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 LordofHats wrote:


Next time there's a discussion about whether or not Dakka needs to just ban users from topic spaces, this thread deserves to be at the top of the example list.

Why wait though? You can start whipping up some support for a deplatforming right now.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
To be fair, Lovecraft died in 1937, prior to WW2, let alone finding out about the Holocaust...which hadn't even started yet. I don't think him liking Hitler is the worst or most racist thing he did.

The eugenics practices of the Nazis started in 1934 with forced sterilisation. This wasn't hidden as the Holocaust was, it was written into law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Prevention_of_Hereditarily_Diseased_Offspring

As an aside you had allready violent actions taken with people killed in Germany after Hitler got to take over.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
To be fair, Lovecraft died in 1937, prior to WW2, let alone finding out about the Holocaust...which hadn't even started yet. I don't think him liking Hitler is the worst or most racist thing he did.

The eugenics practices of the Nazis started in 1934 with forced sterilisation. This wasn't hidden as the Holocaust was, it was written into law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Prevention_of_Hereditarily_Diseased_Offspring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Sterilization_Act_of_1924

Eugenics wasn't something unique to Nazism.

 trexmeyer wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
To be fair, Lovecraft died in 1937, prior to WW2, let alone finding out about the Holocaust...which hadn't even started yet. I don't think him liking Hitler is the worst or most racist thing he did.

The eugenics practices of the Nazis started in 1934 with forced sterilisation. This wasn't hidden as the Holocaust was, it was written into law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Prevention_of_Hereditarily_Diseased_Offspring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Sterilization_Act_of_1924

Eugenics wasn't something unique to Nazism.

True. Yet Nazi Germany carried it out on a vastly increased scale and scope compared to any other country with such practices.

The US sterilised >67,000 people between 1907 and 1963. Between 1934 and 1939, the Nazis sterilised over 200,000 people, possibly as high as 340,000. The US laws, such as the Viriginia law you linked to, often limited such practices to individuals in psychiatric institutions. The Nazi laws applied to everyone.

And then there was the forced euthanasia which the Nazis inflicted upon people that they deemed to be disabled.

Yes, Nazi Germany was awful. No one is disagreeing with that.

My larger point was that it's not necessary to use Lovecraft liking 1930's era Hitler as evidence of him being racist. Furthermore, admiration for Hitler, at least prior to WW2, was not unknown in the western world.

Lovecraft was racist and arguably to a greater degree than the culture at the time. Once again, it's literally evident in his writing. For Christ's sake, the man wrote a poem titled 'On the Creation of <N-Words>' and people are using his appreciation for Hitler as evidence of his racism?

Because I feel spitefully motivated to try and I just saw a trailer for it, who's giving Lovecraft Country a shot? It's based on a book of the same name that used Lovecraft's motif to generate metaphors about the Jim Crow south. The book is so-so on its own but whatever I'll give the series a shot. Not much else I'm watching this week.It's got Jordan Peele working on it. Hoping it's less like Us and more like Get Out.

It's something of a trend in post-Lovecraftian fiction. There's a few other books like it; Carter & Lovecraft, and the Innsmouth Legacy Series.They take Lovecraft's creation of 'Lovecraft Country, and basically accelerate it into the future and play the storylines straight from there, juxtaposing Lovecraft's country with a later period. I love the idea, but none of the books really click? Lovecraft Country is maybe the best attempt. It moves the timeline up to 1950s America. It uses a few different Lovecraft stories for material but nothing specific. The book is okay. Its worst sin is probably being overlong for something that tries to be so pulpy.

The Terror is the only other TV show of late that could be kind of Lovecraftian Horror and the second season was meh (and more ghost story than Lovecraftian) so I doubt we'll be getting more of it. Still holding out for an At the Mountains of Madness series myself. That would be good TV. Though I think I remember hearing something about a TV series based on Who Goes There and that's kind of close.

Neonomican is a passable modern mythos effort, bit X-files meets Lovecraft, with the implication the HPL was seeing / predicting the future, also has a rather disturbing page or ten of nerds indulging in unspeakable rites but Alan gonna Alan

Hey guys,

This thread has become a bit hijacked from what the OP, and first several pages, were about. Dakka has a strict "no 'isms" policy, which obviously includes racism. Some of the posts here (which I'm very belatedly seeing now) brush up against or even step across this line. I've had to edit and remove a few posts because of this.

