If Lovecraft had lived longer

[T. Kelly Lee]

(Split from this thread. -- GU)

I think I have to expand a bit on Genus Unknown above.  I like the concept of Howard's work but I don't get a lot of joy out of reading.  It really is the archetypal pulpy fantasy-realms stuff that leaves me pretty cold.  He wrote some amazing one-off "weird" fiction that is awesome and I really enjoy that stuff.  But the heavy-hitting Conan-Kane just doesn't work for me.  

I've always wondered if HPL had lived if he would have taken his own work in that direction.

[Genus Unknown]

I've always wondered if HPL had lived if he would have taken his own work in that direction.

I doubt it. Howard's pulp-action stories were a reflection of the man himself; he was almost incapable of writing any story that didn't finish with our rugged protagonist laying down a little two-fisted justice on the men or monsters that menaced him. He was a "red-blooded" kind of guy, who loved manly struggle and high-octane action.

Lovecraft was a stranger in that realm. The closest he ever comes to an action scene is the chase in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and the closest he ever comes to "pulpy fantasy-realms stuff" is the Dream-Quest, which, besides being more "flowery" and poetic than your average pulp-fantasy, also marked the end of his experiments in that direction. I don't think he could write a Howardian fantasy story if he tried.

For an indication of the direction Lovecraft's work would have taken, let's look at his early material, starting with "The Tomb," "Dagon," and "Polaris," and his ending material, including "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The Shadow Out of Time," and "The Haunter of the Dark."  The biggest difference between, for example, "Polaris" and "The Shadow Out of Time" isn't theme or aesthetics, but in the scale of the stories and the tendency toward a science-fictional or materialist paradigm over a supernatural one (not to mention, of course, the quality of the writing). The same with "Dagon" and "Innsmouth," the same with "The Tomb" and "The Haunter." If he'd lived longer and followed the same general trend, I think if anything he would have gotten further away from Howard and, perhaps, closer to Clark Ashton Smith, who laid on the bizarre cosmicism even thicker than Lovecraft did (to his detriment, it must be said).

Another possible glimpse of what might have been, in another direction, is the R.H. Barlow collaboration "The Night Ocean," the real last thing HPL ever wrote, even later than "Haunter." Compared to anything else attributed to Lovecraft, "The Night Ocean" is almost too restrained and subtle. It deals, more than anything else in the world of Lovecraft, in atmosphere, suggestion, and mood. How much of that is Barlow and how much Lovecraft, I don't know, but after perusing some of the other Barlow entries, I'm inclined to attribute the maturity and quietness of "The Night Ocean" to Lovecraft. That's the possibility that really excites me (and then saddens me when I realize we'll never see it developed any further). Lovecraft, throwing aside verbosity and italicized revelations to really settle down to the business of suggesting the weird or supernatural and gradually building a mood of gloom and menace. He did it before, in stories like "The Colour Out of Space," and it's worth pointing out that "The Colour" was his favorite among his own stories. I think "The Colour" best represents what he was aiming for all along, and as his skills grew, he got better and better at pulling it off. So maybe a surviving Lovecraft would have gotten more quiet and suggestive, eschewing huge tentacled monsters in favor of tiny hints and manifestations of the Unknown.

We'll never know. In either case, I think he would have gotten less "pulpy," not more.

[T. Kelly Lee]

I've always wondered if HPL had lived if he would have taken his own work in that direction.

We'll never know. In either case, I think he would have gotten less "pulpy," not more.

It's "Mountains of Madness" and "Shadow Out of Time" that make me think his output might be turning pulpy.  He was getting paid for this work and it was getting published.  Plus, it's clear from these stories that in fleshing out the mythos he was heading away from "horror" or "weird fiction" and science fictionalizing his universe.

I doubt he would have ever written a pot-boiling two fisted story - and I'm glad.  I'm not a huge fan of "hard boiled horror lit" - but I DO think that given another decade you could see HPL becoming rather akin to Bradbury. 

[Genus Unknown]

It's "Mountains of Madness" and "Shadow Out of Time" that make me think his output might be turning pulpy.

I don't know about that. I mean sure, those stories are pulpy (or have some pulpy elements), but I don't know if they're necessarily any more so than his earlier material. What is it about those two stories that strikes you as such?

[T. Kelly Lee]

It's "Mountains of Madness" and "Shadow Out of Time" that make me think his output might be turning pulpy.

I don't know about that. I mean sure, those stories are pulpy (or have some pulpy elements), but I don't know if they're necessarily any more so than his earlier material. What is it about those two stories that strikes you as such?

Well, they are more "straight science fiction" than "weird fiction" or "horror."  By this point in his career HPL had reduced a lot of the mystery of his mythos to science fiction elements.  When CoC was introduced we didn't quite know if the Old Ones were magical, demonical, etc.  By the late stage of his career, HPL was moving away from the occult aspects of his work and heading in a more sci fi genre.  The action in these stories plays out more along the pulp lines.  He's jettisoned the ethereal tone of say The Colour Out of Space and dropped the mysterious lurking dread of The Horror at Martin's Beach and is very definately headed toward sci fi at the end of his life.   And, of course, Eryx is straight pulp sci fi.  Projecting forward a decade I envision him maturing to write things more like Mars is Heaven Or Here Be Tygers and moving away from the "Lovecraftian" voice we associate with that body of his work.  I don't think he could have ever writtn the two-fisted pulps.  But I DO think the mythos, in the direction he was taking it, would have fit the space opera genre.
 

[Genus Unknown]

When CoC was introduced we didn't quite know if the Old Ones were magical, demonical, etc.

