4 ms·

> the Lovecraftian universe fits extremely well with the universe as understood by geeks. It's a fundementally science-driven place, where all magic is indeed j

> the Lovecraftian universe fits extremely well with the universe as understood by geeks. It's a fundementally science-driven place, where all magic is indeed just sufficiently advanced technology. Call of the Cthulu starts with a shared dream, so where's the technology? Several other stories involve dreaming too. Lovecraft is more about programming (programming people and peoples programming) than science. Most Lovecraft characters are introverts much like the geeks, and selfie takers of our auspicious era (meh).

thenomad 11y ago
At the point when Lovecraft was writing, dreaming was intimately connected with a new, exciting science - psychology and psychotherapy. And the technology's all around - it's explicitly stated both in Lovecraft and subsequent folk who build on the Mythos that the Great Old Ones, the Mi-Go, the Great Race, and others aren't supernatural entities, but aliens with mathematics and magic we don't understand.
- peterwwillis 11y ago
  Magic is just science we don't understand yet.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
    Squeaked the geeky yet intrepid explorer as he descended the cyclopean steps of the twilit cavern.
    - Spivak 11y ago
      I'm suddenly really interested in his stories because of how the universe was described, but is that really what his writing style is like?
      - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
        You tell us: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/src.aspx http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/src.aspx
      - mrec 11y ago
        Nah, it doesn't use "gibbous", "squamous" or even "rugose" at all. Null points, 0xdeadbeefbabe, null points. Parody sites like http://thedoomthatcametopuppet.tumblr.com/ http://thedoomthatcametopuppet.tumblr.com/ actually give a pretty good sense of his signature style.
        0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
        “Things–presences or voices of some sort–could be drawn down from unknown places as well as to standard out.” is what I meant to say. Edit: Now I know puppet is horrible after all.
        qznc 11y ago
        When I played with Markov chains, I used Lovecraft and some scientific papers. It mixed frighteningly well. Example: Field of research were allowed to deadlock, but I still intend to accept the situation might be available for a unification algorithm.
      - duskwuff 11y ago
        No; his real writing style is even more florid than that. Lovecraft's writing is marked by complex sentence structure and a heavy use of archaic terms. Compare the opening of "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" for an example: http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/novellas/dreamque.htm http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/liter...
fit2rule 11y ago
Is a website nothing but a shared dream?
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  Are you referring to healthcare.gov and the young people who made it possible? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9857662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9857662
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    All literature, no matter how mundane, is a shared dream ..
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
      Everyone reading Tolstoy might fall asleep in boredom and share a dream?
- Vexs 11y ago
  There was one website that got posted here a while ago [1] where everyone that's looking at it is hosting it- if everyone stopped looking at it, the page would die. A neat concept. [1]http://ephemeralp2p.durazo.us/2bbbf21959178ef2f935e90fc60e5b6e368d27514fe305ca7dcecc32c0134838 http://ephemeralp2p.durazo.us/2bbbf21959178ef2f935e90fc60e5b...
lmkg 11y ago
A good deal of Lovecraft's works involve something that is definitely technological. Several of his crazy "alien" races (sometimes Earth-based) have their extreme powers due to technological progress, such as the Elder Things (genetic engineering), the Great Race (time-traveling & mind-swapping), and the Yi-Go (brains-in-jars and inter-stellar travel). Many of his human antagonists are also developing forbidding science/technology, although usually with some alchemy thrown in. Even crazy creatures obey physical laws that happen to not be known; more than one creature disintegrates on death because its body is an exotic type of matter, and at least one creature is invisible for the same reason. A lot of the horror of Lovecraft's works stem from a fear of science-gone-too-far. I read an interesting essay that said that his regression-to-past-generations works were actually founded in the contemporary revulsion many people felt they were first introduced to this newfangled "evolution" business (augmented by Lovecraft's notorious racism). You'll also notice that a lot of the science in Lovecraft's stories isn't, uh, good. Like, it's really bad. Creatures that flap their wings and fly out of the atmosphere, and to a different dimension. Stars that are far away have different laws of physics. That sort of thing. Imagine someone who is a mild conspiracy nut (of the email-forwarding variety), and not scientifically literate but reading pop-science articles about new breakthroughs in the 20s and 30s. The majority of Lovecraft's writings are a fair description of this hypothetical person's fears about scientific progress. Lovecraft's cosmic horror is still fairly rules-based, i.e. it's magic of the Clarke's-Third-Law variety. The dreaming in Call of Cthulhu is a natural force that obeys laws. Humans don't know what those laws are, but something does and can manipulate that force. Cthulhu itself doesn't obey our laws of physics, but there are laws of physics that he obeys (possibly from another dimension), and he is also subject to the alignment of the stars. It's all described as rationally explainable, but not within the bounds of what human intelligence can graps. The actual Dreamlands stuff with Randolph Carter is different, though. It's not even horror, really. It's Lovecraft making an explicitly Fantasy setting, in emulation of Lord Dunsany. It's got a much more whimsical and adventurous vibe, and the various fantastical elements (horrific or otherwise) generally aren't as rationally-explainable.

