Alexx's Journal

I've recently been re-reading a bunch of Lovecraft for an online course Kestrell and I are taking. "The Call of Cthulhu" still has one of the best first paragraphs I've ever read.

But the second paragraph, on this read, pulled me out of the story entirely. To paraphrase: "I hope no one else ever puts together these disparate facts. So here's a neatly organized document linking them together." And again, at the end, the final sentence (and here I quote): "Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye." Um, dude. Why don't you just burn it yourself? For that matter, why did you write it in the first place?

Recalling, however, my maxim that fixfics are more fun than nitpicks, I began to consider if there was a reason why the narrator doesn't destroy the manuscript. And I think my solution is pretty interesting.

"Call" makes it abundantly clear that sensitive minds can have their dreams affected by Cthulhu. What if their waking minds can also be affected to some degree? Possibly the various eldritch beings want to be documented, and influence people to do so.

We know that some of the strange things that HP writes about are not entirely physical. In "The Dunwich Horror", the titular being is described thus: "Only the least fraction was really matter in any sense we know." The naïve interpretation is that Lovecraft is talking about higher mathematical dimensions, or parallel universes in the now-standard SF sense. But what if these beings, either partially or fully, inhabit something akin to Alan Moore's notion of Ideaspace?

For those unfamiliar, here's Moore describing Ideaspace: "The idea of adapting a spatial metaphor for the properties of the mind and consciousness grew naturally out of the almost entirely spatial metaphors that we use already when referring to consciousness: we speak of things being on our minds, at the forefront or shoved to the back of our minds; we talk of being in or out of our right minds, even though our cranium is entirely filled with a kind of pinkish-grey electrified custard in which there is no physical space to be on, in, out of or at the front and back of. When we speak of higher consciousness, just how many feet above sea level is that? The idea of conscious awareness occupying some sort of space seems entirely natural to us, so I attempted to hypothesise about the possible nature of this hypothetical "space", which I labelled Ideaspace. One thing that struck me is that such a space might conceivably be a mutual space, even though we each apparently possess our own discrete consciousness. Maybe our individual and private consciousness is, in Ideaspace terms, the equivalent of owning an individual and private house, an address, in material space? The space inside our homes is entirely ours, and yet if we step out through the front door we find ourselves in a street, a world, that is mutually accessible and open to anyone. […] A further notion that came to me was that this hypothetical Ideaspace, where philosophies are land masses and religions are probably whole countries, might contain flora and fauna that are native to it, creatures of this conceptual world that are made from ideas in the same way that we creatures of the material world are made from matter. This could conceivably explain phantoms, angels, demons, gods, djinns, grey aliens, elves, pixies, smurfs and any of the other evidently non-material entities that people claim to have encountered over the centuries."

If beings like Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu, and the rest exist wholly or partially in this Ideaspace, then the act of writing about them is a method for them to reproduce. These beings could be seen as mimetic viruses, using hapless Lovecraft narrators as hosts. And on some level, these hosts appear to realize what is happening and fight against it, though ultimately unsuccessfully. (If there are successes, we wouldn't know of them, for obvious reasons.)

And as I continued to re-read HPL stories, I saw this pattern again and again. "At the Mountains of Madness" purports to want to discourage scientific expeditions to the Antarctic, while laying out details that could not fail to excite the interest of scientists worldwide. The narrator of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" writes: "I am going to defy the ban on speech about this thing [...] I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours". In "The Whisperer in Darkness", Henry Akeley shares information with the narrator, but insists, in italics, "This is private." Akeley encourages the narrator to back away at several points in the story, but ineffectually. Later "Akeley" (actually an imposter) writes "The alien beings desire to know mankind more fully, and to have a few of mankind’s philosophic and scientific leaders know more about them." (italics added). Throughout the HPL canon, The Necronomicon is described as "forbidden", yet there are copies in every collection of occult books, and most of the narrators have perused them.

I think this is a neat lens to read Lovecraft through. Though of course, you should by no means read any Lovecraft! Turn off your computer before it is too late!

• Started work on the Jerusalem Timeline. Added events for chapters 1-11.
  • It's mostly year-by-year, but more granular when it seems called for. For a certain day in 1909. and a few days in 2006, I'm actually tracking time of day, as there are many overlapping events from multiple chapters.
  • As is ever the case when I start doing fine examinations, I'm discovering a few inconsistencies. These are noted both in the Timeline, and in the individual chapter notes. None are too significant, but Alan Moore, though he is The Master, is not infallible.
• Integrating reader comments on various projects.

·        Updated the Dragaera Timeline to cover information from Bryan Newell's version of The Map of Dragaera. While this mostly consisted of small tweaks, there were two books involving movements of multiple armies which required nearly-complete rewrites: The Lord of Castle Black and Sethra Lavode. The principal battles in these books were sufficiently multi-threaded and complex that, in addition to estimating dates, I also found it necessary to estimate time of day. In the course of this, I also had cause to write two new supplementary essays:

o   Pel's machinations in The Lord of Castle Black – In the first half of the novel, while Pel is playing both sides at once, I infer a lot of interesting actions which Paarfi deliberately elides.

o   Disposition of forces before the Battle of Dzur Mountain – In the lead-up to the battle, there are 3 armies and 2 smaller troops moving around, and it can be difficult to keep track of who is where. This overview should help.

·        Annotated the wonderfully detailed new cover for the 25^th Anniversary edition of Alan Moore's first novel, Voice of the Fire. Highlights:

o   Directly underneath the title is a small string of Enochian text.
"Alan’s favourite Elizabethan magus, Dr. John Dee, is present (albeit offstage) in the Angel Language chapter. To acknowledge this I placed an inscription in Enochian—Dee’s “Angel Language”—underneath the title."
Enochian should read right to left, but this text reads left to right. The small dots are used by Coulthart to demarcate words; they are not typically used in other Enochian writing. The letters read "BYA K A MALPRG", which translates roughly to Voice of the Fire.

o   As evidenced by the title, fire is of central importance to this text, and literally takes up the center of the cover. The hottest portion of the fire is obscured, however, by the body of the shaman. Is there meant to be a symbolic meaning to this, maybe that shamans obscure as much as they reveal?

o   The cover contains many human figures, but surprisingly few human faces. Several of the figures have their backs to us; one has their head turned; one has a hood obscuring the face. A few faces are visible. There are two human skulls, both facing us, which might perhaps be counted as faces. An Imp is facing us, with its human-like face on a ferret-like body. There are two indirect faces, where the cover depicts an object that itself depicts a face: the carved figure in the upper left, and the coin with Diocletian's profile at lower left. It may be that all these facial absences are meant to draw the viewer's attention subconsciously to the symbolically depicted face of the large horned shaman which is semi-hidden as a central design element.

·        Continued contributing to the Little Nemo in Slumberland deep read on Twitter.

·        Answered some questions for Steven Brust.

·        Integrating reader comments on various projects.

Projected for next time: Finishing Jerusalem, chapter 2, and all of chapter 3.