LETTERS FROM PICKMAN
by Richard Upton Pickman
The Old Ones
Nov. 14, 2004
Most Esteemed Doctor:
Your explanation about the Old Ones mind-traveling is certainly correct according to the story details in "The Shadow out of Time". You may recall, however, in "The Whisperer in Darkness" that the fungi from Yuggoth actually flew here through the aether of interstellar space -- one of the few scientific details that Lovecraft got wrong, since the aether had been disposed with by Morley’s experiments as early as 1895. (Einstein further put the cap on the aether’s not existing with his general and special theories of relativity, since light does not need a medium in which to propagate, unlike sound).
Anyway, this explanation of flight is also supported in "At the Mountains of Madness". Of course, your noting that the Old Ones created mankind and suffered their eventual downfall at the hands of the Shoggoth rebellion is supported as well in ATMOM [At the Mountains of Madness]
Lovecraft, of course, eschewed any religiosity and while the Old Ones of the early stories are clearly supernatural entities, the Old Ones of the later tales are extraterrestials, and Lovecraft demythologizes them entirely with the supposition that men may have worshipped them as gods, due to their superiority over humans. As Arthur C. Clarke has said:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
There is the one odd problem of the fungi from Yugguth in "Whisperer in Darkness" who seem to have their own gods such as Azathoth and Nyarlathotep. But I’ve always found this tale a bit unsatisfying with too many loose ends and a main character whose naivete is a little hard to swallow.
My problem with the Lovecraft scholars such as Robert M. Price is that he wants to put the Old Ones of ALL the tales into one neat box, calling them ALL extraterrestrials. This is clearly wrong, if only for the obvious necromantic storyline in "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". It’s apparent that the mythos simply evolved for Lovecraft just as his writing powers evolved and excelled, reaching their climax in "The Colour out of Space" which for me is the finest tale Lovecraft ever wrote.
Best,
Richard Upton Pickman
Good vs Evil struggle
Dear Doctor:
I just realized that we may have a language misunderstanding here, which is why I’m going to write this in English. In the original English of the tales, the Old Ones are not the same thing as the Elder Gods. The Old Ones of "At the Mountains of Madness" are the beings that Lake finds in the ice in Antartica and it is their city that the narrarator and Danforth explore.
I’m sure you know this, I’m just trying to make my point clear, since those are the creatures I’m referring to (and these are the same creatures as in "The Shadow out of Time").
By the way, is everyone aware that the quotation attributed to Lovecraft by August Derleth about his stories centering around beings expelled from earth by black magic is false and was cooked up by Derleth? This quote appeared on most of the early Beagle and Ballantine paperbacks in the US:
"All my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on the fundamental lore or legend that this world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practising black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth again."
Derleth spread this quote everywhere to back up his own interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos, which he turned into a Good vs Evil struggle. This of course is far from what Lovecraft intended. The quote above was made up by Derleth. (This has been discussed endlessly in Lovecraftian studies circles for the last 30 years and is now taken as a matter of fact.)
Lovecraft’s actual words were:
"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. To me there is nothing but puerility in a tale which the human form -- and the local human passions and conditions and standards -- are depicted as native to other worlds or other universes. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all." [Selected Letters II, 150]
Just thought I’d mention this.
Richard Upton Pickman
Copyright © 2004
