Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/30/22: Shunned Locations (Lovecraft IV)

Miskatonik University may be the most beloved of Lovecraft’s imaginary locations. This Ivy League college, known for its library of occult books and daring expeditions, lies near a river of the same name which runs through imaginary Arkham, Massachusetts, *  which Lovecraft based on Salem. He even drew his own map of the city to aid his writing. Miskatonic University t-shirts can be readily purchased online along with other items to show your school spirit (or spirits, given its reputation.)

Lovecraft’s other human settlements, Innsmouth, Kingsport, and Dunwich, also had real-life Massachusetts analogs. In the case of Innsmouth, it was Newburyport.

Of the inhuman and alien locations R’lyeh, Cthulhu’s submerged city in the South Pacific, remains the best known. But there’s also the Mountains of Madness and the Plateau of Leng, which pops up in a recent graphic novel I read, Locke & Key, as “The Plain of Leng.” Many of Lovecraft’s locations make out-of-genre cameos like this, even on the dwarf planet Pluto, where several features are named for Mythos elements. Who says Life does not imitate Art?

In the same spirit here are more places a shady character or Great Old One might hang out.

 

Shunned Locations

The Hewes Museum

Caverns of Algol

The Land of Shan

Iuman of the Unseen Dunes

Gulf of Hastit

The Blasted Moors

Gate of Thuban

Wiskachanik River

Wulfham College

Mishgahoolik State Library

The Hell-Gates

Arxhan River

Osnam Memorial Hospital

The Inhuman City-state
of Aygnalla

 Hodgeson Sanitarium

The Aetheric University

City of K’thun

The Dream City of Sathep

The Shining Silver Gulf

Sea of Xoth

The Crimson Library of Vhuthoa

The Nameless Mountains

Limekiln Asylum

The Burning Tower of Yorghra

The Shugyok Empire

The Sathsothor Depths

Plateau of Ptaeth

Monstrous Temple of
the Myidd-Myidd

* In the DC comic universe, Arkham Asylum is where Batman’s foes get put after their defeat.

The Art of the Elder Thing (Part III)

In this post I’ll examine  Elder Thing depictions done in different media and styles.

This is an Elder Thing stripped down its basic elements: starfish head, wings, cucumber body, five tentacle legs. I’m guessing it’s a petroglyph painted on some exposed shale rock, which since has been desecrated by bird poop.

The creator of the Lovecraft-oriented Propnomicon website has showcased a mouth-watering selection of DIY props, sculptures, and other ephemera related to  At the Mountains of Madness and the RPG game Call of Cthulhu. This sculpture from George Gourogiannis that might have been chiseled off the wall of the Elder Things’ city by the explorers and sent home in a crate.

The slitted aperture (as per Lovecraft) in the center of the creature’s star-shaped head looks more like an eye here. But there’s a reason for that: the increased sense of horror! Which I’ll get to later.

A series of Elder Things done in  illuminated manuscript, Medieval woodcut, and Haeckel engraving style, spanning the centuries.


Haeckel was the naturalist whose depictions of echinoderms likely inspired Lovecraft to come up with the Elder Things in the first place.

An Elder Thing in the decorative style of Russian artist Erté. Very elegant.

An Elder Thing sew-on patch from the Monsterologist website.

Arkham Bazaar offers Lovecraft merchandise for sale, including this lovely enameled Elder Thing pin.

This 1960s-inspired Necronomicon pop-up book has to be the trippiest thing I’ve seen so far. Scenes from five of Lovecraft’s tales are depicted in psychedelic day-glo colors, including this Ratfink-inspired Elder Thing in a tableau from At the Mountains of Madness (with a cameo from Kurt Russell who wandered out of the set from The Thing)

The Art of the Elder Thing (Part II)

In Part II of this series I’ll be taking a look at the Elder Things interacting with their natural environment — either the snowbound Antarctica of At the Mountains of Madness, or their titanic cities of long ago.

This illustration of the creatures shows them checking out a ship that has been stuck in the ice. The Pabodie expedition did not use ships with sails, so this one must be from a time before coal-fired engines. Maybe it’s Shackleton’s ship before it sank. Could the Elder Things have had something to do with it…?

Not a bad depiction, but the heads need to be more substantial, IMO.

Artwork by thatartistfeller

The Elder things stand like sentinels here, taking a pause from pulling their stolen sleigh. They remind me of a group of UFOs poised for takeoff. The texturing on the bodies, which looks metallic, is a nice touch.

