Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The Cthulhu Cult of the Geek

The nerd is a mysterious creature, shrouded in mystery and obscured by misunderstanding. Our culture is diverse, ill-defined, and filled with people who view each other with naught by contempt. But we’re still a cultural group, one rooted largely in self-identification. And there are a few things that most nerds enjoy. And enjoy, in this context, ranges from “genuinely appreciates” to “needs to shut the hell up about.”

Zombies are first and foremost on the list. Then pirates and maybe ninjas, depending on personal preferences. The list goes on, delving into some more embarrassing television territory, a handful of films and, occasionally, books that people keep on the lower shelves. But sometimes something finds its way into nerd canon which is both remarkable and underappreciated, something for which enthusiasm is not another form of pariah-hood. Something like the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft’s works have been acquired partially by geek culture, largely in the form of references to Cthulhu. One might even say they’ve been decontextualized by geek-dom, stripped of their oppressive and fearful treatment of the world around them and instead condensed to a bestiary of squid like creatures of near limitless power.

Nerd culture more frequently refers to Cthulhu than any other part of Lovecraftian mythos, and with good cause. It’s the only real face that Lovecraft ever offers. His other antagonists are abstract, oppressive ideas or forces which threaten both our lives and our sanity without our knowing it. Our minds naturally shrink away from them and to come to know them is to know madness.

Cthulhu lets nerdhood dumb down what Lovecraft was doing, which is a bit of a shame because it really is something amazing. Lovecraft was less interested in Cthulhu, in big highly visible demons that can cause madness with their visage and drew some nice parallels with gothic literature, in general and more interested in the unknown and the known. His writing touches on the idea that knowledge itself is both harmful and crucial, and that to understand the truth of the world around is, in and of itself, a kind of death sentence.

In The Color Out of Space the villain is a swath of discolored ground which slowly eats away at both the physical and psychological health of whoever is nearby. Other similar examples involve an intangible vampire who only manifests himself as a horrible smell and a strange object buried deep under a house, a strange young man who conjures his brother, an invisible and all consuming monster that devastates large sections of American farmland and can only be seen through the use of special dust and lengthy research.

Lovecraft’s horror is self-aware in a way that most people don’t consider the genre. It considers the scientific process and, perhaps more intensely, the emergence of the theory of relativity. It isn’t so much obsessed with a fear of the unknown as it is with the simultaneous dangers of ignorance and knowledge. To truly understand the world beyond ours is to know how unimportant in the human race is on a cosmic scale. But to understand this is, by nature, to rise above the pack, an act which draws attention to oneself. And Lovecraft is always quick to point out that the best way to survive is to not draw attention to oneself.

Lovecraft grasps the knowledge both protects and isolates us from the world we live in. The more we understand the more we are encouraged to act, but with greater understanding comes greater comprehension of just how dangerous it is to act. Of course, if we have no knowledge of these horrible forces then eventually they may come to bear on us and we’ll be helpless to deal with them.

Lovecraft’s obsession with the duality of knowledge and its pursuit is at the core of nerd culture. Nerds are, by definition, people who seek out knowledge about subjects, who are obsessed with and consumed by this pursuit. But this pursuit also isolates us from the world. That’s why we’re nerds: we set ourselves apart from the world in the way we see it.

If we were normal people we’d be content to live our lives and watch TV. But like Lovecraft’s ill-fated explorers that isn’t for us; we have to fly to the roof of the world, dig up the scions of an ancient race of starfaring beings and then be eviscerated by them. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

In Lovecraft’s writing the pursuit of knowledge both isolates and endangers the seeker, and survival isn’t a guarantee. And death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. Madness, insidious changes in your nature and psychic imprisonment are all options. Even if you finally comprehend the world around you more keenly, was it worth the price you paid? Was it worth losing the people you care about?

Lovecraft never really answers this question. He doesn’t seem to interested in it, to be honest, and that’s spot on for commentary on geek culture. We don’t choose to seek knowledge, we do it by nature. And we’d do it even if we knew for a fact that it would destroy us, because we can’t help ourselves. We look down on smokers and people shooting up H, but we never sit and look at ourselves, at our inability to, in the words of that one aunt all of us have had, just be normal for five god damn minutes.

But he also knows that without nerds the world would be destroyed. Even though our very existence ensures that horrible things will come to pass, it also ensures that people will be around to stop these seemingly unstoppable forces. Because Lovecraft’s nerds aren’t passive, and they don’t accept their smallness in the universe. None of them resemble Swift’s Gulliver. Instead in their pursuit and attainment of knowledge they find some measure of power and authority and realize that even if man is not the greatest form of life in the universe it is still a worthwhile one, and can be just as capable with a little luck.

So it is fair to say that Lovecraft loved nerds more than nerds currently love Lovecraft. His estate is doing fine, sure. He’s selling books and occasionally people are making movies, but he’s never really gotten the recognition he deserves. The people who adapt his works seem to miss the essence of what he wrote, and they pick and choose to the point where the true kernel of Lovecraft’s horror, the isolation that comes from knowing that you are simultaneously completely and never alone in this world, is rarely maintained.

There are some examples of relatively faithful adaptations or nods. The Penny-Arcade game, for all its absurdist humor, does a faithful job of thematically portraying Lovecraft’s mythos. And Fallout 3’s Dunlop Building is spot on in conveying that sense of creeping isolation as you seek out the truth of what has transpired there.

There are some larger examples, but they’re more dated. The first Alone in the Dark centered around the Cthulhu mythos, and Eternal Darkness leaned heavily on Lovecraft, utilizing it with reverence and great effect. But lately it’s hard to find a solid example of a film, book, or game which faithfully reconstructs the horror and isolation Lovecraft offered.

Unfortunately, by and large, Lovecraft’s body of work has just been misinterpreted, perhaps due to its dense nature. It has been distilled and decentralized through a literary game of telephone until its image in popular culture bears little or no resemblance to what it truly represents.

But if you are a nerd, or someone interested in nerd-dom, sit down with a collection of his stories and read them. Because in his dense, stolid prose there are glimmers of genius and a true understanding of what it means to keep fighting even when you know that the world and the forces that guide it are way too big for you to ever stop.