappiness of their marriage, some biographers have speculated that Lovecraft could have been asexual. Back in Providence Lovecraft lived in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" at 10 Barnes Street until 1933 (this is the address given as the home of Dr. Willett in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward). The period after his return to Providence — the last decade of his life — was Lovecraft's most prolific. During this time period 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 like 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. 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 Robert E. Howard's suicide. In 1936 he was diagnosed with cancer of the intestine and he also suffered from malnutrition. He lived in constant pain until his death the following year (1937) in Providence, Rhode Island. Lovecraft's grave in Swan Point Cemetery in Providence is occasionally marked with graffiti quoting his famous phrase from The Call of Cthulhu (originally from The Nameless City): :"That is not dead which can eternal lie, :And with strange aeons even death may die." Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument. That was not enough for his fans, so in 1977 a group of individuals pitched in to buy him a headstone of his own. They chose a plain block of granite, 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.

Background of Lovecraft's work

Much of Lovecraft's work was directly inspired by his nightmares, and it is perhaps this direct insight into the subconscious and its symbolism that helps to account for their continuing resonance and popularity. All these interests naturally led to his deep affection for the works of Edgar Allan Poe, who heavily influenced his earliest macabre stories and writing style. Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of imitative fantasies in a "Dreamlands" setting. It was probably the influence of Arthur Machen, with his carefully constructed tales concerning the survival of ancient evil, and his mystic beliefs in hidden mysteries which lay behind reality, that finally helped inspire Lovecraft to find his own voice from 1923 onwards. 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 mankind, and which are hinted at in aeon-old myths and legends. The strangeness of the mythos' style may have been influenced, and was certainly forshadowed, by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. The term Cthulhu Mythos, itself, was coined by Lovecraft's correspondent and fellow author, August Derleth, after Lovecraft's death; Derleth referred to his artificial mythology as "Yog-Sothothery"[http://www.sff.net/people/timpratt/611.html]. His stories created one of the most influential plot devices in all of horror: the Necronomicon, the secret grimoire written by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. The resonance and strength of the Mythos concept have led some to believe that Lovecraft had based it on actual myth, and faux editions of the Necronomicon have also been published over the years. His prose is somewhat antiquarian. He was fond of heavy use of unfamiliar adjectives such as "eldritch", "rugose", "noisome", "squamous", and "cyclopean", and of attempts to transcribe dialect speech which have been criticized as inaccurate. His works also featured British English (he was an admitted Anglophile), and he sometimes made use of anachronistic spellings, such as "compleat/complete" and "lanthorn/lantern". Lovecraft was a prolific letter writer, inscribing multiple pages to his group of correspondents in small longhand. 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 that 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. In his view, the 19th century, particularly the Victorian era, was a "mistake".

Survey of the work

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 are published by Arkham House, a publisher originally started with the intent of publishing the work of Lovecraft, but which has since published a lot of other fantastic literature as well. Lovecraft's poetry is collected in The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft, while much of his juvenilia, various essays on philosophical, political and literary topics, antiquarian travelogues, and other things, can be found in Miscellaneous Writings. Also, 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.

Writing phases

Lovecraft had three very distinct categories of fiction in which he wrote during his life. Although the groups' stories were often written in overlapping time periods with the other groups, there were still periods where almost all of Lovecraft's writings could be categorized in one of the below mentioned groups. It should be noted that these distinctions have been drawn by others and not by Lovecraft himself.
- Macabre stories (approximately 1905–1920)
- Dream-Cycle stories (approximately 1920–1927)
- Cthulhu Mythos stories (approximately 1925–1935) It might also be noted that some critics see little difference between the Dream-Cycle and the Mythos, often pointing to the recurring Necronomicon and subsequent 'gods'. A frequently given explanation is that the Dream-Cycle belongs more to the genre of fantasy, while the Mythos is science fiction;

Letters

Despite the fact that Lovecraft is mostly known for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of Lovecraft's writing mainly consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. S. T. Joshi estimates that Lovecraft wrote about 87,500 letters from 1912 until his death in 1937 — one famous letter from November 9, 1929 to Woodburn Harris being 70 pages in length. 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 responsible for the enormous number of letters Lovecraft produced. 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 four publishing houses that have released letters from Lovecraft — Arkham House with its five-volume edition Selected Letters being the most prominent. 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.) and Necronomicon Press (Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett et al).

