The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

One of May 2019's group read is At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft.

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I read this last year and became a big fan of Lovecraft's work.

I finished this short novella yesterday. I enjoyed some parts. Others less so.

What I liked was the ancient astronauts theme. Having aliens create life on Earth, create civilizations before our own, and fight two other competing alien species for Earth, it all seems very ahead of its time (the story was writen in 1931).

I also like own it unify some of Lovecraft's stories and how it recast Lovecraft's mythos. It moves the mythos away from the realm of fantasy and frames it in the empire of science-fiction in a impressive way. Althought outdated, Lovecraft paid attention to details like geological ages, continental drift, genetics and evolution. Those are notre negligable details when talking about a civilisation that might be 500 million years old.

What I didn't like were the descriptions. They were long and mentioned precise lenght and height too often. There is also a naivety to the story that is bothersome. The protagonists sure understood millions of years of history pretty quickly by just glancing over alien rock carvings.

Am I crazy too think this is a sci-fi story? Is it more of a proto-sci-fi story? Is it stil fantasy?

Does it have its place as an influencer of sci-fi stories or did others have the ancient alien trope nailed before it?

Marc-André wrote: "Am I crazy too think this is a sci-fi story?"

I think it depends on your definition of SF.

Oleksandr wrote: "I think it depends on your definition of SF."

It is like pornography. I know it when I see it.

I was a bit disappointed in the book, maybe my expectations being too high. It wasn't a bit scary. The long descriptions of landscapes and things happening or happened long time ago, were often too long for me. I can see though why people would indeed like it, but for me it didn't work here. The version I read was in a "Fantasy and horror" series, but I would qualify it as SF. Because it has aliens in it.

Leo wrote: "I was a bit disappointed in the book, maybe my expectations being too high. It wasn't a bit scary. The long descriptions of landscapes and things happening or happened long time ago, were often too..."

Margaret Atwood agrees. Aliens=sci-fi! Lol.

I wonder how much of the repetition is due to it being serialized over twelve magazines. Readers need to be reminded what happened in previous chapters. I guess. Apparently, Lovecraft complained that his story was vastly edited before it was published. Like a 1,000 edits.

I read the Project Gutenberg version and its the magazine version. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600...

The over long descriptions & repetition are just pure Lovecraft, IMO. I recently read The Challenge from Beyond which featured 5 authors (although it shows Lovecraft as the author) writing sections of a story. His section adds very little & is as long as the other 4 put together, IIRC.

It's short, so if you want to read it & decide for yourself, it's here:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1304...

Jim wrote: "The over long descriptions & repetition are just pure Lovecraft, IMO. I recently read The Challenge from Beyond which featured 5 authors (although it shows Lovecraft as the author) writing sections of a story. His section adds very little & is as long as the other 4 put together, IIRC.

It's short, so if you want to read it & decide for yourself, it's here:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1304... "

Niiiiice. Thank you.

Long quasi-empty short stories for pulp magazines aren't that uncommon. Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) and Robert E. Howard (Conan) produced plenty. I think it is because this is how they earned their living and writing for pulp mags didn't pay a lot, so they compensated with volume.

But even if they sometimes wrote for food, they produced some memorable stories. I know this month's read has jolted an interest in a re-read of Lovecraft stories I read 20 years (or more) ago.

I think this was the first Lovecraft story I was ever exposed to, many, many years ago when I was still in high school. A friend was reading it and his brief description of the book, and the title, captured my attention so I tracked it down at the library and read it. That began my lifelong love of the Cthulhu Mythos.

As an older and more experienced reader, now I can recognize the flaws in Lovecraft's writing. He tends to go on and on at times. There is of course the problem of racism inherent in many of his stories and his brand of horror does not, perhaps, resonate quite as strongly in our current culture of "jump scares", body horror and extremely graphic blood and violence. Still... if I allow myself to really sink into the story, the themes of cosmic horror, the diminution of humanity and all we have created to an inconsequential nothing compared to timeless entities so vast and different that even knowing too much about them can lead to madness and death can still give me that thrill of horror.

Michael wrote: "the diminution of humanity and all we have created to an inconsequential nothing compared to timeless entities so vast and different .."
I do like this aspect of the story.