Additionally, in depth discussion of Nazi Germany and history just really aren't on topic to the "Geek Media" section. Many of the points here have merit, but also just aren't what this section is for.

So, I'll give this thread a chance to return to the topic - Lovecraft's contradiction between emphasizing fear of the unknown, yet explaining so much of his mythos in minute detail.

If we can't return to that topic, we'll have to lock the thread. Thanks for understanding and for your help, everyone!

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Neonomican is a passable modern mythos effort, bit X-files meets Lovecraft, with the implication the HPL was seeing / predicting the future, also has a rather disturbing page or ten of nerds indulging in unspeakable rites but Alan gonna Alan

I have The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. on my audio books list. I've heard it described this same way with World War Z added in.

I'd again recommend The Magnus Archives for anyone who likes Podcasts. It's a really well put together series that seamlessly moves between an overarching myth arc and episodic entries with most of the episodic entries ending up mattering a lot more than they initially appeared as the story goes forward. It's structured as recorded statements within the titular archives. Really well managed narrative device.

I suppose if people like Lovecraft and like Scooby-Doo they could try Meddling Kids but I didn't think Meddling Kids was very good. Lots of metaphors that make no sense and kind of an unearned self-reverence? Someone might like it more than me maybe. I just struggled to take seriously references so basic as the 'Zoinks River' and the plot spent too much time describing one characters apparently sentient hair.

There was a book a long time ago. A oversized paperback called Alhazared by Donald Tyson. I read it when it first came out years ago and I was working in a book store.

It's an autobiographical work of fiction about the author of the Necronomicon and pretty great from memory. Though he has direct interaction with some lovecraftian entities it keeps them alien, unexplained, and unknowable. Their influence can sometimes be felt but to what extent, how, and all that. It's hard to pin down as it should be.

 Lance845 wrote:
There was a book a long time ago. A oversized paperback called Alhazared by Donald Tyson. I read it when it first came out years ago and I was working in a book store.

It's an autobiographical work of fiction about the author of the Necronomicon and pretty great from memory. Though he has direct interaction with some lovecraftian entities it keeps them alien, unexplained, and unknowable. Their influence can sometimes be felt but to what extent, how, and all that. It's hard to pin down as it should be.

I find that amusing cause the Necronomicon is supposed to be the book of his travels, not a spell book or catalogue.

I'm gonna look for that. That sounds like a cool idea for a story.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
There was a book a long time ago. A oversized paperback called Alhazared by Donald Tyson. I read it when it first came out years ago and I was working in a book store.

It's an autobiographical work of fiction about the author of the Necronomicon and pretty great from memory. Though he has direct interaction with some lovecraftian entities it keeps them alien, unexplained, and unknowable. Their influence can sometimes be felt but to what extent, how, and all that. It's hard to pin down as it should be.

I find that amusing cause the Necronomicon is supposed to be the book of his travels, not a spell book or catalogue.

I'm gonna look for that. That sounds like a cool idea for a story.

Yup! But if you go into a book store and look for "The Necronomicon" yu will most likely be pointed to the new age section with the crystal tarot card and other crap. They have Necronomicons in there are are mostly collections of "spells" and rituals related to lovecrafts stuff.

By titling it Alhazared it became a separate entity from the "spell book".

 Lance845 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
There was a book a long time ago. A oversized paperback called Alhazared by Donald Tyson. I read it when it first came out years ago and I was working in a book store.

It's an autobiographical work of fiction about the author of the Necronomicon and pretty great from memory. Though he has direct interaction with some lovecraftian entities it keeps them alien, unexplained, and unknowable. Their influence can sometimes be felt but to what extent, how, and all that. It's hard to pin down as it should be.

I find that amusing cause the Necronomicon is supposed to be the book of his travels, not a spell book or catalogue.

I'm gonna look for that. That sounds like a cool idea for a story.

Yup! But if you go into a book store and look for "The Necronomicon" yu will most likely be pointed to the new age section with the crystal tarot card and other crap. They have Necronomicons in there are are mostly collections of "spells" and rituals related to lovecrafts stuff.

By titling it Alhazared it became a separate entity from the "spell book".

Oh I know.

