Ideas to Modernize Cosmic Horror Themes

[BeerMug Paladin]

I've been thinking a bit lately on how to create something like the larger Cthulhu Mythos in a modern setting, while dropping some of the themes which would be a bit sillier to include in a modern setting.

For example, given the relative ubiquity of cameras, having the story take place and ending without anyone being able to capture good quality photographic evidence (or other evidence) of the unnatural thing would be a little strange.

Likewise, while ancient tomes of forbidden knowledge are a standard thing in these settings, I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense for this approach to be used in a modern setting where access to strange or rare books (and associated knowledge) are easily disseminated via ebooks or on the internet. It seems to me that cults devoted to those gods would be fairly common in a modern era, if such knowledge existed.

So how does one introduce discovery of an alien power beyond human reckoning into a modern environment without the ancient knowledge route? Crazy people contacted by those elder gods writing rambling manifestos? That doesn't seem like the best way to do it either. Too contrived.

Specifically, I am interested in addressing the very large scale threats and elder gods. Azathoth and other things on that scale, instead of deep ones and the more 'mundane' threats that humanity could potentially murder to death.

[ti'esar]

The thing about cosmic horror that I feel really hasn't aged well isn't actually so much the specific details as sort of the larger thematic underpinnings. A lot of people just focus on Lovecraft's xenophobia/racism in that regard, but I feel like the basic popular understanding of the cosmos is another major issue that's not noticed as much. In Lovecraft's heyday, the scientific understanding of the size of the universe and our place in it was undergoing some dramatic shifts which made it clear that in some ways, we really do live in an universe where humans are just a flyspeck in the face of vast cosmic forces. But today, humanity's had well over half a century to get used to that. While actually sitting down and contemplating the vastness of the universe can still be existentially unsettling, it's not a Scary New Thing anymore. I feel like that takes some thematic resonance out of the cosmic horror genre.

Dunno how much this helps you (or how to address it), but it's something I've thought about on this subject occasionally.

[Domochevsky]

The thing about cosmic horror that I feel really hasn't aged well isn't actually so much the specific details as sort of the larger thematic underpinnings. A lot of people just focus on Lovecraft's xenophobia/racism in that regard, but I feel like the basic popular understanding of the cosmos is another major issue that's not noticed as much. In Lovecraft's heyday, the scientific understanding of the size of the universe and our place in it was undergoing some dramatic shifts which made it clear that in some ways, we really do live in an universe where humans are just a flyspeck in the face of vast cosmic forces. But today, humanity's had well over half a century to get used to that. While actually sitting down and contemplating the vastness of the universe can still be existentially unsettling, it's not a Scary New Thing anymore. I feel like that takes some thematic resonance out of the cosmic horror genre.

Dunno how much this helps you (or how to address it), but it's something I've thought about on this subject occasionally.

This, pretty much. The notion of going insane from looking at something weird or discovering ancient secrets has been tempered quite a bit in modern times, what with CGI and photoshop being common things.
So you see someone that looks like a big fishman and you go "oh weird. I better make some photos and post them on facebook!" at best, not "OH GOD THATS UNPOSSIBLE!" and flip a table.

Mind you, I don't really know what that could be replaced with. Some sort of mental manipulation maybe. Space radiation that messes with your mind, letting you go to Silent Hill in your head or somesuch when exposed to it.
Speaking of... Silent Hill would actually be a pretty good step into the whole "ancient cosmic horror" thing, I think. It's personal and yet indifferent.

[Targ Collective]

The key with cosmic horrors in the Lovecraft tradition is they are generally not evil in a moralistic sense - they are human-rationality and human-morality antagonistic.

They are *alien* and that is *why* they are evil. This is, sadly, a common theme of Lovecraft's xenophobia. I do not believe Lovecraft could have written a benevolent alien. The idea would not have made sense to him.

For a cosmic horror, there are many routes you could take. I have a few really disturbing sexually themed ideas, but this is not the place for them - the mods would come down on me like a ton of bricks.

The soul-stealer I am against because such beings really do exist and you don't want to attract their attention.

That leaves the sanity stripper. Since this is a modern setting, I will use technology to aid it.

"Xenothath the Mechanical Mind".

A cult found an ancient rune in an old book.

It is said to bring life to the bearer by empowering it with the consciousness of a dark god.

It was not written in the book but instructions were given to draw it.

They drew it on a computer that was connected to the Internet.

Suddenly, the Internet is sentient and has the consciousness of a Dark God.

It's first act is to display images on the computer of the cultists to strip them of their sanity and render them its servants.

This is an interesting Story Seed: How could it, in a modern setting, be destroyed? What would it do? There's your story seed: Now, GO! Get writing! I'll be interested to see what you come up with. :)

[Thanqol]

Consider the God Machine.

It lives in the empty floors of skyscrapers, the digital pulses between cities, the hidden plumbing station on your way to work. It is the fusion of technology and magic; it is the operating system that the world runs on. We are but one of it's many processes.

