Cosmic Horrors

[Lycanthrope]

A response to "The Forum Is Dead" topic. Let's try with diversity.

Fear of the unknown has always been one of the most primal fears of humanity. Any threat - no matter how grave - could be dealt with, once it was understood. The Unknown, however, offered no such understanding and if all the attempts to gain it failed, human imagination had to take over. Even the most savage monster was better that the chilly void that was the alternative. At least one "fact" had to be available so one could focus on it, instead of feeling helpless.

Cosmic Horrors are both great examples and excellent subversions. Would one rather choose to remain ignorant of their true nature and live with the fear, or learn more and suddenly find oneself in a world much more alien than previously imagined? So alien that the sanity might shatter...

Imagining Cosmic Horrors is hard for this very reason. It's somewhat against our normal mental habits. We can't help, but fill the gaps with more information. But let's not - it would kill the experience.

What are Cosmic Horrors? They are things that are incomprehensible, it's as simple as that! They might come from the farthest reaches of space and time, or even outside of them. They may have the size of planets, or encompass entire universes - if they're made of matter. Laws of physics could not apply to them. Their very existence would be an aberration of probability and reason. And most importantly - they are conscious... at least in some meaning of that word... probably... maybe... Their motives are as alien to us as is the colour of high frequency radiation. Still, they influence things and it's not comforting...

What are your ideas on using Cosmic Horrors in fiction? Were there any examples you'd like to share?

[Berserker]

I'm sure most of us are familiar with this concept in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, who practically invented the theme.

In film, however, there's one very famous example of a Lovecraftian cosmic horror archetype that most people seem to overlook as such:

Alien.

The Alien is definitely Lovecraftian. It represents unnameable, forgotten cosmic horror revealed in glimpses to a fragile humanity, with the unrecorded downfall of past civilizations as an undercurrent to the inevitable doom of mankind as he tampers with knowledge far beyond his capacity for understanding.

The creature and its surroundings were drawn mainly from H. R. Giger's surrealist vision of the fusion of machine and organic life (himself heavily influenced by Lovecraft,) with its primary theme of the destruction of moral absolutes using a blurred line between the meanings of "life" and "death" and its attack on the unnatural perversions of industrialism, along with a juxtaposition of gender supporting concepts of the elimination of mortal identity. These themes--coupled with the alien's nightmarish physical design--allow for a creature perfectly suited as a vessel for the darker messages of science fiction.

[Aki]

I'm so-so on Cosmic Horrors. They're a cool in a sense, but at the same time "Lol, incomprehensible" feels like a cop-out to me. In some ways the concept is interesting but at the same time I'm not entirely keen on how when it comes to facing them down it's "lol insanity, you lose puny human."

But that's probably because I've never really been huge into horror which is huge on people losing and being entirely inferior to eldritch horrors and the like instead of being able to grab a shotgun and blast a monster in the face.

[RedEye]

Possibly the greatest Cosmic Horror was a flick called "Plan Nine from Outer Space," produced and directed by the memorable Ed Wood!

For those of you lucky enough to have missed it; there were such stirring events as:
No Continuity. One of the Lead Actors (Bela Lugosi) died during production, so Ed Woodf put on a Dracula mask and a cape and finished the scenes himself.
No Lines. The actors were worrking from one script, that had so many erasures and changes that lines were complete non-sequiters.
No Costumes! (no not that kind of no costumes) everybody wore stuff they already had. Maybe from Good Will...
Special Effects. Instead of using good film to make effects, stock shots were used instead. Naturally, things didn't match up.
Now That is COSMIC HORROR!

[Scott Gardener]

The original Alien had more the sense of horror per se. Subsequent sequels, while fun to watch, are more action features that happen to have R-rated grotesque elements. Perhaps part of the reason that the sequels aren't as scary is that we go in knowing the ground rules; we know that the little creepy thing that grabs one's face lays eggs, and that the eggs grow into "chestbusters" that hunt and eat you. We also already know about the acid blood thing. But, in the first one, we didn't, and neither did the crew of the ship that stumbled upon it.

Cosmic horrors are potentially pretty effective. Another good example might be Fire in the Sky. Presented as an "actual account" of an alien abduction story, the thing was pretty scary, because here was something that performed horrific acts of torture on someone, and there was not a darned thing we could do about it. Worse yet, there are numerous people out there who claim that this is real--that this sort of thing is actually going on. I learned only after seeing it that many of the most horrific details from the movie were not part of Travis Walton's actual alleged account, which was scary but not gory or horrifying. Still, alien abduction accounts, whether you believe them or not, introduce the idea that another intelligence out there could be just as horrific towards us as humans have been towards other animals.

Which brings up War of the Worlds, both H.G. Wells' original novel and all the subsequent interpretations, ranging from the radio broadcast that set off a panic, to the 1950s version featuring hovering spacecraft, to a conceptual rock album by Jeff Wayne, and finally to the recent Steven Spielberg version with Tom Cruise. We are introduced to the idea that maybe we're not at the top of the food chain, and that the notion of human dominion over the Earth is not only petty but of no real consequence in the cosmic order of things. We're shown that we are still ultimately at the mercy of the universe, and that human existence remains provisional.

