Three other major tales concern encounters with entities of extraterrestrial origin. In “The Call of Cthulhu,” the piecing together of disparate data, much of it collected by the narrator’s late granduncle, Professor George Gammell Angell, forces him to conclude that a newly risen island in the Pacific Ocean is home to a huge octopoid creature that fell to Earth eons ago. After doing little more than sending psychic signals to sensitives and cultists worldwide, great Cthulhu returns to the ocean depths, but the narrator has forever lost his peace of mind.
In “The Dunwich Horror,” wizard Whateley and his grandson Wilbur try to bring back the Old Ones, invisible monsters detectable by their fetid odor. Miskatonic’s Dr. Henry Armitage, learning of the plot, organizes a team of savants to stop them.
In “The Whisperer in Darkness,” the crablike fungi from Yuggoth (Pluto) lay siege to the remote Vermont farmhouse of Henry Akeley. Albert Wilmarth, a Miskatonic professor who has been corresponding with Akeley, arrives for a visit but flees in the middle of the night when he realizes that his host’s brain has been surgically removed and placed in a metal canister for transport through space.
Analysis
Eschewing both the traditional ghostly trappings of the gothic and the formulaic action and romance of the popular “scientifiction” of his day, Lovecraft combined a classical style derived from a voluminous reading of eighteenth century literature with a technique of careful realism, rooted in the soil of his native New England, to create a fictional universe in which the human race is of profound insignificance. In a 1927 letter to Weird Tales editor Farns-worth Wright, he declared, “Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.” He avoided the assumption that human passions, conditions, and standards would apply to other worlds or other universes. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, he believed that one must forget the existence of such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such attributes of humanity.
“The Call of Cthulhu,” written in 1926, is Lovecraft’s first important tale to reflect this philosophy. He considered “The Colour Out of Space” (1927) his best story because it came closest to attaining his ideal of “outsideness.” In contrast, “The Dunwich Horror” (1928), though strong on plot and suspense, amounts to a conventional narrative of brave human beings thwarting interdimensional invaders. More complex is “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930), with its ambiguous message. To travel through space as a disembodied consciousness, as a pure intellect capable of absorbing all the mysteries of the universe, may not be such a terrible fate.
By “The Shadow Out of Time” (1934-1935), the extraterrestrials have become fully sympathetic. The Great Race, who in their transcendent quest for knowledge have conquered time, affirm the finest of human values. As in the thematically similar short novel, At the Mountains of Madness (1964; cut versions appeared in the 1930’s), however, the horror writer in Lovecraft cannot resist introducing horrors of which even other horrors are afraid. Boundless wonder can give way at any moment to untold terror. In his emphasis on the primal emotion of fear, on atmosphere and mood over character and plot, he ignores such basic human concerns as sex and romantic love. For psychological critics, Love-craft’s cosmic indifference is of less interest as a guide to the universe than to his own neuroses. He may have looked to the stars, but he could not help gazing into the abyss of his own soul. Despite his efforts to deny the human, Lovecraft remains a very human figure whose work continues to move millions of readers.