Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

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Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

Postby NotCIAAgent » Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:28 pm

Hey guys. Missed me?

Yeah, I know the answer, it was a rhetoric question.

Yeah, it doesn't really qualify as a rhetoric question. I think I was just hopeful. Whatever.

Anyways, I've been absent from the forum lately because I just discovered the wonders of our IRC chat, and you guys should definitely check it out!

Anyways, I have a question that came to my mind when I was reading about X-Com 2 in comparison to the first one, and it's that this game is considered "lovecraftian". I started wondering why... is it just because the game is now underwater? Is it because it have ancient, terrestrial "aliens"? Because it have a religious vibe?

So, my question is: is every alien invasion (like War of the Worlds, for example) Lovecraft? What makes Lovecraft "style" (cosmic horror?) different from other alien invasion works?

Edit: Also, there is works depicting alien invasion predating Lovecraft?
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Re: Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

Postby sunglasses » Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:03 pm

Yeah, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells was published in 1897.

I think it's more Lovecraftian if tentacles are involved. Or if the term eldritch is used. Or unspeakable horror. Or unspeakable fathoms. I mean, his works did talk about creatures on Pluto and various planets, idiot gods, and mad messengers.

Honestly, I would say that it would need to be a very specific genre to be called Lovecraftian. Aliens aren't the only things that need be involved. If it had more of a horror element, that helps as well. The religious theme/cult theme does go hand in hand with that as The Old Ones oft had cult members and ancient sects. The underwater theme helps as well as Innsmouth, Dagon, Cthulu, etc all had underwater themes. Same with the ancient aliens vibe. In one of his stories they find a former city of aliens in Antarctica. Sadly, they also find a bunch of homicidal Soggoths.
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Re: Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

Postby NotCIAAgent » Sat Jun 21, 2014 5:10 pm

Well, the game's brutal difficulty could be considered an horror element. Aliens lobbing plasma and grenades on you before you even have the chance to spot the bastards.

As I said, there are ancient, terrestrial intelligent creatures that predates humans and even dinosaurs as one of the early enemies.

The only thing this game is (possibly) missing is the mystical element. But apparently they even have Cthulhu.

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Well, in conclusion: apparently is a little hard to define Lovecraft's style.
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Re: Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

Postby Marcuse » Sat Jun 21, 2014 5:14 pm

Well Lovecraft had a very particular style and modus operandi. Anything that was unspeakable, unknowable without causing insanity, or outside the range of human knowledge and capacity to understand was very common.

Creatures like Chthulu, a winged octopus quasi-deity that was said to dwell in the sunken city of Rl'yeh kind of fits the "underwater alien" thing, given that it's pretty much stated outright in The Mountains of Madness that his race came from space. The Old Ones related in detail in that story also came from space, and ended up living underwater.

Several of his other stories were things like reanimating the dead, long lost reptilian races preparing to sweep away the faltering civilisations of man, stuff like that.

Basically, anything that paints humanity as a small, weak, and powerless species in a world where elder races trod the Earth far before we did, and we're living on borrowed time before they take over. In a sense, they're not "alien invasion" because the aliens are said to have landed sometimes millions of years before we evolved on Earth, so it's less an invasion, more the rightful owners of the planet sweeping away the vermin that have infested their former lands.

I suppose a comparison might be useful.

An alien invasion would be a hostile species of alien arriving at Earth and attacking. Like Independence Day.

A Lovecraftian horror around the same thing would more likely be a lone scientist or soldier stumbling almost by accident on some hitherto unknown subterranean archive of records of a species of aliens that used to exist on Earth, and their dwindling remnants have been hibernating ever since their fall milennia before humans even evolved. He almost wakes them up, but attracts the attention of something hideous and sanity draining, that he is reluctant to put into words. The impression is left that, if awoken, we'd all be doomed.
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Re: Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Jun 21, 2014 5:44 pm

Not entirely sure if this will help, but it is roughly on-topic:

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Re: Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

Postby NotCIAAgent » Sat Jun 21, 2014 9:05 pm

You guys did it. Kudos on all of you.
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Re: Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

Postby NathanLoiselle » Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:29 am

I'm surprised that no one bothered to give examples by way of movies. War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Mars Attacks! are not lovecraftian. Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Hellboy 1 are definitely lovecraftian. Mostly because the primary antagonist (Old Ones, Cthulu, Bob the Builder) are never really introduced but are really just alluded to.

So aliens who never actually show up to invade (kinda like in The Arrival) until after the film would be lovecraftian. Incidentally, the Arrival would make an excellent Lovecraft film.
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Re: Alien stuff = Lovecraft?

Postby FaceTheCitizen » Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:46 am

...
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