One of my favorite stories of the 'moral guardians' is the one about the lady who warned parents to see if their kids were reading the Necronomicon in 1972. A fan version of the book wouldn't be published until the next year, so at the time 'the book' literally didn't exist and there weren't even any imitators around yet.I feel like there was a brief period in the 70s where the Necronomicon was a name people were hearing about, but no one really knew where it came from cause Lovecraft was still obscure outside of literary circles. Kenneth Grant recommended the book 1972 as well, also a year before any sort of copy existed.

On a related note, I think one of the cable channels has some mini-series called Lovecraft County that maybe of interest to the readers of this thread. I personally have not seen it and only have heard it referenced.

https://www.hbo.com/lovecraft-country?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3KXlkdei6wIVkozICh2nagX_EAAYASAAEgIxrvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I think the point is to tackle some of the criticisms leveled in this very thread....

 Easy E wrote:
On a related note, I think one of the cable channels has some mini-series called Lovecraft County that maybe of interest to the readers of this thread. I personally have not seen it and only have heard it referenced.

https://www.hbo.com/lovecraft-country?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3KXlkdei6wIVkozICh2nagX_EAAYASAAEgIxrvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I think the point is to tackle some of the criticisms leveled in this very thread....

Yeah. I mentioned it above.

It's based on a book of the same name and is coming from HBO. It started this past week on the 16th. Haven't watched episode one yet. Probably later tonight.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
On a related note, I think one of the cable channels has some mini-series called Lovecraft County that maybe of interest to the readers of this thread. I personally have not seen it and only have heard it referenced.

https://www.hbo.com/lovecraft-country?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3KXlkdei6wIVkozICh2nagX_EAAYASAAEgIxrvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I think the point is to tackle some of the criticisms leveled in this very thread....

Yeah. I mentioned it above.

It's based on a book of the same name and is coming from HBO. It started this past week on the 16th. Haven't watched episode one yet. Probably later tonight.

I glanced over the thread looking for it, but must have missed it. Sorry to re-iterate a point all ready made Hats!

 Easy E wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
On a related note, I think one of the cable channels has some mini-series called Lovecraft County that maybe of interest to the readers of this thread. I personally have not seen it and only have heard it referenced.

https://www.hbo.com/lovecraft-country?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3KXlkdei6wIVkozICh2nagX_EAAYASAAEgIxrvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I think the point is to tackle some of the criticisms leveled in this very thread....

Yeah. I mentioned it above.

It's based on a book of the same name and is coming from HBO. It started this past week on the 16th. Haven't watched episode one yet. Probably later tonight.

I glanced over the thread looking for it, but must have missed it. Sorry to re-iterate a point all ready made Hats!

Kind of glad you did honestly. Got me to bother loading up the episode now rather than later.

EDIT: Decided to load up the episode now cause it came up and I laughed because 6 minutes in, we get two characters arguing about John Carter of Mars and his background as a Confederate officer. The characters sum up amazingly how I feel about this topic:

"Stories are like people. Loving them doesn't make them perfect. You try and cherish them. Try to overlook their flaws."

"Their flaws are still there."

"Yeah they are. But I love pulp stories."

dyndraig wrote:
So seems George R. R. Martin got into some hot water recently for praising Lovecraft at the Hugo awards. Which is strange considering I remember some people in this very thread insisting that the controversy surrounding Lovecraft was something only made up in the minds of Lovecrafts fans

Yeah, the Hugo audience is kind of a special little group.

The Hugos are a fan award, voted on by the attendees of World Con (a science fiction and fantasy convention). And there are piles and piles of silliness surrounding them (mostly if you realize how few nominations are required to get on the ballot, it is pretty staggering).

The World Con professionals (writers, editors, agents) have an extremely liberal cultural bend. This includes a lot of writers who are often calling out other writers for being sexist, racist, homophobic or whatever else. They nominate and vote for books largely on their political grounds. This is at odds with the fandom- the World Con fans are mostly very old and tend to revere the "old masters" of science fiction like Asimov, Heinlein, Ellison, etc. These guys all wrote books that have some racism, sexism, and the like, and many were known to sexually harass women quite a lot (something the current professionals are all very aware of).

