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Yeah she keeps trying to convince the protagonist (who also has a notable Innsmouth name, Gilman) to serve Nyarlathotep.

 LordofHats wrote:


The man is dead. No one is going to tip toe around him because other people are butt hurt about things he did they'd rather not talk about.

Not when there is money to make and virtue to signal!

 LordofHats wrote:


The man is dead. No one is going to tip toe around him because other people are butt hurt about things he did they'd rather not talk about.

You make it sound like he was Charles Manson.
He's nowhere near that same level of character. I do not recall any criminal record or acts of violence associated with him.
HPL was less KKK and more image board user; wrote unsavory things but ultimately harmless.

Just a thought, isn't the whole horror from the strange / foreign excactly that well written because of his rascism?
Respectively didn't it allow him to better write/ capture that fear?

Not Online!!! wrote:
Just a thought, isn't the whole horror from the strange / foreign excactly that well written because of his rascism?
Respectively didn't it allow him to better write/ capture that fear?

Its possible. Apparently he also suffered from night terrors, and that gave him inspiration.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

At the end of the day, the debate over the copyright status of his works is mostly academic. There is no evident party today who could possibly sue for infringement. Fundamentally even if the copyright exists, there is no one to own them.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Chaosium sue people in the gaming space. And though I don't know that Arkham House has ever successfully sued anyone, I think they've had lawyers send strongly worded letters to people. Mind you, this is going off memory, so I could be wrong.

Regardless, the fact remains, if you are going to use Lovecraft's creations, don't gak on Lovecraft while you do it. It's not even just a matter of respect or decency. It's just a cynical, amoral approach to business where you selfishly exploit talent much greater than yourself. It is at complete odds with having loyal and enthusiastic fans.

It's fine if you want to do something LIKE Lovecraft. In fact, that's a great idea. We wouldn't have Star Wars if George Lucas had gotten the license to Flash Gordon. Dungeons and Dragons was obviously and directly influenced by Tolkien and Howard. Night of the Living Dead was directly based on I Am Legend - but it wasn't I Am Legend. It was it's own thing. Necessity is the mother of invention. Not having something forces you to forge your own path, and if you aren't a completely worthless hack, maybe we end up with the next Star Wars, or maybe even the next Galaxy Quest.

But if you do want to use someone else's work, and they allow it, do it because you want to respect the work and want to do justice to it. There's absolutely no reason to use the name Cthulhu if you aren't going to be true to the name of Cthulhu. The least you can do is reserve your masturbatory fan fiction for the appropriate dark corner of the internet and not pretend like you belong in that legacy.

I'm 100% in agreement with you, I just don't particularly care about random PR reps on twitter denouncing lovecraft while they do it. To me, a lazy pasting of ol' cthulhu's face on a piece of trash is exactly as offensive if the company does or does not bad mouth a dead guy.

There are plenty of works inspired by Lovecraft that don't bad mouth him and kick ass. You live in a world where Pathologic exists, and it's a wonderful world, in no small part because of lovecraft.


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Not Online!!! wrote:
Just a thought, isn't the whole horror from the strange / foreign excactly that well written because of his rascism?
Respectively didn't it allow him to better write/ capture that fear?

Yeah, no doubt. it is certainly easier to write about a fear if you can project it on to living breathing humans.Not having a real understanding of how foreign cultures actually operate does make them into cartoon stereotypes pretty much any time they appear, but when he just transforms them into gibbering monstrosities the work is really good.


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 LordofHats wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:


Regardless, the fact remains, if you are going to use Lovecraft's creations, don't gak on Lovecraft while you do it.

The man is dead. No one is going to tip toe around him because other people are butt hurt about things he did they'd rather not talk about.

It is funny to me when the "it's a joke, grow a thick skin, GOD people are so SENSITIVE these days" corner of the internet gets all up in arms about people insulting a dead dude.

Sporgar brought up Smite. Smite is a game about a whole bunch of deities getting together and doing a fight, and as memory serves they have been absolute jackasses when it comes to people from non-white cultures coming out and asking "Hey, could you maybe not put one of the major gods in our culture's pantheon in your game wearing a sexy bikini?" They're fine with seeing gods actually worshipped by millions of people as pokemon to put into their creature game, but they don't have the stones to stick jesus in there as a healer or even any of the christian/muslim saints or angels.