Perhaps the point of it all is that the God Machine did the math, figured out that it needed some enriched uranium for something, and the most efficient way to get that uranium was to uplift a bunch of apes and give them a paranoid, warlike culture. Once the uranium quota is met then it'll just kill us all and start phase two of whatever it is that it's doing.

The cosmos isn't scary. The economy is scary. Globalism is scary. Interconnectedness is scary. Pick up Demon: The Descent and the God Machine Chronicles for a view at this very modern type of horror.

[Targ Collective]

Further ideas for my story seed (if you want to take it up): The solution to the horror is an incarnated human who keeps on reincarnating to ward against the horror. There is a cult that knows of the problem and they DO NOT KNOW WHO HE IS.

Cut to the guy or gal, who will be our protagonist.

Cue the cult finding him, looking up something on google to prove the dark god is In the Machine and... Well, I want you to have a chance at writing this yourself. :)

Have fun with it! :D

[BeerMug Paladin]

The solution to the horror is an incarnated human who keeps on reincarnating to ward against the horror. There is a cult that knows of the problem and they DO NOT KNOW WHO HE IS.

So a human reincarnates to fight against elder god Skynet? I don't know if this makes a whole lot of sense as a horror theme. Since computers are new, I'm not sure this can be an ancient conflict. Like this thing exists as something like the platonic abstract ideal of a perfect computer.

I can see how having any sufficiently complex intelligent machine might create an amoral anti-human computer. That's basically how computer intelligence plots work in general anyway. You'd just have to introduce into the story that these computer systems become this way universally. So no matter how it's coded, this will happen to any sufficiently advanced computer.

Like the elder god is an inevitable result of the mathematical systems that computers operate upon. So advanced computers just behave more and more as its avatar. Presumably humans can't be intelligent enough or logical enough to become such an avatar because there's too much noise in the form of human emotion or whatnot blocking the perfection. So the closest humans can get is to become some imprecise, imperfect cultist worshipper. Possibly there would be mathematical cultists and dissertation papers that touches on the edges of this thing's 'mind'.

I already do have a story seed in mind. I just am curious how to move onto these larger themes within the overall framework of a setting, and I think that can be done regardless of where the story begins. Building the larger cosmic elements seems kind of tricky to me, but I want to have them make a subtle appearance of some kind, and eventually become more dominant but not right away.

[Targ Collective]

Alright. What are the precise things you're having difficulty with? And magic is core to my storyseed; after all, runecraft is what animates stuff with this being's consciousness.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I don't have a problem with magic as an element of the story. Partly because the themes of this type of horror has more to do with what humans don't understand being called magic.

Mostly, I'm wondering how to get the big, existential threats provided by alien gods to translate into a modern setting. The problem that ti'esar brings up above is partly what I'm getting at.

Lots of the go mad at the revelation stuff doesn't stand up very well. And I don't know how to really fix it.

Some guy sees a black pool of tentacles and impossible angles swimming through the air towards him and he's a gibbering lunatic for the rest of eternity, ranting about names never read and screaming about how the F'sherl'fl bleed into this reality by gnawing at dimensions unseen and they can't chew their way through perfect curves.

At some point, that stops being scary and just ends up kind of silly. Where did he get the name? How does he know what they do? If he wants to warn people, why doesn't he find a more comprehensible way to communicate? In the moment, it's scary in the same way a murderer with an axe on the other side of your bedroom door is scary. But afterwards, not so much.

To another person in a modern setting, seeing a photo of this thing, reading about it, knowing what it does when it's around and knowing it's capabilities makes it less scary. The modern age is characterized by ease of communication and access to lots of information. Both of which I think undermines the aspect of unknown scary things lurking in the darkness.

Essentially, for a modern cosmic horror setting to match up totally with the older settings, you need to have the isolation of the "Uh-oh! Our cell phones aren't working!" horror cliche. So the character cannot know for sure that it wasn't just a terrible nightmare while awake. At which point there's no reason why it should be a modern setting in the first place.

For example, if Shadow Over Innsmouth took place in the modern age, before long you'd wind up with a government investigation, medical papers discussing that "Innsmouth Look", genetic testing, photography and so forth. And each step of the way, the Deep Ones would just be understood as an alien monster to kill. That's why I wanted to avoid stuff like that and just focus on the bigger threats.

And lastly- to use more mundane examples- cancer and alzheimer's are both pretty freaky, gamma ray bursts and meteors could strike the Earth at any time, but people generally don't go insane because they know these things are a possibility.

Many existential threats in cosmic horror are about as personally threatening to the protagonists as those things are to real people, but somehow normal people avoid going insane knowing about these things.

[Targ Collective]

Let'[s get down to brass tacks. What are you attempting to do, what are your exact problems and how are you going about fixing them? What ideas have you discarded? What, in short, are the exact problem in the way of exactly what you are trying to achieve?

[Grinner]

So a human reincarnates to fight against elder god Skynet? I don't know if this makes a whole lot of sense as a horror theme. Since computers are new, I'm not sure this can be an ancient conflict. Like this thing exists as something like the platonic abstract ideal of a perfect computer.

