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| − | (For other Cthulhus, see the [[Cthulhu (Disambiguation)|Disambiguation page]].)
| + | #REDIRECT [[H. P. Lovecraft#Lovecraft Mythos]] [[Category:redirect]] |
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| − | [[Howard Phillips Lovecraft]] practically dominated [[weird fiction]] in American [[proz]] till his death in 1937, and his [[mythos]] still march on in the hands of friends and pupils like [[Bob Bloch]], [[Clark Ashton Smith]], and [[August Derleth]], who have added independently to the canon. The Mythos centers around the exile to Earth of the [[Great Old Ones]], who had rebelled against the [[Elder Gods]] (not those of the [[Shaver Mythos]], fergawdsake) and still scheme to try again. A touchstone for stories of this cycle is the exclamation "''Ia! Yog-Sothoth!''"; it's part of the ritual for opening the Path Whereby the Spheres Meet (Yog-Sothoth, as every good [[fan]] should know, is the Key and the Guardian of that Path's Gate) and rarely fails of utterance. The [[Necronomicon (book)]] of [[Abdul Alhazred]], the mad Arab, is a source of much knowledge of the Great Old Ones; other books of incredible secrets like the R'lyeh Text, Comte D'Erlette's Cultes des Goules, Freidrich von Juntztz' Unausprechlichen Kulten, and the Pnakotic Manuscripts have also proved baneful to over-curious folk. Dreadful events center around Arkham, where Miskatonic University has one of the few known copies of the [[Necronomicon]], and whose neighboring towns Dunwich and Innsmouth are effectively in the hands of the Cthulhu Cult, as inquisitive scientists find out too late. The Great Old Ones themselves are numerous; important ones are [[Nyarlathotep]], Their messenger, who originated the human race; Yog-Sothoth; Azathoth the Lord of All (a "blind, idiot god" who, [[Fritz Leiber]] conjectures, symbolizes the mechanistic cosmos); and Cthulhu the sea-god -- a being very like a cross between an octopus and a jellyfish, tho capable of "lumbering slobberingly" in pursuit of humans and such tasty morsels. Other approximately mortal creatures like the Deep Ones, Shaggoths, Tcho-Tcho People and suchlike which your compiler would rather not think about are more or less servants of the Great Old Ones.
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| − | Pronunciation of such names as Cthulhu has worried many fans -- Cthulhu, incidentally, was the first to be the subject of one of [[HPL]]'s stories, whence the mythos are sometimes called "Cthulhu Mythos" -- who were not helped by [[Lovecraft]]'s insistence that the name was rendered into those English letters phonetically. This is nonsense -- [[C]] has no definite phonetic value in English -- but would make the original some such sound as Kh-thool-hoo or Ss-thool- hoo. "[[Sykora]] used to pronounce it with a whistle in the middle; I heard him", says [[Damon Knight]]. "Thool-thool" is the only so-called authentic pronunciation [[Coswal]] has heard, which obviously evades the C problem. [[Harry Warner]] cites a valuable source of information, approved by [[weird]] authors: "Just give a click with the tongue at the start of the word, just as you do with many Russian words, and ignore the second [[H]], with accent on the first syllable. I've never heard it pronounced, you understand, so that knowledge must be instinctive inheritance from the Old Days."
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| − | *2020 — [[1945 Best Series Retro Hugo]].
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