Buncha PR spouting wussy ass pricks who made a gakky LoL clone. feth 'em.

the_scotsman wrote:

It is funny to me when the "it's a joke, grow a thick skin, GOD people are so SENSITIVE these days" corner of the internet gets all up in arms about people insulting a dead dude.

Personally I think it's funnier that people get all up in arms about a man being racist in the early nineteen hundreds, but each to his own.

dyndraig wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

It is funny to me when the "it's a joke, grow a thick skin, GOD people are so SENSITIVE these days" corner of the internet gets all up in arms about people insulting a dead dude.

Personally I think it's funnier that people get all up in arms about a man being racist in the early nineteen hundreds, but each to his own.

so far, the examples for "getting up in arms over lovecraft" we've had are....

...some fantasy writing award somewhere changing the image used on their award from an impossibly terrible and creepy statue of lovecraft's head that would have almost certainly have horrified the man himself (Look at those bug eyes and thick lips! Hewlett Packard would never have approved!)

....a gakky, gakky video game company with a history of being gakky putting out a PR statement on twitter or some gak to cover their ass because they want to copy/paste cthulhu into their thing.

And the examples of "lovecraft still being extremely well loved" we've got are, let's see...

...Maybe the 2nd or 3rd most widely-played RPG rule system, and one of the longest running

...endless reprintings of his works continuously being sold in pretty much every bookstore in existence, along with graphic novel adaptations, mythos additions from other writers, movie and radio adaptations, high-budget video games. Myself, I have a lovely leatherbound edition that was pretty recent with his complete works.

...Cthulhu being a near-universally recognizable character in geek culture, to the point where his ubiquity is becoming an in-joke in and of itself

...Countless movies, games, books, comics, shows, art, and nearly every form of media taking inspiration from Lovecraft's style and themes to create original and incredible work

If Lovecraft was not currently in the public domain, and was owned by a private company right now, they'd be raking in royalties right alongside Lord of the Rings, Song of Ice and Fire and other IPs.

HP lovecraft appears to be about as "cancelled" as the legion of crusty-ass washed up comedians currently milking that particular chestnut for every easy buck they can milk out of it in the standup world.

the_scotsman wrote:
HP lovecraft appears to be about as "cancelled" as the legion of crusty-ass washed up comedians currently milking that particular chestnut for every easy buck they can milk out of it in the standup world.

You must love cherries, given how many you've picked. But it's not about being "cancelled", it's about this culture of identity politics which has made even simple conversations without proper deference to the orthodoxy into landmines. It's a way to control public opinion and punish differences of opinion.

I've personally been suspended from Dakka for saying Black Panther was a terrible movie, and I saw someone else recently suspended (and then asking for a permanent ban) over Ghostbusters 2016. Saying that one thinks The Last Jedi sucks shouldn't get them called a white supremacist. I mean, I thought The Last of Us was a thoroughly mediocre game, but they've already primed it so that if I won't play The Last Of Us 2, I'm a misogynist (or worse). I should be able to say I like the Star Wars prequels without first condemning the racially insensitive depictions of Jar-Jar, Watto, and the Nemodians - "I'm not racist, but I liked Phantom Menace" is a dumb way to start a conversation, especially since the playbook also says only a racist would add a "but" to the statement "I'm not racist". Defending yourself from claims of racism is just more proof that you are racist.

I've already had someone here suggest I was a secret racist for normalizing Lovecraft. Do I really have to say that I don't share the viewpoints of a person who died in the 1930s? Do I need to say, "Lovecraft was afraid of air conditioners, but I love them. Some of my best friends are air conditioners!"? Of course not, because nobody believes everybody around them is a secret air conditioner denier. But they do think everybody is a secret racist, and they thrive on attempting to out them for social media likes.

Now everybody has to put a disclaimer before Lovecraft - even Chaosium and Lovecraft Historical Society! I'll bet they didn't have those disclaimers 20 years ago. When do you think they added them? I have no way of checking, but I'll bet you anything it was right about when that writer denounced the award with Lovecraft's face on it.

