Getting into Lovecraft

I see. Are there any guides on the Pantheon? I want to try writing poems form the point of view of the deities.

edited 3rd May '12 6:09:53 AM by SPDUDE48

Response to someone on the previous page:

While Derleth helped shape the mythos, he also derailed it by removing a lot of the cosmic from the horror. The creatures of his mythos had more human aspects, like the whole good evil conflict they had going on. I prefer to ignore his work entirely.

Quite, which is why it's best not to identify the Cthulhu Mythos (which was largely his creation) with Lovecraft too closely, despite Creepy Howie being its inspiration.

I've always felt that trying to form a coherent mythos out of Lovecraft's work was missing the point. Lovecraft's stuff was about the unknown. It was about getting a tiny glimpse into things that shattered man's illusions of relevance and worth.

Trying to solidify it into an understandable mythos kind of defeats that.

This too. I just call it the Cthulhu Mythos because that's the conventional word for it.

Anyone read much of his Dream Cycle? I really enjoyed the couple of short stories from it I've read, and I'd like to delve more. Any you recommend?

What have you read from it?

@Yuanchosaan: I love Lovecraft's poetry, more than I enjoy his prose. Fungi from Yuggoth is utterly beautiful, particularly "Alienation", which I have talked about on this forum before.

edited 3rd May '12 10:58:20 PM by JHM

It's the entities themselves (Outer Gods, Great Old Ones, Elder Gods, etc.) in the Mythos that fascinate me the most. Does anyone know some good online sources where I can research the entities?

It's been a long time, so I don't remember the names exactly, but I can describe them:

One about a man who ventures deep into an underground labyrinth and encounters the builders of it.

One where a demon has a brief conversation with another entity.

One where a decadent race is destroyed by a creature from the nearby lake.

The one with the cats.

I'd suggest starting from the shorter works of Lovecraft. As has been said before, try to get an anthology of Lovecraft's short stories.

I like the mythos, but I was thoroughly bored by 'At The Mountains Of Madness'.

I think Lovecraft is better in his shorter works, and yes, a lot of his stories are quite alike. Still worth being read, though I feel it's better to taste Lovecraft in small doses.

Yeah, I don't recommend Mountains of Madness as a starting point. It's more like a culmination.

^^^The last one is definitely The Cats of Ulthar. First sounds like The Nameless City, but that's not a Dream story to my knowledge.

The first could also be "In the Walls of Eryx", though my memory of the synopsis for that one is, to say the least, sketchy. The third is definitely 'The Doom that Came to Sarnath", however.

With what little data I have, I can at least recommend to you the following:

• The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath—Lovecraft writes an epic quest story. It's awesome.
• "Hypnos"—A borderline example, but a very strange and lovely story nonetheless.
• "Celephaïs"—A man invents a city in his dreams. Time works strangely there. Very nice.
• "Ex Oblivione"—From the same era, but very different in tone. A philosophy piece.

The Great God Pan

The first could describe not only At the Mountains of Madness, "The Nameless City," and "In the Walls of Eryx," but "Under the Pyramids." Told you HPL had a tendency to write the same story.

There's an entertaining book called What To Do When You Meet Cthulhu. It's basically a guide to the mythos presented as a tongue-in-cheek survival manual.

True, though he at least bothered to change the theme, style and background events of each narrative enough to keep things interesting. It's a bit like how there are at least three different Thomas Ligotti short stories that ultimately boil down to "depressed guy goes to small town for a weird festival and bad things happen."

How would one characterize Eihort? I'm trying to write a short story from his point of view.

That's actually a Ramsey Campbell creation, if I recall correctly.

But it's classified as a Great Old One. How would one characterize Eihort?

edited 6th May '12 6:42:51 AM by SPDUDE48

Umm... pardon me, but this thread is specifically about getting into Lovecraft, not the Cthulhu Mythos in general.

Is there a thread for the Mythos?

Don't think so. If you want to, you can start one...

It was the Nameless City, which they got on their first guess.

Somewhere, I still have a rough, fragmentary draft of a Mythos parody I started and never finished: "The Cat of Cthulhu." When the stars are right, he escapes his digs and gets lost in the streets of Arkham. He's a cute, personable little guy, but his coat suggests that he's been handled and groomed by nitid, unhallowed appendages whose provenance could blast the mind. His collar reads:

MY NAME IS [mind-bending, indescribable sigil] IF FOUND, RETURN TO R'LYEH

The narrator who finds him is a classic HPL type: a neurasthenic aesthete and student of forbidden lore who freaks out everyone at the Petco.

That sounds hilarious.