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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 6, Spring 1945
Page 106
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106 FANTASY COMMENTATOR Granting this, there is no reason why we should be slavishly bound to strict scientific law in our broadcast conceptions of the universe, and the door is thus left open for a renaissance of personal faith in the supernatural based on our individual intuitions and inclinations. Now, Lovecraft was cognizant of all that has been sketched in the lines above, but he also realized that we live in a world in which heat, light, gravitation, electricity, etc., do seem to follow definite laws of action that remain quite stable from day to day. Unless we are to abandon all reason, we must take this fact into account. After all, the modern reader of his stories would be bound to have a fair scientific background: this reader couldn't tolerate very many of the old-fashioned Gothic trappings of the ghost, werewolf and vampire per se. It takes a first-rate artist today to make us grant even a half-hour's credence to these relics of yesterday, and after that we dismiss the tale with a shrug and a smile. Clearly, a new approach and wider horizons are required. Lovecraft was possessed of an enormous spirit of sensitivity and almost boundless imagination, so it seems quite probable that he shrank from the full implications of a universe governed by mere blind force, particularly with his intuitive feeling for the weird and the unseen. So, therefore, I venture to suggest that his brilliant mind resolved all of these difficulties by a new concept of the spectral tale; a synthetic attitude into which grew inevitably the mythos of a supernormal, scientifically-conceived gods and associated lore to take the place in literature of the simon-pure supernatural and more strictly poetical gods of our past days. I think we can sense this immediately upon the first perusal of his best works, although realization does not come until after meditation and considerable rereading. The atmosphere of a clear rationalism overhangs all of the story-telling; something of the mechanistic belief survives in the concept of Fate as ruling the action of both man and gods. Neither of these, however, subordinate a complete grasp of present-day scientific and philosophical outlook. Mingled throughout is the sense of terror from vast, unseen things and psychological horror of the creeping menace of unimaginable entities from outside. The objection may be made that the finished product is only pure horror; that the creations of the mythos are almost universally malignant, or, at best, indifferent towards man's fate. This cannot be avoided: all the main currents of the supernatural in the past have had the prime effect of making us uncomfortable. A scientist of today can conceive the universe as peopled by blind forces which have no concern with the human race, but for the purposes of literature this attitude is too static, too dead: we must have conflict of purposes and emotions to make a story. We must personify these forces in some manner to make them intelligible to the reader, and we are forced to make them inimical to mankind's aspirations and progress in order to have the interesting elements of struggle and survival. If we postulated all the powers of the galaxies as simply united in working towards our objectives, the outcome would be merely a lazy complacency of mind, even granting that we could hurdle the patent absurdity and puerile infantilism of such an idea. It could not be expected that a modern scientific integration with the supernatural would help to flatter us to any extent when we consider the utter vastness of our present conceptions of space and time, and man's paltry insignificance in the midst of it. IV Science-fiction had already seen most of its best days when Lovecraft began seriously to write: he was just a couple of decades ahead of the bulk of the writing world in sensing the fact. Of course the reason for this beginning of decadence was, ironically enough, that legitimate science had almost caught up
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106 FANTASY COMMENTATOR Granting this, there is no reason why we should be slavishly bound to strict scientific law in our broadcast conceptions of the universe, and the door is thus left open for a renaissance of personal faith in the supernatural based on our individual intuitions and inclinations. Now, Lovecraft was cognizant of all that has been sketched in the lines above, but he also realized that we live in a world in which heat, light, gravitation, electricity, etc., do seem to follow definite laws of action that remain quite stable from day to day. Unless we are to abandon all reason, we must take this fact into account. After all, the modern reader of his stories would be bound to have a fair scientific background: this reader couldn't tolerate very many of the old-fashioned Gothic trappings of the ghost, werewolf and vampire per se. It takes a first-rate artist today to make us grant even a half-hour's credence to these relics of yesterday, and after that we dismiss the tale with a shrug and a smile. Clearly, a new approach and wider horizons are required. Lovecraft was possessed of an enormous spirit of sensitivity and almost boundless imagination, so it seems quite probable that he shrank from the full implications of a universe governed by mere blind force, particularly with his intuitive feeling for the weird and the unseen. So, therefore, I venture to suggest that his brilliant mind resolved all of these difficulties by a new concept of the spectral tale; a synthetic attitude into which grew inevitably the mythos of a supernormal, scientifically-conceived gods and associated lore to take the place in literature of the simon-pure supernatural and more strictly poetical gods of our past days. I think we can sense this immediately upon the first perusal of his best works, although realization does not come until after meditation and considerable rereading. The atmosphere of a clear rationalism overhangs all of the story-telling; something of the mechanistic belief survives in the concept of Fate as ruling the action of both man and gods. Neither of these, however, subordinate a complete grasp of present-day scientific and philosophical outlook. Mingled throughout is the sense of terror from vast, unseen things and psychological horror of the creeping menace of unimaginable entities from outside. The objection may be made that the finished product is only pure horror; that the creations of the mythos are almost universally malignant, or, at best, indifferent towards man's fate. This cannot be avoided: all the main currents of the supernatural in the past have had the prime effect of making us uncomfortable. A scientist of today can conceive the universe as peopled by blind forces which have no concern with the human race, but for the purposes of literature this attitude is too static, too dead: we must have conflict of purposes and emotions to make a story. We must personify these forces in some manner to make them intelligible to the reader, and we are forced to make them inimical to mankind's aspirations and progress in order to have the interesting elements of struggle and survival. If we postulated all the powers of the galaxies as simply united in working towards our objectives, the outcome would be merely a lazy complacency of mind, even granting that we could hurdle the patent absurdity and puerile infantilism of such an idea. It could not be expected that a modern scientific integration with the supernatural would help to flatter us to any extent when we consider the utter vastness of our present conceptions of space and time, and man's paltry insignificance in the midst of it. IV Science-fiction had already seen most of its best days when Lovecraft began seriously to write: he was just a couple of decades ahead of the bulk of the writing world in sensing the fact. Of course the reason for this beginning of decadence was, ironically enough, that legitimate science had almost caught up
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