The Call of Cthulhu in Under 2 Minutes
In our ongoing service to bring you all things Mythos:
Fun Passage from The Fuller Memorandum
One of my favorite passages from Lovecraft is the first paragraph of his short story “The Call of Cthulhu“:
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
As I’ve argued here before, while Lovecraft is most often classified as a horror, dark fantasy, or weird tale writer—he might classify himself as a writer of supernatural horror—much of his Mythos stories can classified as a science fiction as it is a response to contemporary scientific thought.
All this is simply to preface my favorite passage from Charles Stross’ The Fuller Memorandum:
Magic is a branch of applied mathematics, after all, and when you process information, you set up waves in the platonic ultrastructure of reality that can amplify and reinforce—
To put bluntly, there are too many humans on this planet. Six-billion-plus primates. And we think too loudly. Our brains are neurocomputers, incredibly complex. THe more observers there are, the more quantum weirdness is observed, and the more inconsistencies creep into our reality. The weirdness is already going macroscopic—has been, for decades, as any disciple of Forteana could tell you. Sometime really soon, we’re going to cross a critical threshold which, in combination with our solar system’s ongoing drift through a stellar neighborhood where space itself is stretched thin, is going to make it likely that certain sleeping agencies will stir in their aeons-long slumber, and notice us.
No, we can’t make CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN go away by smashing all our computers and going back to pencils and paper—if we did that, our amazingly efficient just-in-time food delivery logistics would go down the pan and we’d all starve. No, we can’t make CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN go away by holding a brisk nuclear war and frying the guys with the biggest dicks—induced megadeaths have consequences that can be exploited for much the same ends, as the Ahnenerbe-SS discovered to their cost.
CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is the demonological equivalent of an atomic chain reaction. Human minds equal plutonium nuclei. Put too many of them together in too small a place, and they begin to get a wee bit hot. Cross the threshold and suddenly and emphatically and they get a lot hot. And the elder gods wake up, smell the buffet, and prepare to tuck in. (61)
Just a bit of Stross’ science fictional thinking of which I think Lovecraft would have approved mightily.
The Fuller Memorandum and “Overtime”
The Fuller Memorandum is the third novel in Charles Stross’ Laundry series best described as Lovecraftian spy thrillers, and “Overtime” is the most recent Laundry short story (available for free from Tor). Playing with Lovecraft’s conceit that magic is applied mathematics and the horror of the Mythos are aliens and beings from other dimensions, the books imagine a Lovecraftian world in which modern intelligence agencies established sections to protect from the occultic and eldritch horrors. The Laundry series center around the adventures of Bob Howard, a computational demonologist who was pressed into service in the British occultic agency—The Laundry—after he accidentally almost unleashed some unnamed horror while conducting graduate research. As long-time readers of this blog know, I am a great fan of Stross’ work and it was his first Bob Howard book, The Atrocity Archives, that brought him to my attention. As I expected I would, I greatly enjoyed this latest installment.
As I’m trying to more regularly blog my reading, here are some thoughts/comments on The Fuller Memorandum and “Overtime” à la Brendan.
- While The Atrocity Archives consciously draws its spy thriller elements from Len Deighton and The Jennifer Morgue draws from Ian Fleming, The Fuller Memorandum doesn’t seem to be an homage to a particular spy thriller author. I’m not widely read in spy thriller fiction, so I’d be happy to be corrected on this one.
- The absurdest tedium of civil service bureaucracy upon which The Atrocity Archives draws so much of its humor is only hinted at in this novel, which is a good thing.
- The primary villains of this story are cultists seeking to awaken the sleeper in the pyramid aka the Eater of Souls aka CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN aka Cthulhu. With cultists at the center of this novel, I think it’s got a more Lovecraftian feel than the other two novels, but that’s a pretty subjective statement, especially as the other two are very much Lovecraftian in their own ways.
- As with Stross’s other two Laundry books, there is history to this novel, this time with roots in the Russian revolution and extrapolation based upon post-Soviet espionage. The arrest of an alleged Russian spy ring in the US the week before the novel’s publication and resulting spy swap a few days after the novel was released lends a sense of immediacy to the novel.
- In setting about writing this post, I came across a short post by John Brownlee of Wired, written after the publication of The Jennifer Morgue, in which he asks, “Which raises the question: exactly what genre of fiction wouldn’t benefit from the addition of the Cthulhu Mythos?” Good question.
“Overtime” is a fun story, set over the Christmas holiday with Bob serving as Night Duty Officer tasked with staffing the office while everyone else is off enjoying the holiday. (Mo, his wife, is off seeing her mother.)
While published before The Fuller Memorandum, it’s set after the book itself. Not only does Howard carry some technology he acquires in the FM, there’s a brief reference to climatic encounter in the novel. Very much worth reading, but I’d suggest reading it after FM.