Lovecraft died 100 years ago, but why did his racism only become an obstacle in the last decade? Why did all his contemporary peers constantly correspond with him through letters when he was such a scumbag? Why didn't it become a thing during the civil rights movement in the 60s? What about when Lovecraft had a resurgence in the 80s and then in the 2000s? Why did his racism only matter recently? We both know the answer to that, but you are going to tiptoe around it because admitting the reach and influence of identity politics would be the undermine it immediately.

 Sqorgar wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
HP lovecraft appears to be about as "cancelled" as the legion of crusty-ass washed up comedians currently milking that particular chestnut for every easy buck they can milk out of it in the standup world.

You must love cherries, given how many you've picked. But it's not about being "cancelled", it's about this culture of identity politics which has made even simple conversations without proper deference to the orthodoxy into landmines. It's a way to control public opinion and punish differences of opinion.

I've personally been suspended from Dakka for saying Black Panther was a terrible movie, and I saw someone else recently suspended (and then asking for a permanent ban) over Ghostbusters 2016. Saying that one thinks The Last Jedi sucks shouldn't get them called a white supremacist. I mean, I thought The Last of Us was a thoroughly mediocre game, but they've already primed it so that if I won't play The Last Of Us 2, I'm a misogynist (or worse). I should be able to say I like the Star Wars prequels without first condemning the racially insensitive depictions of Jar-Jar, Watto, and the Nemodians - "I'm not racist, but I liked Phantom Menace" is a dumb way to start a conversation, especially since the playbook also says only a racist would add a "but" to the statement "I'm not racist". Defending yourself from claims of racism is just more proof that you are racist.

I've already had someone here suggest I was a secret racist for normalizing Lovecraft. Do I really have to say that I don't share the viewpoints of a person who died in the 1930s? Do I need to say, "Lovecraft was afraid of air conditioners, but I love them. Some of my best friends are air conditioners!"? Of course not, because nobody believes everybody around them is a secret air conditioner denier. But they do think everybody is a secret racist, and they thrive on attempting to out them for social media likes.

Now everybody has to put a disclaimer before Lovecraft - even Chaosium and Lovecraft Historical Society! I'll bet they didn't have those disclaimers 20 years ago. When do you think they added them? I have no way of checking, but I'll bet you anything it was right about when that writer denounced the award with Lovecraft's face on it.

Lovecraft died 100 years ago, but why did his racism only become an obstacle in the last decade? Why did all his contemporary peers constantly correspond with him through letters when he was such a scumbag? Why didn't it become a thing during the civil rights movement in the 60s? What about when Lovecraft had a resurgence in the 80s and then in the 2000s? Why did his racism only matter recently? We both know the answer to that, but you are going to tiptoe around it because admitting the reach and influence of identity politics would be the undermine it immediately.

When power on social media and internet forums becomes any kind of power in the real world then I will begin to give a gak about anything in this post, Wild and crazy that you seem to be getting warnings and suspensions on a forum with a politics ban - all your posts are so

 Sqorgar wrote:
You must love cherries, given how many you've picked. But it's not about being "cancelled", it's about this culture of identity politics which has made even simple conversations without proper deference to the orthodoxy into landmines. It's a way to control public opinion and punish differences of opinion.

So, apolitical.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
You make it sound like he was Charles Manson.
He's nowhere near that same level of character. I do not recall any criminal record or acts of violence associated with him.
HPL was less KKK and more image board user; wrote unsavory things but ultimately harmless.

This hyperbolic in the extreme. I made no such sounds. A dead man is dead. It's possible to respect his legacy while noting it's less savory aspects and moving on.

It is funny to me when the "it's a joke, grow a thick skin, GOD people are so SENSITIVE these days" corner of the internet gets all up in arms about people insulting a dead dude.

This is fething pathetic. The ONLY people up in arms here, in need of a thicker skin, are the people who won't just let this go. It's asinine (and I'm pointing this out for the third time) I and others have tried to move the discussion elsewhere. The only wussy ass pricks in here are you lot. If you don't want to talk about that aspect of his life, talk about some other part of it or his work.