Some illustrators have depicted the creatures actually attacking the human expedition.

Artwork by Mark Witton

Artist Mark Witton theorizes the Elder Things might have been bioluminescent, which would have aided them in the sunless depths of their city. In his depiction they have attacked Lake’s camp and set fire to it. I love the contrast of colors here and the reflection of the firelight on the creatures’ bodies.

Artwork by Jake Murray

Danforth and Dyer are having one hair-raising escape! Though without weapons, the Elder Things have managed to bend the wing of the airplane, dent in its side, and cause it to lose a tire. One is in the process of ripping off a horizontal stabilizer and two more are approaching from the upper left. But pity the poor Thing whose eyeball has just been shot out!

This scene never took place in the novella. But it could have. Or not. The creature’s wings are arranged radially, which would have given them problems with a direct attack. They are not birds that have a top side, with wings, and a bottom side, with claws. It’s more likely they would have lashed out with their locomotive tentacles, hooked on, and sheathed their wings for protection while their crinoid arms did the dirty work.

The Elder Things grieve for their companion who didn’t make it. Poor creatures! How their tentacled heads droop in sadness. The one at the left has prepared a star-shaped marker for the grave. This scene was in the story, albeit happening off-screen.

Artwork by Lee Moyer (www.leemoyer.com)

An Elder Thing before the Mountains of Madness, poised to take flight. This kind of wing seems the most plausible to me: radially oriented, as in the description and large yet thin enough to be folded completely inside. A simple depiction, yet I like it, especially the green cilia on the head that looks like moss contrasting with small red eyes.

How did the Elder Things convey themselves in their cities? The chubby one below, which has the appealing texture of an avocado, is conducting some experiments. Those look like humans in the steampunk-style tubes.

A tongue-in-cheek comic depiction of a lounging Elder Thing being served drinks by a shoggoth as more Elder Things direct a shoggoth to to build a column. The shoggoth seems to be panting with the effort. Overhead a pterodactyl carries another piece for the growing city. This was in the Mesozoic when their civilization was at the height of its power. The artist has many other fine Lovecraft sketches on his website.

Artwork by David Lee Ingersoll

Robed Elder Things gesticulate as a shoggoth sullenly slides behind them. That’s a neat conceit: clothing! Fashioned for a pentagonal, columnar form.

Artwork by Jacen Burrows

Another comic illustration, this time showing the Elder Things defending their city against a shoggoth rebellion. The laser cannon makes a star-shaped explosion when it hits, but not before the shoggoth has speared the Elder Thing at the top with its tentacle. Poor Elder Thing!

This graphic is very busy, as some comic illos are, and delightful. It’s very rare to find a picture of the creatures at the height of their civilization. That these three I’ve found are done in a comic style makes me think the subject matter is just too difficult for a more realism-oriented artist to paint. The setting reminds me of a sewage plant of some sort, and the creatures are true to Lovecraft’s description.

Artwork by Steve Maschuck

Steve Maschuck’s illustration also depicts a shoggoth, but it’s harder to tell what’s going on. The main Elder Thing might be commanding it, or frozen in terror as the two other Elder Things skedaddle through some doorways. Maschuck’s shoggoths are pale, translucent, ghostly protoplasmic masses which glow from within. It’s a different take, and I like it. Maschuck also shows the plasticity of the Elder Things by picturing the one on the right squeezing through a narrow doorway.

The Elder Things on the losing end again, this time from a member of the Great Race of Yith who has zapped it with a “camera-like” (per Lovecraft) weapon.

Holding court with the penguins. A sad end for such an abandoned, lonely being.

Elder Thing, by kkkiri@deviantart

“Am I the only one left?” The creature turns its head to the sky, searching for its fellows.

 

Roadside Picnic
[Reading Challenge 2022]

Roadside Picnic

by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Translation by Olena Bormashenko
Chicago Review Press, 2012
(Originally published 1972 in the USSR)

[ Challenge # 34: A book by more than one author. ]

Roadside Picnic is an SF classic. Originally published in the USSR at the height of the Cold War — and Communist censorship – it received an English translation and publication in the US in 1977. It was thought of then as an experimental novel, and it still is. The premise is this: Four alien ships have visited Earth for a brief time and left behind a bunch of trash and strange effects in the areas they’ve visited, some of which are harmful to humans so those areas have been closed off for safety and further study. But people still sneak in to steal the alien technology, for which there’s a thriving black market. The novel is about one these stalkers, as they are called, nicknamed Red. It’s not a bang-up adventure tale ala Michael Crichton, though there are exciting parts when Red enters “The Zone” to find alien tchotchkes. It’s more about his interior life and how the alien visit has affected the rest of humanity, which ranges from scientists to black market dealers to housewives.

