In our reality, H.P. Lovecraft died on March 15, 1937 at the age of 46. While it would be a stretch to say that he died "young," he certainly died younger than most men of his era. For example, Clark Ashton Smith, who was born less than three years after Lovecraft, died in 1961 at the age of 68. With a better diet and better access to medical care, it's not at all improbable to imagine HPL living into his 60s or even 70s – long enough for him to see World War II, the end of the Great Depression, and the monumental technological and social changes of the ensuing decades. If he had lived, what might Lovecraft have written and what impact might it have had?
I have no answers of my own to this question, but, back in 1978, at the 38th World Science Fiction Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, several notable science fiction and fantasy writers and commentators held a panel on the very topic. Led by Dirk W. Mosig, the panel also included Donald R. Burleson, J. Vernon Shea, Fritz Leiber, and S.T. Joshi. If you're interested and have the time, you can listen to the panel, which consists of six half-hour audio files.
Average male lifespan in 1937 in the USA is estimated at 61.2 years. Considering that the figure is dragged down considerably by the much higher infant mortality rates of the era and folks who lived to adulthood could easily expect to see 70+ years, he died very early.
ReplyDeleteInteresting as speculating on HPL is, I'm still more fascinated by the idea of REH's suicide having been prevented and what course his life would have taken if he'd survived to (and through) WW2. He could reasonably have lived well into the 1970s himself, long enough to have written a much larger and even more varied body of work. REH was over fifteen years younger than HPL and had a correspondingly longer potential career ahead of him, although he'd have had to make it past the death of the pulps and into more traditional publishing by the later parts of it.
One interesting possibility for both of them is a stint writing for comics, which were still pretty much kiddie stuff when they died. Not hard to imagine them penning stories for EC Comics if they'd survived just a little longer, as well as early Marvel and DC. I can't see HPL doing superheroes, but there were plenty of horror and weird fantasy/scifi titles until well into the 50s (when the Comics Code upset the whole industry). REH would have been even more suited to the field, given his varied interests and proven ability to write Westerns, horror, weird fantasy - and post-WW2, most likely war comics and maybe crime noir and "exotic locale" adventures. A lot of their pulp era peers dabbled in comics to some degree, and a few became giants in the industry, eg the legendary Gardner Fox. Both REH and HPL just died a little too early to see that whole industry open up.
According to a 1939-1941 actuarial table I found after a second of googling, a white man of Lovecraft's age had an average future lifespan of a bit over 30 years. He would have had a decent chance of seeing the first moon landing.
DeleteThe nature of "The Shadow out of Time" leads me to believe that Lovecraft would have moved ever farther away from "horror" and ever deeper into "science fiction". The demythologization of the Mythos began in "At the Mountains of Madness" and I think would have continued apace.
ReplyDeleteI haven't listened yet, but an idea came to mind: what sort of influence would have the UFO phenomenon along with other paranormal activity/events would have made on HPL? It's interesting to think how HPL would have reacted to the Project Bluebook investigations.
ReplyDeleteHe would have been the one to create the x-files.
DeleteJim Hodges---
ReplyDeleteI've spent years trying to decide what Lovecraft would have thought of Star Trek. Anyone have an opinion?
He would definitely have written Robert Bloch with his thoughts on "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Catspaw", which Bloch wrote cosmic horror into.
Delete"The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
ReplyDeleteHe would have been very upset about the progress made in the area of civil rights
ReplyDeleteOr, maybe feel completely vindicated by it
DeleteHe definitely would be wearing the silly red hats.
DeleteThat dude would have been driven more insane by eugenic "weak strains" (he kind of "was one" himself, ironically), more red terror, nuclear paranoia (this would have been huge, I think), neo-Romantic beatnik's in the 50s giving way to 60s counter-culture (more "scum" dirtying up "culture"), etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteLovecraft, like many of the classic fiction writers, was a turbo authoritarian. He wrote some interesting fiction in terms of literary/philosophical concepts...
But I just don't buy the "product of his time" line of bull crap people use as an excuse. He chose his biases willingly with a ton of academic literature, media and historical events (and even being friends like James Morton as a force of countering ideas).
I think over time as Scientism and modernity's "demystifying" project carried forward it would have been harder for him to find a similar breadth of veiled, allusive, noumenal topics in his speculative horror. And without a doubt he would have became more reactionary.
I always saw Lovecraft as a prototype of the modern opinionated Nerd/Geek.
ReplyDeleteI personally do not buy the "product of his times" line: people hold a series of different beliefs for different reasons in different ages.
And I agree with the line of thought that sees him as becoming even more reactionary as time passed.
Somehow, however, I don't think he would have become a Conspiracy Theorist (my mind on this has changed over time, a few years ago I thought he would have fallen for stuff like that).
As for how his fiction would have changed, Geoffrey said he could have moved more towards a harder Science Fiction approach and that sounds believable with what I know about him.
I think he would have thoroughly hated most of the New Wave SF and Cyberpunk.