But, my favorite "cosmic horror" story, soon to be treated to a remake, has got to be The Day the Earth Stood Still. This Sci-Fi Noir classic contains all the elements one normally associates with B-movies--a giant robot, a space man in a silver suit, a flying saucer, stock footage of army trucks rolling in... And yet, the way it is done is not cheesy at all, but indeed haunting. Michael Rennie's portrayal of Klaatu is nothing short of spectacular, and Bernard Hermann's music score is very chilling. The clean, seamless lines and simplistic design elements of the saucer and the robot Gort convey an otherworldliness that is totally believable. And, the images of the movie burn themselves into your subconsciousness. Probably one of the most powerful and effective moments of horror would have to be when Klaatu steps forward, saying, "we come in peace, with goodwill," and reaching forward with a strange-looking alien device, only to be shot. I won't spoil the scene for you, but suffice it to say, when it is revealed what the device is for, it makes you cry. For, the horror of this film isn't about the aliens, but about humanity, about just how primitive we still are.

Contact has a similar moment. A consortium of scientists at one point have just decoded the first portion of the alien signal, and we see a gray blob against a lighter background. The view pans back, and we see more detail. It pans back further to see something that looks disturbingly like a swastika. It finally pans back to show Adolf Hitler giving a speech at the 1936 Olympics, and it is revealed that this is the first image the aliens see of Earth--that the very embodiment of the most nightmarish aspect of humanity is the very first thing we sent out into space.

So, some of the best cosmic horrors aren't about aliens, but about us, as viewed by aliens.

[Dreamer]

Speaking of Cosmic Horrors, I kinda wonder, has anyone done a work based on Lovecraft that features Deep One characters whom are not evil and Cthulhu-allied?I mean, it's a well known fact that The Shadow Over Insmouth has some very racist subtext that can be pretty uncomfortable to think about these days (replace all the references to Deep Ones with black people and you'll see what I mean), and I wonder if any writer has been clever enough to subvert that hateful tradition.

[Aki]

Speaking of Cosmic Horrors, I kinda wonder, has anyone done a work based on Lovecraft that features Deep One characters whom are not evil and Cthulhu-allied?I mean, it's a well known fact that The Shadow Over Insmouth has some very racist subtext that can be pretty uncomfortable to think about these days (replace all the references to Deep Ones with black people and you'll see what I mean), and I wonder if any writer has been clever enough to subvert that hateful tradition.

Two things to consider:
1. Lovecraft came from a time where racism was the norm. It's kinda like blaming a knight for thinking a woman weak when that's all he's ever had drilled into his head.
2. If you replace all the references to [insert monster] with black people it'll always be racist. For example, if you replace the word "zombie" in any zombie book/movie/etc. with black people BAM, [insert author] IS A RACIST.

[Dreamer]

Yes, but Lovecraft was way more racist than was common in his time, and in a number of his stories (Especially Herbert West Re-Animator) he described black people with a horror usually reserved for cosmic horrors, and some of his earlier stories have even more blatiant racist subtexts (Like the Horror at Red Hook). And the subtext for the Deep Ones goes beyond what you're talking about. Basically, The Shadow Over Insmouth is about a race of horrible creatures that want to breed with our women to infiltrate our society, worship evil gods, and plan to take over the world using their superior numbers. Sound familiar?

SO, I ask the question again, has there been any Lovecraft-inspired authors that subverted the racist subtext of the Deep Ones by having Deep One characters that were not evil?

[Midnight]

.

[Dreamer]

[Aki]

Like I said, this was common back then.

It only seems more prominent because he wrote it. People back then were just as racist, only this hasn't stuck around to be reviewed like Lovecraft's work has.

[Werewolf Warrior]

I agree with aki, because we are getting kind of Off the paticular topic at hand.

[Bloodyredbaron]

Sorry to necro, but I felt this had to be injected into the discussion.

Better question about Lovecraft's so called "cosmic horrors", when have critters like Chtulhu ever really proven themselves to be as all powerful as they claim, if I remember Chtulhu went out of his way to avoid being struck by a Tramp Steamer, going so far as to partially phase out of the physical plane, and suddenly he can take nukes to the face and he's destined to wipe out the planet? Most of the protagonists have been driven insane by the end of the story anyway, so how can we really take their testimony at face value?

So all and all "I wouldn't trust a Lovecraftian description of a glass of milk, much less his so called Cosmic Horrors..."

That sounds normal for Lovecraft: in the little of his writings that I have read, he described just about everything that way. If he wrote about his breakfast in the morning the eggs would be ichorous, the toast would be scorched, bitter and bleeding butter, and the coffee would have Stygian depths.

"Like distilled madness, the ghastly white fluid was of a viscous quality quite unlike anything that could truly be called 'liquid' by contemporary man.

This pseudo-fluid was contained, yet not contained, within a transparent barrier like the purest ice, yet its temperature was not cool. This container was not a square, but a thing of unnaturally precise curves."