Actually I think the book IS a parody of the Russian black market for Western goods as it existed in the early 1970s. The characters one meets in the book could have been selling rock LPs and blue jeans. But there’s a philosophical aspect too, in the idea that even if aliens have visited the Earth, humanity might never understand them, or they, us.

This is one of those rare books I would give five stars. Despite the often awkward language I was really into it by the end, which describes Red’s colorful but tension-filled trip through a bizarre alien-damaged quarry in search of the “Golden Sphere” — a legendary alien artifact which has the power to grant wishes. There’s a good amount of cosmic horror too. We never see an alien, only the strange effects their visit has caused, which ranges from “bug traps” – areas of increased gravity, that squash anything that enters them into pancakes – to poisonous hell slime, free-roaming invisible heat storms, and momentary time warps that resuscitate corpses. That these are all described so colloquially and off-handedly adds to the strangeness and horror of it all. It was very different from anything I’ve ever read.

The book is divided into one prologue in which the alien visit is nicely introduced and four chapters. The first of them is a first person present monologue by Red as he visits The Zone with two companions. It’s one of the rare first person present POVs that gets it right. The other sections are in close third, also from Red, which felt like first person POV; as writer, I felt the authors were showing me two different ways to handle the same voice. Both were valid, and both worked.

On the downside, the roles of women were stereotypical: Wife and Mother vs. Spoiled Teenage Whore. There were no female scientists, stalkers, or black market dealers. There’s only one mention of a woman even having a job, and that’s as a stenographer who has to fend off the attentions of the boss. Well, it was written in the early 1970s after all, by two Russians with only clandestine knowledge of the West, which is where the story is set. Unlike the Russia of the time, where women were regarded as comrades working alongside the men, women of the West in the 1960s were still expected to hold minor jobs at best until they got married.

The story’s setting adds to the absurdist nature of it, making it more like magic realism than a Western SF novel of the time that set out to predict a plausible future. The imaginary town of Harmont where the visit occurred is English-speaking and could have been American or  Canadian, yet, the characters are Russian through and through in their personalities and mannerisms. There’s a lot of drinking and smoking that goes on, and there’s even a bar called The Borscht. Colloquialisms that were originally in Russian sound odd when translated to English equivalents, like “mug” for example, for a criminal-looking face. Which might have suited the early 1970s time frame, but sounds odd today, in the 2020s. But that’s also what made it so interesting to read.

So, don’t be intimidated by this book in spite of its academic pedigree. (There’s a scholarly introduction by Ursula K. LeGuin, in fact.) You’re in for a good time. There’s even been a video game based on it.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/23/22: Shady Characters (Lovecraft III)

Asenath Waite, Lovecraft’s only transgender femme fatale, by Abigaril Larson

Humans in Lovecraft’s universe did not fare very well. They were transformed into monsters or disembodied brains, driven mad by forbidden knowledge, or became cannon fodder against ancient gods. That’s for the male humans. Female humans fared better. Mostly, by keeping out of his stories. But when they appeared they were witches, or the mothers of monsters.

Lovecraft was meticulous about choosing names for his characters, sticking to family names from his corner of New England (Masschusetts) like Dyer, Pabodie, Peabody, and Whately. His male characters’ names always sound a bit prissy, like they got called four-eyes in school and got beaten up a lot. When he references imaginary local histories, the first names he uses are those that were popular in that particular decade, which may be names from the Bible, Puritan names like Mercy or Resolve, or old blood English ones, such as Thomas or Abigail. In doing research to randomgen this list I came across some very odd ones indeed, like Onesiphorus, Gershon, and Hepza.

Since his characters are often professionals like doctors and scholars, I included some titles for both women and men.