Others have tried to move past it. Your the only ones hung up on it.


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the_scotsman wrote:
If Lovecraft was not currently in the public domain, and was owned by a private company right now, they'd be raking in royalties right alongside Lord of the Rings, Song of Ice and Fire and other IPs.

That might be generous.

It's hard to really know where his work would be today if it were copyrighted and held by someone. A big part of the current popularity is the release of Call of Cthulu First Edition in 1981. He'd always been popular in some table top and literary circles even before that. When Call of Cthulu took off in the big RPG boom of the 80s and 90s, it massively spread awareness of Lovecraft (it helped that the game itself carried important mechanical innovations). That never would have happened if his works were held by a copyright, and someone needed to license the works. I suspect Lovecraft would be no where near as well known today without his work being public domain and there wouldn't be that much money to make.

I think he'd be much more niche and he still kind of was until maybe 15 or so years ago. We certainly wouldn't have the large body of materials we now have otherwise.

No one gets banned for saying a movie is not good. I have argued at length, like at severe length, that TLJ and GB16 suck hard.

ITT I’ve given opportunities to talk about HPL topics not to do with his racism. But only LoH seems even remotely interested.

 Manchu wrote:
No one gets banned for saying a movie is not good. I have argued at length, like at severe length, that TLJ and GB16 suck hard.

ITT I’ve given opportunities to talk about HPL topics not to do with his racism. But only LoH seems even remotely interested.

I'm actually up to talk about Old Man Henderson because I just mentioned the Call of Cthulu RPG game, and the entire tale of Old Man Henderson is crazy awesome. If we're talking about derivative works, we can talk about that right XD

As an expansion on my last addendum, I think Lovecraft's popularity today is hard to detach from the RPG boom of the 80s and the growth of the Internet. Lovecraft was never a highly marketed name, in his own life. Derleth certainly tried and made important contributions to preserving his legacy, but Lovecraft has grown predominantly by word of mouth and reference. Grassroots. Memetic mutation even. I actually can't think of any other examples of authors whose cultural legacy grew in this manner? Maybe Howard a bit? He certainly boomed a bit in the 80s himself.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
No one gets banned for saying a movie is not good. I have argued at length, like at severe length, that TLJ and GB16 suck hard.

ITT I’ve given opportunities to talk about HPL topics not to do with his racism. But only LoH seems even remotely interested.

I'm actually up to talk about Old Man Henderson because I just mentioned the Call of Cthulu RPG game, and the entire tale of Old Man Henderson is crazy awesome. If we're talking about derivative works, we can talk about that right XD

As an expansion on my last addendum, I think Lovecraft's popularity today is hard to detach from the RPG boom of the 80s and the growth of the Internet. Lovecraft was never a highly marketed name, in his own life. Derleth certainly tried and made important contributions to preserving his legacy, but Lovecraft has grown predominantly by word of mouth and reference. Grassroots. Memetic mutation even. I actually can't think of any other examples of authors whose cultural legacy grew in this manner? Maybe Howard a bit? He certainly boomed a bit in the 80s himself.

I'd say a lot of the super old-school classic sci-fi and fantasy authors' work have grown in large part by things making them more accessible to wider audiences. Heinlein, Howard, Phillip K Dick, etc.

how much of Tolkien's popularity was driven by DnD and Warhammer being as huge as they were in the 80s, or even going farther back, by the existence of the more accessible hobbit?

I've often thought of Phillip K Dick as the writer who came up with every cool sci-fi concept in the world, and then wrote the exact same novel with the exact same characters every time doing basically nothing (Will there be a Fiery Brunette in this one? And when there is, will she be the leading man's destruction or his salvation?) and the true extent of how cool those conceits were only really becomes understood when someone steals the idea and makes something interesting from it.

Lovecraft has a little bit of that, definitely less so in my eyes than Dick or some of the others, and often people take lovecraft's work and flanderize the hell out of it, so the original is actually quite a lot better if you can see past the archaic language and pacing.

