Started reading Lovecraft age 12 I think - probably influenced by Metallica, hah - the basic anti-human idea immersed in all his writings had a severe impact on my world-view back then, before reaching heavier philosophic & religious writings..; the basic idea of humanity's complete insignificance when facing some sort of true reality. And I guess astronomy has proved him more right than he'd thought himself, with physical matter in the universe being estimated to a mere 4%, but dark matter, whatever that is (yog-sothoth?) about 80% and dark energy about 16%... (at least to make the calculations work..).
But anyway, Lovecraft has been slightly ruined for me the past few years with all gothic/roleplayer whooptydoo and plush Chthulhus; he's had quite a renaissance the past years in Sweden with new translations, literary scholars publishing biographies and analyses, et c. I only know how the Swedish tranlsations are, and basically, they have lost at least one dimension of the original writings. Lovecraft's later works can be a bit overbearing with the pseudo-archaic aesthetics & three-hundred adjectives & synonyms to "unmentionable" in a row... but as a stylist, he's beyond most competition. His main point about horror literature I guess is that it's
all about feeling, atmosphere, ambience. Characters & plot all comes in second hand. Maybe this should be reserved to a specific Horror literature thread? Fellows like Meyrink, Bierce, Machen and Blackwood deserve mention. Lovecraft's treatise "supernatural horror in fiction" is a must to get into early cosmic horror (late 19th/early 20th century). For the interested, I recommend Manuel Aguirre's
Closed Space, a study of the four major themes traceable in the history of horror literature, related to what the actual horrors are, up to the 1980's.
Back to science fiction. Massive recommendation if you like theories about light-speed travelling & time dilation: Poul Anderson's
Tau Zero.
