Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

Re:Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In Th... by scarmig on Wednesday January 24, 2018 @07:04PM (#16227540)

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Lovecraft is fundamentally about confronting modernism and the inevitable decay of humanity in the faces of forces beyond our control. Central to that is the decay of the Anglo-Saxon genetic stock.

Xenophobic isn't quite the right word. Racist is closer, but even that misses the mark. Every story he writes is terrified of black voodoo savages, or toothless white hill people, or inbred decadent Boston brahmin families, or fishermen that are half-white-half-Chinese-half-fish.

Aristotle, by contrast, isn't that concerned with gender. He is happy to treat it as a topic, but he has nowhere near the same level of preoccupation.

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Re:Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In Th... by chc on Thursday January 25, 2018 @12:56PM (#16232889)

The story in question, At the Mountains of Madness, isn't about any of those things. It's about an Antarctic expedition that finds the ruins of an ancient civilization, which they gradually realize wasn't built by humans.

I do think you're right that Lovecraft's ability to write effective horror was largely because he himself was fascinated with terror at the world. But I don't think his weird xenophobia is what he ended up actually communicating to most readers or what he's famous for. He's more known for misshapen tentacle monsters and cosmic-scale horror. For example, Lauren Beukes' novel Broken Monsters is often considered Lovecraftian horror, and it has fairly modern sensibilities.

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Re:Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In Th... by Apocryphon on Wednesday January 24, 2018 @07:48PM (#16227796)

Ur-tribalist, perhaps.

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Re:Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In Th... by sooheon on Wednesday January 24, 2018 @10:58PM (#16228621)

Wow, I just learned that I despise the prefix "ur-" far more than is reasonable.

Seriously though, why not call it "tribalist"?

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Re:Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In Th... by Apocryphon on Wednesday January 24, 2018 @11:51PM (#16228853)

Not ultra- enough, in Lovecraft's case.

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Re:Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In Th... by Cthulhu_ on Thursday January 25, 2018 @04:44AM (#16229818)

Lovecraft would've added at least three more adjectives.

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