The paranormal, UFOs, monsters, mysteries. As you're listening to Talking Weird
and now from a cabin deep in the Northwoods, your host, doctor Dean
Bertram Well, greetings to all my fellow weirdos and weirdo's. Welcome to Talking
Weird on the Untold Radio Network. I'm your host, Dean Bertraman. Those
of us joining us live this Saturday night or very early Sunday morning, depending
what time is on your in thank you for spending this time with us.
For those of you listening or watching after our live stream on the Saturday night,
thank you for being with us. I got to treat in store for
you all today. I've just read the book which is only just about to
be released. It's fantastic. It's called When the Stars Are Right HP Lovecraft
and Astronomy, And anybody who knows much about me knows I've been a big
fan of HP Lovecraft since my eighteen years. And we have the two amazing
authors of that book here, and one of them is actually somewhat of a
regular not only in the chat of this show and the other show I do
with Jason McClean on Tuesday nights on Mysterious lib but he's also been a guest
on Talking Weird in the past. The other one. He received a PhD
in history from the University of Connecticut and is now Assistant professor of World History
at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts. He has written several articles
dealing with Lovecraft and his stories. He's also interested in the historical development of
the modern flat Earth movement. Tonight's other guests. Who's the one I mentioned
who's a longtime friend of the show is Emery, Professor of physics and astronomy
at Michigan State University. He has a BA degree from Wesleyan University in a
PhD in astronomy from Yale. Here's the author and co author of several books
and numerous scientific papers. He began to read the fiction of HP Lovecraft around
nineteen seventy, and he became intrigued by the role of astronomy in the development
of Lovecraft's thinking. So I'm just so delighted to welcome to the show Doctor
Edward Gammont and Professor Horace Smith. Oh, glad, glad they will join
you. It's so good to have you back, Horace, and it's so
great to finally meet you, Eddie. I've been looking forward to seeing this
book for sometime since Horace told me it was in the works, and I
wasn't disappointed. Just an incredible book. But before we talk about that,
and we will, I thought, maybe maybe we'll start with you, Edward.
Maybe for those out there or for those of not ask us, I'm
a big fan of Lovecrafts that way, I know who he is. For
those of you who, for those of the our listeners who aren't really familiar
with Lovecraft and hist could you maybe just give a little overview of who HB.
Lovecraft was? Sure? Sure, I mean just a very brief overview
is he was an author Born in eighteen ninety in the city of Providence,
Rhode Island, in the United States. He died in Providence in nineteen thirty
seven. Spent most of his life in between birth and death living in Providence,
with brief exception in Brooklyn, which was very formative and a probably can
say a negative way for him. But he came from, say, I
guess, kind of an upper middle class, wealthy family which went through a
series of declines in his youth, basically progressively pour throughout his life, but
in his I guess we'll say lateeen years, early twenties, he became very
interested in amateur press associations and from there developed into a fiction writer, and
especially was a pioneer of what became known as weird fiction, which we would
say kind of elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror that were kind of
unique at the time in the late teens early nineteen twenties. Progressively became kind
of more well known within a very small niche of readers of a lot of
these magazines, in particular Weird Tales as the signature when he published. In
near the end of his life, he published a few stories in the emerging
science fiction magazine Seems Amazing, Stories Astounding, and especially those later stories of
publishing Astounding started to get a bit of a wider audience, I guess.
And he's very prolific letter writer as well. You know, if he had
been born, say, you know, seventy years later, he probably would
have been very active, you know, in the early Internet, probably would
a very prolific email or forum user, you know, bulletin board poster.
But in a way he's kind of pioneering a lot of the similar social networks
with the science fiction, fantasy, horror fandoms of the nineteen twenties and thirties.
But that being said, by the time he dies he's very i will
say, not popular in the wider mainstream and essentially unknown and maybe just started
to change at the time of his death. But especially in the nineteen sixties,
there's kind of a renaissance and he becomes the subject of a lot of
not just people republishing his work, but running with his fiction and new directions.
Scholarly work starts to develop around him. He quickly becomes, you know,
basically gets a reputation as the America or the twentieth century Edgar Allan Poe.
Essentially have people like Alan Moore, Stephen King, Neil Game, and
Guillermo del Toro citing him his major influences. I think Guermo del Toro has
a statue of him in his house I think says something. But you know,
he's a pioneer of this field of cosmic horror, where you know,
the horror isn't vampires or Frankenstein monsters or stuff like that, but kind of
the horror of realizing just how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things.
And a lot of his famous creations, especially the eldritch god Cthulhu,
you know, kind of is an embodiment of this, and through stories like
the Call of Cthulhu at the Mountains of Madness, the Dunwich Horror shadow over
in Smith, he really pioneers this new trend of horror that really fruits after
his death. So again, he's I think very interesting in a guy who
was almost completely unknown in his lifetime and then basically through a lot of the
networking, through the uniqueness of the stories he wrote, developed an enormous,
enormous influence after his death, you know, to the degree that you know,
for example, I was just reading a when Richard Nixon dies in the
nineties, Hunter S. Thompson is comparing him to HP Lovecraft in his eulogy,
and I mean it's just, you know, stuff that for many reasons,
Lovecraft would never have expected during his lifetime. Again, you know,
we could could talk send the whole hour talking just about his biography, but
for those who aren't familiar, it's kind of a brief capsule summary of Lovecraft
and his life, and I'm sure we'll dive into more details, you know,
throughout the rest of the conversation, and you mentioned then the importance of
him being the originator of cosmic horror, and as this book looks at,
a lot of that has to do with his interest in more than an interest,
his passion for astrology. Really, so, maybe Horrors, you can
tell us a little bit about the book it's tired of what it means,
and give us a little bit of just a very brief overview about Lovecraft's interest
and entry into the world of amateur I said astrology, I meant astronomy,
amateur astronomy Lovecraft Lovecraft with strangle. Maybe if I said he had an interest
in astrology, because of course he was quite the skeptic. But yeah,
so he had this incredible interest in amateur astronomy, and that really helps shape
the type of cosmic horror that he would write later. So anyway, tell
us a little bit about the book and the astronomical aspects of Lovecraft's life.
