Lovecraftian horror, otherwise known as cosmicism is a type of horror that pulls from the universe itself. The most popular figure of this type of horror would have to be the Cthulhu Mythos that was created by H.P. Lovecraft himself.
The Cthulhu Mythos has sense been used by dozens of other authors to create works of horror and weird fiction. H.P. Lovecraft got started in Weird fiction so it makes sense that much of his work is in that genre. His extensive work in the genre created the genre of Cosmic horror.
The main tropes of Lovecraftian horror are that humans are meaningless little ants htat can’t stop the impending doom to come, or the will of a god, or some strange thing that is happening. Essentially the universe is so vast and dangerous and the ancient beings that traverse it are so powerful that humanity is basically nothing. We are less than the flees of a dog.
Lovecraftian Horror goes into strange places, notably, other worlds and the Dream Lands. In one story a character travels through time and sees the future to come. Lovecraft never fully develops his monsters but instead gives the readers the ability to make up their own images and conclusions for what is really happening.
It’s not uncommon for Lovecraft to describe everything in the story as being “horrifically”, “unimaginable”, or “impossibly”.
Personally I think that what turns people off of Lovecraft is the fact that there are so many things described in that way. I think that to enjoy Lovecraft you have to have an imagination that you are willing to let run wild.
If you like cosmic horror I write it too and it’s available here.
Beauty of Lovecraft is that he let the reader decide how scared he would become, now if it was planned as such or a coincidental occurance, his stories have made many a profound image on my head.
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I agree.
Many images in my mind as well.
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Most epic one happening to me was reading a story that was spent in a cave in search of a castle a thunderstorm was evident in the story, the night i finished there was a real thunderstorm happening outside and i had the most vivid “otherworldly, indescribable nightmarish visions so hard to describe”. It was a good night…
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