 

Characters for a Lovecraftian story

MALE

Old Leyander Lipcott

Captain Theodore Baird

Dr. Jeremiah Pallsgrave

Elder Levi Cabell

Pastor Israel Hugh

Resolve Plumstead

The Honorable Israel Clough

William Trascott

Minister Gershon Curtwell

Nathaniel Shapley

Zephaniah Jessup

Roland Sherman

Deacon Wymont

Governor Jonathan Whippel

Enoch Stoddard

 FEMALE

Madame Paget

Dr. Eunice Granger

Patience Silsbee

Lydia Cabell

Serene Cordner

Old Addie Osgood

Lavina Charles

Susannie Watkins

Harriet Rose Bucknam

Lucy Colcord

Mercy Stoddard

Lady Adelaide Carrington

Madame Lucente

Mrs. Eber Alger

Mother Phoebe

The Art of the Elder Thing (Part I)

H. P. Lovecraft’s notes on At the Mountains of Madness and a drawing of an Elder Thing, written on the back of an envelope

The Elder Things are one of Lovecraft’s crowning creations, an  exercise in speculative biology that also includes the Yithians (The Great Race) and the Mi-Go, also known as the fungi from Yuggoth. These trifecta of beings stand the test of time even today of what an alien intelligence could be like.

Lovecraft based his creatures on echinoderms, that is, starfish, with their five-part head and five-part radial symmetry. Their barrel-shaped bodies recall a stiff, leathery version of a sea cucumber, with the sea cucumber’s tentacles serving as legs. Around the body’s five ridges are arms similar to the arms of a basket star or crinoid — that is, tentacles that split again and again into smaller tendrils — and wings which can be folded up and tucked into pockets between the ridges. He was very exacting with his description, which appears twice in At the Mountains of Madness. Yet, every artist who attempts to illustrate one of these creatures has his or her own interpretation, and for the most part, they are all correct according to the text.

Let’s start with the original drawings from their first published appearance in Astounding Tales in 1936.

I rather like these. They are basic, and… cute? They adhere to the text, particularly the bit apart being part vegetable. The heads look more like those of a brittle star than the familiar cookie-cutter like American flag star. Correctly for the text, they are covered in cilia and have eyeballs on the end. The bat wings don’t really make sense, but they didn’t make sense in the text either.

It’s my feeling that Lovecraft had a lot of affection for his creations. He worked out their society and biology in  detail. Though the human characters are repulsed, the Elder Things are shown to be curious, thinking, emotional beings — they hold a funeral for one of their fallen comrades — and live in comfort surrounded by artwork carved on the walls and even have furniture of a sort. Compare this to the Mi-Go, who are just repulsive all around, and a lot scarier.

I’ll come out and say favorite depiction is artist Kurt Komoda’s. Not only does he go into fine anatomical detail, he has worked out studies of how the Elder Things must have moved, and there’s humor on his site, too, like this drawing of an Elder Thing playing with multiple Rubik’s cubes.

Artwork by Kurt Komoda

Komoda addresses the issue of the creature’s odd wings, which, though they might have seemed cool when written, don’t gel with what we know today about flying and space travel. Even planetside the wings don’t seem substantial enough to lift such a large and hefty creature, let alone propel it through the vacuum of space. I don’t get the feeling Elder Things things had hollow bones like birds. Hell, they probably didn’t even have any bones! Since their flesh is described in the text as tough yet supple, I will bet they are also a good deal denser than Terran animals. Anyway, the wings seem like a mistake from the beginning that the creature is better off without.

If I had to retcon the Elder Things, I would say the wings developed as a spawning organ, and evolved, over time on their original world, as a means of aquatic locomotion. At some point, the Elder Things developed a means within their bodies to generate a lighter-than-air gas, enabling them to rise from the earth and fly, perhaps rotating their bodies in a screwlike motion through the air. Changes in direction may have been possible with puffs of air from their nether tubes. Such flight was smooth, but not too swift.

For space travel, however, who knows?

Artist Jagoba Lekuona has also done anatomical studies in detail. Already, we can see how the creatures can differ even in the basics like body texture, wings, and leg and arm structure. Lekuona’s speciman below even seems to peeing from one of the waste apertures between its legs.

Artwork by Jagoba Lekuona

Another anatomical drawing, again demonstrating the diversity of visual ideas.

Elder Thing by Pickmansmodel

This artist delves further into the creature’s hypothetical anatomy, like giving the creature lamprey-teeth claws on the underside of its feet. At lower right he or she postulates that it might move through water like a squid with jets of water –aft-to-fore.

This drawing also attempts to make sense of the anatomical parts that were not fully explained in the text — for example, the orifice slit in the center of the starfish head, which is explained as a “major mouth” with teeth like that of a starfish or sea urchin.

In his 1980 book Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestials SFF artist Wayne Barlowe includes a streamlined version of an Elder Thing whose trunk reminds me of the shell of a leatherback turtle.

