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Well, we didn't, did we? We could make an unholy mess with nuclear weapons, but hubris aside, we can't kill ourselves with them. Lovecraft survived to the very
by aaronem 11y ago
Well, we didn't, did we? We could make an unholy mess with nuclear weapons, but hubris aside, we can't kill ourselves with them.
Lovecraft survived to the very verge of the atomic age, and it shows in his writing; one of Azathoth's epithets is "nuclear chaos". In other words, he took it about how his writings would lead you to expect.
- panzagl 11y agoHe missed the really good stuff though (fission, etc). It's one thing to say 'the end is nigh' another to actually have it come relatively close to happening.
- aaronem 11y agoHe knew about radioactivity; fission was theorized well before it was discovered, and his circle of sf/fantasy nerds was precisely the sort which would both know about what was then still a relatively obscure branch of physics, and contemplate at length its possible implications. It sounds like you're fumbling toward the question of what Lovecraft would've made of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Obviously there's no way to know for certain, but I think Charlie Stross has come as close as anyone could in his short "A Colder War", which is freely available online and quite engaging.