While a lot of the people in each of these groups have moderated opinions, the groups have strong cultures. The result is that a lot of people talk about how great the old masters were for whatever reason, the conversation has to move to how racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic they were (and a decent number of people do not feel the need to look past these problems to appreciate the writing anyway- there's a mix).

So old Hugo fans LOVE Lovecraft, and many would probably try to defend him as "not racist really." But the Hugo professional culture is very much against ignoring his racism, and would probably like to change the names of the awards that honor him.

And of amusingly missing that Mr L began to soften once he started interacting with the world rather than unquestioningly following the dogma of others

 odinsgrandson wrote:


The World Con professionals (writers, editors, agents) have an extremely liberal cultural bend. This includes a lot of writers who are often calling out other writers for being sexist, racist, homophobic or whatever else. They nominate and vote for books largely on their political grounds. This is at odds with the fandom- the World Con fans are mostly very old and tend to revere the "old masters" of science fiction like Asimov, Heinlein, Ellison, etc. These guys all wrote books that have some racism, sexism, and the like, and many were known to sexually harass women quite a lot (something the current professionals are all very aware of).

Honestly I think that commentary on the Hugos is almost always in full display of not knowing how the Hugos work.

World Con doesn't have an extremely liberal cultural bend. It has at worst populist cultural bend. In a lot of ways, the best way to understand the Hugo Awards is to understand it as a popularity contest that only 'true fans' get to participate in. The people voting have to buy a membership to vote and only serious devotees are going to do that. As a result, the award reflects whatever is en vogue with people who live and breath scifi and fantasy. If you went back to the 90s, it was en vogue to be sort of retro and neo-liberal. In the 80s it was anti-corporatism and neoconservativism.

I think coverage of the Hugo awards is a lot more liberal than anything having to do with the awards themselves, case and point; the Hugos literally just handed Lovecraft the Retro Hugo (which has only been awarded in 3 rounds of the award before) this year, an odd choice for extreme liberals who largely nominate and vote on political grounds. It's hard to get the Retro Hugo rolled out. It's an optional award with a lot of barriers in the way of actually awarding it, but those barriers got overcome this year and it went to Lovecraft.*

The Hugos are a reflection of the culture of the time but I think that's most awards honestly. I see it as kind of a double edged sword. You rarely see garbage win at the Hugo Awards, but sometimes it can be eyebrow raising what gets nominated. Their best when you line them up next to the Nebula Awards, which is where the 'the Hugos are just liberal politics' argument kind falls apart because the nomination lists for the Hugos and the Nebulas are usually 75% the same, despite one being based on fandom voting and the other published authors.

Last year a good example is Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, which I would confidently accuse of being nominated almost solely on it's blurb rather than it's content. It's not a bad book, I rather liked it, but it's a wonderful example of an author's first work will likely not be their best and the idea that it was worthy of nomination was bizarre to me but the Hugo nomination process is easy to get through.

*Well, it went to 'everyone' who produced the Cthulu Mythos. Seems the nominators made the decision that it was a long term group effort, so the award is to "Lovecraft, Derelth, and Others."

But the Hugo professional culture is very much against ignoring his racism, and would probably like to change the names of the awards that honor him.

I actually don't think Lovecraft has (or had) any awards named after him? Not any meaningful ones. The World Fantasy Award used to use a bust of him as a trophy but they nixed that back in 2015ish? I think Arkham House has an award in his name but no one ever pays attention to Arkham House anymore since Lovecraft's stuff is all public domain now.

For Lovecraft Country, I think I need to reread the book, cause I can't remember if some of the stuff in the first episode is in it or not. The episode was decent enough. Kind of waiting to see what direction the series actually goes.

For Lovecraft Country, I think I need to reread the book, cause I can't remember if some of the stuff in the first episode is in it or not. The episode was decent enough. Kind of waiting to see what direction the series actually goes.

Watched it tonight. Pretty good (though the rural bus intro/ sudden transition to Chicago confused me).

The direction of future episodes is an open question.
Certain elements were a bit too heavy handed, and the characters too knowledgeable for a standard Mythos story.

I really want to see the characters confused and over their heads, not... fairly calmly accepting every horrible thing.

---
And that's episode 2.
The pacing on this show is aggravating. And whoever picked the (almost) completely anachronistic soundtrack for this episode seriously hacked me off.
Rest could have been interesting, but so much seems lost in the rush.