Copyrights

There is no little controversy over the copyright status of many of Lovecraft's works, especially his later works. All works published in the US before 1923 are public domain. However, there is some disagreement over who exactly owns or owned the copyrights and whether the copyrights for the majority of Lovecraft's works published post-1923 - including such prominent pieces as The Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness - have now expired. Questions center over whether copyrights for Lovecraft's works were ever renewed under the terms of the USA Copyright Act of 1976 for works created prior to January 1 1978. If Lovecraft's work had been renewed they would be eligible for protection for 75-95 years after the author's death according to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This means the copyrights would not expire on some of Lovecraft's works until 2019 at the earliest, providing that no further laws extend the periods of copyrights within the USA. Similarly, the European Union Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection of 1993 extended the copyrights to 70 years after the author's death. 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.[http://phantasmal.sourceforge.net/Innsmouth/LovecraftCopyright.html] However, prominent Lovecraft scholar 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 descendents, 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. According to Peter Ruber's (the current editor of Arkham House) essay, The Un-Demonizing of August Derleth, certain letters obtained in June 1998 detail the Derleth-Wandrei acquisition of Lovecraft's estate. It is unclear whether these letters contradict Joshi's views on Lovecraft's copyrights.[http://www.epberglund.com/RGttCM/nightscapes/NS15/ns15nf01.htm] It is also worth noting that 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, Dungeons & Dragons, included in one of its earlier suppliments a section on the Cthulhu Mythos; they were forced to remove this from later editions because of Chaosium's trademark. 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. By "wide citation" he hoped to give his works an "air of verisimilitude" and 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 References to the Cthulhu Mythos).

Race, Class, and Sex

The racist, classist and sexist themes in much of Lovecraft's writing evoke strong reactions in many modern readers. Lovecraft was an avowed Anglophile, and held English culture to be the pinnacle of civilization, with the descendants of the English in America as something of a second-class offshoot, and everyone else below them (see, for example, his poem "[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_American_to_Mother_England An American to Mother England]). Lovecraft's writing showed a distinct disinclination towards mixing with other ethnic groups, reverence for birth-issued social status, and a preference for traditional social roles for women. Racial, ethnic, class, and sexual stereotypes are frequently encountered in Lovecraft's work. A typical example of this sentiment is found in the name of the black cat "Nigger-Man" in his tale The Rats in the Walls. The narrator in "The Rats in the Walls" expresses sentiments which could be considered hostile towards Jews (although several of Lovecraft's closer friends and correspondents were Jewish), Italians, and Poles. Racist views can also be found in his poetry, particularly in On the Creation of Niggers, and New England Fallen (both 1912). Contemporary critics have decried Lovecraft's presumed white supremicism, particularly in the treatment of immigrants and African-Americans. However, Lovecraft does not spare even northern European ethnic groups from his onslaught of negative ethnic stereotyping. The degenerate descendants of Dutch immigrants in the Catskill Mountains, "who correspond exactly to the decadent element of white trash in the South," (Beyond the Wall of Sleep, 1919) are common targets. The Temple presents a stereotypical arrogant and coldly murderous Prussian aristocrat U-boat captain from World War I who makes frequent references to his "iron German will," supremely rational Prussian mental powers, and the insignificance of human life compared to the need to glorify the Fatherland. Perhaps the best example of his classist views can be found in the short story Cool Air (1926): the (presumably Anglo-Saxon) narrator speaks disparagingly of the poor Hispanics of his neighborhood, but he worshipfully respects the wealthy and aristocratic Spaniard Dr. Muñoz, "a man of birth, cultivation, and discrimination." Lovecraft drew upon the history of his own ethnic group for the environment of much of his work, and his love for Anglo-Saxon history and culture is often-times repeated in his work (such as King Kuranes' nostalgia for England in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath). Characteristically, this history is viewed sardonically. A major Lovecraftian theme is the individual who finds that his lineage is accursed or interbred with a non-human strain. Important examples are Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920), The Rats in the Walls (1923), and The Shadow over Innsmouth (1931). This theme 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. Lovecraft expressed racist and ethnocentric beliefs in his personal correspondence and he gave a thorough summary of his views on race and culture in a letter to J. Vernon Shea written September 25, 1933. This letter, 648, can be found in the book Selected Letters IV published by Arkham House. Women in Lovecraft's fiction are rare, and the few leading female characters in his stories often turn out to be agents of some evil, alien force. Paradoxically, Lovecraft married a Jewish woman of Ukrainian ancestry, Sonia Greene. The marriage failed, and some commentators believe that the cause may have been shame felt by Lovecraft over his wife being essentially the breadwinner. It is often thought, however, that the women in Lovecraft hold traditional roles because he was surrounded by such women growing up. While the unapologetic frankness with which Lovecraft reveals his beliefs on race, class, and sex can often seem quite shocking to the early 21st century reader, the modern reader must bear in mind that these attitudes were not at all unusual during Lovecraft's lifetime. The eugenics movement, for example, was quite mainstream in the United States and most of Europe before World War II, to the point where harsh eugenics policies were actually written into the law in many states. Racial segregation was still legally enforced throughout much of the United States. Very many prominent and powerful individuals in these times openly avowed attitudes similar to or even harsher than Lovecraft's.

