So say, for whatever reasons, Lovecraft's cancer goes into remission before his death, and he is able to live a long life— say, for the purpose of this discussion he lives until the 1960s or 70s. How would his career be changed by the social upheavals of World War II and its aftermath? Would he still have been seen as a genius despite living longer? How would his racial views changed in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the Civil Rights movement?
WI: Lovecraft lives into old age
- Thread starter Midnight-Blue766
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holocaust would mean developing cthulhu mythos. That humans could be capable of such atrocity could mean that his later works would have great old ones created from these thoughts.
I believe that his views were shifting towards the end of his life. Economically he had become a moderate socialist and had started to renounce his lifelong racism.
Maybe butterflies also keep Robert E. Howard from committing suicide - the two of them were dear friends, and were beginning to dabble in doing joint works.
One or both surviving makes early American speculative fiction a very different place.
One or both surviving makes early American speculative fiction a very different place.
I wonder how both of them would have reacted to The Lord of the Rings.
Would Tolkien-style High Fantasy still end up completely dominating the genre in a timeline where the grand masters of Sword and Sorcery and Weird Fiction are alive and well?
Lovecraft's political views were pretty weird. He proposed a sort of hybridization of socialism and technocratic fascism that was partly futurist but supported the preservation of culture and art.
Yes, Lizardmen shall rule the world with their superior technology and crush all human dissent. That or the world becomes a utopia.
Seems a bit too humanistic for Lovecraft. The guiding idea behind most of his work is that humanity is utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Having the Great Old Ones be created by humanity, in any way, completely goes against that ethos.
Didn't Lovecraft mostly stick to settings in the real world? Besides, you know, all the demons and aliens and such. Sure, the Lord of the Rings is supposed to be thousands and thousands of years in the past of Earth, but that is understood as being part of the made myth.
Yes he did, but my point was this: when Lord of the Rings showed up in the 1950s it pretty much displaced all previously popular fantasy literature, which included Lovecraft-style "Weird Fiction" and Howard-style sword-and-sorcery. Nowdays, nearly all fantasy is derived from Tolkien's work in some form. I was wonderedering if history would have progressed differently if Lovecraft and Howard had been alive to "fight back" and prevent the complete takeover of their genre by high fantasy.
May be that fantasy has a broader meaning. I doubt they would 'fight back' as if Tolkein was an enemy, though they might find his stuff a little flowery. In interviews Christopher Lee correct people when they asked about him and horro movies, saying that they were 'fantasy'. If Lovecraft's stuff is seen as being tied to the realm of Black and white styled horror films and the works they were based on (neither having too many Eldritch abominations) then we can have fantasy as a much broader term. As for Tolkein doing high fantasy, you can only really get to the hat point if their is a low fantasy to compare it too. Have to wonder if some wouldn't start pushing Lovecraft into the science fiction category when aliens become more popular subjects of novels. And given the complex histories and pantheons of all three authors, perhaps the major fantasy works are categorized as New Myths? In comparison to the derivative people who just base stuff off their work. Which might or might not include a lot of the semi-official fanwirks people made on Lovecraft's stuff.