When the Sky Comes out of the Ground

"Meteorites retain the same place of prominence in the modern heart that they held in the ancient one. Perhaps no heavenly body beside the zodiacal constellations has endured in this way. We know a meteorite cleared an evolutionary path for us 65 million years ago. We also know a meteorite could block that path at any moment. Meteorites symbolize both Genesis and the Day of Judgment."

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Nice article, quite a few nice little points about Lovecraftian fiction, but I felt a bit lost, sometimes I didn't know what you were trying to get at.

Okay, second reading, I think I get it now. Well, I get the points about success in science being more dreaded than failure, although this for a given value of failure, or success. If an experiment will have catastrophic consequences if it fails, is it still worse for the experiment to succeed?

Nevertheless, the concept of coosmic indifference is a troubling one, ut then again, only for those of an Aethistic viewpoint. To those of us who choose to believe in a cosmic plan, or some other BBITS (Big Beard In The Sky), it isn't as threatening.

I'll have another crack at what you said about Marxism and the like. Nevertheless, a nice article.

While I enjoyed the read, it must be asked: When did The Escapist shift away from gaming? There have been a few articles here and there that were off-topic, and several that worked to include the gaming world in some manner, but they seemed to have abandoned their original premises as of late. Of course, it might be quite difficult to produce five quality games-related articles a week, and publishing items that those of us that gravitate to this site would be interested in is a viable way to fill that gap. But, is this a conscious decision by the editorial staff, a slow but understood moving forward, or just the natural evolution of a niche entity, once the initial reservoir of content is depleted? I'm not dissing the site or it's decision makers, just curious.

Boucaner, I would hazard a guess that this issue is the grab bag issue. This is where you look at submitted articles, go "Hey, that's sort of a common theme there." and toss it out, so you build up your reservoir of other themed articles, of which the one we see the most being games, because we do love to go on about those :)

As far as this article goes, it came across as nervous titterings as a result of scoffing at paranoid possibilities ... that might just closer to the truth than simply "I don't know", even when that is the wisest course of action to say "I need more evidence and reflection before I can draw a conclusion that might with stand scrutiny." Hahaha, scientists say "I don't know" and the rest of us get to make ghost stories and urban myths.

Actually, the "grab-bag issue", as you call it, is the Editor's Choice Issue(s). This just seems a non-game-related issue (extrapolating from the two articles in this issue I've read so far)

Erm, well, it's obvious that Mr Huling has a very knowledgeable mind, a firm grasp on the English language. The trouble I had with this article though is similar to your last one. It tries to cover too much territory within the confines of 3 pages. It starts out on a meteor crash, quickly goes to conspiracy theories, then Lovecraft, then Pravda and Marxism or something, then back to conspiracy theories, with only the vaguest of connections between them all.

I like to think of myself as a fairly well-read bloke, but reading this I felt swamped with ideas and information. I got a handle on the conspiracy theories part, then all of a sudden the article changed to something else entirely, and I was left to struggle along as best as my limited understanding of Marxism could allow. Also, a lot of the points I came across seem a bit, how can I put this... pretentious? For example, the highlighted quote on page 1:

"Pravda's ravings and Lovecraftian horror both have materialist roots, but today their materialism serves to deny reality rather than intensify it."

Perhaps if the article was longer and had more space to elaborate its various points, I'd understand the significance of that. As it is, being the luddite that I am, I read it and go 'Huh?' I guess what I'm trying to say (and labouring to do so), is try to give your articles more space to breathe in future. There's so many different ideas, it's hard to get what you're driving at.

I really wish that the article had linked to Nick Mamatas' actual blog entry regarding the meteorite. Having read Nick's blog for several years and having corresponded with him on occasion, I know him to be an excellent horror writer, incredibly intelligent, and a complete smart-ass, and I'm sorry to have missed this particular entry.

Good article, although with a noticeable dose of paranoid schizophrenia.

People have the strange misconception that good things happen to good people and that things should make sense in our anthropocentric and often sentimental view. There are no laws in physics or nature that would cause this. The universe is arbitrary and indifferent. The human race, our little blue planet and our existence on it, is as insignificant and random as an asteroid tumbling through the cosmos for billions of years. Perhaps only Chaos Theory can account for how all this began and where it will proceed.

Ach, a community of critics. Is this a good or a bad thing? Unimportant; I enjoyed the article.

Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos are part of pop culture, but remain relatively, and appropriately 'cult'; references are strewn everywhere but few understand, or often notice them. Part of this may be explained by the observation that - while I personally love his work - for a new reader, of whom I've introduced a few, it is often immediately uncomfortable, inaccessible; a blunt and sheer wall of sinister adjectives one must clamber to find each descending twist of the plot, each getting darker as the maniac Lovecraftian flavour becomes stronger, each twist driving us deeper into the bottle, risking driving through the sodden cork into the raw, chaotic and joyous concoction of his universe-view.

It's an allegory, above all, for our own insignificance in what he believes is a cold, massive and uncaring universe, in which humanity are, as science continues to proclaim, beings of no significance; merely a dot in a field of stars.

The article references a popular flavour of dark fiction that has had significant influence upon games across numerous genres, and uses it to giftwrap recent, unusual events that could easily be influencing the games of the future, if we have not all rotted to mounds of crumbling grey ash.

Reality imitates art. Art predicts reality. Iä! Shub-Niggurath!