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.

Historical locations

- Copp's Hill, Boston, Massachusetts
- Red Line (MBTA)
- Pawtuxet(nonextant)
- 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.

Fictional locations

- Miskatonic University in the fictional Arkham, Massachusetts
- Innsmouth
- Dunwich

Bibliography

- List of Works by H. P. Lovecraft

Books

- From Arkham House
- Definitive versions with corrected texts by S. T. Joshi:
- At the Mountains of Madness, and Other Novels (7th corrected printing), S. T. Joshi (ed.), 1985. ISBN 0-870-54038-6.
- Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, S. T. Joshi (ed.), 1987. ISBN 0-870-54039-4..
- The Dunwich Horror and Others (9th corrected printing), S. T. Joshi (ed.), 1984. ISBN 0-870-54037-8.
- The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, S.T. Joshi (ed.), 1989. ISBN 0-87054-040-8.
- Miscellaneous Writings (ISBN 0870541684)
- From Ballantine/Del Rey:
- The Tomb and Other Tales (ISBN 0345336615)
- Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (ISBN 034542204)
- The Doom That Came to Sarnath (ISBN 0345331052)
- The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (ISBN 0345326040)
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (ISBN 0345337794)
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (ISBN 0345354907)
- At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (ISBN 0345329457)
- The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (ISBN 0345350804)
- The Road to Madness (ISBN 0345384229)
- Dreams of Terror and Death: The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft (ISBN 0345384210)
- Waking Up Screaming: Haunting Tales of Terror (ISBN 034545829X)
- From Night Shade Books:
- The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft (ISBN 1892389169)
- Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei (ISBN 1892389495)
- From Hippocampus Press:
- The Shadow out of Time (ISBN 0967321530)
- From the Pest Zone: The New York Stories (ISBN 0967321581)
- The Annotated Fungi From Yuggoth (ISBN 0972164472)
- Collected Essays (ISBN 0972164413)
- The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature (ISBN 0967321506 )
- H. P. Lovecraft: Letters to Alfred Galpin (ISBN 096732159X)
- H. P. Lovecraft: Letters To Rheinhart Kleiner (ISBN 0974878952)
- Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue (ISBN 0967321573)
- Primal Sources: Essays on H. P. Lovecraft (ISBN 0972164405)
- An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (ISBN 097487891X)

