There's a Vertigo title simply called "Lovecraft" by Hans Radionoff & Keith Giffen. It's definitely among the best in terms of artwork (Enrique Breccia). I have mixed feelings about the actual story, maybe it was trying to hard to be clever and thereby lost a lot of its heart. 4/5 from me.

It's been mentioned before on the thread: Amnesia - The Dark Descent
I finally managed to play through it last week. I was only able to play about 20 minutes per go before I would have to stop., so it did take a while to complete.

I appreciated two things in particular:
- The insanity system requires you to look away from monsters if you at all can. This means that your imagination is kept working just as when Lovecraft described Curwen's beasts as 'unfinished'. Also, since you have to rely on your hearing, you engage in a broader sensory experience than the traditional adventure game. Overall, the sense of trying to sense other beings but not allowing yourself to fully SEE them fits in with my ideas of the 'unnamable', 'unknowable', 'unmentionable'...
- The occult aspect is definitely of the 'Dunwich' and 'Dexter Ward' variety, based on corrupting lore and inhuman investigations. The theme is very much that of knowledge->corruption.

Definitely the scariest game ever.

[* The universe is materialistic.]

This is a really good topic - I don't feel that just throwing in the Necronomicon or mentioning the Old Ones or the Deep Ones in your story makes your genre "Lovecraftian."  I think "Lovecraftian" fiction has a very few common elements:

* The universe is materialistic.  Magic, the supernatural, and the paranormal are merely exotic sciences which we humans have yet to understand. 

* Humankind is utterly insignificant.  Not only are we not the top of the heap in evolutionary times, our evolution is really just the result of an accident. 

* The "secret" of the universe is dreadful and ultimately meaningless.  There is no good god with a benevolent purpose at the center of things but rather, blind and dumb "gods" who seem to exist for nothing more than their own amusement.  Some people can handle this knowledge and be fine, for non-nihilists, this revelation drives them mad. 

* Knowledge of the true nature of the world has been preserved to the present day through ancient books and hidden cults.  "Unwholesome" research can reveal this knowledge and usually leads to the destruction of the researcher.

* Humans are under constant threat of "contamination" from these unwholesome influences - whether it's interbreeding with apes or Deep Ones or having their brains taken out and put in jars to travel space.  Corruption of the human body is terrifying. 
 
*Dreams are highly significant.  They are more than just visions of the inner mind but can lead to higher revelation.   

This is a convincing list of what any lover of lovecraftiana would appreciate in a new story or in an adaptation.

I wonder however whether there is a value in a label such as "lovecraftian". The man himself evolved his own ideas about his writing, and the difference in perspective between "The call" and "shadow out of time" is dramatic. He had aspiration that he voiced himself with regards to weird writing and the atmosphere he wanted to establish and the themes he wanted to deal with. But since he himself did not feel that he ever did a good enough job of meeting those aspirations, I don't think we can presume to label any non-Lovecraft work "lovecraftian". Indeed, where "weird fiction" doesn't fit as a label, there "lovecraftian" sounds like an euphemism for "pastiche".

It seems appropriate to talk of a Cthulhu Mythos, which has been constructed by a group of writers and which doesn't necessarily have to be "Lovecraftian". Lovecraft never acknowledged a Cthulhu mythos, so no need to try to separate Lovecraft's part of the Mythos. Hail Derleth!

For creators such as King, Gaiman and Carpenter, I'd say "inspired by Lovecraft" or "touched by Lovecraft".

Hi, I am CRIT. I discovered the podcraft more than two years ago around episode 30. It's weird to think that I have aurally followed Chad and Chris though weddings and continental relocations and pregnancy and birth - and of course from two friends having a lark to become the center of a new wave of Lovecraft-enthusiasm. My fascination with HPL himself is only matched by the energy and creativity that is sloshing around this community!

I read "Call of Cthulhu" when I was in my early teens and it scared me. I thought it was fer'reel. I got through Dexter Ward and even Mountains of Madness. My relationship with the man was ended after a few pages of "Dream-Quest" however, and it took me almost 20 years to make a second attempt. I think that I am not alone in my arc: a fascination with Cthulhu to a wider appreciation of HPLs work, to something of an obsession with HPL 'the man, the thinker, the writer' and now finally an overall appreciation of 'weird' and speculative fiction.

So... hello all! Nice to know you!

@ catamount: “I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content." That sort of sums up Inception, but in a non-dreary way.

@Genus Unknown: And the name of that story is....?

@adamgurri

Wow... like... really?

Lehman's reading in this episode of the weird man's accent is EXACTLY what does it for me. Creepy as hell, exactly because it is not of any accent used today.
Each to their own, I suppose. There's no right or wrong here. But as someone who spends a lot of time both in the UK and in the US, I found the accent authentically alien and not derivative of fake britishness at all. I'm sad to hear that a reading that brought me so much thrills is not doing so universally.

