3 ms·
A very well written article, with interesting personal anecdotes. Lovecraft is certainly iconic, with a writing style that seems to belong more to the 19th tha
by photochemsyn 3y ago
A very well written article, with interesting personal anecdotes. Lovecraft is certainly iconic, with a writing style that seems to belong more to the 19th than the 20th century - but which was heavily influenced by more modern scientific concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry and the size of the known universe. One additional fact not mentioned in the article is that Lovecraft was an ardent atheist, and produced at least one searing criticism of religion in general, in particular of 'utilitarianism', i.e. the notion that even if not true, religion has societal benefits:
https://www.skeptical-science.com/essays/letter-religion-lovecraft/ https://www.skeptical-science.com/essays/letter-religion-lov...
As far as the question of Lovecraft's prejudices and the 2016 decision to remove his image from the World Fantasy Award, well, one might as well cancel most if not all of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence over their support for slavery and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. Cancel culture and book burning is redolant of authoritarian ideology and shouldn't be tolerated in any modern society - as more and more people have come to realize, so there's some hope.
Many of the derivative works published by various authors have instead poked fun at Lovecraft's prejudices ("Lovecraft & Carter" by Johnathan Howard has an alternative timeline in which Lovecraft has children who engage in race mixing, etc.), which is a much better way to address the issue. There are a great many such derivative works spanning sci-fi and fantasy genres, which shows how influential Lovecraft has been.
- tptacek 3y agoWhether or not a private organization chooses to award people a bust of HP Lovecraft or a trophy of a spooky tree has really not much at all to do with the article we're reading and discussing. This isn't an article about "the Howard" award. Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- WillPostForFood 3y ago[flagged]
- pvg 3y agoReplies to comments on articles aren’t comments on articles.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WillPostForFood 3y agoI read "or post" to include comments. Regardless, it is a violation of the principle, if not the rule and degrades civil discourse.
- pvg 3y agoIt doesn't include comments since that makes little sense and this isn't about 'civil discourse' in the abstract but about known failure modes of this specific forum. Don't dingleberrypick stuff out of articles to start unrelated flamery. People are right to downvote this sort of thing and to point out it's corrosive enough to merit written rule.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoYou should include comments, because it is definitely a known failure mode as well.
- pvg 3y agoI don't 'include' stuff, I'm some rando. But if you check the guidelines, it's in there just not in the 'you can't respond to a thing in a comment' way which would make conversation impossible.
- photochemsyn 3y agoIf you go through the list of all the awardees of the World Fantasy Awards and subject them to the same criticisms, then I'm pretty sure they'd have to retroactively remove many of those awards because of the objectional content in some of those author's works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Fantasy_Award%E2%80%94Novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Fantasy_Award%E2%80%94No... Also, in today's political climate, I'd guess Lovecraft's stance on religion is more controversial than the above issue.
- tptacek 3y agoI'm not interested, and neither is the author of the article, or, thankfully, most of this thread, which managed to be about Lovecraft's work.
- photochemsyn 3y agoI rather doubt that a devout believer in one of the Abrahamic religions (or any other) would have spent so much time and effort portraying a cosmic picture of human insignificance - a picture where humans are litte more than a tiny species of ants trying to survive in a world of Tyrannosaurus Rex, where a casual accidental stomp might just wipe us all out. Really, you don't think Lovecraft's diehard atheism contributed anything to his worldview or to his literary work?