American Gods: 1 Book, 1 Twitter
The third hour-long 1 Book, 1 Twitter with Neil Gaiman in which they discussed American Gods took place earlier today. I didn’t participate or read it live, but enjoyed reading the conversation. All three sessions are available and worth reading.
A few favorite question/response exchanges from today’s session include:
@neilhimself I would love to read the version of AG in Dream’s library, how long a book do you think that would be?
@poodlemaster I think it would either fill a dozen shelves, or be twice as good and half as long.
and
@neilhimself Do you consider American Odin to be less powerful / derivative of Norse Odin, or just different but equal?
@meaganoff He’s more fun to write, because he’s more screwed up. He’d like to be as powerful as Norse Odin was in his glory days.
and
@neilhimself Are there any AG characters you plan to revisit in a different context as in Anansi Boys?
@T_Lawson I want to do more MONARCH OF THE GLEN stories about Shadow in the UK. Then send him home.
and, finally,
Do you ever see yourself in Mr. Wednesday?
@Asche_zu_Ash if you’re doing your job as a writer you had better see yourself in all the characters
American Gods was the first book chosen for the 1 Book, 1 Twitter discussion, which was the brainchild of Jeff Howe of Wired.
Conan the Barbarian: The Musical
As long time readers know, I’ve got a fondness for the original Robert E. Howard Conan stories. I discuss reading the Lancier paperbacks in my technoliteracy autobiography, titled “On the Dangers of Reading Conan Stories and Playing Computer Games; or, The Making of a Technorhetorician: A Technological Literacy Collage,” I mention Conan in a discussion of why medievalists should embrace popular culture such as sword and sorcery fantasy, and in the post “Barbarian Chic” I talk about a review of the recent rereleases of Howard’s original Conan stories and my own 2004 MLA paper in which Conan played a featured role. You can find other references to Robert E. Howard and his most famous creation scattered here and there in other posts as well.
Having gotten all that out of the way, it is with much pleasure I share with you Conan the Barbarian: The Musical:
Thanks to Matt Eash, who posted a link on Facebook.
What I’m Looking Forward to Reading, Pt. 1
Having done a recent reading roundup, I know you’re all dying to know what’s in my immediate reading future, so, without further ado:
The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, Ed. Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.
- Currently reading. Yes, I do actually read scholarship.
While I am afraid of getting lost in metaphor theory, as I explained, I can’t avoid it. I actually wrote that post knowing this book was in my immediate future. - So far, I’m enjoying it, although I’m being very careful to not read it from cover to cover right now. Too many fascinating essays on too many fascinating topics. Right now, I’m limiting myself to “The neural theory of metaphor” (George Lakoff), “Philosophy’s debt to metaphor” (Mark Johnson), “Rethinking metaphor” (Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner), “How metaphors create categories—quickly” (Sam Glucksberg), Metaphor as structure-mapping” (Dedre Gentner and Brian Bowdle), “Metaphor in education” (Graham Low), and “Metaphor in picture and multimodal representations” (Charles Forceville).
Stories: All-New Tales, Ed. Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio
- Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio contacted a number of authors and asked them for new stories that “used a lightning-flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as if we have never seen it at all.” They wanted stories, as Gaiman explains in his introduction, that invoked the four words Gaiman suggested should be written on the wall of a children’s section of a library: “…and then what happened?” (A librarian asked Gaiman for his suggestion.)
- I’ve read the first few. Good stuff. I’d heard Gaiman say that the first story, Roddy Doyle’s vampire story “Blood,” was unlike no other vampire story you’ve ever read. I think something like “turns the genre on its head” or something like that was said. He’s right.
Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Three, Alan Moore et. al.
- As I’ve explained, I’m looking forward to reading the end of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run and see the debut of John Constantine. On June 29, everything else goes on hold.
Marshall McLuhan Unbound, Marshall McLuhan
- The Medium is the Massage, which regular readers will know I often teach, is in many ways comparable to Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy. Both are surveys that skim the surface of their subject, maps to give you a sense of the territory rather than comprehensive and definitive accounts. As a collection of McLuhan’s essays that circle around his books. As the promotional material explains, “Some were written after the book and encapsulate major themes; some set out additional discoveries or matters left out of the book; some present material discovered as a result of writing the book.”
- In reading these, I’m looking for further insight into McLuhan, for essay-length pieces I can give to students to supplement The Medium of the Massage, and, eventually, readings for a class I want to someday teach on McLuhan and Ong, which I’ll title “The Prophet and the Priest: something, something, something.”
