Lovecraft’s 122nd Birthday is Today, Tis a Panegyric Day
H.P.Lovecraft was born on this day in 1890, making today his 122nd birthday. His fiction has endured much longer than his body ever did and given it has now become part of our culture, will continue to be for some time. His fiction is famous for its bleak world-view, its horror prose writing style and its use of use of obscure words. But it is his creations – Cthulhu being the most famous, that have passed beyond fiction to become archetypes and memes of a monstrous, vast and blighted universe. So on this most Panegyric yet Eldrich of days, I present a few links you might be interested in…
H.P.Lovecraft, 1890-1937
Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably rubbed proverbial shoulders with Lovecraft. His work has been referenced in everything from Babylon 5 to Army Of Darkness. If you recently watched Prometheus, then I urge you to read ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’. The similarities are remarkable.
Games and Gaming Owe his Thanks
Call of Cthulhu was one of the first role-playing games to have a literary legacy. Because Chaosium publishes both the role-playing game and collections of Lovecraftian fiction, the game is treated on equal footing with the books that inspired it. … Dungeons & Dragons owes much to Call of Cthulhu. This is most evident in its monsters: Ghouls, Kuo-toa (Deep Ones), Mind Flayers (Star Spawn of Cthulhu), and Black Pudding (Shoggoth) all are directly or indirectly inspired by their Lovecraftian counterparts.
Within His Work We Face our Mortality
It’s a bit depressing to know that more than 99.9% of all species that have ever existed on earth have also died out. Extinction is not an exception but is the norm; the Dodo has plenty of company. … Lovecraft really understood this idea; a large slice of the monumental horror his works served up comes from the realisation that we are just another scrabbling species trying to scrape out a living in an uncaring universe.
A Great Becoming... 