The book is titled When the Stars Are Right HP Lovecraft and Astronomy, and
the title when the part of the title When the Stars Are Right, goes
back to the story The Call of Fool who or who however you want to
pronounce his name. The idea is that the real name is not meant to
be pronounceable by a human, so that gives you leeway to pronounce it however
you will, and he'll hear it pronounced in different ways. But in that
story, one of the cultists of this uh people believe in the Great Old
Ones, and Thu, who is returned to take over our world, was
being interrogated and he's talking about when he says, when the stars are right,
they could fly from world to world, but when the stars are wrong,
they could not live. And Tho whose lives sleeping down beneath the Pacific
Ocean awaiting the time when the stars are right and he can return and presumably
take over what's going on on our particular small part of the universe. Now,
of course we have the case that may be a rather unreliable narrator telling
us that because one of Lovecraft's ideas this shows up in the number of stories
is how insignificant the people are, and presumably the cultists as well in some
way to what's really going on in the universe. But we thought the idea
when the stars are right would be a good part of the title, and
it's also a good part of the title because Lovecraft, from his youth,
was a very skilled and experienced amateur astronomer, and he was very uh when
he wrote a story. He was very careful to make sure that his own
descriptions of the stars that would be visible in the night sky, the phases
of the moon, anything having to do with astronomy, were accurately described,
and he was very upset if other writers did not do the same. He
would take little star planispheres that show the appearance of the heavens at different dates
and hours during the year, and he would send them to some other writers
to make sure that they would avoid the mistakes of their past writing and get
the stars right in the more literal sense in their in their fiction. But
he started out he was an amateur astronomer around nineteen oh two, when he
was about twelve years old. He was swept off his feet by astronomy and
for his many of his teen teenage years was his chief one of his chief
interests. For a part of the time his chief interests, he had his
own telescopes. He would skiing to say he made his own handwritten in heck
graphed. I don't know if anyone remembers the hectograph process. I remember still
doing that, but theol a little u thing for kind of a an even
cheaper way of hand doing a mimiograph. And he made his own hand produced
magazines of astronomy with titles such as the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, in
which he would report his own observations. He thought for a while that he
could he would go into research and while still a teenager, with his minuscule
telescopes, he would solve the problem of whether there was life on the Moon,
or changes on the Moon, or the rotation period of the planet Venus.
As he became experienced, he realized, no, I can't really do
that with a two or three inch telescope. But but he was ambitious at
the beginning. Room was for a while going to be his career, and
that all crashed around nineteen oh eight when he realized that mathematics was required in
astronomy and he met he had met algebra in high school, found it daunting
and realized that the mathematics and for a professional career were probably beyond him.
That may have contributed to it to a breakdown. He had nineteen o nine
that put him out of action for several years, but he was started out
precocious. He was actually at the age of fifteen, he was writing astronomy
columns for two newspapers, and the crash when it came was devastating to him
for a while, but perhaps not for us, because instead of having Lovecraft
newspaper columns or astronomy articles that anyone could have done, we have the fiction
that perhaps no one could have done other than Lovecraft. And that makes them,
I think, particularly intriguing to both Eddie and I and was inspiration for
this book. And it's interesting you're talking about him looking for things like life
on the moon and the type of ideas that were still viable in the astronomy
of Lovecraft's day, about thoughts about the Moon or Mars or Venus. And
while there was obviously some I suppose, contrasting views on the reality of life
or the potentiality of life on those planets, it was still scientifically within the
realm of possibility that there may be life in these places. So can you
can either of you talk a little bit about how that kind of view of
our solar system was influential on love Cross not only he's thinking but then his
rooting as he transformed into perhaps, you know, as we were saying,
the father of the modern cosmic horror story. Well, yeah, I'll jump
in. I'll say, probably of all those theories, the one that's probably
has the most staying power in the public eye today is the idea of life
on Mars and the idea of there had been a Martian civilization that was going
into decline. They built these giant Martian canals to bring water from the ice
caps to irrigate the lush vegetation that was assumed to be growing on the Martians
surface. And these are ideas that really emerged in the last quarter or so
of the nineteenth century. Just in case any when it's not familiar. In
the year eighteen seventy seven, when Mars and Earth were very close in Italian
astronomer Giovanni's Scaparelli claimed he had discovered channels on the surface of Mars. Channels
in Italian is canally, which and got translated into English as canals. So
he thought he had just observed essentially giant riverbeds on Mars. People assumed he
had discovered artificial waterways to set off a huge craze basically over the idea that
Martians had basically been confirmed. I think there's maybe some similarities to the modern
UAP discussions that are going on today and assumptions that are being made over what
exactly is meant by you know, unidentified But maybe we can talk about that
later without you know, getting too distracted. But one of the major proponents
of this idea of Martians building these waterways was an American American astronomer, I
guess we can call him, even though I don't think he had any formal
training and astronomy Persial Lowell, who again a pretty well known name for his
Martian advocacy in nineteen oh seventy came to give a talk at Brown University.
