Before R’lyeh: Proto-Cosmic Horror

By Gabriel Berger

One of the problems with humans, especially in regards to climate change, is that we believe that we are the main characters of this planet, and that we have the plot armor to survive it. This is something humans have always thought and is something that the genre of cosmic horror has been trying to disprove. We may think of this type of nihilism as new, but, in terms of modern society, it’s surprisingly old.

Cosmic horror is a genre of horror popularized and made into the form we know today by H.P. Lovecraft. It deals with the idea of an indifferent universe, that we are not the center of the universe, just a cosmic blip, and there are things beyond our understanding that will drive us mad out there. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror is the form of cosmic horror that is popular today. However, it did not start with him. Prior to him, several other authors wrote in a vein of cosmic horror that holds many of the same themes but execute them in a way that is more nature based, in what I’m calling “Proto-Cosmic Horror.”

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English man who loved the outdoors, and it shows. The two stories of his that are most known are “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” “The Willows” is particularly influential and follows a duo of canoe travelers along the Danube who encounter spring rapids and are stuck upon an island, where the trees themselves seem to hold a power to them. Without trying to spoil too much, the discussion of ancient spirits beyond our comprehension is probably the greatest contributor to cosmic horror. Blackwood captured an amazing atmosphere with these stories, of a wilderness that is both hostile and uncaring, much too big for human comfort.

William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was also an Englishman whose early career as a sailor led to his writing of many a sea tale, in the vein of Weird Fiction. His short but prolific career (only 11 years long) had him release major works of weird fiction, including the four novels The Boats of the Glen Carrig, The Ghost Pirates, The Night Land, and The House on the Borderland.

The former two are sea stories with many horror elements brought into them, an influence shown in cosmic horror’s obsession with the sea.  The latter two are weird science fiction. The Night Land follows a future vision of Earth where the sun has gone out and the last humans live in a massive pyramid, as they are stalked by vast shapes outside the pyramid. The House on the Borderland follows a man living in a house where many strange occurrences are documented. He is besieged by pigmen, and lays witness to the cosmos and the vistas beyond the stars. This is where I note much of the actual cosmic influence in later cosmic horror to come from.

Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933), the only American on this list, is best known for his 1895 collection The King in Yellow which concerns a play called “The King in Yellow”, which has influence from an entity called The King in Yellow, and his mark, the Yellow Sign. The reading of the play is said to drive people mad, and this is shown off the bat in the first story “The Repairer of Reputations”. The King in Yellow play has another world with strange baroque elements to it, and that vibe influenced many a weird fiction writer, while the actual entity and the discussion of an entity’s sign influenced many cosmic horror writers. In fact, The King in Yellow is so beloved that many other writers have expanded upon the lore.

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) incorporated very blatantly pagan elements to his stories, the biggest two being The Great God Pan and “The White People”. The former, wrapped up in quite a classist and misogynistic air, follows two men who are having revenge taken upon them by the child of a woman who they experimented on, whose father is Pan. The Great God Pan’s influence is much like Blackwood’s, a god beyond our comprehension and the horror that that brings.

At the time that these authors were writing, humanity did not know much about the cosmos. It makes sense that much of the early cosmic horror was more in the vein of the romantics that came before, bringing in horror of the natural world.  It’s a way of evoking a similar emotion without needing to know the vast emptiness between stars.