WI: HP Lovecraft, the world's oldest man

RedBeret

Howard Philips Lovecraft was born in Providence, on the 20th August 1890, and the first 47 years of his life proceed much as usual, writing, poverty, cancer and all. Yet in this timeline, though the cancer proves a significant health scare, he survives through it nonetheless. In the year 1990 he celebrates his 100th birthday, and with the death of Joan Riaduvets on the 5th of March 2004, he becomes the oldest man in the world at 113 years, 198 days old. On the 27th of February 2005, at 114 years and 191 years of age, he dies in his hometown of Providence, the third oldest man in history at the time.

How might things progress for such a long-lived Lovecraft? How might his writing evolve and his views with the Second World War, the Civil Rights Movement, eventually the rise of the Internet itself? Does this long life aid his fame, or ultimately hamper it, even reducing his writing to a sidenote to his longevity?

Discuss.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Or have it that people wonder why he is still alive to this day in 2020, 130 years old, yet not looking like a desiccated Mummy
 

Mechadogzilla

Considering how he was incredibly racist, every decade he lives longer tarnishes his legacy a bit more. Especially if he keeps writing in the style he did. OTL he got away with it more by being a relic of the past. Unless he has some sort of serious change of heart and reform. If he didn't, people would like him less and less. By the 2000s he probably wouldn't even be well known. He'd just be a weird horror writer who won't die and thinks black people are part beast and whatnot.
 
Gukpard

Gukpard

He was a hardcore racist, would he keep that posture? This might destroy his career if he remains like that up until the 2000s
 

SonOfSharknado

Banned
Honestly, if HP Lovecraft lived long enough to see the Civil Rights movement and the million man march, he'd blow his brains out, assuming he didn't have a heart attack. With his cartoonishly weak constitution and his seeming inability to function without an older woman acting as his mother figure, I don't see HOW he'd make it to 114.
 
Harry_Z_Trumen

Harry_Z_Trumen

Presented without comment...
Church of Cthulhu.png

Disclaimer: no association is implied with any OTL organisation
 

Venditg

Banned
Gukpard said:
He was a hardcore racist, would he keep that posture? This might destroy his career if he remains like that up until the 2000s
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He did change his views later in life. Also , he was no Wallace or Byrd, the guy was fearful of everything. Everybody seems to forget that is racist attitudes stem from that.
Or that it was perfectly normal until the 1990's to have the same opinion of Lovecraft, not just the United States but the European world as well.
 

RedBeret

Venditg said:
He did change his views later in life. Also , he was no Wallace or Byrd, the guy was fearful of everything. Everybody seems to forget that is racist attitudes stem from that.
Or that it was perfectly normal until the 1990's to have the same opinion of Lovecraft, not just the United States but the European world as well.
Click to expand...

I believe the phrase was that he was "terrified of everything that did not encompass his hometown of Providence, New England". And yeah, though he never forsook them entirely, he did end up mellowing out towards the end of his life IIRC (though considering what earlier Lovecraft was like, "mellowing out" might not say much). That trend might end up continuing, especially with stuff like WW2, so though I can't imagine his racism vanishing entirely, it could well eventually start proving less and less integral.
 
Gukpard

Gukpard

Venditg said:
He did change his views later in life. Also , he was no Wallace or Byrd, the guy was fearful of everything. Everybody seems to forget that is racist attitudes stem from that.
Or that it was perfectly normal until the 1990's to have the same opinion of Lovecraft, not just the United States but the European world as well.
Click to expand...

I see, I checked his wikipedia and it seems that he was a normal person for 1890.

So maybe as he gets older he would desescalate his racism to normal levels, going with the flow.
 

Venditg

Banned
Gukpard said:
I see, I checked his wikipedia and it seems that he was a normal person for 1890.

So maybe as he gets older he would desescalate his racism to normal levels, going with the flow.
Click to expand...

@Gukpard I also remember in a Kaiserredux or Kaiserreich post on reddit someone said that before he died he was allegedly in in favor of social Democratic ethnostates , which sounds awful until you realize that there weren't many individuals that advocated for such things, most people in his time only viewed people of color as colonial subjects or a poor subject in need of education, civilization or both.
Also, he was born in 1890, I doubt babies can have racist opinions, it is already a miracle if they can formulate some sounds coherently.
Plus, look at his personal history growing up, considering what he went through I am surprised he wasn't worse than OTL.
 

David T

Venditg said:
Wait, I don't recall HP Lovecraft living up to 1948, nor do I remember him being a presidential candidate.
Click to expand...
Uh, maybe read the premise of this thread in the OP? (For that matter, maybe remember that this whole board is supposed to be about alternate history?)
 
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