Lovecraft did meet him in person, and when you read Lovecraft's writings on astronomy,
you can see that. You know, later on in his letters he'll
claim that he never gave you know, personal Lowell any credence at all.
Of course, he thought it was all nonsense. But you know, when
you read letters earlier to the time, when you read his astronomy calms,
he did give this very significant idea consideration that Lowell might have the right idea
that at least there might be some kind of intelligent life on Mars. But
also it's interesting because by the end of his life he's explicitly writing there's basically,
you know, probably nothing on Mars living except no maybe bacteria, which
again pretty close to modern beliefs. So you can see that's one way in
which his views of extraterrestrial life change. But I think more broadly, you
can consider the notion of what the Martian canal scenario means. You have this
planet that's slowly dying, this advanced civilization that's basically unable to halt it.
They're engaging these giant no public works, basically altering the surface of their planet
trying to survive. You can see a lot of echoes of you know,
kind of the futility of trying to survive against nature and a hostile universe.
The idea of this ancient civilization of aliens going into decline, leaving behind kind
of remains that can be observed by human explorers. So this astronomical theory,
which again was at least I had broad public appeal at the time, even
if I think probably a lot of professional astronomers were somewhat more skeptical, but
you can see how this astronomical concept probably contributed at least in some part to
the eventual development of his particular strain of weird fiction and cosmic horror. Even
if no, it's a long line to get there. Well, maybe one
of you could talk a little bit about his cosmicism, which is is it
cosmicism or cosmicism? And I've never heard it said, I've only ever seen
it written. I've always said cosmicism, but they don't know if any agrees.
But that's all I've said it too. Okay, we're cosmicism. Then,
how perhaps he is very interest in astronomy, and you went there a
little bit there, but it goes to this incredibly almost bleak idea of mankind
being so insignificant in the universe that the inimical forces of the universe, or
perhaps even they're just non bo perhaps they just don't care. But the idea
that the universe is so much bigger than man that we don't matter and we're
kind of lost in this cosmic void. And I'm the book certainly suggests,
as I never really thought about it, it makes total sense that his interest
in astronomy really developed that type of philosophy which becomes apparent in the hostility of
these other entities that visit the planet throughout so many of his writings. I
think that's true. I think that goes back to his teenage years and as
he goes into astronomy. Astronomy at this time was advancing with bigger telescopes with
a picture of the universe, not just of the Solar System and our nearby
objects, but a bit of picture of the scale of the universe, and
became a parent that it was huge in both time and space, compared to
a human lifetime and compared to the planet Earth. And he began to think
that in this vast universe, the Earth was looking pretty small, and all
on Earth, the people's the wars. He would be in his twenties when
World War One broke out and he's writing some of his new Spaker remarks,
and how insignificant all this fighting in Europe was well compared to the state of
the universe as a whole, the size as a whole. And he developed
this idea of cosmicism in which he regarded people as insignificant, and that was
associated with an atheism, because he said he couldn't believe into in this god
that cared about humans, that cared about people, and he thought about this
vast universe is in some ways a kind of oblique idea. But although I
think he loved astronomy, he was amazed and wondered by these developments of the
of the expanded scale of the universe. And I don't know that he himself
regarded this is too as a too much of a with a pessimistic you in
that sense, he always had a pitty pessimistic view. Well. He developed
a pessimistic view about people and about the on the planet Earth that rather as
zenaphobic nature, particularly with the with the immigrants coming into the US from countries
other than this beloved England. But this developed in this cosmicism shaped his fiction.
And we see beings beyond the capabilities of people in his fiction that are
not really that can't be regarded as like devils, that that are inimical to
people, but they don't really care that much about people, that have the
ability far beyond those of humanity, and care about people in the same way
that we might care about wandering through an in ant hill and not even noticing
whether we destroy it or not. In our with our footsteps, and that
I think is is one of the aspects of cosmicism that was something relatively new
and I think in the fiction of the day the traditional ghost story. If
you look at Monty Road James, for example, one of British master of
the traditional ghost story, who is writing about the early nineteen hundreds, then
we have the traditional ghosts, which is someone from the past that is for
some reason surviving and interacting very much. The interactions with people living are the
highlight, the main focus of the story. Lovecraft, this gets you thinking
about things far beyond that level, and that maybe the people bull shouldn't be
the focus of the story, and in some ways that the heroes of his
tale are kind of watchers rather. Have we lost Horace? Eddie? Can
you hear Horrace little? Oh? You might be back? I think we
lost you from I'm and Horrace up. Well, I uh, I was
just saying, I was wondering if Eddie you had any thoughts to say.
I've been so like we're going on and awful a little bit on my end,
so if I blank out, Eddie will have to take over. So
I'll say, like, I think one thing that Lovecraft has been criticized,
I was now his His protagonists generally tend, on the one hand, tend
to be people very similar to how Lovecraft himself viewed himself as you know,
generally from you know, New England or Hardy New England's stock as you know
he would call it, you know, kind of and their thirties or forties.