Marc-André wrote: "Long quasi-empty short stories for pulp magazines aren't that uncommon. Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) and Robert E. Howard (Conan) produced plenty. I think it is because this is how they earned their living and writing for pulp mags didn't pay a lot, so they compensated with volume...."

Indeed, they were paid by the word, as was Dickens, but most editors didn't allow too much rambling. Can you provide any examples of REH padding? His lean prose is one of reasons he's been a favorite author of mine for so long.

Jim wrote: "Indeed, they were paid by the word, as was Dickens, but most editors didn't allow too much rambling. Can you provide any examples of REH padding? His lean prose is one of reasons he's been a favorite author of mine for so long."

I'd need to check my books at home, it's been a while. But in the case of Howard, it is less about padded stories and more about stories quickly written to make a buck. A good example of that is Fritz Leiber's When the Sea-King's Away: A Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Adventure. It is just a long pointless description of the two heroes' journey to bone sirens.

While I don't associate Lovecraft with Sci-Fi, or science in general, I may reconsider.

This article and short TedEd video argue that "Lovecraft sought to invent a new kind of terror, one that responded to the rapid scientific progress of his era. His stories often used scientific elements to lend eerie plausibility."

https://laughingsquid.com/hp-lovecraf...

He is creating "terror" by expressing the view that the universe is vast and we are insignificant little specs that the universe doesn't care about. For many, that is more scary than the idea of an all-powerful God that watches over us.

I agree with Ed. In fact, I think Lovecraft anthropomorphized our current philosophical views in the West, namely materialism and nihilism.

I am enjoying it, but his descriptions are too long and, for me, hard to keep them all in my memory. For me it may have influenced The Thing. Or I am wrong by think that?

The book certainly reminded me of the movie The Thing.

It is listed as an influence of the movie the thing on Wikipedia.

Rosemarie wrote: "The book certainly reminded me of the movie The Thing."

I've always thought that Campbell was probably influenced by At the Mountains of Madness when he wrote his short story Who Goes There? which eventually become the movie The Thing From Another World (later remade as The Thing).

I found it interesting how the trope of racial memory was used to explain how the Necronomicon was written by a human containing references to the Elder Things and other part of the Mythos millions of years old. Even if it is junk science, it is one of those things that re-framed the Mythos into science-fiction instead of fantasy and made me think of Dune's racial memory.

Speaking of junk science, I was amused how hypnotism was used by the Elder Things to controlled the Shoggoths. I wondered if Lovecraft had written for John W. Campbell if hypnotism would have became telepathy. I guess brain hacking (wheter it is wetware or hardware) is what replaces hypnotism nowadays. And if I think about hacking brains, I think about the excellent Snow Crash and Sumerian brothels.

Marc-André wrote: " I wondered if Lovecraft had written for John W. Campbell if hypnotism would have became telepathy. "

In our other monthly read, Star Maker, there is a telepathy even despite it wasn't written for Campbell and was before the 'golden age' - my point is that telepathy in SF wasn't only due to Campbell, it was in spirit of the times. See Arthur Conan Doyle and his late life affection with spiritualism

Marc-André wrote: "It is listed as an influence of the movie the thing on Wikipedia."

Oh, great to know!

Oleksandr wrote: "Marc-André wrote: " I wondered if Lovecraft had written for John W. Campbell if hypnotism would have became telepathy. "

In our other monthly read, Star Maker, there is a telepathy e..."

Telepathy existed before Campbell, but he really believed in it and pushed for it in works he published.

Marc-André wrote: "Telepathy existed before Campbell, but he really believed in it and pushed for it"

I don't deny it, my point was that at the time quite a few people linked to fiction incl. SF, believed in it

I always found that Lovecraft stories had protagonists who were alone and didn't have many dialogues with other living people. It reflected Lovecraft's life as someone who was rather isolated socially and communicated mostly via letters and literature.

This story is no different. Dyer is basically writing a letter. We do not even get a dialogue between him and Danforth.

I find this isolation contributes to the existential dread communicated by Lovecraft's tale.

Marc-André wrote: "I always found that Lovecraft stories had protagonists who were alone and didn't have many dialogues with other living people. It reflected Lovecraft's life as someone who was rather isolated."