“If these are examples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism”
Teaching Jonathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism” tonight. My two favorite passages are:
If nostalgic cartoons had never borrowed from Fritz the Cat, there would be no Ren & Stimpy; without Rankin/Bass and Charlie Brown Christmas specials, there would be no South Park; without The Flinstones—more or less The Honeymooners in cartoon loincloths—The Simpsons would cease to exist. If those don’t strike you as essential losses, then consider the remarkable series fo “plagiarism” that links Ovid’s “Pyramus and Thisbe” with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, or Shakespeare’s description of Cleopatra, copied nearly verbatim from Plutarch’s life of Mark Antony and also later nicked by T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land. If these are examples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism. (61)
and
As a novelist, I’m a cork on the ocean of story, a leaf on a windy day. Pretty soon I’ll be blown away. For the moment I’m grateful to be making a living, and so must ask that for a limited time (in the Thomas Jefferson sense) you please respect my small treasured usemonopolies. Don’t pirate my editions; do plunder my visions. The name of the game is Give All. You, reader, are welcome to my stories. They were never mine in the first place, but I gave them to you. If you have the inclination to pick them up, take them with my blessing. (68)
I’m rather fond of this essay. While remix culture brings these issues to the fore, Lethem reminds us that composition, that poesis in its broadest sense, has always been about appropriation. In fact, I first came across Lethem when I read his novel Gun, with Occasional Music, a direct homage to Philip K. Dick. I just recommended the novel, along with John Scalzi’s The Android’s Dream, to a student who wants to do her senior thesis on Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Both novels are, in their own way, homages to Dick, both explore the question of what it means to be human, and both involve a genetically modified sheep. In his essay, Lethem discusses Bob Dylan as a knowing plunderer of what has come before and notes that Dylan has himself never refused a request to rework his own music. Dylan and Lethem both knowingly plunder visions and offer visions to be plundered.
Tonight, we discuss this essay before I introduce a video remix/mash-up assignment which asks students to imagine what the academic version of a remix/mash-up would be. I first used this assignment last semester and was quite pleased with the results.
Doctorow on Sci-Fi as Political Activism
Browsing through the New Media Literacies Project‘s New Media Exemplar profiles, I see one of their featured media producers is Cory Doctorow. There’s a total of seven videos for Doctorow, each a few minutes long. Here’s the seventh, which I found on Google Video, titled “Sci-Fi as Political Activism.”
The Singularity Film
The site says this is coming out this year. It looks interesting if not promising.
And for fun, here’s “I am the very model of a Singularitarian”:
Stross’ Laundry Series Goes RPG
From Charles Stross’ blog:
Cubicle 7 Entertainment is producing a roleplaying game based on the award-winning Laundry series (The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, and the forthcoming The Fuller Memorandum) by the even-more-award-winning Charles Stross, and uses the also-award-winning Basic Roleplaying System (Call Of Cthulhu) by Chaosium Inc.
“We love the Laundry Files novels, so we’re really excited about this game,” said Dominic McDowall-Thomas, Cubicle 7 Director. “The world of the Laundry is a perfect mix of espionage, conspiracy and tentacled menace from beyond the stars.”
“The books are Lovecraftian spy thrillers. The best elements from both genres are thrown together with a sprinkling of long lost Nazis, terrorist cultists, other foreign governments wanting a piece of the action, as well as Her Majesty’s Civil Service.” added Cubicle 7′s Angus Abranson. [Read more.]
I expect this to be very fun. My introduction to Stross’ work began with an Analog review of The Jennifer Morgue, which begins with:
In The Atrocity Archives (reviewed here in June 2006), Stross presumed that mathematics, topology, physics, and computers all had the power to open portals and let the eldritch horrors of Lovecraft, et al., through. Naturally, there are government agencies whose business it is to prevent disaster, either by stopping meddlers (sometimes by recruiting them) or by cleaning up the mess after the meddling. One of their employees is Bob Howard, once a graduate student whose work became meddling, now a computer geek whose usual job at the Laundry was keeping the computers running smoothly until they needed him for something more active. [Read whole review -- you'll need to scroll down.]
Here’s what I wrote about The Atrocity Archives after I read it:
Lovecraftian SF with a hero named Bob Howard,1 how could I not check it out further? The Atrocity Archives is, essentially, a mashup of H.P. Lovecraft (Lovecraftian mythos, which I’ve long maintained is as much SF as supernatural horror), Neal Stephenson (post-cyberpunk SF), and Len Deighton (cold war spy thriller), all three of whom are thanked in the acknowledgements, with a great deal of government bureaucratic procedure tossed into the mix, all written in the comic vein (because, you know, a serious novel with this much paperwork due to actions such as killing a co-worker to stop a major demonic possession/transdimensional infestation would get tedious). A fun romp, and yet another novel I’d like to teach someday.
Call Of Cthulhu is an excellent RPG set in Lovecraft’s world—as if you couldn’t tell by the title —so it makes a logical starting point for a game based on the Laundry series, allowing the game designers to focus on world creation rather than game mechanics. I may have to pick this up just for the sake of reading it. (Yes, I have been known to read RPG rule and source books as you might read a novel or magazine.)
- That is, Robert Howard, author of Conan and long-time correspondent with Lovecraft. [↩]
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