You know, typically you know, university professors at is great fictional university
Miskatonic. But no, it's typically it's them writing down, you know,
a narrative of you know, oh, I went to Antarctica and this is
what I saw. Let me like list everything there's there's not kind of the
more what we might think of as a typical fiction setup, you know,
like characters discussing, you know, things being told in the third person or
if there's a third person's very narrowly focused. And again, you know,
it's this very you know, very tight view of basically just the chance to
recount stuff, you know, kind of I think in modern terms you might
say he's very interested in the world building, not very interested in characterization,
very thin characterization. What characterization there is is basically someone being like, well,
my father, you know, I was born in this state and this
town in New England, and then I went to college and this town blah
blah. So it's basically, yeah, it's you know what I found.
One of the things I enjoyed. I enjoyed the whole book, from cover
to cover. It's such a wonderful book. And we'll talk more about it
later how people can get ahold of it soon, because I know it's just
about to release. But what surprised me, because I knew, and I
mentioned this to both of you guys before the show, what surprised me is
I knew it was going to be about Lovecraft's connections to astronomy, but what
came as a really pleasant surprise was how much time it spent about talking about
his influence on science fiction and the influence of science fiction on Lovecraft. Because
I mean, I'm not I don't think I had just a passing interest in
Lovecraft. I thought I had a fairly good handle on his influences. So
obviously there were you know, there's people like Poe and Mackin and Dunsany and
Merit that I was conscious were influential of on Lovecraft's writings, and I obviously
knew the impact he had on Horror afterwards. But I never heard about Garrett
P. Service. I don't even if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, and
his incredible influence on Lovecraft's and I mean, maybe we can use him as
a segue into Lovecraft being as important to the realm of science fiction as to
horror, and the influence of science fiction on him being as important as the
influence of Horror on him. Yeah, I'll dive in. I'll say Garrett.
With Garrett P. Service in particular, I think he was, again
much like Personal Lowell, someone who became very influential and popularizing astronomy. But
again, I don't think any professional training as an astronomer. Is someone who
maybe is roughly a similar kind of cultural space to Carl Sagan or Neil de
grass Tyson today, even though of course they do have professional training, but
someone who's very active in popular promotion of astronomy. But he was a fiction
writer as well. I think the one the story we talked the most about
in this is Edison's Conquest of Mars, which is one of a number of
unofficial I guess basically like a copyright infringing sequels to the War of the World
probably the most imaginative one. It's published very quickly after the original HG.
Wells novel. It's about Thomas Edison basically, you know, like using his
scientific knowledge to build a human fleet and fly to Mars, and essentially I
think they end up committing genocide against the Martians as retaliation. A lot of
very interesting kind of science fiction staples come out of that. For example,
I think i've seen it read that's the first use of the space suit and
fiction, very early example of what we would say call ancient Aliens, where
it was revealed the Martians came to Earth and build the Pyramids and the Sphinx,
and the Sphinx is actually meant to depict a Martian again, something that
I think we can see a lot of reflection of with Lovecraft. But Service
wrote a lot of popular astronomy books as well, and Lovecraft read the He
claimed that he read everything that had been published by Service, which if true,
that would be quite extensive. But you know, with that in mind,
it's easy to see you echoes of some of Lovecraft's themes in a lot
of both the fiction and nonfiction that Service wrote, and Service himself obviously his
Edison's Conquest of Mars is a rip off, will say of H. G.
Wells. He wrote another book called Columbus of Space that's very explicitly influenced
by Jules Verne, who again was someone who Lovecraft as a kid wrote that
he was enormously influenced by Jules Verne. If you read no there's a few
childhood stories that Lovecraft wrote that survived, you can definitely see the influence of
kind of the Verne style adventure novel. One of the things that really kills
me is in his letters later on Lovecraft mentions, you know, as a
kid he basically wrote like his own Nope from the Earth to the Moon knockoff
about people going to the far side of the moon. But you know,
I think either mentioned he lost it or he deliberately destroyed it as a kid,
I would have loved to have read that childhood story of his. And
you know, beyond H. G. Wells, beyond Jules Verne, who
certainly did read both of those as a kid, and Edgar Allan Poe,
who again probably is remembered most as a horror novelist or maybe also a bit
of a crime fiction person. He wrote science fiction as well, and you
can see in Poe's science fiction a number of echoes of things that come up
in later Lovecraft. He also later on he read a lot of science fiction
in general, but wasn't a big fan. He thought a lot of it
was drek at the time, and I mean probably he was pretty right about
that assessment. But no, he did read some of the key works that
kind of are still held in high regard, for example, the John Carter
of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burrows. And again I mentioned Lovecraft was involved
very much in kind of letter writing and these science fiction and Noah writing journals
that John Carter books are originally serialized in magazines. Lovecraft rights in this article
or this letter to the editor complaining that Edgar Rice Burrows had gotten the number
of days in a Martian year or wrong, and very angrily denouncing him.
