Introduction:
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, was an American sci-fi, horror fiction author, who often based his stories on "cosmic horror". Most of his stories were published between 1920's-1930's, and although you might have never read his stories before, but you have definitely seen something that are inspired by HP Lovecraft's horror stories. For example, if you are a Metallica fan, you would know that the band has an instrumental song "The Call of Cthulhu", which is inspired by the Lovecraft story of the same name. Or "Arkham Asylum" in the Batman mythos, is inspired by Lovecraft's fictional American city of "Arkham".
Stephen King, have said that Lovecraft, is "The twentith century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale". While some other said Lovecraft is the comparable to Edgar Allan Poe in terms of his wild imagination, and the ability to weave the most spine chilling tales of the unimaginable.
Personally, I have never been a fan of horror fiction, and I have never picked up any of Stephen King's novels, and I am only about one third of way into a massive Edgar Alan Poe collection. However, I've always wanted to read some HP Lovecraft stories, only because I heard that back in the 30's, HP Lovecraft was a good friend of my most favorite author "Robert E. Howard", the creator of Conan the Cimmerian. This duo, is kind of similar to J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, the only difference is that HP Lovecraft is an atheist, and Robert E. Howard, has a very strange view about the world that is obviously twisted. Unlike the friendship between Tolkein and Lewis where both are Christians.
Anyway, I was not sure which collection of HP Lovecraft to buy. There is a book published by Library America, featuring most of Lovecraft's famous stories, and there is another volume called "Necronomicon", published by GollanczF, a massive tome containing a well collected library of Lovecraft's literary works. As a new comer to HP Lovecraft, I wasn't sure if it would be worth it to invest the bucks into getting those collector's books. Until one day, during a casual walkthrough at the book store, I stumbled across this book, "The Call of Cthulhu and the other Weird tales of HP Lovecraft", published by Vintage classics, the book only costs 12 dollars. At 551 pages, contains 12 of Lovecraft's most mind shattering horror stories.
In the last 2 weeks, I have been reading this book after work, while hiding under my blankets and paging through stories after stories of fantastic cosmic horror tales. And I have come to the conclusion that, HP Lovecraft not only has a great command of the English language, but he also seem to have the unique ability to weave sci-fi horror stories by using the combination of scientific and prose language. A style of which I have yet to see in most modern authors. Undoubtedly, Lovecraft is a great writer, and his stories are good. It is enough to send chills up your spine, and make you want to lit small lights while you are sleeping at night.
My thoughts:
What are my thoughts are Lovecraft's stories?
Well, to begin with. I am quite offended by the racist remarks and quotes in Lovecraft's writings. I have no doubt that Lovecraft, is obviously xenophobic and racist at the same time. This is evident in his stories where he continuously degraded people coming from non-English or non-white backgrounds.
However, if you are going to delve in HP Lovecraft's writings, and you are a Christian it might be worthwhile to note that there is a recurring theme in all of his writings. See, all of Lovecraft's horror stories are based on one concept. That human beings are created as a joke, an accident by an ancient alien species that ruled the earth millions of years ago. As Lovecraft described in "At the mountain of madness". An alien species came to this planet eons ago, and created life as an experiment, and through evolution, life have reached the diversity that exist now on the face of this planet. In "The Call of Cthulhu", Lovecraft have created this fictional race of aliens, who were rulers of the earth until a major disaster struck them that caused their decline, and in the story, it was said that one day, their high priest Cthulhu shall rise again to rule over the world, and destroy human kind on his ascension.
Therefore, I sensed that Lovecraft had embedded his atheistic belief that the universe, is a cruel place and that our existence, is but a joke and a freak accident. Nothing more.... Another theme I detected in Lovecraft's stories is that, in most of his stories, Lovecraft often create fictional occult groups that worships the evil alien race that created life on earth. I wonder if Lovecraft was trying to compare religious groups with the occult groups in his stories.
Overall, I sensed a lot of atheistic undertone in Lovecraft's stories. Furthermore, I detected that Lovecraft is out there trying to mock religious people. However, it is interesting to see that a lot of elements of the modern "neo-atheist" belief was already flourishing back in the 1930's.
As a Christian, while I did appreciate Lovecraft's horror tales, and find them worthwhile reading because of its undeniable literary values, but at the same time. I have to make my stand and point out the illogical view of atheist thinking, and I disagree with Lovecraft's atheistic view presented in his writings.
How can people really believe that the universe is a cruel place, and all that ever existed is nothing but a joke?
Can you really believe that? Can we really believe that? To take on this atheistic worldview, will mean that love, for example has no meaning at all. The love for your family and friends, will be nothing but a sick joke if our existence is an ultimate sarcastic joke with no purpose nor meaning.
The universe, was not meant to be a cruel place with no purpose nor meaning. In Genesis chapter 1, it said "God" created the universe. It is a creation process with structure, purpose and meaning, with every step of creation, the bible says "And God saw that it was good". See, when God created everything, it was meant to be "GOOD", with "good" purpose and "good" meaning, not cruel and meaningless as the neo atheist view want us to believe.
Unlike Lovecraft's evil alien race who created life on earth, who sees human beings as nothing but playthings and a joke. The God of Christianity, is a loving and just creator who loves His own creations so much that He even gave his only son, Jesus Christ to the world, to save the those who believe in Him for eternal life (John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave his only son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life).
So what do you believe? Do you believe that the universe is cruel and our existence has no meaning? Or are you unsure and don't want to think about it, only focusing on the things of the present? I implore you to use your common sense, which belief is right ? To believe that life, love, family, friends, and everything has no meaning, purpose and will end with aboslute nothingness, because it's all an accident? Or to believe that everything has meaning and purpose because there is a God that loves us so much that he even gave us his only son, Jesus Christ and there is hope, with something true and eternal?
This, is I think, the most important question and decision that we all have to make, at some stage of our lives. I can only pray that you will make the right one before it is too late. For the space-time continuum for us creatures, is a one way arrow, with our lives fading away but as glimpse of the blurring past millenia from now. At the end, only what we believe will matter at the end of this seemingly everlasting continuum, when we meet our creator.
Book rating: 4/5
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