Anyone NOT a fan of expanded Mythos?

[CMcCormack]

Hey everyone,

I know a lot of people end up working their way back to HPL through other sources like the RPGs and other expanded mythos stories and concepts, but I've always felt that a lot of the stuff that categorizes and explains and names the abstract concepts in HPL's work to really take some of the fun/fear out of it, and I was wondering if anyone else here felt the same way.

It doesn't even necessarily have to extend past HPL himself either--the main reason why I don't really care for At The Mountains of Madness is that it gets so into the history of the creatures that I think it humanizes them in a way that takes the mystery and scariness out of it.

Am I alone here?

Clay

[T. Kelly Lee]

No, you are not alone.  I really heavily dislike the Derleth stories...because he talked too damn much.  August Derleth was a man who just wrote too damn much.  Exposition was his hallmark and, as a result, there's too much literary noise.  He pastiched two great authors - HPL and Arthur Conan Doyle.  Both men were famous for their "poverty of language" styles.  They say a lot with the power of their words rather than with their volume. 

Secondly I have ABSOLUTELY no use for authors who try to meld the mythos realm with the "hard boiled detective story" style.  To me, it not only doesn't work, it's lazy.  I haven't read a single one of these stories that's even remotely "Lovecraftian" and they all play out the same way.  "Two Gun Dick" stumbles across mythos monster/cult/woman/thing/book and has his world rocked while falling back on gumshoe detective tropes to save the day.  One or two of these would be fun, but it seems that everyone who tries their hand at writing mythos stories these days immediately goes to the CSI Arkham model as if they're the first to ever try it.  Boring. 

I'm not big on the role playing/video games based on the mythos.  I can see why people like them, but they don't get my Lovecraftian juices flowing.  Good horror is scary and creepy because, at its root, it's existential.  The games and such just suck all that away, for me.  But then chess is the only game I enjoy playing.   

For me, I adore stories like Smith’s “Return of the Sorcerer,” Bloch’s “Notebook Found in a Deserted House,” King’s “Crouch End,” Wilson’s “The Barrens,” and Jacob’s “The Dream of the Fishermen’s Wife.”  Even something funky like Brite’s “Are You Loathsome Tonight” sets the proper dread for a Lovecraftian tale without getting into the zanier weeds of a pulp story.  I like stories that expand the Mythos without explaining it.  I like stories that come up with something NEW entirely that are in the same vein as Lovecraft.  He took Poe and Machen and Dunsany and became an heir to their works, without being a pastiche or parody.  I don’t like stories that are just an attempt to geek out on Lovecraft by mixing his characters with your favorite genre de jour.  That can be fun and I’ve done it myself, but I’d rather read one of Gaiman’s little two-pagers than all the Derlethian windbaggery in the world! 

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

I'm touch and go on the expanded mythos. I tend to enjoy the RPGs, but I'm super-picky about stories. I tend to only like about 1/4 of what I read and for a while I just stopped reading anything that was connected at all.

[CMcCormack]

Yeah I tend to agree with you, T.Kelly--though my knowledge of other authors' works pales in comparison to yours, I think we're more or less on the same wavelength.  I have a few friends who are big HPL fans who go crazy over the more sci-fi, and expanded mythos stuff, but I just can't get behind it.  It seems, at least from my experience, there's a divide between those who like the more sci-fi stuff and those who prefer the more occult-based stuff.

As for the Hard Boiled P.I.-meets-Lovecraft angle, I couldn't agree more.  I think falling back on something like that is just a sign of bad writing or a lack of good ideas--and it's usually pretty boring

Clay

[Vulpine]

I actually am a fan of the pastiches and gaming foo out there.  They're not always good, but even a bad story is a little better to me with a some Mythos foo thrown in.  That's me, I'll take my Mythos in most any form. 

[Yojimbo]

The only Mythos stuff I've read comprehensively is Lovecraft's, so I can't say I've delved too deeply into the expanded material.

I tried Derleth, honest I did. But it just doesn't work. I picked up one of the Chaosium compilations, this one concerning Hastur, but haven't read it yet. I've looked at the RPGs but never really gotten into them.

But I'm hardly a purist. I enjoyed the episode of the Justice League cartoon where Dr. Fate, Solomon Grundy, Amazo, and Aquaman fought Icthulhu (voiced by Rob Zombie, no less). I enjoy Two-Gun Bob's more pulpy (less fainty, more stabby) approach to the Mythos. I don't mind mixing my cosmic horrors from beyond with mighty-thewed barbarians - or down on their luck P.I.s, either. So long as it's done well.

