Lovecraft: What Am I Missing?

[Shelldrake]

Out of Mind, while low budget, is a well worth watching take on the Lovecraft mythos.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213968/

[airboy]

His two best short stories were:
Shadow over Innsmouth
Call of Cthulhu

He is famous for two reasons.  First, he started a new sub-genre of literature.  The literature has lasted almost 100 years now.
Second, his work inspired an awesome RPG - Call of Cthulhu!!! 

I agree that At the Mountains of Madness really, really needed an editor.

Roger Zelazny wrote a Cthulhu-type book that was just outstanding:
A Night in Lonesome October.  It is simply amazing.

[Gusington]

Lovecraft was also most likely clinically depressed and a drug-addicted alcoholic. His life story is quite depressing. It seems like maladies like those are somehow linked to creative thinking.

[Hiimori]

An insider's tip to capture the true Lovecraftian atmosphere: I highly recommend the movie "The Call of Cthulhu", a silent movie from 2005, filmed with original silent movie techniques from 1920. VERY cool and very Cthulhu!

http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/

[Gusington]

^Whoa. Ok you win.

[Shelldrake]

An insider's tip to capture the true Lovecraftian atmosphere: I highly recommend the movie "The Call of Cthulhu", a silent movie from 2005, filmed with original silent movie techniques from 1920. VERY cool and very Cthulhu!

http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/

Trailer looks very cool!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

[airboy]

An insider's tip to capture the true Lovecraftian atmosphere: I highly recommend the movie "The Call of Cthulhu", a silent movie from 2005, filmed with original silent movie techniques from 1920. VERY cool and very Cthulhu!

http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/

This is on netflix

[Gusington]

Awesome!

[airboy]

An insider's tip to capture the true Lovecraftian atmosphere: I highly recommend the movie "The Call of Cthulhu", a silent movie from 2005, filmed with original silent movie techniques from 1920. VERY cool and very Cthulhu!

http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/

My wife and I watched it on Netflix tonight.  We gave it 4 stars out of 5.  Well worth watching if you like the genre.

[Gusington]

Also just watched it...I really liked that it was "silent." Well done.

[Grimnirsson]

http://www.lurkerfilms.com/cat/

[LongBlade]

I've been reading "Strange Case of somebody Ward." It's actually pretty good.

Great? Meh. But I'm getting where he's coming from now and I see the inspiration behind the games. It's not a bad time killer on my Kindle.

[FarAway Sooner]

A couple things to keep in mind about Lovecraft:

1) He was writing before practically anybody else besides Jules Verne had done science fiction.  Put aside all the hackneyed themes of alien invaders that have been hashed and rehashed to the consistency of tapioca in the last 50 years.  Put yourself in the mindset of somebody in the 1920s, where science is making huge advances and much of the world is unknown but the world is untamed and a lot of mystery still remains. 

2) Imagine the literary forebears he had to draw on for that genre.  Let's see, there was Edgar Allan Poe...  and there was Edgar Allan Poe...

3) He bent and blended genres in ways that nobody's been able to since.  Stephen King tries (and King himself admits that Lovecraft was his primary inspiration among 20th century authors), but his novels have to be set in the modern world where so much more is known.  Lovecraft was writing at a time when much less was known, but the rate of change in life hinted at huge potentialities.  He just explored those potentialities in less... pleasant directions than some authors.

He's not everybody's cup of tea, and I'll admit that I read him sparingly.  But I think he's a real pioneer and his stories really freak me out.  The Rats in the Walls still makes me shudder.

[Gusington]

Don't forget his drug use, alcoholism and mental illness! What more do you need for a great writer?

[GDS_Starfury]

or a great artist.  ::)