Extraterrestrials & Lovecraft’s duality

Ralph Dumain

Colavito, Jason. The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005.

This is a fascinating book of wider significance than the title alone might suggest. The author has a sophisticated analysis of the fundamental ideological contradiction of the modern world, as it first solidifies in the polarity of Enlightenment and Romanticism and progresses as both science and superstition develop in the 19th and 20th centuries. This struggle is also embodied in the progression of literature from Gothic to Poe to the scientific romances of Verne, Wells, and others, to what will eventually be known as horror and science fiction. In parallel we have the crackpot alternative histories and anthropologies, occultisms and pseudoscience of Blavatsky, Donnelly, Fort, and others.

All of this comes together in Lovecraft, who assimilates this entire history, and, while himself a hard core rationalist and materialist, crafts a brand new mythical structure combining all of these elements and becomes the focal point for future developments.

“Star-Winds”
by H. P. Lovecraft

Science Fiction & Utopia Research Resources: A Selective Work in Progress

Sciencfikcio & Utopia Literaturo en Esperanto /
Science Fiction & Utopian Literature in Esperanto:
Gvidilo / A Guide

Exotica, Curiosa, Crankery, Hoaxes, Cultural & Intellectual Arcana:
Selected Web Guide & Bibliography