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Long, long, long ago I was given a present of a large hardback volume of Edgar Allan Poe, the publisher had kindly printed an injunction on the back cover: not to be read after midnight! Naturally I waited until after midnight before starting to read only to be completely nonplussed. They were as advertised tales of mystery and imagination, but not for me at that time (after midnight) disturbing or unsettling, but then again I was then in the habit of watching the evening news on the TV.

I had a similar reaction reading these stories (The Dunwich Horror, The dreams in the White Hose, The lurking fear, the thing on the doorstep, Hypnos, The Outsider), they were weird - which I'll get to in a minute, but less than a hundred years after being written neither frightening nor horrific unless you have a particular fear of slimy things, or things with tentacles chewing peoples faces off because they are a bit hungry, but like I have said, I tend to follow the news.

The basic idea behind these stories is that just beyond or perception there are other realms of being, where odd looking things (view spoiler)[which conveniently are so odd looking as to be described as indescribable (hide spoiler)] dwell, and can in certain (view spoiler)[ unclear (hide spoiler)] circumstances pop into our perceptual universe either to, as already mentioned, snack on available humans, occasionally impregnate them, and as a bonus terrify people up to and beyond the edge of madness.

Some people are keen to interact with these beings, it is a bit unclear what is potentially in it for them, but there seem to be some opportunities to develop occult or supernatural powers, other people are horrified by these beings but - and these tend to be the narrators of these stories - they are keen to track them down and forcibly remove them from our environment, to simply investigate them - it's a bit unclear exactly why, and this is why the stories are really weird, because getting close to these beings tends to leave you insane. This raises all kinds of problems, but never mind.

I was interested that in say, Ethan Frome, which came out only about ten years before Lovecraft was publishing, the New Englander is initially seen by the narrator as an ideal type, pure, and unaffected by either more recent immigrants or indigenous persons. Here there is an absolute reaction to that, instead the hardy, native New Englander is at constant risk of degeneration through inbreeding and rural life. This leads them to not only talk funny but also with a bizarre tendency to interact with those beings who dwell beyond our perception (view spoiler)[and as a consequence to sometimes get eaten by them (hide spoiler)], but as they are mostly inbred hill billies who talk funny nobody seems much fussed apart from the intrepid investigators.

In the years since these stories were published, a lot of things have happened, and if you have for your sins seen a sufficient amount of Star Trek, or for that matter Futurama or even read Terry Prachett or Douglas Adams, you won't find the events of these stories horrific, but instead mostly cheerfully familiar but considerably more coy.

I was interested in how in the dreams in the witch house non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are related to witchcraft and lead the hero of the story into realms beyond rational human perception and into risk of, well, risk. I don't know if this represents a rejection of modern science in favour of a safe Newtonism or if it was intended to be broadly humorous - it did make me smile a little (view spoiler)[ on the inside (hide spoiler)] . Along similar lines in Hypnos we are told Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed. One man with oriental eyes has said that all time and space are relative, and men have laughed. But even that man with oriental eyes has done no more than suspect (p.185) which does give a sense of contemporary 1920s culture given a spin for a pulp readership, modernity as an incomprehensible threat, today we could read this as an allegory for the assault on the environment maybe - the real horror is all those Ford motor cars and sturdy refrigerators bursting into our universe. Or in The Lurking Fear the death of several sidekicks could now be read as an allegory of AIDS: sleeping unprotected with muscular men in strange bedrooms can cause them to die hideously and for you to be driven to the brink of madness. If Lovecroft would appreciate that I don't know.