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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 7, Summer 1945
Page 163
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 163 Open House (Editor's note: As an experiment---in deference to the many interesting and publishable letters received as well as to outright requests for such a feature---a column devoted to readers' letter is being instituted in this issue. Both its length and its continuance as a regular part of Fantasy Commentator's line-up is dependent, of course, on you. If you'd rather see this space devoted to other material, write in and say so. On the other hand, the best way to insure its staying permanently is to send in letters of general interest to fantasy readers so that they may be printed. May I hear from you?) Concerning the last issue's "Lord of R'lyeh" Fritz Leiber, Jr., writes: Onderdonk hits the nail on the head in pointing out how Lovecraft effected a transition from the supernatural to the supernormal. He himself put it nicely in the introductory section of his "Supernatural Horror in Literature": "...men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse." (The only thing questionable in that statement is the "hereditary impulse" angle---modern science has certainly been as responsible as tradition for opening the eerie vistas he mentions.) But right there Lovecraft tells us that he is not looking to religion or folklore for the main source or rationale of his horrors---he is taking them out of the realms of the possible. The transition shows plainly in his own tales. The relatively earlier ones tend to depend on black magic, incantations, spells, etc., as major factors, while the later ones do not. Compare, for instance, "The Dunwich Horror" with "The Shadow out of Time." (Come to think of it, there may be chronological exceptions to this, but at any rate the transition is there, whether neatly chronologic or not.) In an interesting backhand sort of way, the Necronomicon mythology---Arkham-Al Hazred set-up) illustrates this transition. In "The Dunwich Horror," the Necronomicon is a vital factor; incantations from it are used in the story to effect important ends; it could not be eliminated. But by the time he was writing "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Shadow out of Time," the Necronomicon mythology was merely a source of local color, so to speak, and could have been eliminated without harming (perhaps even helping) the tales. The fascination of the Necronomicon mythology is so great that one is apt to mistake the shadow for the substance. Personally, I think it eventually became a minor millstone around Lovecraft's neck. For instance, Wilmarth of "The Whisperer in Darkness" might just as well have been an instructor at Brown or Harvard, and no references made to forbidden books at all---they weren't necessary to the tale. (This criticism is of course a casual and minor one; I just make it because admirers of Lovecraft, writers and readers both, are apt to think that the mythos was the important thing about Lovecraft instead of his vastly more important achievement in working out the transition from the supernatural to the supernormal that Onderdonk describes.) We hear next from J. O. Bailey, author of the soon-to-be-published book Pilgrim through Space and Time: "Calling All Crack-Pots," with its detailed listing of inconsistencies, seemed to me a good and entertaining job. I don't know what the whole secret of success in a piece of fantastic or scientific fiction may be, but the key to failure, as far as I am concerned, is the inclusion of a minor irrationality or stu-
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 163 Open House (Editor's note: As an experiment---in deference to the many interesting and publishable letters received as well as to outright requests for such a feature---a column devoted to readers' letter is being instituted in this issue. Both its length and its continuance as a regular part of Fantasy Commentator's line-up is dependent, of course, on you. If you'd rather see this space devoted to other material, write in and say so. On the other hand, the best way to insure its staying permanently is to send in letters of general interest to fantasy readers so that they may be printed. May I hear from you?) Concerning the last issue's "Lord of R'lyeh" Fritz Leiber, Jr., writes: Onderdonk hits the nail on the head in pointing out how Lovecraft effected a transition from the supernatural to the supernormal. He himself put it nicely in the introductory section of his "Supernatural Horror in Literature": "...men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse." (The only thing questionable in that statement is the "hereditary impulse" angle---modern science has certainly been as responsible as tradition for opening the eerie vistas he mentions.) But right there Lovecraft tells us that he is not looking to religion or folklore for the main source or rationale of his horrors---he is taking them out of the realms of the possible. The transition shows plainly in his own tales. The relatively earlier ones tend to depend on black magic, incantations, spells, etc., as major factors, while the later ones do not. Compare, for instance, "The Dunwich Horror" with "The Shadow out of Time." (Come to think of it, there may be chronological exceptions to this, but at any rate the transition is there, whether neatly chronologic or not.) In an interesting backhand sort of way, the Necronomicon mythology---Arkham-Al Hazred set-up) illustrates this transition. In "The Dunwich Horror," the Necronomicon is a vital factor; incantations from it are used in the story to effect important ends; it could not be eliminated. But by the time he was writing "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Shadow out of Time," the Necronomicon mythology was merely a source of local color, so to speak, and could have been eliminated without harming (perhaps even helping) the tales. The fascination of the Necronomicon mythology is so great that one is apt to mistake the shadow for the substance. Personally, I think it eventually became a minor millstone around Lovecraft's neck. For instance, Wilmarth of "The Whisperer in Darkness" might just as well have been an instructor at Brown or Harvard, and no references made to forbidden books at all---they weren't necessary to the tale. (This criticism is of course a casual and minor one; I just make it because admirers of Lovecraft, writers and readers both, are apt to think that the mythos was the important thing about Lovecraft instead of his vastly more important achievement in working out the transition from the supernatural to the supernormal that Onderdonk describes.) We hear next from J. O. Bailey, author of the soon-to-be-published book Pilgrim through Space and Time: "Calling All Crack-Pots," with its detailed listing of inconsistencies, seemed to me a good and entertaining job. I don't know what the whole secret of success in a piece of fantastic or scientific fiction may be, but the key to failure, as far as I am concerned, is the inclusion of a minor irrationality or stu-
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