I mean, I tried the first Titus Crow book. And it was pretty good, I thought, especially when Crow became The Doctor. But then Cthulhu's twin brother showed up and I was out.

[Genus Unknown]

I go back and forth on this sort of thing. God knows I've read my share of awful Mythos fiction, and it's easy to write off the entire movement as a bunch of hacks playing in someone else's sandbox. But whenever I'm tempted to do that, I remember the Robert Bloch stories I love (not just "Shambler" and "Notebook," but the first appearance of Nephren-Ka, "Fane of the Black Pharaoh"), "Black Man With a Horn" by T.E.D. Klein, and the collection Haggopian and Other Stories by Brian Lumley, of which I enjoyed every single story.

It can be done right, and I think even when it's not (which is usually), it still has a base sort of charm of its own. Even if they get the Lovecraftian philosophical underpinnings or its mythology wrong, hell, I like a cheap monster story, too.

[ahtzib]

Secondly I have ABSOLUTELY no use for authors who try to meld the mythos realm with the "hard boiled detective story" style.  To me, it not only doesn't work, it's lazy.  I haven't read a single one of these stories that's even remotely "Lovecraftian" and they all play out the same way.  "Two Gun Dick" stumbles across mythos monster/cult/woman/thing/book and has his world rocked while falling back on gumshoe detective tropes to save the day. 

This, this, a thousand times this.

In its defense

- I can see why detection/investigation, including that of the game Call of Cthulhu, is associated with Lovecraft. Significant stories take this form (The Call of Cthulhu and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward particularly stand out in this regard, with stuff like the Whisperer in Darkness, the Thing on the Doorstep, , The Lurking Fear, and The Rats in the Walls having an element of mystery and even investigation, but not really being mystery or detection stories).

- HPL even tried his hand at it once, sort of, with The Horror at Red Hook.

BUT

I for the most part do not understand the desire to meld noir or the hard-boiled with HPL. I know for some, it's the chronological link, the dieselpunk aspect of the mid-century (and just as much, you see this with the strong blending of Lovecraft fandom with Victoriana, including the steampunk fixation on tentacles and Lovecraft. I'd argue that part of the tension that drove Lovecraft is that he was self-educated with Victorian-era background, but faced that modern era, and bizarrely rebelled against both with his Georgian fixation). But whether set in the period, or set in the present (I'm looking at everything ever written in and around Delta Green except the game books themselves, and even elements of them), the whole hardboiled gritty edge meets the mythos thing just sets my teeth on edge. A tough cookie running into these forces should resemble Dr. Strangelove, with saner heads losing it, and only the insane thinking they've got the situation under control. Yes, I like Stross's "A Colder War." The other attempt at hard-boiled that works, IMO, is King's "Crouch End," where our unflappable detectives are quite flappable, and frankly just try not to deal with any of it if possible.

That trope, and the "the 'mythos' isn't the real problem, evil humans who use it are the real problem" trope can go.

[ahtzib]

I've mentioned "A Colder War" which is my favorite non-Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos story (I've read excerpts of one of the Laundry books, and want nothing to do with that). I can't think of too many others that really worked that well for me. I've enjoyed Call of Cthulhu gaming, but I have to admit that it does do some harm to one's appreciation of the tales.

I'm honestly trying really hard to think of stories that have worked for me outside of HPL, and I'm largely coming up blank. I didn't love Shoggoths in Boom, but I liked it (it's an interesting take, and I'm partial to scientific narrators, though this one was distinctly not a Lovecraft-typical scientist in numerous ways). The Barrens is mentioned above, and from what I remember, I enjoyed it for the "suicidal folkloric studies element" found in Lovecraft, but I remember being a bit nonplussed by the end.

I can't tell if I'm a fan of the Chambers stories, because their inclusion in "The Mythos" is so heavily cloaked in the trappings from game stories and fandom, and I don't like those trappings. I instead prefer some of the stuff that is similar in tone, imagery, or especially theme, but that predates Lovecraft, like Machen's folkloric tales, or Hodgson.

Really though, I get more enjoyment out of the real-world extensions of Lovecraft's tales than I do from the vast majority of Cthulhu Mythos stories. In other words, either the real-world influences on Lovecraft, or real historical or scientific elements which can be easily viewed through a Lovecraftian lens, both approaches anchoring Lovecraft almost more as a lens for viewing the world rather than just a collection of stories. That's far more engaging than a horror or adventure tale with a name drop.

