Before we begin with our regular discussion of ancient astronauts, I have brief notice about the ongoing debate over H. P. Lovecraft’s racism and the World Fantasy Award. Last night Salon’s Laura Miller published a bland summary of the issue. There isn’t anything new here, but it’s good to see Miller point out S. T. Joshi’s remarkably puerile behavior (“a remarkable combination of the pompous and the grotesquely arch”) and myopic illogic. I’m not sure, though, that I agree with her assertion that Lovecraftian prose is enjoyable due to its “camp appeal” and “silliness.” I suppose there is an argument to be made there, along the lines of the excesses of the Gran Guignol, but unless you’re the Evil Dead, I’m not sure I’d be praising a horror story for being “silly.”
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Thursday Grab Bag: Jewish Pyramid Conspiracies, Atheist Spirituality, and Bergier on Lovecraft9/11/2014 I have three brief topics for today.
An Alleged Jewish Pyramid Conspiracy First, I don’t really have much to say about, but figure I should mention, yesterday’s story in the Jerusalem Post reporting claims by Egyptian heritage activist Amir Gamal that Israeli operatives are infiltrating archaeological teams in order to fabricate evidence that the Jews built the pyramids of Egypt. According to Gamal, the Israelis are plotting to identify Pharaoh Sheshonq I with the Biblical King Shishak (a rather common identification made long ago and supported by a stela at Megiddo) in order to claim the gold of Egypt as the Temple treasure stolen by Shishak during his invasion of Judah (2 Chronicles 12:9). Similar claims have popped up over the last few years, particularly after the fall of Pres. Hosni Mubarak and the ouster of Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass, largely due to nationalism and continued popular resentment over what many Egyptians and Islamists see as the country’s too-friendly relationship with Israel. Greg Little Claims to Have Found the First Ancient Astronaut Theorist, Except That He Didn't9/8/2014 Regular readers will remember Dr. Greg Little as the writer who is currently promoting material about prehistoric giants and before that had investigated Atlantis as channeled by Edgar Cayce. He’s also the author of articles specifically criticizing me by name for not agreeing with his preferred analysis of so-called giant skeletons. Little is back this month with a new article in Alternate Perceptions magazine (Sept. 2014) that is apparently meant to challenge my view, in The Cult of Alien Gods (2005), that H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction was instrumental in the development of the modern ancient astronaut theory. I say “apparently” because Little refers to my work only elliptically, complaining of “various bloggers and writers have attempted to credit the idea of ancient astronauts to some person who is, for one reason or another, a favorite of the writer.” From the evidence of the article, it seems clear that I am one of the writers he has in mind.
Today I have three brief topics to discuss. One is about ancient astronauts in Malibu, and another is about H. P. Lovecraft, who would probably have found it difficult to invent a story that could make ancient astronauts in Malibu sound remotely plausible, though the famous archaeological ending of Planet of the Apes was shot on its beaches. But so was Gidget. Finally, I’d like to talk a bit about Graham Hancock’s latest interview, in which he endorses the reality of ancient astronauts (sort of) and justifies his continued appearance on Ancient Aliens before stabbing them in the back as a “cult.”
Let’s start with Lovecraft since there is rather little to say. Our dear friend S. T. Joshi has taken the time to debase himself again on his blog (Sept. 1 entry) by asserting that he is more important than novelist Daniel José Older and therefore more entitled to an opinion on whether the World Fantasy Award should continue to bear the likeness of H. P. Lovecraft, whom Older correctly accused of virulent racism. That issue, discussed last week, has decayed into a more general complaint that Lovecraft’s racism should not be emphasized above his atheism. Joshi continues to be outraged by the assumption that we should judge Lovecraft for his racism, arguing anew that historical figures cannot be judged by contemporary standards.
Canadian author David Nickle has an interesting post on his blog about H. P. Lovecraft and the issue of racism, prompted by the recent petition by Daniel José Older to replace World Fantasy Award’s bust of Lovecraft with that of the Black female writer Octavia Butler because Lovecraft was an “avowed racist and a terrible wordsmith” while Butler challenged “our notions of power, race and gender.” Personally, I’d have objected on the grounds that Lovecraft is better suited to horror than fantasy, but boundaries blur at the edges of the forms of speculative fiction. I don’t really have a problem with the World Fantasy Award being a bust of Lovecraft, nor do I see it as an endorsement of racism, but the debate over Older’s petition has degenerated into parody of the kind of debates over racism we see in society today.
I’m feeling a bit uninspired today, so I’ll share a grab-bag of small stories I haven’t figured out how to spin into something more substantive.
Micah Hanks, H. P. Lovecraft Accused of (Separate) Efforts to Suppress Truth about Giants, Theosophy8/11/2014 Today I have two topics to discuss. The first is rather amusing in its way. You’ll remember Micah Hanks, the researcher into “giants” who published some criticism of me just about one year ago in which he took exception to my evaluation of claims for a Smithsonian conspiracy to suppress the existence of giants, not because there was any conspiracy but because giants are real. Anyway, a year later Hanks returned to Coast to Coast AM to discuss giants, and he was surprised that listeners accused him of being part of the conspiracy to suppress the truth about a lost race of Bible giants when he declined to endorse the most wide-ranging conspiracies:
Today’s post is going up a bit late. Due to a faulty underground cable, more than 5,000 homes and businesses here in Albany lost power this morning. As a result of the outage, I had no power, no internet access, and no way to prepare a blog entry until power was restored this afternoon. Fortunately, however, the power came back on before the ice cream melted.
As you will recall, we’ve been discussing anti-Semitism and Nazism in conjunction with fringe history, so I thought it would be interesting to extend that to a discussion of where these concepts intersect with H. P. Lovecraft. The most obvious place was in Lovecraft’s support for Hitler and his hatred of the Jews, as he wrote in his letters, some of which were quoted by S. T. Joshi in his various books on Lovecraft. (Note: Lovecraft scholars, unlike fringe writers, acknowledge anti-Semitic and racist material.) The early buzz on The Strain was filled with dramatic adjectives. “Unique” got tossed around several times, though not by every reviewer. After watching the pilot episode, I can’t imagine how anyone could have applied the word unique to anything about The Strain, which is perhaps the most derivative vampire story to come to the small screen in years. In recent years, we’ve had vampire detectives (Angel and Moonlight), vampire lovers (True Blood), vampire teens (The Vampire Diaries), vampire aristocrats (The Originals), vampire slackers (Being Human), vampire capitalists (Dracula), and a bunch of Canadian vampires on the Syfy channel. The Strain, from producers Guillermo Del Toro, Chuck Hogan, and Carlton Cuse, wanted to reverse the trend toward human and relatable vampires and return them to their roots in horror.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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