Voss wrote:

And that's episode 2.
The pacing on this show is aggravating. And whoever picked the (almost) completely anachronistic soundtrack for this episode seriously hacked me off.
Rest could have been interesting, but so much seems lost in the rush.

The ending especially was rushed. I had to go back because I couldn't tell why <you know who> was suddenly okay and nope. There was no explanation for that. Then we had the rest of the ending, which felt insanely abrupt and sudden, lacking the sufficient build up to make a real impact. And it's a shame too cause they did a great job placing some truly unnerving and grotesque moments in the episode earlier (the one where the cult is laughing at them like animals in a zoo I thought was particularly unnerving in a very core way). They built a good village people vibe. No idea why they bothered now. The second half of the episode ruined it. A serious drop off after episode 1, which was slow but I think set the season up for success. They tossed that out the window fast.

That's definitely not how the book went either. I'm a bit iffy on a few things but I know at least one big change and a few little ones. Not sure how the rest of the series plays out. I might kind of write off episode 2 as a janky set up that provides premise for the rest of the series. Depends how it goes. EDIT: And I'm super iffy cause the preview for episode 3 looks decent enough I suppose, but I'm baffled how it really relates to the first two episodes. If they're going roundabout in terms of plot they need to keep good will and episode 2 didn't leave me with much. The book was semi-episodic in nature, but there were still strings that tied everything together. They completely skipped over several.

The use of Whitey on the Moon in the episode is extremely jarring, I agree. It might work in a Dreamlands sequence rather brilliantly, but within the context of the actual episode it doesn't make a lick of sense. The thematic ties are rather strained and it does feel completely out of place.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think most writers today are generally able to recognize Lovecraft's significant literary contributions while not becoming anal buttholes about his racism.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of audiences, who seem to bring it up at every opportunity to tear down his works.

 LordofHats wrote:
The anal retentive "but he's not racist" crowd is almost solely the domain of people who haven't read him but get completely butt hurt at any mention that anything might be racist, so the rest of us who would like to talk about his literary contributions or achievements instead get bogged down in the lowest common denominator. This thread's first couple pages are a marvelous example.

I think the bigger issue isn't that he was a racist, it's that he wasn't just a racist. Dude was a frickin' loony. He seemed to hate everything, both for racially motivated reasons and completely unrelated reasons. I'm not saying that absolves him of his very clear racism, more that boiling down his existence to "Was a racist" is hardly an adequate descriptor.

 LordofHats wrote:

Voss wrote:

And that's episode 2.
The pacing on this show is aggravating. And whoever picked the (almost) completely anachronistic soundtrack for this episode seriously hacked me off.
Rest could have been interesting, but so much seems lost in the rush.

The ending especially was rushed. I had to go back because I couldn't tell why <you know who> was suddenly okay and nope. There was no explanation for that.

The daughter had a vague statement that 'dad did it', and they talked briefly about if he cooperated, he'd do the same again. After... you know, succeeding in his... weird plot. Which shouldn't leave him in a position to do anything, if I understood where he'd end up correctly (unless that was a lot more metaphorical than I understood).

Then we had the rest of the ending, which felt insanely abrupt and sudden, lacking the sufficient build up to make a real impact. And it's a shame too cause they did a great job placing some truly unnerving and grotesque moments in the episode earlier (the one where the cult is laughing at them like animals in a zoo I thought was particularly unnerving in a very core way). They built a good village people vibe. No idea why they bothered now. The second half of the episode ruined it. A serious drop off after episode 1, which was slow but I think set the season up for success. They tossed that out the window fast.

Yeah, I couldn't figure out quite how things went together at the end- did he just think really hard about his ancestor? Partly it was my dogs wanting to go out, right at that moment, but things in the show just fell apart and I had no real idea why.
The village was interesting (lots of symbolism and what looked like plot hooks) up to the dog lady, where they completely guessed at what was going on... and like most of the things in this episode, were completely correct. I think that got me most of all. They kept blind guessing (and/or reading the script) and were absolutely right, every time. It helped pushed things along, I guess, but for a 10 part series, they could have spent some time on the location and the people. Not just shooed them out at the first opportunity.

The use of Whitey on the Moon in the episode is extremely jarring, I agree. It might work in a Dreamlands sequence rather brilliantly, but within the context of the actual episode it doesn't make a lick of sense. The thematic ties are rather strained and it does feel completely out of place.