And I think Lovecraft, again, as a kid, very clearly was a
fan of Burrows. Later in life he talks ABO know Burrows is a hack
writer. I think the fact that Burrows ignored this letter, you know that
from this completely unknown guy at the time pointing out this er because I did
check when that novel was compiled and released as a novel. The error wasn't
fixed, so it's still in the actual published thing. So Burrows either never
read Lovecraft's letter or didn't care, or I think Burrows is kind of a
heavy drinker, so you may just not have may have gone right over his
head in any case, but it's it's also interesting the few science fiction stories
that Lovecraft really points out as being good. There's an author who again today
probably is almost completely forgotten, named Stanley weinbamb who, like Lovecraft, ended
up dying very young of cancer. But he wrote maybe like a dozen or
so stories kind of in a shared universe about you know, humans and what
is then the future going to various different planets in the Solar System. The
first two I think are set on Mars. There's a couple of others on
Venus, on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and some of the asteroids.
Very these are stories I think still hold up day and they're very imaginative
take of alien life form. You can see how there would have appealed to
Lovecraft. Arthur C. Clarke also writes about Stanley Winbomb being a big influenza
and then maybe maybe a bit better well known, but I think also probably
not well member. Even so is Olaf stapled In, and in particular his
really expansive novel Last and First Men, which is this you know, you
know again, it covers the future history of humanity from what in Stapleton's you
Know time would have been the very near future up until you know, I
think it goes past a billion years into the future and just traces how humanity
goes from being on Earth into basing unrecognizable evolutionary forms. And again you can
see how this is something where you know, you're covering humanity going across billions
of years, you know, thousands of light years of space. Clearly,
this is something that's very interesting to Lovecraft. And again there's some echoes of
his fiction in particular and a shadow over in Smith when he kind of tackles
some of these issues of alternative human evolution. We can say you can see
a lot of that in a stapled In. But for me, at least,
that's kind of the more interesting ways in which Lovecraft was reading science fiction.
What he thought was really kind of the key standouts of the genre of
his time. I was fascinated that service had kind of been almost perhaps the
originator is suggested in the book of Almost an Ancient Astronaut Theory with his point
or a suggestion that Egyptian culture had been influenced by Martians. Of course,
whenever you read in one of I suppose what we recognize as one of the
precursors of ancient astronaut theory in the occult space, like a book like Bergier
and Pale's Mourning of the Magicians, they'll mention Lovecraft and Shells fought almost in
the same sentence as progenitors of this kind of idea. So it's fascinating and
I'm sure this is something Horrors will be interested in as well. And maybe
you'll want to field that you talk about thoughts intersection with Lovecraft, because ironically
Lovecraft is the great amateur astronomer in this space. And as we both know
because we've talked about it before, Horrce and you knew before we talked about
Fort's enemy is the astronomer, like the people he dislikes the most in the
sciences of the astronomers. So it's interesting that these two forces fought on one
side and Lovecraft on the other, are both thought to have influenced ancient astronaut
theory, and they intersected as well. Maybe maybe you Horace or Eddie or
whoever wants to feel that can talk about the Lovecraft and Fought intersection. I'll
say a few words and then that he can jump in. Lovecraft did read
Fort's books, so I think he thought more highly of the Book of the
Damned than some of the Wedder books, if I recall yeah, I think,
yeah, yeah, he had some criticisms of some of the wed with
I don't think he was reading them as accepting the ideas about the sorry gassle
Sea of the Sky from Charles Fort literally, but he but he was looking
at them his ideas of things that might might be useful. And in fact
he in this the all the letters I recall about uh for from from Lovecraft,
He's actually kinder than I would have thought he might have been. If
that if Eddie had that same impression, yeah, I mean I think he
thought that Fort was someone who was not to be taken seriously. But you
know, he collects a collector of random factoids, ran collector of interesting stories.
So you know, I think Lovecraft appreciated those for what they were.
I certainly don't think and I think in one of his letters he kind of
criticizes Fort for not really having any kind of specific or like an idea,
an organizing principle or ideology or methodology maybe, but you know, yeah,
I think he definitely preferred a Book of the Damned over I think new Lands
was the other hero. I'm not sure if he read any of the others,
although there is ah this maybe is steering it in maybe a different direction.
But one of Lovecraft's closest associate or closest friends. And again, Lovecraft
was not a shut in like is often referred to, but he did have
a number of very close friends who he only knew through letter writing, which
again maybe echoes of some people forming friendships over you no internet connections these days.
But one of his very close epistolary friends we never met in person,
was Clark Ashton Smith, another very good weird fiction author but also poets sculptor
who lived in Auburn, California. There is one and they wrote a few
letters about Fort back and forth. Smith also was a fan. But Smith
and I think it's nineteen three, you know, he talks in a letter
to Lovecraft about how a few years earlier in the late nineteen twenties, he
saw what he referred to as you know, the black media rite, which
is this giant, black, silent cylindrical object that flew overhead, which you
know today would pretty clearly call that a UFO. So, you know,
he didn't have doesn't have a term, but he's telling Lovecraft. Yeah,
a couple of years ago, I saw this, you know, mysterious black
media rte fly overhead. I bet Charles Fort wouldn't have a good run at
this. And Lovecraft's immediate response our book mediate in terms of letter writing responses.
You know, Oh, it could be any number of natural phenomenon.
We don't need to jump right to the forty in explanation. I think he
actually even uses forty and at the time, which is a pretty close linked
to the Interestingly enough, Lovecraft had at least two friends who themselves were friends
with Theodore Dreiser, the founder of the forty in Society. One of them
offered to connect him with Lovecraft and lovecraft base. He said, no,
thank you, that's fine, but it is kind of one of these interesting
what ifs. You know, if Lovecraft had met up with the forty in
Society in the early thirties, right after it was formed. But sadly,
I Lovecraft was kind of a bit self sabotaging in a number of ways like
that. I think I was interested that that actually Lovecraft dad an early intersection
with unidentified aerial phenomena of a sort that we've talked about I've mentioned before on
this program, so I won't go into it. No, No, men
mentioned it again because it's fascinating. I know exactly what you're talking about.
