You could always start one!

The original Deities and Demigods had the Cthulhu Mythos in it (AD&D), but I think Derleth or somebody from Arkham threatened to sue, and TSR, not realizing that Lovecraft was public domain, cut them out in later editions.

Steampunk can go right to hell with its Victorian nostalgia. This is not an era that deserves to be resurrected.

In defense of Steampunk, the "punk" in the name implies rebellion, a focus on the underclasses and disenfranchised, and fighting against the status quo. There's also a predominance of lady steampunkers and fashion. <i>League of Extraordinary Gentleman</i> is steampunk (at least initially) and that's pretty good. Nonwhites and ladies kick ass in that book.

Sherlock Holmes and the works of Charles Dickens are also Victorian, as are the works of Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stephenson, and Jules Verne. There's plenty GOOD stuff from the era. Unfortunately Sturgeon's Law still holds, and most of it is crap. It's just that, over a century later, most of the crap is forgotten (except when resurrected by stuff like this podcast) and it's only the good stuff that gets remembered.

Whoah. This forum goes to some interesting places sometimes. I like reading these threads, even when I don't have anything useful to contribute, because I enjoy watching you guys chase the rabbit down the hole.

"all-has-read." That's pretty neat.

On the subject of Azathoth, and His power - isn't Azathoth just a personification for the universal constant of entropy? Everything breaks down, even the entire universe will some day, because of Azathoth. That's not nothing.

Alan Moore is well acquainted with HP Lovecraft. I'm not sure what Moore thinks of Lovecraft, but he's certainly recycled a lot of Lovecraft's material (as he recycles so many other authors). In League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for example, Moore provides the weirdest fan-fic mash-up of all when Bertie Wooster encounters the Great Old Ones.

And of course, there's Moore's Deep One porn, if you can stomach it.

I agree with you that human behavior certainly follows a pattern, as all animal behavior follows patterns. For example, almost all organisms will tend to follow structure. It holds true for both bass and humans. I read of attempts in the second half of the 20th century to create a sort of new socialist architecture, with wide open plazas and cafeterias to encourage human interaction. But it turned out that people usually like to congregate in small groups within booths or other structure (defensible space).

We tend to forget that we're animals, too. For example, the behavior you describe puts me in mind of genetic memory (similar to? different from? same as? collective unconsciousness). Our ancestors were bipedal apes living on the savannah. Standing up in the middle of an open space makes you a target for larger, more dangerous animals - big cats, hyenas, et al. Clumping together in groups around copses of trees not only provides the benefit of shade, but also a bit of camouflage. And while scampering up a tree won't save you from a leopard, having a bunch of your mates around with you when you do just might.

And there's still the question of what Helen Vaugn did, or revealed, to her lovers to make them all kill themselves within hours of consorting with her. Casual sex, in and of itself, just doesn't fit the bill. Those men caught a glimpse of Something lurking beneath or behind the mundane world, and it was more than they could handle. Even the kinkiest nookie doesn't normally do that!

As I admitted, my reading is uncharitable. I think yours is the opposite.

The problem is that, while the story TELLS us that there is cosmic horror going on, we only have flat cardboard and uninteresting characters reacting to this horror. Which some would say exists in Lovecraft's stories as well, but Lovecraft's language and ideas are more fully realized than Machen's. The prose is mediocre, the protagonists bland, and the details of the horrible events so vague as to be left entirely up to the reader's discretion to delineate them. Not terribly enjoying the story, I decided it was just sex. There's not much else in the text to support anything more, other than Helen's disintegration at the end - which, again, happens "off screen" as it were, as so much of the "story" does.

So, yes, it all struck me as a lot of noise about women's sexuality. Not necessarily kinky sex, either (although I've read Victorian porn and know they were not as prudish as we've been lead to believe), but simply the idea that a woman could take control of her own body and do with it what she willed. Because there's no positive female voice in this book - they're either victims or villains. We never actually meet Helen, or get any grip on who or what she is (vs. Wilbur Whately or his invisible brother, who get more character development than poor Helen ever does), and have to rely upon a coterie of potentially unreliable narrators for the entire book. Clarke witnesses a crime and then does nothing about it for twenty years... but he's supposed to be a good guy? The protagonists are all bachelors, and it's the married men who get ruined. I can't help but see a lot of icky sexual politics tied up in this story.

The one truly horrifying moment in the book is the lobotomy.

