![]() ![]() And that machine has had a marked effect on his mental attitude. It is certainly a well-crafted story, but the reason I like it so much is that it develops a theme which fascinated me when I was a geeky adolescent (and still fascinates me, now that I am a geeky adult): the idea that the world we humans see is circumscribed by our organs of perception, and that other differently constituted organs-more sensitive to detail, wider in scope-could reveal to us countless phenomena of which we are now unaware.Ĭrawford Tillinghast, described as a “man of feeling and action" who “mistakenly” studies science and philosophy-fields that should be reserved for “the frigid and impersonal investigator"-has devised an “accursed electrical machine” that opens him up to a whole new range of perceptions. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.Īlthough Lovecraft had difficulty placing this story in a magazine (written in 1920, it was first published fourteen years later in The Fantasy Fan), I find it to be one of my favorites of his early stories, right up there with "Dagon" (1917) and "The Cats of Ulthar" (1920). Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.Īlthough Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. ![]() Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. ![]()
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