I see your point, but it seems there were quite a few other authors with this style in this period - even our other monthly read has almost no dialogues

Also, Lovecraft's central theme is always madness which is probably the most isolating human experience. And although I understand some readers may find the descriptions too long, I personally love his atmospheric style. Some critics have unjustly qualified his writing as naive at best and simply bad at worst but I think they were all misguided. His atmospheric style is created through a poetic form which is on the cusp of the 18th century English writing style and the 20th century moderns. He is unfortunately considered, even by those who love his work, as another pulp fiction writer but when one really analyses his work, one should realize that he is as great an author as say, Kafka.

Richard wrote: "Also, Lovecraft's central theme is always madness which is probably the most isolating human experience. And although I understand some readers may find the descriptions too long, I personally love..."

On my to-read shelf is H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Houellebecq is one of my favorite authors. I wanna found out his take on Lovecraft and somehow I think it would be close to yours.

Marc-André wrote: "On my to-read shelf is H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Houellebecq is one of my favorite authors. I wanna found out his take on Lovecraft and somehow I think it would be close to yours."

Funny you should say that! Because of this thread, I remembered this book and got it out of my bookshelf today to reread it... ;-)

A question for those who finished the story.

(view spoiler)[What Danforth saw at the end (whatever it was), do you think it fits in a sci-fi story? It felt a bit as if a cosmic horror slithered into a story that tried to rebrand cosmic horrors as aliens.

I have no issues with mysterious ends, but what Danforth saw, and scared the Elder Things, felt too mystical for the sciency tone of the rest of the story. (hide spoiler)]

(I do hope to get to this story this month some time.)

It us interesting to me that he mentioned Poe, Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith by name in the first two chapters.

Leo wrote: "... It wasn't a bit scary. The long descriptions of landscapes and things happening or happened long time ago, were often too long for me. ..."

I agree. It is only scary if you are afraid of penguins, which, judging by this story, HPL seems to be. And it reads more like an encyclopedia than a story. There isn't a single line of dialog in the whole thing. Just descriptions of things that narrator saw, and sometimes he refuses to even say what he saw.

I suspect that many of the people who like Lovecraft, actually enjoy the things inspired by his writings more than his writings themselves. Or else enjoy his stories more because they fit into those other Cthulu-related stories from other people.

Trying to find this thing on Amazon, it led me first to the kid-friendly video Howard Lovecraft and the Kingdom of Madness. That would probably have been much more fun. As would be the graphic novel versions of HPL by I.N.J. Culbard.

Our other group read this month also reads like an encyclopedia, but I'm enjoying it a bit more. And I just recently read "Erewhon Revisited" which is almost as dry. I need to read something with a real story in it next!

Praise the Elder Ones, next month's book, The Space Merchants, should have plenty of story!

Marc-André wrote: "I wondered if Lovecraft had written for John W. Campbell if hypnotism would have became telepathy...."

This story was published by Campbell, who apparently made many changes. I wonder what the un-edited version was like.

"... Lovecraft paid attention to details like geological ages, continental drift, genetics and evolution. ..."

I don't think he included continental drift in the story. I got the strong impression that he acted as if Antarctica had always been at the pole. But mainstream scientists didn't accept the idea of continental drift until well after 1950, so I won't criticize HPL about that.

Ed wrote: "This story was published by Campbell, who apparently made many changes. I wonder what the un-edited version was like."

The editor who made the changes was F. Orlin Tremaine. He bought the story from Lovecraft in 1935 and published it in 1936. Campbell started editing the magazine in 1937 under Tremaine's supervision.

An unedited version was published in 1985.

Ed wrote: "I don't think he included continental drift in the story. I got the strong impression that he acted as if Antarctica had always been at the pole. But mainstream scientists didn't accept the idea of continental drift until well after 1950, so I won't criticize HPL about that."

Lovecraft did mention continental drift in the story. Whether it was because of dumb luck that it turned out to be factual, or that Lovecraft was a visionary when it came to geological science will remain a mystery.

Marc-André wrote: "... An unedited version was published in 1985. ..."

Thanks. Have you read it? What is different?

I didn't see any continental drift in the story, but I'm not going back to look for it.

Maybe the French version I read was translated from the 1985 version of the tale. I'm not sure as there are few indications in the book and I read it 20 years ago. I read the pulp mag version available on protect Gutenberg for the group read (in English). So it has all the unwanted edits.