So this is nineteen o nine. At the time is just before Christmas.
The New England newspapers are overwhelmed with reports of a mysterious airship that flies only
at night, and it's reported over moving over Worcester in Massachusetts. It's reported
over a Willamantic, my hometown in Connecticut, and people are out doing their
Christmas shopping or are scanning the skies for this airship. And it was said
in Worcester that the streets were blocked the street cars couldn't go through because so
many people were at one time out in the street looking for the mystery airship,
which was supposed newspapers said it was supposedly the work of a mysterious invented
tilling Hast, a name that shows up in later a Lovecraft story, but
just before Christmas and Providence Lovecraft is out. This has actually during the period
where it had his breakdown of nineteen oh eight, so this is one of
the few windows we have on these activity during right after this breakdown us out,
he sees Christmas shoppers out in the street, and a bunch of gathered
at the street corner pointed to something in the sky, and Lovecraft things,
uh, well, there this getting them interested in astronomy. Mosey over and
see what's going on. And he goes over and there pointing look, it's
the airship. I can see it. I can see it's headlights shining the
sky. And the dismayed Lovecraft had to tell them that what they were pointing
out was the plane at Venus rather than tilling Hass mystery airship. So that
may have said set Lovecraft on a rather skeptical view of people's reports of objects
in the sky. But but it was something that appeared that he reported,
and in a number of times this this this account of people mistaking a planet,
and he said people needed to read newspaper columns so they would realize what
was going on. In the heavens, and you're right because Charles Fort writes
about that case as well. Of course they're tilling his nineteen oh nine airships,
so there's an immediate connection between the two of them. M hm.
Yes, he was a very uh uh I dropped out, I think for
a moment here. Uh. Yeah, we have you now, horse,
you're here now, okay about yeah, I'm actually uh, it's very interested
that there was interested in this. Uh. At the time, it was
also interested in the space travel from the Earth to space. But I think
he noticed how glibly early science fiction writers had people going from the Earth to
the Moon or to Mars, and he realized how hard this would be in
practice. In fact, he didn't think people would go to the Moon for
a long time because it was going to be so difficult and so expensive,
and why would people spend all that money. He thought the ordinary person wouldn't
want to spend all that money to go to the moon, and he thought
if they did, the people on that first trip might not make it back
alive. And in actually some ways he was rather rather more realistic about space
travel and its difficulties than were many of the science fiction writers of the time.
For himself. When he has his creatures moving through space, like the
Great Old Ones or the Amigo, they're often not going in the physical spaceships,
but are flying through the ether on some kind of wings that can not
flap against air, but against the ether filling the universe. And then he
does have some mention of space space ships, of rockets, and of ways
of getting this space. But he realized this was going to be a very
difficult endeavor, and he kept away from the easy space journeys that appeared in
many of his contemporaries writing where people glossed over the difficulties of traveling through space.
There's one picture he wrote in the nineteen oh three I Think thereabouts that
Eddie found, which which Frebbie amused me very well. It's is reproduced in
the book. It's a drawing he made of a train going up from the
Earth into the Moon and UH person in UH equipped for are going to the
moon dressed up and looks like a deep sea diving suit. In his on
the page when he wrote, he often included a lot of drawings in these
little journals of the self published as a teenager, and those are online.
You can go look at them on the Brown University Digital repository, and they're
just fun to go through. Uh they're they're just amusing to read. As
he gets more sophisticated, Uh see, he gets to writing his own newspaper
columns. In fact, they get a little bit less charming and more of
the ordinary newspaper affair of the day. So some of the earlier things the
more eccentric, and I think I'm more fun to read. And perhaps just
to go back to some of you were saying that perhaps the lack of spaceships
and the lack of that technic, technical, logical kind of accompaniment to the
great old ones is the reason so much of this resonates more in horror and
science fiction, because again, as I mentioned before, while I'm conscious of
people who are meant to be the horror influences on Lovecraft, everybody's conscious of
how Lovecraft went on to influence horror. We mentioned it before, whether it's
Stephen King or John Carpenter. I'm in name almost any author in the space
today in every second movie you see is loaded with Lovecraft ideas. But also
what I was less conscious of was his influence on science fiction. And there's
a wonderful chapter. I never even thought about in there about big dumb objects
in sci fi and Lovecraft's influence on that. Maybe we can use that as
a stepping off point. We can one of you can explain what big dumb
objects are and how that shows Lovecraft's influence on the broader science fiction. Well,
I think Eddie chose that use that expression. I'm happy to jump in
out. So this is a genre, very specific genre of I guess we
would generally call it space opera. I suppose it really came up in the
nineteen seventies. I think that was the big decade. But the typical uh
kind of like two examples that we talked about in the book. But I
think most people are probably familiar with Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama and
Larry Nivens Ring World. But in the the way in which the big dumb
object genre goes or bdo we can call it as you know, there's some
giant object in space that's you know, built by incredibly advanced aliens, you
know, huge number of years ago. Now it's abandoned. A small number
of you know humans go land there, explore it, you know, try
to figure out who built it? Why uncover some deep mystery? You know,
some of them die along the way, the rest make it back to
Earth to report on what's going on. But this is the basic format of
this. I'd like to say, No Rama by Clara ring World by Niven.