I disagree with that. I think CoC makes it pretty clear that the Great Old Ones are alien rather than magical or demonic in any traditional sense.

By the late stage of his career, HPL was moving away from the occult aspects of his work and heading in a more sci fi genre.

I agree that he was moving more toward sci-fi at the end of his life, but...

What about "The Haunter of the Dark?" The Haunter is said to be an avatar of Nyarlathotep, and the Starry Wisdom sect (complete with spooky old gothic church and an occult library) summons the Haunter to Earth by gazing into a crystal. "The Haunter of the Dark" (and "The Call of Cthulhu," while we're at it) doesn't use sci-fi to replace the occultism so much as supplement it. The demons and ancient gods are still there, they're just described and explained in more materialistic terms. In general tone and aesthetic, you can't get any more gothic than "The Haunter of the Dark," even if the monster is more "alien" than "demonic" (and even then, there's some ambiguity; it certainly behaves like a classic demon, and is of such a nature and comes from such a part of the Universe that even calling it an "alien" seems misleading -- it is, rather, Something Else).

All that aside, why does such a move toward science fiction signify a move deeper into "pulpiness?" There's plenty of old-fashioned supernaturalism and black magic in the pulps, and plenty of science fiction that transcends the pulps.

 

The action in these stories plays out more along the pulp lines.  He's jettisoned the ethereal tone of say The Colour Out of Space and dropped the mysterious lurking dread of The Horror at Martin's Beach and is very definately headed toward sci fi at the end of his life.   And, of course, Eryx is straight pulp sci fi.  

I'll give you that. But I don't think they indicate the general trend of his writing. You say he dropped the ethereal tone of "Colour" and the mysterious lurking dread of "Martin's Beach," but both of those are present in spades in "Haunter." "The Thing on the Doorstep" is hardly a pulp adventure (and, by the way, seems to show a shift back toward straight magic and occultism). "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" has that chase scene, but most of the story is about exactly the sort of "mysterious lurking dread" you say he abandoned. And again, there's "The Night Ocean," which came last of all and shows the least pulp of anything else he wrote.

[T. Kelly Lee]

I think it's pretty clear from HPL's body of work that the kind of stuff he really enjoyed writing most was stories like Kadath.  It's some of his longest output and though it's bizarre, it contains some of his most fluid writing.  From reading HPL's letters he wanted to write something like Dunsany's Gods of Pegana.  The problem being Dunsany had already done it and HPL didn't really know how to take that sort of story telling to the next level - unlike Tolkien, who was also influenced by Dunsany.  

HPL had a pretty low opinion of his own writings and he clearly knew when to produce a story for publication versus producing something beautiful like the Night Ocean.  I think Night Ocean is strongly indicative of where his skill as a prose writer was going, but I think high pulp stories like Eryx are more strongly indicative of the direction his commercial output was taking.  

HPL's literary evolution parallels the evolution of the genre in which he wrote.  There was no true sci fi genre in 1918.  But by 1936 sci fi had come into its own - and HPL's genre had evolved with it.  And that later is stuff is what the public seemed to have a commercial taste for. HPL had become a true prose master by the end of his life - by age 60, even at his sparse rate of output, I could see a situation where his own literary evolution and the evolution of popular readership would have converged to create a balance in which he was able to sell some marketable sci fi.  His later stories certainly pioneered the market later staked out by Bradbury.  

[old book]

I'm told by the fans that "sci fi" is a pejorative used to refer to schlocky three-eyed alien films of the 1950s, while the upper crust of the genre is properly labeled "SF." I cannot vouch for the truth of this assertion, nor its applicability to Lovecraft's brand of futuristic fiction.

He might've given up trying to achieve Dunsanian effect as pointless, because impossible, emulation. As I said earlier, I see him breaking into television and radio, perhaps on Bloch's heels.

[T. Kelly Lee]

I'm told by the fans that "sci fi" is a pejorative used to refer to schlocky three-eyed alien films of the 1950s, while the upper crust of the genre is properly labeled "SF." I cannot vouch for the truth of this assertion, nor its applicability to Lovecraft's brand of futuristic fiction.

He might've given up trying to achieve Dunsanian effect as pointless, because impossible, emulation. As I said earlier, I see him breaking into television and radio, perhaps on Bloch's heels.

I'm not enough of a true sci fi fan to understand (or really care about) the lingua franca of the genre.  But, for that matter, let's face it - what HPL was writing at the time would have fallen into that schlocky niche!!!   

I can't see a situation where HPL would have evolved into a television writer - for the simple reason that a job like requires a lot of work.  And the one thing we really know about the man is that he HATED work.  In his day he was offered jobs as a travel writer, an editor, and all kinds of gainful gigs.  In fact he was once offered the gig of editor of, I believe, Weird Tales!!  And he turned it down.  So within his lifetime he could have easily gotten a job writing for radio - every station had tons of serials he could have gigged up with. 

I just see no evidence of HPL becoming more prolific with age.  His output remained fairly consistent.  He spent his days writing letters - thousands and thousands of letters.  His literary output in terms of fiction was miniscule.  Take by comparison RE Howard, who in a very short time wrote and published a mountain of material by comparison to HPL.  The difference being, of course, that HPL was so good, we remember him for almost everything he wrote.  I believe even if he had never written another story after Colour Out of Space that tale alone gets him in horror anthologies for the rest of history. 

I think one of the things that frustrates us Lovecraftians is how little he wrote.  In fact, it frustrated his friends as well.  They were ALWAYS trying to get him to write more or to take jobs that would lead to him having a greater impact on the world of weird fction.  And he made it clear that a steady job and he were never to be friends. 

Hell, I know how it goes - I have my job so I don't have to have a "real" job.