As a counter-example of a book that deals with similar themes but is GOOD, I live you Dracula. Stoker's story is as much about fear of the other (specifically the Eastern European) as it is about fear of sex, but there's a relatively strong female character at the heart of the story who even has her own voice.

Do you think the unmentionable parts of the story were just about sex? I had the impression they were about something much more disturbing than people getting it on with satyrs and fauns, but maybe I'm reading too much into it.

My uncharitable reading of it was that it was just sex. "Oh noes - lesbian sex in the woods! How unnatural!" Etc.

I see that a number of people hate this story. Just out of curiosity, for those of you who do hate it, are there any Victorian era stories that you do like? In other words, do people find this story difficult because it is Victorian or because it is exceptionally difficult for fiction from that era?

I like plenty of Victorian era fiction. But this story just disappointed me. I had been looking forward to consuming it, because of the connection to Dunwich, but the Puritanical center to the story didn't do much for me at all.

So here's a random thought: d'you suppose the name "Helen Vaughan" is a subtle play on "fawn?" Fawn, Pan? No?

Interesting thought! Hadn't considered that. And rather trivially, half of 'Helen' is 'Hell'...

At least her surname wasn't "Back."

My first exposure to this story (and many others, including, I think, those of HP), was through a tiny little book I picked up at a grade school book fair. I don't remember the title, but it was a survey of monsters from science fiction and horror. It covered literature and film. I learned about the Horla and Ymir from the same book. I do faintly remember that the Horla, "What Was It?" and "The Colour Out of Space" were discussed all at the same time.

Monster classification!

I always thought that the zombie and the vampire were on the same continuum. Both are undead, need to consume living matter (brains, flesh, or blood), and have specific vulnerabilities (head and heart).

Werewolves are just a way to explain serial killers, aren't they? I mean, aren't there medieval records of people being tried for being werewolves? Not just folktales, but people actually accused of being werewolves. I don't think it was just mushrooms contaminating the water supply - I think it was the Dahmers and Jack the Rippers of the period.

My initial subscription has expired. I went to PayPal to re-up, but I'm having trouble. My initial purchase was made simply with a card, through PayPal, but now it's requiring me to use a PayPal account. Is there any way around that?

Thanks!

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, by Paul Malmont (2007)
        Not a Mythos story, it's a pulp story. More accurately, a story about the pulps and the pup writers and how their lives begin to strangely reflect the fiction they produce. Lovecraft has a cameo, and its a doozy.

I am still not a fan of this story. Totally with Genus Unknown on this. It's just so stuffy and Victorian, and so clearly about the fear of female sexuality. I can't get past the assumption that the "terrible unmentionable things" are just sexual in nature. Like the teenage girl who killed herself - she and Helen were having makeouts in the woods. Totally Victorian thing to be horrified about.

I think, by leaving so much of the story up to the reader, Machen miscalculates. Something should be spelled out, so you can have an idea of what we're supposed to be scared about. But all that blank space... just gets filled with what I think would scare a Victorian gentleman, which is not remotely scary to me.

I will take the "Dunwich Horror" over this any day.

I listened to it via the Supernatural Horror in Literature podcast by Charly Crawmer.

Maybe it's his deadpan, dry reading of it coloring things for me, but I love how the horror and otherworldliness of the plot is almost completely submerged by the politeness and stiff formality of upper-class society.

And I love how Pan as an entity is hinted at and revealed through like 3 degrees of separation... not to be wholly understood. It reminded me of a more masterful treatment of the basic premise of Medusa's Coil, even more so than The Dunwich Horror.

Crawmer's reading is my only exposure to the story myself. I had the opposite reaction, though. I really didn't care for it. I found the basic idea to be mostly about rich British white guys disparaging a loose woman; prudery, Victorian snobbery, and centuries old social mores. Never once did I sense any cosmic horror.

Great episode, and I can't wait for part 2, but man, I've never liked this story. I'd heard what a huge influence it was on "The Dunwich Horror" (not least in the story itself), and after reading it I have to say that "Dunwich" is by far the superior story. Lovecraft took everything of value from "The Great God Pan," rewrote it better, and then tossed out the rest.

"Dunwich" is much better. Maybe more visceral and obvious, but there's also a palpable sense of horror rather than just a couple of dudes being outraged by a lady who has sex with lots of people.

Still, I agree with GU that it was a great episode. It actually did more for me regarding this story than Crawmer's podcast did.