These are really the ones that popularize that genre, and there have been
a few other ones. I think those are probably still the best known ones.
But again, you know, like the idea, you know, humans
going to some location finding a giant structure built by inscrutable advanced aliens that have
been long since died out. It struck me as very evocative of particularly at
the Mountains of Madness, but also a later novella he wrote, The Shadow
out of Time. Notably also these two Mountains of Madness Shadow out of Time.
These aren't structures in space. They're like ancient cities on Earth and inhospitable
locations, the first one in the Antarctica, the second one in the Great
Sandy Desert of Australia. But because of the remoteness, you have these expeditions
going there that are fairly evocative of later space voyages. They're kind of standings,
and actually at the Mountains of Madness be and as Lovecraft trying to think
about an interplanetary story. So there even is that kind of space voyage genesis
in this novella about going to an alien city in Antarctica. But again note
these the big Dumb Object genre is very evocative of these two novellas that Lovecraft
wrote at the end of his life. These novellas were not published in Weird
Tales, kind of the more horror and fantasy oriented there were published in the
much more science fictional focused Astounding Stories I think it was called at the time,
which was widely read by kind of a lot of the emerging figures in
what would become the science fiction space opera genre. For example, Arthur C.
Clark was an early reader. He has a biography. He has one
of his many biographies is called Astounding Days, and it's about his memories of
reading astounding science fiction. He has a chat acron remembering reading these two stories
by Lovecraft. Larry Niven, which I haven't found anything specific about him,
but he's certainly familiar with Lovecraft. He's written a number of Lovecraft pastiches.
So it was interesting to me that these two stories that were the only ones
published in these more explicitly science fiction mediums that we know we're read by these
pioneers of space opera of early science fiction, then got reflected in their notions
of this particular space opera genre. It's interesting also, I mean, I
don't think this is the only case of it. But at the Mountains of
Madness you describing this very extensive. Again, no, part of Lovecraft's interest
is basically using fiction as an excuse to write about what might otherwise have been
a non fiction article. Basically, but he's very interested in antarctic exploration or
the cutting edge of antarctic exploration of his day. He writes an extreme in
detail about you know, the outfitting of this expedition to Antarctica, and at
the Mountains of Madness, it's essentially the nineteen thirties equivalent of a space expedition.
This is published an Astounding science fiction are astounding stories. I guess one
of the people who helped secretly got copies of Astounding and read it was Verner
von Braun, who at the time was now working for the Nazi government in
Germany on the V two missile or what would eventually would be working on the
V two missile. After the war, he develops the first plan for a
Martian exploration, which again is very similar to the same Antarctic expedition tropes that
Lovecraft was drawn from. So it is kind of evocative to think, you
know Verner von Braun reading at the Mountains of Madness, and then you years
later keeping it in mind while developing his own expedition, and notably in von
braun kind of initial mission outline to Mars, his astronauts were landing at the
South Pole on Mars too, so there is that kind of a explicit,
interesting parallel there too. We have We have a question from Ed Schultz,
who's a regular viewer of the show and also a guest on the show.
He's actually about to come out with his own book, Confessions of a Psychic
Priest, which I can't wait to read. In fact, I've read quite
a bit of the of the proofs and they're excellence. So anyway, Ed
asks any parallels with Stargate, obviously, the popular film and TV series,
which I know Ed's a fan of. I will say I've seen the Stargate
movie. I've really only seen a few episodes of any of the show,
so I can't comment on if Lovecraft has brought more up with the show.
But I know the movie very much was influenced by Eric von dan Akin,
among I think Graham Hancock actually also is a big influence on it, even
though Hancock tends not to write about aliens. But that's a whole other kettle
of fish. So there's definitely the von Danikin influence in Stargate. There's an
author, I guess we can, we can kind of calm like a polymath,
a renaissance man named Jason Colavito, who has written extensively on kind of
tracking the lovecrafty and influence in a von Danikin. As far as we can
tell, as far as far as has been noted, von Danikin did not
read Lovecraft directly before writing Chariots of the Gods. He seems to be more
aware of Lovecraft later on potentially, But also you kind of have to take
a lot of what von Danikin says with a grain of salt, because he
has been convicted of fraud multiple times, I believe, But I mean,
we know von Danikin did read Morning of the Magicians, which itself you know,
was influenced by Lovecraft. Sites Lovecraft, so I think indirect we have
Stargate through von Danikin, through Morning Magicians, through Lovecraft. Then again,
like we said, you know, Lovecraft himself probably we can guess did read
Edison's Conquest of Mars, where a lot of this comes up. Although interestingly,
this idea, you know, aliens coming to Earth in the past,
influencing in particular Egyptian civilization, this pops up a few times. Like one
thing that really interesting me was doing a lot of research on the science fiction
stories Lovecraft would have been reading. It comes up not super often, but
it's there. It's the ancient Aliens trope is decently popular in the nineteen twenties
and thirties. Typically it's connecting Aliens with Atlantis or what I did my dissertation
on Great zimbabwey that comes up a few times, or the Greeks or the
Egyptians. The author I mentioned, Stanley Weinbomb he has one of his stories
where they realize, you know, the Martians had come to Earth and the
Egyptian god thought was based on a Martian that had landed in Egypt, you
know, a long time ago. So again, a lot even beyond a
service, a lot of the stuff that Lovecraft was reading kind of independently came
up with these ancient aliens notions, and again, it's kind of an interesting
way in which something that's an explicitly science fictional trope kind of gets recycled into
pop science or pop ostensibly nonfictional science, to the degree you have ancient aliens
now being brought up, you know, in the US House of Representatives and
members of the US House of Representatives appearing on the TV show, which is
an interesting feedback loop of its own, but I won't dive too deep into
that right now. That's I might add that a contrast to the stargate kind
of idea where you go through a gate and people go to another world,
Lovecraft sometimes use the mind exchange notion, where some person on Earth would switch
minds with an alien creature and the alien would take over the humans body,
whereas the human would be find himself on some distant time, perhaps not just
necessarily a different distant place, but some some other location than the current time
and place, not by traveling there, but by his mind going there is
the alien switches place with him, which I thought was was kind of an
interesting idea in itself that I guess has had some follow up more recently,
but not the pattern taken by things like Stargate. Well, it's interesting too,
how much of at least particularly to make us as you know, Horace.
