DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 6, Spring 1945

Transcribe
Translate

Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 6, Spring 1945

Page 104

magnificent novel "The case of Charles Dexter Ward," progressed further andd created in literary form a new family of gods and associated lore which we have come to know under the general title "The Cthulhu Mythos."
Here would seem to be a basic contradiction. If "mechanistic materialism" means what it implies, it would indicate a conviction that man's psychical faculties as well as his physical ones---and all the attributes of his world and the universes around him---are uniformly governed by immutable and inviolable mechanical laws, some of which we have already discovered and labeled "science." In short, man and the universe are equally machines; and machines have no power of choice: they must obey the laws which regulate their actions. To such an adherent, it would require an impossible wrench to the intellect to postulate powers of any sort which could modify, reverse, or set aside these blind mechanical laws or any part of them merely to satisfy some whim of the gods or supplication of mankind.
Now, the most immediate conclusion which might be drawn in the case of Lovecraft is that his literary creation of a new pantheon was simply a grim, ironic jest; a bold nose-thumbing at conventional religious concepts; a credo that any man may construct his own family of gods to suit his own tastes and inclinations; a dictum that each man's pantheon has equal velidity because in reality none of them has any intrinsic meaning.  Those who know anything of Lovecraft the man, however, and who are aware of his genuine erudition, must cast aside immediately such ideas. A man of his character, learning and intellectual integrity was utterly incapable of such shallow posturing, such sophomoric sniping at fundamental and ultimate human questions.
Here was Lovecraft's dilemma as this writer sees it, and here is how he resolved it, according to the best thought and meditations of this same humble seeker after truth" Lovecraft had an inmate predilection for the weird and the supernatural since early childhood. Next, he professed an intense nostalgia for the vanished eighteenth century and all it implied (and surely the eighteenth century was a veritable apotheosis of mechanistic materialism in science and philosophy!). Finally, he had a complete awareness of twentieth century science and the speculations arising therefrom: he well have the terrifying new vistas it had opened up to the human mind. So the query is: how to reconcile these diverse elements!
In the fires of genius flaming in his brilliant intellect he was able to reinterpret eighteenth century mechanism in the light of twentieth century relativity and indeterminacy, and then to integrate these new basic concepts of science with the best elements surviving from age-old supernaturalism. The crowning touch was the added glamour of the weird, which like a gossamer sheen envelope the best of all his tales.
By accomplishing this remarkable feet, he created (as all genius must) something new and unique in the world's storehouse of original ideas. In his case it was a new kind of weird tale that had elements of science-fiction artfully and inextricably woven into the deeper currents of the unseen and the Outside. The result was neither science-fiction, nor weird fiction, nor supernatural fiction, but something different from all of these: in short, a Lovecraftian tale! The supreme resulting achievement? What we formerly called the supernatural was no longer so: it had now become merely the supernormal.

III

The conflict between science and religion is one of mankind's wars. It probably started when one of our earliest ancestors found a new and better way of hunting and killing, or a new kind of food, drink or amusement that conflicted with the authority of the tribal priests. This inevitable led to the

Saving...

magnificent novel "The case of Charles Dexter Ward," progressed further andd created in literary form a new family of gods and associated lore which we have come to know under the general title "The Cthulhu Mythos." Here would seem to be a basic contradiction. If "mechanistic materialism" means what it implies, it would indicate a conviction that man's psychical faculties as well as his physical ones---and all the attributes of his world and the universes around him---are uniformly governed by immutable and inviolable mechanical laws, some of which we have already discovered and labeled "science." In short, man and the universe are equally machines; and machines have no power of choice: they must obey the laws which regulate their actions. To such an adherent, it would require an impossible wrench to the intellect to postulate powers of any sort which could modify, reverse, or set aside these blind mechanical laws or any part of them merely to satisfy some whim of the gods or supplication of mankind. Now, the most immediate conclusion which might be drawn in the case of Lovecraft is that his literary creation of a new pantheon was simply a grim, ironic jest; a bold nose-thumbing at conventional religious concepts; a credo that any man may construct his own family of gods to suit his own tastes and inclinations; a dictum that each man's pantheon has equal velidity because in reality none of them has any intrinsic meaning. Those who know anything of Lovecraft the man, however, and who are aware of his genuine erudition, must cast aside immediately such ideas. A man of his character, learning and intellectual integrity was utterly incapable of such shallow posturing, such sophomoric sniping at fundamental and ultimate human questions. Here was Lovecraft's dilemma as this writer sees it, and here is how he resolved it, according to the best thought and meditations of this same humble seeker after truth" Lovecraft had an inmate predilection for the weird and the supernatural since early childhood. Next, he professed an intense nostalgia for the vanished eighteenth century and all it implied (and surely the eighteenth century was a veritable apotheosis of mechanistic materialism in science and philosophy!). Finally, he had a complete awareness of twentieth century science and the speculations arising therefrom: he well have the terrifying new vistas it had opened up to the human mind. So the query is: how to reconcile these diverse elements! In the fires of genius flaming in his brilliant intellect he was able to reinterpret eighteenth century mechanism in the light of twentieth century relativity and indeterminacy, and then to integrate these new basic concepts of science with the best elements surviving from age-old supernaturalism. The crowning touch was the added glamour of the weird, which like a gossamer sheen envelope the best of all his tales. By accomplishing this remarkable feet, he created (as all genius must) something new and unique in the world's storehouse of original ideas. In his case it was a new kind of weird tale that had elements of science-fiction artfully and inextricably woven into the deeper currents of the unseen and the Outside. The result was neither science-fiction, nor weird fiction, nor supernatural fiction, but something different from all of these: in short, a Lovecraftian tale! The supreme resulting achievement? What we formerly called the supernatural was no longer so: it had now become merely the supernormal. III The conflict between science and religion is one of mankind's wars. It probably started when one of our earliest ancestors found a new and better way of hunting and killing, or a new kind of food, drink or amusement that conflicted with the authority of the tribal priests. This inevitable led to the