This is the quote where Lovecraft mentions continental drift:

"As I have said, the hypothesis of Taylor, Wegener, and Joly that all continents are fragments of an original Antarctic land mass which cracked from centrifugal force and drifted apart over a technically viscous lower surface- an hypothesis suggested by such things as the complementary outlines of Africa and South America, and the way the great mountain chains are rolled and shoved up-receives striking support from this uncanny source."

Marc-André wrote: "This is the quote where Lovecraft mentions continental drift: ..."

Thanks for that. I guess I didn't notice it. It seemed like he had Antarctica sitting at the pole for a long, long time. That didn't really have any effect on how much I did or didn't enjoy the story. I can overlook much larger science errors than that and still enjoy a story.

Marc-André wrote: "I always found that Lovecraft stories had protagonists who were alone and didn't have many dialogues with other living people...."

Yesterday I saw a movie poster for a movie about Emily Dickinson. That shocked me. How can you do a movie about someone who didn't talk much to other people? I'm very curious to see how they do that.

Richard wrote: "Marc-André wrote: "On my to-read shelf is H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Houellebecq is one of my favorite authors. I wanna found out his take on Lovecraft ..."

According to this website, I read that book 10 years ago. But I have no memory of doing so!

(Ed wrote: "According to this website, I read that book 10 years ago. But I have no memory of doing so!.."

FYI. GR has, in the past, had glitches that mark people's books as read.)

Cheryl wrote: "FYI. GR has, in the past, had glitches that mark people's books as read.)"

i probably really did read it. I remember reading another Houellebecq at that time.

A question to those who read it. Is it science-fiction? Science fantasy? Just fantasy? Proto-sci-fi? Something else? Like a Cosmic Horror wrapped in an Great Old One, inside and Outer God?

Marc-André wrote: "A question to those who read it. Is it science-fiction? Science fantasy? Just fantasy? Proto-sci-fi? Something else? Like a Cosmic Horror wrapped in an Great Old One, inside and Outer God?"
I'd call it SF/Horror. The monsters in the story are definitely portrayed as unknown science rather than supernatural.

Michael wrote: "I'd call it SF/Horror. The monsters in the story are definitely portrayed as unknown science rather than supernatural."

And yet: "[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes."

Some passages sure don't sound SF to me but rather more supernatural... Lovecraft kept his worlds on the cusp of science and the supernatural. This is exactly, I think, what makes his writing so unique. He didn't feel obligated to restrict his imagination within the confines of the usual categories or genre. BTW, the notion of "genre" in fiction is solely a mercantile creation. For better or for worst, it was created to help readers identify types of story they knew and might be interested to buy. Genre has now become a literary formula. But the authors whose works survive them are usually of the kind who did not follow any trend and created their own. Lovecraft is one of them.

Marc-André wrote: "Is it science-fiction? Science fantasy? Just fantasy? Proto-sci-fi? Something else? Like a Cosmic Horror wrapped in an Great Old One, inside and Outer God?"

All of the above.

Richard wrote: "And yet: "[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes."

Insanity warped Dyer's mind? It is a called At the Mountains of Madness after all.

BTW, the notion of "genre" in fiction is solely a mercantile creation.

Maybe, but the human mind also likes to be able to categorize and label stuff.

Genre has now become a literary formula.

Yup. It is why I like to read authors who play with that formula, subvert it or master it.

Marc-André wrote: "Maybe, but the human mind also likes to be able to categorize and label stuff."

Mind you, I use genre myself to make reading choices and to classify my own books. I only meant that genre is not an inherent part of literature and that once you like (or don't like) a book, it doesn't really matter what genre it is.

This is my first time reading Lovecraft though I've met a lot of Cthulualikes in video games. I wouldn't normally read anything categorised as horror so I wasn't expecting to like this. At first I enjoyed the quasi-academic dryness of the narrative, especially as I was listening to it rather than reading it but the extended and convoluted descriptions became tedious after a while. The endless explainations of the circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, cylinders, cubes, orbs, and every other geometric construct known to man and shoggoth that made up the city eventually forced me to fast forward. I was confused by the juxtaposition of things from the real world - paintings of Nichols Roerich and Minoan temples- and things from Lovecraft's own works -Plateau of Leng and Pnakoptic Manuscripts- and had to keep stopping to look stuff up. Overall I was more bored and frustrated than horrified or entertained but I did appreciate the world building elements and gained some understanding why Lovecraft's writings spawned so many other works.