thenomad 11y ago

At the point when Lovecraft was writing, dreaming was intimately connected with a new, exciting science - psychology and psychotherapy. And the technology's all around - it's explicitly stated both in Lovecraft and subsequent folk who build on the Mythos that the Great Old Ones, the Mi-Go, the Great Race, and others aren't supernatural entities, but aliens with mathematics and magic we don't understand.

peterwwillis 11y ago
Magic is just science we don't understand yet.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  Squeaked the geeky yet intrepid explorer as he descended the cyclopean steps of the twilit cavern.
  - Spivak 11y ago
    I'm suddenly really interested in his stories because of how the universe was described, but is that really what his writing style is like?
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
      You tell us: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/src.aspx http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/src.aspx
    - mrec 11y ago
      Nah, it doesn't use "gibbous", "squamous" or even "rugose" at all. Null points, 0xdeadbeefbabe, null points. Parody sites like http://thedoomthatcametopuppet.tumblr.com/ http://thedoomthatcametopuppet.tumblr.com/ actually give a pretty good sense of his signature style.
      - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
        “Things–presences or voices of some sort–could be drawn down from unknown places as well as to standard out.” is what I meant to say. Edit: Now I know puppet is horrible after all.
        qznc 11y ago
        When I played with Markov chains, I used Lovecraft and some scientific papers. It mixed frighteningly well. Example: Field of research were allowed to deadlock, but I still intend to accept the situation might be available for a unification algorithm.
    - duskwuff 11y ago
      No; his real writing style is even more florid than that. Lovecraft's writing is marked by complex sentence structure and a heavy use of archaic terms. Compare the opening of "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" for an example: http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/novellas/dreamque.htm http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/liter...

fit2rule 11y ago

Is a website nothing but a shared dream?

0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
Are you referring to healthcare.gov and the young people who made it possible? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9857662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9857662
- fit2rule 11y ago
  All literature, no matter how mundane, is a shared dream ..
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
    Everyone reading Tolstoy might fall asleep in boredom and share a dream?
Vexs 11y ago
There was one website that got posted here a while ago [1] where everyone that's looking at it is hosting it- if everyone stopped looking at it, the page would die. A neat concept. [1]http://ephemeralp2p.durazo.us/2bbbf21959178ef2f935e90fc60e5b6e368d27514fe305ca7dcecc32c0134838 http://ephemeralp2p.durazo.us/2bbbf21959178ef2f935e90fc60e5b...

lmkg 11y ago

A good deal of Lovecraft's works involve something that is definitely technological. Several of his crazy "alien" races (sometimes Earth-based) have their extreme powers due to technological progress, such as the Elder Things (genetic engineering), the Great Race (time-traveling & mind-swapping), and the Yi-Go (brains-in-jars and inter-stellar travel). Many of his human antagonists are also developing forbidding science/technology, although usually with some alchemy thrown in. Even crazy creatures obey physical laws that happen to not be known; more than one creature disintegrates on death because its body is an exotic type of matter, and at least one creature is invisible for the same reason. A lot of the horror of Lovecraft's works stem from a fear of science-gone-too-far. I read an interesting essay that said that his regression-to-past-generations works were actually founded in the contemporary revulsion many people felt they were first introduced to this newfangled "evolution" business (augmented by Lovecraft's notorious racism). You'll also notice that a lot of the science in Lovecraft's stories isn't, uh, good. Like, it's really bad. Creatures that flap their wings and fly out of the atmosphere, and to a different dimension. Stars that are far away have different laws of physics. That sort of thing. Imagine someone who is a mild conspiracy nut (of the email-forwarding variety), and not scientifically literate but reading pop-science articles about new breakthroughs in the 20s and 30s. The majority of Lovecraft's writings are a fair description of this hypothetical person's fears about scientific progress. Lovecraft's cosmic horror is still fairly rules-based, i.e. it's magic of the Clarke's-Third-Law variety. The dreaming in Call of Cthulhu is a natural force that obeys laws. Humans don't know what those laws are, but something does and can manipulate that force. Cthulhu itself doesn't obey our laws of physics, but there are laws of physics that he obeys (possibly from another dimension), and he is also subject to the alignment of the stars. It's all described as rationally explainable, but not within the bounds of what human intelligence can graps. The actual Dreamlands stuff with Randolph Carter is different, though. It's not even horror, really. It's Lovecraft making an explicitly Fantasy setting, in emulation of Lord Dunsany. It's got a much more whimsical and adventurous vibe, and the various fantastical elements (horrific or otherwise) generally aren't as rationally-explainable.