[ SECRET POST #2189 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2189 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 084 secrets from Secret Submission Post #313.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Cthulhu isn't science fiction

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously, though, Cthulhu isn't science fiction, and most of Lovecraft's work wasn't science fiction either.

Re: Cthulhu isn't science fiction

[(Anonymous)]

I'd argue that originally it was. Lovecraft had a very mechanistic, non-spiritual view of the universe, and if I'm not mistaken he explicitly stated that his Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are not really gods or mystical beings; they are just a representation of the universe's crushing forces and/or ancient, more developed beings - he was kinda sorta like a proto-Daniken in these regards.

The spiritual stuff - gods, mysticism and magic - was added to the mythos later on, and August Derleth was one of the main offenders, IIRC. Then, of course, it blossomed into the modern pulpy pop-culture version of the mythos, which is about as close to Lovecraft's original themes as Xena is to Greek mythology.

Re: Cthulhu isn't science fiction

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I agree with you re: the ultimate role of Derleth in shaping the mythos, but I can't see my way around to saying that Lovecraft's original work was science fiction in any meaningful sense. I agree that the old ones and other things in Lovecraft's work are mostly naturalistic forces. But there's nothing speculative, or future-looking, or mechanistic in terms of his presentation of them and what he's doing with them narratively; it's all about the horrifying realization of limitations of man's place in the universe, dark forces beyond our ken, etc etc etc. The Old Ones are concepts as much as anything else and the world that Lovecraft wants to describe is using new concepts of science to re-awaken older concepts, if that makes any sense.

I mean, it all comes down to questions about genre definitions, which are really difficult to define and really squishy. So if you want to call it science fiction I suppose it'd be hard for me, at the end of the day, to really definitively say "no" to you. But to me, I think it's closer to horror or fantasy in terms of the rhetorical / aesthetic thrust of where Lovecraft's story is going. And certainly, if you look at it in a genre sense, I think Lovecraft's work has been pretty well pushed over into horror and has a decent separation between it and SF as a self-constructed genre field.

Re: Cthulhu isn't science fiction

[(Anonymous)]

I enjoyed reading your answer and, above all, I enjoy the level of discussion below a picture of a plushie Cthulhu used as a sex-toy :D Who says the Internet is gowing downhill?