It only takes the tiniest bit of modernization to make HPL stories incredibly cool. The indy film version of Whisperer that came out a little while ago was so, so great. just by streamlining the correspondances and adding a little bit of action at the end.

the_scotsman wrote:
I'd say a lot of the super old-school classic sci-fi and fantasy authors' work have grown in large part by things making them more accessible to wider audiences. Heinlein, Howard, Phillip K Dick, etc.

That's certainly true, but I feel this is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. Many of these men were very famous and well known in their own lives. Lovecraft died relatively young, and was mostly only famous within a circle of admirers and friends. He only ever had one published book (Innsmouth) and it did not sell. Weird Tales, while an important publication, was not that widely read. Many of the men who published in it alongside Lovecraft went on to strike it big with anthologies and books of their own that sold very well. They only got their start there. Maybe Lovecraft would have too if he'd lived longer, but at the time of his death he was not a big name.

how much of Tolkien's popularity was driven by DnD and Warhammer being as huge as they were in the 80s, or even going farther back, by the existence of the more accessible hobbit?

Tolkien was famous and widely read long before the 80s. Long before DnD even. Tolkein was effectively instantly famous. It helped that his publisher really went to bat for him of course. He was able to sell the entire Trilogy very early on a box set, something that was at the time pretty much unheard of and it was a huge deal for him and his work.

I don't think the same can be said of Lovecraft. I don't think he became someone we could call 'widely read' until the past 20 years. He's up there with Edgar Allen Poe now I'd say, one of the big grand daddy's of modern horror, but most of that owes itself to others bringing his work into awareness over the course of a near century. There's a pretty good article on this from the Independent that I managed to find pretty fast fortunately. Sometimes finding these things is pulling teeth. The author himself discovered Lovecraft through the RPG. There were also in that decade several movies made (The Thing being the big one I think*), and several books (It by King) that also happened. Those helped grow awareness Lovecraft, but it was cultural osmosis. It was a long road for Lovecraft to get the recognition he deserved for his contributions and it was very different from Tolkein's comparatively overnight fame.

*Which isn't based on Lovecraft but John Campbell's Who Goes There?, but Campbell was a Lovecraft fan and so was John Carpenter. Both talked Lovecraft up in their own careers, and helped advance his legacy.

the_scotsman wrote:I'd say a lot of the super old-school classic sci-fi and fantasy authors' work have grown in large part by things making them more accessible to wider audiences. Heinlein

Isn't Heinlein getting it in the neck (again) these days too, tho?

LordofHats wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
how much of Tolkien's popularity was driven by DnD and Warhammer being as huge as they were in the 80s, or even going farther back, by the existence of the more accessible hobbit?

Tolkien was famous and widely read long before the 80s. Long before DnD even. Tolkein was effectively instantly famous. It helped that his publisher really went to bat for him of course. He was able to sell the entire Trilogy very early on a box set, something that was at the time pretty much unheard of and it was a huge deal for him and his work.

As I understand it, The Hobbit was popular and that created demand for a sequel, but then it took almost twenty years for that to arrive. (Man, and we get on GRRM's case) Might explain why it needed a boost from certain demographics.

Did Gary Gygax wear many buttons?

 Vermis wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:I'd say a lot of the super old-school classic sci-fi and fantasy authors' work have grown in large part by things making them more accessible to wider audiences. Heinlein

Isn't Heinlein getting it in the neck (again) these days too, tho?

LordofHats wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
how much of Tolkien's popularity was driven by DnD and Warhammer being as huge as they were in the 80s, or even going farther back, by the existence of the more accessible hobbit?

Tolkien was famous and widely read long before the 80s. Long before DnD even. Tolkein was effectively instantly famous. It helped that his publisher really went to bat for him of course. He was able to sell the entire Trilogy very early on a box set, something that was at the time pretty much unheard of and it was a huge deal for him and his work.

As I understand it, The Hobbit was popular and that created demand for a sequel, but then it took almost twenty years for that to arrive. (Man, and we get on GRRM's case) Might explain why it needed a boost from certain demographics.

Did Gary Gygax wear many buttons?

I don't know, I'm not in the habit of searching on google or twitter for internet posts designed to piss me off.