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

I can't tell if I'm a fan of the Chambers stories, because their inclusion in "The Mythos" is so heavily cloaked in the trappings from game stories and fandom, and I don't like those trappings. I instead prefer some of the stuff that is similar in tone, imagery, or especially theme, but that predates Lovecraft, like Machen's folkloric tales, or Hodgson.

I have been reading and loving Machen! And I can see how he influenced both HPL & REH. Right now, I'm having fun trying to go through some of HPL's favorites from his "Supernatural Horror in Literature" essay. The podcast of the same name, now on hold, got me kick-started on Machen anyway.

[T. Kelly Lee]

I have been reading and loving Machen! And I can see how he influenced both HPL & REH. Right now, I'm having fun trying to go through some of HPL's favorites from his "Supernatural Horror in Literature" essay. The podcast of the same name, now on hold, got me kick-started on Machen anyway.

Machen is very good...but readers should remember that he's "high Victorian" and not "post-Nietzschean" in his outlook on the world.  So the cosmic dread of HPL's greater works aren't there.  Though, believe it or not, it does crop up from time to time in M.R. James, whose happy little Christmas ghost stories often cloak a greater, more dismal world view we only get a peek at.  Devil worship and gnostic/pagan gods are implied in many of his tales, all peeking from behind the veil of quiet Christendom.  Good stuff!! 

Referencing the "hard boiled mythos detective" - I suppose my dislike for that cross-over genre is the fact that those characters are so often introduced as a tool for imposing order on the disordered universe of the mythos realm.  Cops and detectives like order and when they run across things that don't fit their definition of it, that throws them for a loop.  (This is why, btw, a disproportionate number of police believe in aliens and the supernatural.)  So getting the tough talking detective in the picture is really the author's way of saying: "look, I don't like this cosmic dread stuff, so I'm introducing a character that's going to kick the shit out of it."  Some readers might like that stuff - but for me it ruins the spirit of the thing.  The HPL story is about a journey INTO madness, not shooting madness in the face. 

[JulieH]

And yet, in the film adaptation, "the resurrected" it's the narrative style of the hard-boiled PI story that actually allows for a lot of the insights into the story - making the transition from page to movie a much smoother one than it might otherwise have been.

[T. Kelly Lee]

And yet, in the film adaptation, "the resurrected" it's the narrative style of the hard-boiled PI story that actually allows for a lot of the insights into the story - making the transition from page to movie a much smoother one than it might otherwise have been.

I can see where that case could be made, but from my point of view that's the part of Resurrected I actually liked the least.  When I first saw that film ages ago it struck me as odd having an 80's style mooching PI as the main character.  As an expository tool I didn't think much of it.  With this kind of modern update I like the "Kolchak" hounddog reporter angle, for instance.  With Resurrected - maybe it was the character's portrayal - every scene NOT spent on Ward or Curwen was wasted footage.   

Now, I will give an exception to my rule - Catch a Deadly Spell.  And, of course, it works because it's SUPPOSED to be a pastiche.  But I wouldn't use it as a model for a genre.   

[JulieH]

Cast a Deadly Spell also works because Fred Ward pulls it off.  Fred Ward has been terribly underrated.
And David Warner is always brilliant.

But mainly Cast a Deadly Spell isn't a private eye imposed on a monster story, or a monster imposed on a private eye story - it's a world with magic, where a monster/private eye story occurs.  It's the blase attitude to magic that makes everything work.  I particularly love the things you can see in the background if you pay attention.

And while the creature at the end is not a bad Chthulhu cousin, the story itself isn't really Lovecraftian - any time you could trade "necronomicon" for "generic satanic book" and insert, say, "Beelzebud" or "Godzilla" for the "monster that destroys the world" and not change the story one jot, it's not truly Lovecraftian - no madness, no cosmic horror...

But it's a super film and really REALLY needs a DVD release.

[oh and the sequel "witch hunt" was a dreadful sequel - sort of in a class with the "Rocky Horror"/"Shock Treatment" coupling]

[T. Kelly Lee]

Cast a Deadly Spell is a really great film - interestingly, I think it's actually a re-make of Chinatown via HPL.  Don't believe me?  Watch them both back-to-back!  BOOM!  The Mythos stuff is cursory, though Fred Ward's character is called Phil Lovecraft and it does make reference to a lot of mythos trope.  Ward is really playing Jake Gittes...(who is channeling Philip Marlowe).

I don't understand the lack of a DVD release.  It came out on VHS and it has been run at few film festivals.  But it would be such a joy to get a good copy of it.  Hell, it has an all-star cast. 

But, as you say, the sequel isn't worth watching.