I wasn't thinking just of that one, though it was really off. Marilyn Manson on the covered bridge was an equally moment for me. The first episode had its hiccups, but the tone was pretty consistent. This wasn't, and the soundtrack didn't help. The end credits song being the sole exception.

 LordofHats wrote:


Honestly I think that commentary on the Hugos is almost always in full display of not knowing how the Hugos work.

World Con doesn't have an extremely liberal cultural bend. It has at worst populist cultural bend. In a lot of ways, the best way to understand the Hugo Awards is to understand it as a popularity contest that only 'true fans' get to participate in. The people voting have to buy a membership to vote and only serious devotees are going to do that. As a result, the award reflects whatever is en vogue with people who live and breath scifi and fantasy. If you went back to the 90s, it was en vogue to be sort of retro and neo-liberal. In the 80s it was anti-corporatism and neoconservativism.

- You obviously know a lot on this subject, and you're right about the values changing over time. And you are right about the commentary being more liberal than the voters (I would chalk this up to the liberal professional commenters and less liberal voting population). The Nebulas don't prove much, since the "World Con professionals" that I talked about are pretty much those same people.

And it isn't all about the political statement- it is about "how we wish to present ourselves." Which sometimes means making political statements, sometimes it means snubbing very popular works, and the like.


- The only think I think I disagree that it is as "populist" as you seem to think. Mostly, I think that the fans who attend World Con or pay for their votes consider themselves a sort of elite, and have some disdain for things that are popular. This is why many of the most extremely popular works (like Robert Jordan or J. K. Rowley) don't get Hugos.

I mean, Tolkien losing to Asimov is a sign that you're group is voting against things that are more popular (and have a general bias favoring science fiction over fantasy). It doesn't represent all fans, or even "hardcore fans"- it represents a very specific group of fans.


- Every year at World Con, there are panals about the "aging of fandom." It seems that a lot of the World Con fans think that they represent science fiction fandom at large- something that obviously hasn't been the case at least since the release of Star Wars in 1977.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
The only think I think I disagree that it is as "populist" as you seem to think. Mostly, I think that the fans who attend World Con or pay for their votes consider themselves a sort of elite, and have some disdain for things that are popular. This is why many of the most extremely popular works (like Robert Jordan or J. K. Rowley) don't get Hugos.

Oh, I'd agree with that.

That's why I say "popular with that group." I think World Con is unexpectedly a reflection of World Con's attitudes, and World Con is not as edgy as they sometimes think they are. Lots of the stuff that makes it through the nomination round is of questionable merit. I think the big break point are the awards themselves, where the winners are normally works I think are worthy of awards. Though I would point out Harry Potter did win the award once. Goblet of Fire won it.

I mean, Tolkien losing to Asimov is a sign that you're group is voting against things that are more popular

I think this is more of a reflection of the odd place of fantasy works at World Con. It's nominally a sci-fi convention, but plenty of works have won the award that are more appropriately called fantasy. There's stuff like Hyperion and American Gods that kind of mixes the two, but then we've got Snow Queen, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, and Paladin of Souls which are all so fantasy I've always been confused why they're at a nominally sci-fi award for consideration. That's just the way the nomination process is I guess. Sometimes a work wins because more people liked it than the competition, not because it's from the 'right' genre.

I'm not sure it's apt to use Asimov winning over Tolkien as a sign that the group is voting against popularity. Asimov is one of the Big Three, one of the most popular scifi authors ever. The only way Tolkien would ever win is with a retro award, and the retro awards don't get dragged out of the closet that often. Lovecraft and the Cthulu Mythos winning this year is most likely in recognition of the growing relevance of Lovecraftian Horror in popular culture over the past few years. That probably provided the momentum needed to beat the hurdle. In comparison, Tolkien has always been present and if anything fantasy is moving away from Tolkienesque works, not towards them.

- Every year at World Con, there are panals about the "aging of fandom."

I think that's more than World Con's base is aging. Fewer and fewer people see the value in paying for a membership which doesn't actually come with much imo. The Hugos may be dying. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future World Con changed the voting rules, or something. It's hard for me to imagine a modern teenager or young adult seeing the value in it compared to more modern things like social media groups and websites like GoodReads. Everyone can offer an opinion now. It makes particular opinions like the Hugos less valuable.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I think most writers today are generally able to recognize Lovecraft's significant literary contributions while not becoming anal buttholes about his racism.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of audiences, who seem to bring it up at every opportunity to tear down his works.