I just want to take a minute right now and imagine what our world would be like if JK rowling wrote Sorceror's Stone and, twenty years later, came out with a sequel trilogy to Sorceror's Stone what Lord of the Rings was to the hobbit.

"you want a sequel to my popular children's bedtime story? i hope you like LINGUISTICS!!!!!"

We don’t need to wonder. Look at Game of Thrones and the Kingkiller Chronicle. I think both those fandoms have largely become impatient with the delays, especially the later given that the author apparently spends all is time streaming video games.


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As for Heinlein, a lot of people pick up on his militarism and near facist ideology in Starship Troopers. A lot of people have also never once read Stranger in a Strange Land, which Heinlein considered his master piece and is so hippie just reading it leaves you puking drum circles.

Heinlein is an even better example than Lovecraft of a man who started in one place and found himself somewhere very different later in life. His early fiction was largely military fiction, or militant fiction. By the time of his death he’d become the king of sci-fi hippies.

 LordofHats wrote:
We don’t need to wonder. Look at Game of Thrones and the Kingkiller Chronicle. I think both those fandoms have largely become impatient with the delays, especially the later given that the author apparently spends all is time streaming video games.


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As for Heinlein, a lot of people pick up on his militarism and near facist ideology in Starship Troopers. A lot of people have also never once read Stranger in a Strange Land, which Heinlein considered his master piece and is so hippie just reading it leaves you puking drum circles.

Heinlein is an even better example than Lovecraft of a man who started in one place and found himself somewhere very different later in life. His early fiction was largely military fiction, or militant fiction. By the time of his death he’d become the king of sci-fi hippies.

I remember reading Stranger in a Strange Land.
Its a good novel. What happened to the main character was pretty brutal though, but I understand that Heinlein was going for a messianic theme.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an interesting novel too, and one that I'd hardly considered fascist, as its about a Moon colony seceding from a tyrannical Earth based government's control. I don't think a fascist would have rebels as his protagonists.

I think I prefer The Number of the Beast for its outlandish escapism. It was basically an Isekai (as in, that Japanese trend in fiction where the main character finds himself in a game he's familiar with) before Isekai was a thing.

Heinlein also wrote a novel in 1951 about parasitic mind controlling alien slugs, where the most effective way to identify the host is to strip him naked, which results in a nudist culture on Earth.
He was a pretty interesting author. Its a pity that most people only seem to remember him for Starship Troopers, and by Starship Troopers I mean the film version that was directed by a guy who didn't even read the book and thought it was right-wing propaganda.

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 LordofHats wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I'd say a lot of the super old-school classic sci-fi and fantasy authors' work have grown in large part by things making them more accessible to wider audiences. Heinlein, Howard, Phillip K Dick, etc.

That's certainly true, but I feel this is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. Many of these men were very famous and well known in their own lives. Lovecraft died relatively young, and was mostly only famous within a circle of admirers and friends. He only ever had one published book (Innsmouth) and it did not sell. Weird Tales, while an important publication, was not that widely read. Many of the men who published in it alongside Lovecraft went on to strike it big with anthologies and books of their own that sold very well. They only got their start there. Maybe Lovecraft would have too if he'd lived longer, but at the time of his death he was not a big name.

Yeah, the sad truth is that if it weren't for the efforts of August Derleth, Lovecraft would have remained obscure.
Derleth is also the one who coined the Mythos, added more of a good vs evil bent and tried to control licensing rights, iirc.

 LordofHats wrote:

As for Heinlein, a lot of people pick up on his militarism and near facist ideology in Starship Troopers. A lot of people have also never once read Stranger in a Strange Land, which Heinlein considered his master piece and is so hippie just reading it leaves you puking drum circles.

Heinlein is an even better example than Lovecraft of a man who started in one place and found himself somewhere very different later in life. His early fiction was largely military fiction, or militant fiction. By the time of his death he’d become the king of sci-fi hippies.

That's true. A number of his later works are little more than pornography with a scifi flavour. I would contest that much of his earlier work, and certainly not his better work, is largely military fiction though. He did deal with politics a good deal, and a good number of his (later) characters are ex-military though, that's true.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Its a pity that most people only seem to remember him for Starship Troopers, and by Starship Troopers I mean the film version that was directed by a guy who didn't even read the book and thought it was right-wing propaganda.