One of my major interests at the moment is Ray Palmer and Richard Shaver
and the Shaver Mystery. How much you can see what you guys are talking
about, this fiction feeding into eventually actual pseudo scientific tropes. I think the
entry way for Lovecraft and this type of thinking into the modern uthology is directly
through the Shaver mystery, because you can't look at the Shave Mystery without really
thinking about Lovecraft, certainly without thinking about Merit and other people in that space
that Shaver actually acknowledges or influencers on him. And then that goes directly into
UFO belief. So you have somebody riding in the same space as Lovecraft admittably
ten years post, ten years after, and that's Richard Shaver regurgitating many of
these ideas. I shouldn't say reggitating that, but that's I'm kind of revisiting
many of these ideas but pushing them forward as fictional representations of a fact of
things which actually happened, and so that whole kind of ancient civilization idea,
which was popular in science fiction becomes put forward in Amazing Stories in the mid
forties as genuine historical fact. And then I think that bleeds into the UFO
belief and bleeds eventually into the popularity of ancient aliens and ancient astronaut theory and
things like that. Well, Shaver himself he wrote an article, a short
article called I Think it was Lovecraft in the Darrows. I mean, so
he was making that connection right there. But you know, speaking of early
UFOs, I didn't mention this in the book itself because I only came across
it later on. But one of the early figures in a kind of like
UFO writing is Donald Kehoe, who now twenty years earlier, was writing for
Weird Tales. He published stories in the same issue that Lovecraft published stories,
and so we know, like Lovecraft read all of Weird Tales, he read
Donald Kehoe. We know Donald Kehoe probably read not just the Lovecraft stories in
the articles or in the issues he was publishing his stories in. He's probably
reading a lot of other ones also, So almost certainly it's not just through
Shaver, but Kehoe himself probably did re Lovecraft. And that's on top of
you know, let's he get to the sixties once the UFO field is really
you know, taking off or kind of trying to be uh more systematized.
I guess that's also the air of the Lovecraft renaissance. I think you can
see a lot of similar intersections there. This was just an amazing show.
I could talk to you guys for another two or three hours to Lovecraft and
Shaver nation Astronaut's theory. But listen, the book is fantastic. Can we
can you guys talk about how people are gonna can get ahold of I know
it's about to be released. It's not quite available rights as far as I
know, Is that correct? Right? It is? Can be ordered from
the Hippocampus Press website, but I haven't gotten the physical copy of the book
yet. The publisher thinks the copies will be out before the end of August,
so hopefully they won't be the way too much. It can be ordered
through the Hippocampus Press and probably often it will be linked to Amazon later on,
but I haven't seen it. It hasn't appeared there there at the moment,
but certainly you can order it from Hippocampus Press and it will be on
its way as soon as they get the actual copies printing out. And if
you're in the area of Providence, you can go to Eddie giving a reading
from the book tomorrow morning at the if you're going to the HP Leftcraft Film
Festival that's going on there, not I am sure up to the level of
the Midwest the Weird Film Festival, but but no, the Hblevecraft Film Festival.
I've never been there, but I've only had good things, so that's
going to be an NX. I would love. I wish I was near
Providence so I could go on. And what about what about websites for you
guys? Do you have any other websites you'd like to point anybody out or
I am perpetually working on my personal website, so it's it's in development continuously.
As of now. I am still available on I guess what we now
have to call X the everything app. I We'll see how long that last.
But yeah, it's at Edward Gaemont. I'm there for now. I'm
sure if you search my name, it probably is the first to come up.
But as of now, it's probably the best way best, considering how
semi functional it is to get in touch with me. Yeah, for me,
just my university website comes up, so I probably should make something a
little bit more focusing on the different books, but I haven't done that yet.
One of the excuses for E. Meredis professors is you're retired. You
don't have to get anything done. Well. Well, on that wonderful note,
please let me know when it's available, and Jason and I will certainly
mention it as the book of the week on Mysterious Library on Tuesday night,
and at some stage we'll get around I'm sure to talking about the book on
there as well. I'd love to have you both back on sometime in the
not too distant future, because just a fascinating conversation, gentlemen. And until
I get to talk to you both again, and everybody else out there,
keep it weird. Bye, good evening,