The Call of Cthulhu
by H.P. Lovecraft · first published 2016
21% recommend79% neutral
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The Call of Cthulhu is a fantastic piece. But what's your thought process around, reconciling Lovecraft's views on race, with naming your product after his work? Why does he get a pass in tech/internet culture?
on “Fhtagn – a tiny CLI programs tester written in Awk” ↗…quaint. It feels more and more like we're heading to that society, but in quite a different way. The Hobbit - Quite an enjoyable story. Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? - Pure madness. What is real? Call of Cthulhu, Dunwich Horror - HP Lovecraft Quite a few of the Philip K Dick shorts. I think I've probably read most of my books twice. I always feel that the second reading really seals it in my mind!
on “Ask HN: What book have you re-read 3x or more?” ↗…will have to defend your implementation, convince your colleagues against rewrites and sell your products to clients who were disappointed in the past. This book provides the right tools for that. - Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraftian literature in general. When I read this book I had a huge sense of déjà vu, but this is because Lovecraft really was the spearhead that put the cosmic horror genre into…
on “Ask HN: What are some must read books?” ↗…vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" That's exactly what I think happened: we fled from the deadly light into a whole grab bag of comforting, pessimistic, conservative absolutisms. Apocalyptic fiction is so popular for the same reason--…
on “Why Is Peter Thiel Pessimistic About Technological Innovation?” ↗…reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” -From the opening paragraph of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, H. P. Lovecraft
on “Can filming one second of every day change your life? [video]” ↗…vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H.P. Lovecraft "The Call of Cthulhu"
on “Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star” ↗Yes - He features in a lot of different popular media and was first portrayed in H.P.Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu (published 1928). The mythology of Great Old Ones etc. is usually referred to as the Cthulhu Mythos, though Cthulhu is definitely not the most powerful being. (That honour would probably go to Azathoth…
on “Lovecraft and Me – How cosmic horror gave me hope (2020)” ↗I love the idea of hanging by a thread, of complete existential and cosmic precarity. To again quote the opening of Call of Cthulhu, science will reveal "our frightful position [in reality]". I like the fact that, for Lovecraft, the answer to such terrifying revelations is mostly to draw the curtains and ideally brick up the window…
on “Lovecraft and Me – How cosmic horror gave me hope (2020)” ↗I wonder how much of Lovecraft’s popularity has to do with the excellent Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG (one of the generation of games that targeted everything wrong with Dungeons and Dragons) and how much it has to do with stories like that becoming so mainstream (e.g. any season of Sailor…
on “What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn't Last” ↗found in a book by H.P. Lovecraft ... the Call of Cthulhu "The most mercful 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…
on “An oddly accurate description of AI by H.P. Lovecraft” ↗…in a room makes it non-euclidean since there's now a barrier in the way. Maybe that's what H. P. Lovecraft meant about non-Euclidean architecture in R'lyeh. ;D (It probably isn't - the quote from The Call of Cthulhu says "the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres [...]".)
on “HyperRogue – A non-Euclidean roguelike” ↗The Call of Cthulhu seemed to have a bit of language construction and world-building, if you are into that. But my knowledge of Lovecraft lore is limited, so I wouldn't know all details; I just read his short stories from…
on “How far back in time can you understand English?” ↗It's a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu".
on “There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written” ↗…fair description of this hypothetical person's fears about scientific progress. Lovecraft's cosmic horror is still fairly rules-based, i.e. it's magic of the Clarke's-Third-Law variety. The dreaming in Call of Cthulhu is a natural force that obeys laws. Humans don't know what those laws are, but something does and can manipulate that force. Cthulhu itself doesn't obey our laws of physics, but there are laws of physics…
on “Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable from Cthulhu” ↗