@Chris "that make me very, very jealous"- yeah, because screw Stuart gordon, joshi and Kenneth hite. What do those clowns know?

That (Amnesia, that is) looked positively awesome. I dig that they call their physics/3D software framework the "HPL Engine" :-)

I think horror in general HAS to rely in some sense on irrational fears. Whether it is fear of strangers, fear of sex, fear of failure, fear of betrayal, fear of ones own dark desires... Horror is so named because it evokes non rational responses. Think of something that is objectively terrible, such as the many civil wars that have been plaguing Africa and the Middle East, as well as Mexico. A purely objective, scientific view would loose the horror, as you would have to balance the writing with examples of humanity in the midst of chaos. You would have drama, suspense etc. But you would not have horror. Horror only emerges once you start to apply irrational views to it, for instance by inventing one character that is inhumanly evil, or once you start depicting humanity as fundamentally evil. At this point you start tapping into our deep seated fears and me move from objectively terrifying to profoundly horrifying.

This truth is probably why some people feel so passionate about criticizing Lovecraft, as they see in him the source of Xenophobia and bigotry that is still accepted today in horror movies. Lovecraft fans can be depicted as complicit in projecting Lovecraft's bigotry to new generations of readers.

I personally don't agree. As has been mentioned on this thread, the bigotry is used not for its own sake but to connect us with a more abstract horror. Ultimately what stays with us is a sense of dread at our own insignificance. I read Lovecraft as a teenager, and his stories stayed with me for ten years. I could only remember the big themes, and it was those themes that finally brought me back to re-reading him. I was surprised to discover now about his bigotry. And it is certainly there, and it is unforgivable even by the standards of his own time. Yet the bigotry is just a number of transient hooks for the reader to bring him into the REAL horror.

I say: Lovecraft was an awful, awful bigot, and I thank god for that.

That is the most awesome Donald Duck comic i've ever read.
Most. awesome. EVAR!

cthulhu podcast dot com has just begun a reading of ATMOM.

Link?

@Chris:
Fifer & Lackey has more of a ring to it, than Chris & Chad, doesn't it :-)

Thanks for your frank thoughts on the industry. You are right, it really is a changing world in media. Sincerely, I really do think your show is one of those rare gems out there. There used to be a podcast by Russell Brand that offered cutting edge comedy on a weekly basis. We still have the Bugle with John Oliver of Daily Show fame. And of course "Underwood & Finch" by Mike Bennett (strongly recommend his reading of "From Beyond"). All of this is free and of such high quality I'm almost embarrassed to subscribe. I do try to contribute now and then, but I understand its not enough.

(I'd argue against your comparison with iTunes songs, though. The cost per minute of a mainstream song is probably several orders of magnitude higher than your show, once you include all kinds of agency fees, marketing etc. also from the buyers point of view, the duration of the song is irrelevant. I'd expect a 9minute "deep cut" version to cost as much as the 3 munute "radio" version)

Now, what is interesting is that while there is a huge mental barrier between me sending you a paypal check, i routinely spend at least a dollar per day on various iPhone games. I'm sure there are people like me in the Android world as well. And, on the iPhone, you have this cool app called ComiXology, which is a gateway to comics, each costing $1. And my experience is that people are prepared to pay for that content, because the free content is so shit.

So dunno, maybe there's a case for exploring the mobile downloads worlds. Like, i get a lot of pleasure reading this forum, listening to your podcast, reading the actual stories etc. Maybe if you would bring it all together into one app (reading, forum, text and maybe you could syndicate some related comics?)?
And when i need my lovecraft fix, its sometimes frustrating to find all the stuff on the internets. Your links in your blog roll are often helpful. Maybe expand that a little, with an extensive set of links to free internet resources.

As I'm writing this, i can see myself that its probably too much work to pay off. getting a programmer to write the program and then additional time crafting the links etc for each show. So that was maybe a brain fart. the point being though, my impression is that the expectation in mobile apps stores is that you pay, whereas the expectation on the webs is that you get it for free. Something to explore since you are thinking about the implications of a brave new world anyway...

Lovecraft was very interested in theoretical physics and saw it as one of his sources to cosmic horror. In one of his letters he even expressed pretty deep opinions about the uncertainty principle in quantum physics, erroneously siding with Einstein. His respect for the natural sciences even helped him overcome his racial prejudice against jews and east asians, though he remained as bigoted as ever on the topic of African-Americans and native Americans and Australians.

The atomic robo cracks me up :-)
Here's another strip along the same lines. Cant remember where I picked this one up, might have been from the podcast comments, so sorry if you've already seen this...

http://www.bogleech.com/comics/comic89-lovecraft.htm