Adaptations

Movies

Films based (generally very loosely) on specific Lovecraft works (partial list only; see [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0522454/ Lovecraft's IMDB entry] for a more complete selection):
- Cool Air (1998), Adaptation by Bryan Moore starring Jack Donner ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200546/combined IMDb entry])
- The Curse (1987) Adaptation of "The Colour out of Space" ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092809/ IMDb entry])
- Dagon (2001), based less on Lovecraft's story of the same name as on The Shadow over Innsmouth ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264508/ IMDb entry])
- Die, Monster, Die! (1965) (another adaptation of "The Colour out of Space") ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0059465/ IMDb entry])
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (2003), an animated adaptation of the book by the same name ([http://www.petting-zoo.org/Movies_Dreamquest.html Official Site]) ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384057/ IMDb entry])
- The Dunwich Horror (1970) ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065669/ IMDb entry])
- From Beyond (1986) ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091083/ IMDb entry])
- The Haunted Palace (1963), an adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward ([http://us.imdb.com/Title?0057128 IMDb entry])
- Necronomicon (1994) Three short films based on his stories (The Rats in the Walls, Cool Air, The Whisperer in Darkness) ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0107664/ IMDb entry]) Curiously, this film depicts Lovecraft himself stealing the Necronomicon from some sort of religious order.
- Out of Mind: The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (1998), Excellent Lovecraft sampler. Show on Bravo! [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213968/combined IMDb entry]
- Re-Animator (1985) Comedic adaptation of "Herbert West, the Re-Animator" which had two sequels ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089885/ IMDb entry])
- The Resurrected (1992) Adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105242/ IMDb entry])
- Rough Magik (2000), BBC pilot for a Call of Cthulhu show ala "X-Files" starring Paul Darrow ([http://www.lurkerfilms.com Available on DVD])
- The Call of Cthulhu (2005) Highly faithful adaptation of the short story; B/W, silent film, short film ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478988/ IMDb entry: Available on DVD])

Radio production

- The Call of Cthulhu (Broadcast in Tasmania, on Lovecraft's 100th birthday)
- Jeffrey Combs reads Herbert West—Reanimator (Audio book CD by Beyond Books/Lurker Films)
- At the Mountains of Madness (Atlanta Radio Theater Company, www.artc.org)
- The Dunwich Horror (Atlanta Radio Theater Company, www.artc.org)
- The Rats in the Walls (Atlanta Radio Theater Company, www.artc.org)
- The Shadow Over Innsmouth (Atlanta Radio Theater Company, www.artc.org)

Lovecraft's influence in popular culture

:Main article: Lovecraftian horror Beyond direct adaptation, Lovecraft and his stories have had a profound (if sometimes indirect and unnoticed) impact on popular culture, and has been praised by many modern writers of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Much of his influence is secondary, as he was a friend, inspiration, and correspondent to many authors who would gain fame through their creations. He was a friend of Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard; Robert Bloch, author of Psycho; and Frank Belknap Long, Lovecraft's biographer and contributor to the Mythos. Many later creators of horror writing and films show influences from Lovecraft, including Clive Barker and H. R. Giger. Others, notably Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Neil Gaiman, Fred Chappell, Stephen King, Alan Moore, and Brian Lumley, have written stories that are explicitly set in the same "universe" as Lovecraft's original stories. Videogames like Eternal Darkness show a great amount of influence from his work; others, like Call of Cthulhu, are directly based on his job. Lovecraft pastiches are common. For more examples of specific references to and uses of the Mythos in popular culture, see References to the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft's "universe" is so distinctive that he is an eponym for strange creatures and settings. Lovecraftian horror may mean a story that references the Mythos, or that is simply too bizarre to be classified as normal horror. Examples include beings with hideous and completely unnatural features (innumerable sets of eyes, far too many limbs) or architecture or geography of inhuman or alien design (such as the city of R'lyeh, which makes exclusive use of curves in its architecture). Lovecraftian horror stands in contrast to the predominantly humanoid and anthropomorphic designs in mainstream horror and mythology.