Oh, he definitely read it. He just didn't like it, and the general film audience was either enjoyed the campiness or actioness of the film and missed the satire the movie was intended to be. It was never intended as a faithful adaptation.

I doubt Heinlein ever intended to come off as facist. I think it was more a case of unintended unfortunate implications. He was looking one direction while writing Starship Troopers, and didn't quite notice that the other direction was starting to look maybe a bit unsavory. But the thing I think really makes the book worth reading is the way it kind of makes you think about why you're disagreeing with it. The book has a very 'to the heart' way about it, with some clever metaphors and word play. It's a very good book for introspection.

Back to Lovecraft, still holding out hope Del Toro can get Mountains of Madness green lit. It's probably in my top three favorite stories he wrote and I'd love to see a movie adaptation.

 LordofHats wrote:
[
Back to Lovecraft, still holding out hope Del Toro can get Mountains of Madness green lit. It's probably in my top three favorite stories he wrote and I'd love to see a movie adaptation.

Wasn't that axed after Prometheus came out?

Starship Troopers was a parody of facism where he approached it asking the question "how could a facist government actually work?".

Heinlien was not in favor of those ideas. He just presented them. If heinlien has a self insert character that could be his talking head it's Lazarus Long. He more or less represents heinliens morality.


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If anything, heinliens a libertarian.

 LordofHats wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Its a pity that most people only seem to remember him for Starship Troopers, and by Starship Troopers I mean the film version that was directed by a guy who didn't even read the book and thought it was right-wing propaganda.

Oh, he definitely read it. He just didn't like it, and the general film audience was either enjoyed the campiness or actioness of the film and missed the satire the movie was intended to be. It was never intended as a faithful adaptation.

Actually, he said he tried reading it, but stopped when it made him depressed for being too right-wing and asked Ed Neumeier to give him a synopsis.

I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring … It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book.

So no, he definitely did not read it. Or finish reading it, at least.


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 LordofHats wrote:


Back to Lovecraft, still holding out hope Del Toro can get Mountains of Madness green lit. It's probably in my top three favorite stories he wrote and I'd love to see a movie adaptation.

I hope so. If anyone can do a Lovecraft film right, its Del Toro.

Though Mouth of Madness was a pretty good Not-Lovecraft film.

 LordofHats wrote:
...and missed the satire the movie was intended to be.

Which is pretty baffling. But then again, there's also people who fail to see the satire of american corporatism and commercialism in the original Robocop film despite stuff like all this:

Color out of space with Mr cage was a pretty decent adaptation of the short story. Especially considering the monster is a color.

 Lance845 wrote:
Color out of space with Mr cage was a pretty decent adaptation of the short story. Especially considering the monster is a color.

...I did not know that there was a Color out of Space film adaptation, and I feel really bad now for not knowing that.
I'll have to see it.

dyndraig wrote:Wasn't that axed after Prometheus came out?

He said he was unable to get any interest because of Prometheus. The last word was a few years ago where he said he was going to try one last time to get the film funded.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Though Mouth of Madness was a pretty good Not-Lovecraft film.

Yeah, but despite it's name it has near nothing to do with At the Mountains of Madness. It borrows from other stories, most notably Witch House, Innsmouth, and Shadow Out of Time.

Lance845 wrote:Color out of space with Mr cage was a pretty decent adaptation of the short story. Especially considering the monster is a color.

I was honestly surprised how good it was. It's not a very good Lovecraft moive imo, but it's a fun campy B-horror movie, and for once Nick Cage I think managed to make his role work rather than overpower the film with his over the top acting.

 Lance845 wrote:
Starship Troopers was a parody of facism where he approached it asking the question "how could a facist government actually work?".

Heinlien was not in favor of those ideas. He just presented them. If heinlien has a self insert character that could be his talking head it's Lazarus Long. He more or less represents heinliens morality.


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If anything, heinliens a libertarian.

and totally to blame for Centurions, Aggressors and the other bouncy Primaris