 LordofHats wrote:
The anal retentive "but he's not racist" crowd is almost solely the domain of people who haven't read him but get completely butt hurt at any mention that anything might be racist, so the rest of us who would like to talk about his literary contributions or achievements instead get bogged down in the lowest common denominator. This thread's first couple pages are a marvelous example.

I think the bigger issue isn't that he was a racist, it's that he wasn't just a racist. Dude was a frickin' loony. He seemed to hate everything, both for racially motivated reasons and completely unrelated reasons. I'm not saying that absolves him of his very clear racism, more that boiling down his existence to "Was a racist" is hardly an adequate descriptor.

I mean the issues with his life made for a very.. interesting read for why he was as he was. His life experience was quite sheltered, but miserable and started with his parents vast issues.

 LordofHats wrote:

I think that's more than World Con's base is aging. Fewer and fewer people see the value in paying for a membership which doesn't actually come with much imo. The Hugos may be dying. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future World Con changed the voting rules, or something. It's hard for me to imagine a modern teenager or young adult seeing the value in it compared to more modern things like social media groups and websites like GoodReads. Everyone can offer an opinion now. It makes particular opinions like the Hugos less valuable.

I don't know that we actually disagree about this. The people who pay for memberships at World Con are either the older fans who continue doing what they've always done and the writers, editors and agents (of all ages). I wonder if this has shifted the balance much of the fan control to the professional control of some of the things. But since World Con doesn't appeal to younger fans, the attendance shrinks and gets even older.

A little while ago, I heard an argument that the convention based fandoms were really important when the fandoms were small. When science fiction and fantasy were these really niche audiences, they had to get together at conventions to talk about them.

After Star Wars made Science Fiction accessible to a mass audience, the conventions were no longer needed for the fandoms to continue, and the result was that the new fans- and hence the majority of fandom- didn't bother with the conventions at all.

Of course, the internet takes the place of a lot of those things as well- communities are easier to access, and it is much simpler to have your small voice heard.


- The Hugos sometimes change their voting rules, and I'm sure they'll do it again. The last time I know they changed their rules, it was to make the awards more insular rather than making them more inviting to outsiders (you probably followed some of the "Sad Puppies" stuff from a few years ago).

I've been listening to a lot of Lovecraft stories lately- some of them are things I'd previously read and some are things I haven't, and I've come to a few conclusions:


- For a long time, I had supposed that Lovecraft never spelled out the connections between his various mythos. I now revise that conclusion. Lovecraft could not help but make the world building connections himself.

At the Mountains of Madness goes into detail about the mythological timeline (implausibly surmised in great detail from some murals). There are a number of other stories that expound on the mythology in far more detail than makes any sense for someone trying to evoke fear of the unknown.

So this great contradiction of Lovecraft lauding the "Fear of the Unknown" while attempting to evoke fear via very detailed mythology is inherent in Lovecraft's own work, and not merely the works of Peterson and others who put his work together.


- In reality, Lovecraft tends to evoke what I'd call an atheist fear. What if humanity is not special at all in an infinite and uncaring universe? There are no 'gods' in Lovecraft, just old creatures who are beyond us.

I've seen this fear reversed quite a lot. The Exorcist and many works afterward evoke a fear that religion is right and a "what if our secular assumptions are wrong?"


- Lovecraft's racism is definitely part of many of his works. Most is just taken for granted by the protagonist-narrator.

It is probably at its peak in Horror at Red Hook: the story reads like a xenophobic Pizzagate conspiracy rant about why we shouldn't let people who don't speak English into New York because they'll sacrifice babies in a secret cult underneath the dance hall.

The "secret history" of the Earth isn't the unknown that is at the center of Lovecrafts horror.

It's the totally alien entities who's actions and motivations are completely opaque and inscrutable.

Cthulhu has no motivations we can understand. While we can see the Whatley's and their motivations because they are human or at least human in part, Shub-Niggurath and Yog Sothoth are entirely different creatures.

The Color Out Of Space is unstoppable and unknowable.