 

Illustration by Wayne Barlowe

It’s an OK depiction but not as rotund as I pictured them myself. I get a delphinoid, marine vibe from them. Well, they are partly sea creatures. The fanlike wings, though I don’t like them in concept, look good here and nicely alien. This body shape doesn’t seem very expressive though, and like it would locomote on land in a stiff, clumsy way.

A chubbier marine version. This one seems sessile, like it could barely move at all. The texture is nicely done making it seem very unearthly.

Elder Thing by Tom Ardens

A magnificent depiction by artist Tom Ardens. I like how the wings seem tough, yet still transparent, and how they and the the creature’s bottom part reminds me of a type of bulbous kelp. It’s both disquieting and oddly beautiful .

Of course, some artists just get it all wrong!

This one from a French paperback ignores the starfish head and crinoid arms, and to make things worse, puts trees in Antarctica!

This Death Metal version is more influenced by H. R. Giger than H. P. Lovecraft. The legs are all wrong — they are not spider-like in the text, they are tentacles! — and so are the arms, while the mouths are not at the ends of tubes like they were in book. I don’t know what’s up with the skull. Perhaps they’re headbanging.

This one resembles a… lion? A lily flower? It also seems to have six segments instead of pentameral.

Sometimes, though, the changes are done well enough that they could be valid re-interpretations. This cartoon of an Elder Thing gets the proportions wrong — the being is barrel-shaped, not rhomboid, and the arms are too long and the head too small. Yet, I like it.

Another “skinny” version that ignores the crinoid arms, replacing them with insectile ones. Again, I like it in spite of its shortcomings.

On to more faithful versions that add a twist.

Manga panel by Gou Tanabe

Manga artist Gou Tanabe tackled At the Mountains of Madness and came up with this design, in which the creature’s head is more starlike than usual. Depicted is the moment the Pabodie explorers come across a mummified version in the cave.

There’s a lot to like, too, about this Elder Thing by davinci41. Namely, its magnificent, but alien, wings, two of which are shown emerging from their pockets. (How does such a wingspan fold up so tidily though?) I like the legs, too, and how the artist shows the plantlike nature of the feet which resemble leaves.

This version incorporates reptilian elements, with the clawed, webbed feet, dragon wings, and the snakelike seeking of the tentacled orifices. It’s active, sensing, exploring its environment, something I didn’t get from the more polished Wayne Barlowe version I posted earlier. Folded up and mummified, it’s like a squash blossom.

A very bulbous Elder Thing that relies heavily on vegetable elements like roots and tubers. Its large, bulging eyes are flat black, adding to the alien nature of it.

There are so many Elder Things around, I feel like a child discovering a Baskin Robbins ice cream store for the first time — so many different flavors, and I have to try them all. So I’m going to break this topic apart, and the next installment will deal with the Elder Things depicted in their natural environment.

The Happy Couple

Art by Dan Hillier

“With these tentacles, I thee wed…”

Lovecraft jokes

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”
― H. P. Lovecraft

 

Google “Lovecraft” and “Humor” and you’ll find an astounding number of jokes and cartoons, the Mythos giving Star Trek and Star Wars a run for its money in the meme department. Here I’ve culled out a few.

Q:   Why did Lovecraft go to Hawaii?
A:    He wanted to learn how to Cthulhu dance.

Who writes the most frightening tales from the dark web?
… HTTP Lovecraft

Q:   What does Cthulhu have for lunch?
A:    Fish & Ships

 

Necrotelecomicon: The book of dead phone numbers.

Q:    What are Lovecraft’s favorite TV subscription services?
A:    Cth-Hulu and HB mi-gO.

A customer in a sushi restaurant orders sashimi of tako (octopus.) But to his disgust, the tiny creature is delivered to him still alive. “Waiter!” he calls. “This octopus is still alive.”

“Not alive, Sir, only dreaming.”

 

 

H.P. Lovecraft needs some alone time for serious writing, so he takes a boat to Antarctica. There, on a snowy beach and wrapped in furs, he takes out pen and paper and starts to compose. But he’s soon interrupted by some starfish-headed, barrel-shaped beings who start to play volleyball.

So he packs up and sets up his table and chair further inland. But again the starfish-headed beings come by, this time whistling loudly among themselves, to lay down a picnic cloth and bottles of wine.

This time Lovecraft moves even further away. But again the silence is broken by the squawks of a giant blind albino penguin, who is running away with a whole pack of the alien beings chasing it with spears.

“Blazes,” Lovecraft mutters. “I’ll never get any writing done today. It’s just one damn Elder Thing after another.”