Lovecraft: The Shadow out of Time

[Darthwing Teorist]

WARNING: For the people who did not read this story yet, my post contains some spoilers.

Given that it was Halloween and all, I decided to see what is all this fascination with Lovecraft and I started by reading "The Shadow out of Time". This may seem like blasphemy to certain hardcore fans, but I found this particular story to fail achieving it's purpose, which was to horrify or terrify me. It could be that the story did not age well or maybe I am getting older and more demanding upon the fiction that I read. A little note about myself: I am the kind of person who finds it quite easy to suspend his disbelief. For example when people criticized Star Wars for a few physical impossibilities, such as the fact that Tie Fighters and other spacecraft do not make noise in space, I came up with the rationalization that each craft may be equipped with a system giving feedback about it's environment using other senses than sight, such as giving the location and type of various ships in space using sound.

That said, here are my impressions: I selected this one because the title seemed very promising, I was expecting to at least be disturbed in some way. The story started quite well, building up a frightening and sinister atmosphere: slowly and with vague allusions to terrifying facts and events. The use of adjectives was quite abundant and in the beginning was working well. However, the more that I advanced in the story, the more that the same technique was used without giving any more details that would be really terrifying. I can understand that the may character may have felt terrified by finding out about a mighty race that can reach across space and time and switch minds between bodies. But, letting alone all scientific problems that this raises, the fact that the Great Race was quite benevolent made it a bit silly to continue describing these beings as "shambling horrors". There were other references in the same style to "blasphemous" knowledge, when in fact the said knowledge was simply science and nothing about it seemed blasphemous at all. The fact that the human race did not survive, can be disturbing but it shouldn't have been to the character, who as a scientist could have envisioned that possibility quite easily. Now, the only thing that seemed really terrifying, was the Elder race. I was looking forward to learn more about them and the horrors that they unleashed but was very disappointed to learn that all they did was stirring some anomalous wind. When the main character fell into their domain through a chasm, what did he do? He actually swam upward THROUGH THEM and got away free! For beings that terrorized the mightiest race known to have walked (or shambled) the earth, they did not seem able to do much harm, if a tired, half-crazy middle aged scientist managed to get away unscathed from them. Yes, maybe they got weaker by the time these events occurred, but in this case they should not have posed any threat at all to mankind.

Maybe I just did not get the story but for the reasons that I described above, it failed to impress me.

The thing that I ask myself is this: I know that Lovecraft uses this style throughout most of his stories. Are they the same as this one or are some better and still effective in this day and age?

[RobP2]

Have you seen this? Great discussion on every HPL story. Now they are working through Supernatural Horror in Literature

http://hppodcraft.com/

[Darthwing Teorist]

No. Thanks for the link, now I have more stuff to listen to while working.

[RobP2]

Really is a great site - they also have links to Clark Ashton Smith and MR James podcasts, both very good too

[Patrick]

For classic gothic novels you need to be in the right mind set. To me its not so much about being scared, as being taken away by the atmoshpere that is created by using certain archetypical motives, psychological states of the characters involved and - of course - a wonderful romantic writing style. If you come to these kind of stories with an analytical mind, they wont work.

With Lovecraft stories you have to be careful, some are hit and miss, especially those he did not really write. Sometimes he edited something or just gave some other author tips, and later these stories got rereleased with Lovecrafts name.
One of my favourites was "the case of charles dexter ward". Even though I have read a lot of Lovecraft, when I was younger, I must say Lovecraft is no Edgar Allen Poe.

[Darthwing Teorist]

Yes, I remember reading some Poe when I was young and it was very creepy. You're right, the mindset counts but the story has to deliver a bit also, I am not a difficult reader. I will read/listen to the recommended classics.

[RobP2]

I agree - with the caveat that I never saw HPL as gothic. In fact he overturned many conventions of the genre - his monsters were alien beings rather than supernatural and there is a distinct lack of romance and good vs evil. We are all meaningless in the HPL universe. In that respect I think HPL was the founder of modern horror, many of his ideas and themes run through horror / wierd fiction still.

Not that I don't enjoy a good Poe or similar story! Then there is the great English ghost story tradition exemplified by MR James, or the modern version Susan Hill's Woman in Black. Saw this guy live a while back, well worth catching if you can

http://www.nunkie.co.uk/

[Patrick]

You are right of course, that he marked a turn. But to me his writing style was still very romantic influenced. The monsters themselves did not appeal to me so much, as the psychological horror that the protagonists had to go through. And the descriptions thereof seem to be the strength of Lovecraft [the realism of his works if you wish].

I bought a collection of MR James short stories last year, but unfortunatley his original writing style [translations are out of print] is a bit hard to read.

[river rider]

There's a movie from 2005, a blackandwhite silent "The Call of Cthulhu", that I just watched on amazon... this presentation is more like Lovecraft's story and style than other other movie I've seen (and I've probably seen most)

There's several one volume editions of Lovecraft out there. The best way to catch his work, IMO, is to read a bunch of the shorter stuff and then back into the longer pieces.

[Darthwing Teorist]

Yes, I downloaded quite a lot from the interwebs. If anyone wants to write down their own favorites, it can help because he has quite large body of work.

[river rider]

"the whisperer in darkness"
"the color out of space"
"the music of erich zann"
the great fantasy novel The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

[ashe]

I found this particular story to fail achieving it's purpose, which was to horrify or terrify me.

BAN HIM!



for reals though...

[Josealb]

Ive always told Felipe that The case of Charles Dexter Ward was one of the best. Dunno if he ever got to read it. Joseph Curwen was the man.

Personal favorites are The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Thing in The Doorstep, The Statement of Randolph Carter and At The Mountains of Madness. The Call is taken for granted here, of course.

[RobP2]

There's a movie from 2005, a blackandwhite silent "The Call of Cthulhu", that I just watched on amazon... this presentation is more like Lovecraft's story and style than other other movie I've seen (and I've probably seen most)

The same team have released Whisperer in Darkness too, doesn't quite stick to the story the same way as CoC but enjoyable! This time it's like a film noir

[RobP2]

Ive always told Felipe that The case of Charles Dexter Ward was one of the best. Dunno if he ever got to read it. Joseph Curwen was the man.

Personal favorites are The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Thing in The Doorstep, The Statement of Randolph Carter and At The Mountains of Madness. The Call is taken for granted here, of course.

Yep, here too. Plus Imprisoned with the Pharaohs and The Outsider

Here's the link to the HPL podcraft forum, lots of good info and discussions there too

http://www.hppodcraft.com/forums/