External links

- [http://www.hplovecraft.com/ The H. P. Lovecraft Archive]
- [http://www.hplfilmfestival.com The HP Lovecraft Film Festival] - Annual film festival held in Portland Oregon
- [http://www.lurkerfilms.com Lurker Films] - Distributor of Lovecraft related films on DVD
- [http://lovecraft.cjb.net "The Ultimate Cthulhu Mythos Book List"] - Listing of all mythos novels, anthologies, collections, comic books, and more.
- [http://www.templeofdagon.com/ H. P. Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos Information and Forum]
- [http://www.netherreal.de/library/lexicon/ The Cthulhu Lexicon]
- [http://www.netherreal.de/library/timeline/ When the Stars are Right... (Cthulhu Mythos chronology)]
- [http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/lovecraft.html Essay on Lovecraft by S. T. Joshi]
- [http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1498708,00.html Extract from Michel Houellebecq's HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life]
- [http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/ A number of stories by H.P. Lovecraft]
- [http://www.noveltynet.org/content/books/lovecraft/index.php The Complete (?) Works of H.P. Lovecraft in PDF format]
- [http://www.cthulhulives.org The HP Lovecraft Historical Society]
- [http://terror.org.pl/~darkeye/bookz/hor_lovecraft.html Library of Bookz - Biblioteka - Horror - H.P. Lovecraft - (Spiral of Life)]
- [http://www.rinf.com/e-books/HP-Lovecraft.html H.P. Lovecraft Ebooks]
- Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft, H. P.
- Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. ko:하워드 필립스 러브크래프트 ja:ハワード・フィリップス・ラヴクラフト simple:H. P. Lovecraft

Azathoth

Azathoth is a fictional deity in the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. It is referred to in the Weird Tales short stories of Lovecraft, as well as in the stories of other authors. Its epithets include The Blind Idiot God, Seething Nuclear Chaos, the Daemon Sultan, and possibly Lord of All Things. Its avatars include The Madness from the Vaults and Xada-Hgla. It is sometimes claimed that Azathoth corresponds to a monster or god in Sumerian mythology named "Azag-Thoth"; however, "Azag-Thoth" comes from Simon's Necronomicon, which is a fiction based loosely on Sumerian mythology and other things.

Azathoth in the mythos

[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes...
—H. P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Azathoth is described as both blind and

Athammaus

Gods of Hyperborea

Tsathoggua

Yhoundeh

Cities of Hyperborea

Commoriom

Uzuldaroum

Geographical locations in Hyperborea

Eiglophian mountains

Mount Voormithadreth

Y'quaa

The Cavern of Archetypes

Notable denizens of Hyperborea

The Voormi

Citizens

Athammaus

Eibon

Satampra Zeiros

See also

References

Bibliography

Books

Web sites

External links

Short stories

History

Modern short stories

Elements and characteristics

Length

Genres

See also

Examples of classic short stories

Other resources

Greenland

History

Politics

Geography

Economy

Demographics

Culture

Miscellaneous topics

See also

References

External links

Cthulhu mythos

Lovecraft and the mythos

Lovecraft's pantheon

Structure of the mythos

Derleth's involvement

Elements of the mythos

Overview

Beings

Great Old Ones

Outer Gods

Elder Gods

Great Ones

Other supernatural beings

Non-human species of the mythos

Table-a (A–F)

Table-b (G–M)

Table-c (N–Z)

Cults in the mythos

Arcane literature and other media

Fictional locations

Non-fictional elements of the mythos

See also

References

Books

Web sites

Notes

External links

Further reading

H.P. Lovecraft

Biography

Background of Lovecraft's work

Survey of the work

Writing phases

Letters

Copyrights

Race, Class, and Sex