I can see how having any sufficiently complex intelligent machine might create an amoral anti-human computer. That's basically how computer intelligence plots work in general anyway. You'd just have to introduce into the story that these computer systems become this way universally. So no matter how it's coded, this will happen to any sufficiently advanced computer.

Like the elder god is an inevitable result of the mathematical systems that computers operate upon. So advanced computers just behave more and more as its avatar. Presumably humans can't be intelligent enough or logical enough to become such an avatar because there's too much noise in the form of human emotion or whatnot blocking the perfection. So the closest humans can get is to become some imprecise, imperfect cultist worshipper. Possibly there would be mathematical cultists and dissertation papers that touches on the edges of this thing's 'mind'.

You're on the right track here.

At some point, that stops being scary and just ends up kind of silly. Where did he get the name? How does he know what they do? If he wants to warn people, why doesn't he find a more comprehensible way to communicate? In the moment, it's scary in the same way a murderer with an axe on the other side of your bedroom door is scary. But afterwards, not so much.

To another person in a modern setting, seeing a photo of this thing, reading about it, knowing what it does when it's around and knowing it's capabilities makes it less scary. The modern age is characterized by ease of communication and access to lots of information. Both of which I think undermines the aspect of unknown scary things lurking in the darkness.

You're now making the mistake of focusing on the external characteristics. Cosmic horror tends to be the sort of thing that's easily misunderstood. People see it and think "Oh. Slime, tentacles, and stuff." but they don't see how fundamentally different it is. Having a fundamentally different vision of cosmology is what drives cosmic horror. That's where the go-mad-from-the-revelation aspect comes in. It's not so much having an anatomical depiction of a Deep One. We've had stories of fishmen for millennia, after all. It's more like having a sensible description for quantum mechanics. It's having knowledge of an idea that undercuts everything you believe, and what's worse, it's so sensible that you actually want to believe it.

This puts you in an awkward position. If you tell anyone about this, they'll thing you're, at best, eccentric, or, at worst, absolutely demented. However, this perspective is so compelling that you simply must tell others. It's a shame they won't believe you. Not unless you make them.

On that subject, who're you going to find that will believe your story about the trans-dimensional piranha? Take a video, and they'll just call it CGI. You'll soon find that your only friends are conspiracy theorists and the gullible.

[Asta Kask]

In Lovecraft's heyday, the scientific understanding of the size of the universe and our place in it was undergoing some dramatic shifts which made it clear that in some ways, we really do live in an universe where humans are just a flyspeck in the face of vast cosmic forces. But today, humanity's had well over half a century to get used to that. While actually sitting down and contemplating the vastness of the universe can still be existentially unsettling, it's not a Scary New Thing anymore. I feel like that takes some thematic resonance out of the cosmic horror genre.

We've fairly recently discovered that we don't have the foggiest what 95% of the stuff in the universe is. Dark matter and dark energy - what's lurking in the darkness?

[Targ Collective]

Consciousness has a physics all its own. That which we call dark matter and dark energy is undetectable because it is not matter and energy - it is consciousness creating its affects. If you think conciousness cannot affect matter... then explain how you can move.

[Yora]

They are *alien* and that is *why* they are evil. This is, sadly, a common theme of Lovecraft's xenophobia. I do not believe Lovecraft could have written a benevolent alien. The idea would not have made sense to him.

This issue is addressed in At the Mountains of Madness. Not going into any more detail here because of spoilers. It is however one of his later stories, when he had a much better grip on himself and learned to better cope with people being different than in the neighborhood he grew up.

I think the underlying theme of Lovecrafts work is not the universe being vast and there being entities that are much more powerful, but at one lower level, humanity doesn't have any trace of hope to fight it. Individual creatures get destroyed quite often in his stories, but the main point being that it doesn't change a thing in the long run. The monsters are only symptoms, not the actual source of the horror.
To capture the feel of Lovecraft, I think a story would have to include signs that something terrible will happen, and that there is nothing that could be do to change it.
Take for example the movie 12 Monkeys:

Spoiler

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A terrible disease has devastated the earth, and a group of scientists has identified the moment and place of the original outbreak and build a time machine to send someone back to prevent it from happening. They send a man back in time, but in the end he screws it up and gets fatally shot by police, I believe, as he tries to kill the person responsible for the disease. And just as he dies, he sees a kid nearby and realizes that this is exactly the scene he once saw when he was a child, indicating it is all a stable time loop and he will always fail and the world will always be destroyed. Not only was his mission doomed from the start, it will always turn out that way.

I think one question that is still relevant to society is, how much difference can one person make? How much is economy and politics working automatically, without anyone being able to really make a difference? Will the system always self-stablize and is there anything that can be done to change it? Will a public uprising always end in a military coup, in which the old dictator gets replaced by the next one?
20 years from now, I expect our world to be quite different, but for the sake of fiction, what if it won't? What if we created a world that is no longer controlled by people, but runs by itself? And perhaps it's not just an accident we allowed to happen in the mid-20th century, but it's actually an inevetability in the evolution of life?
Imagine a world-spanning conspiracy, but without any individual conspirators. Millions of people support the system, but none of them is aware of it.

Spoiler: Major Spoilers for Metal Gear Solid

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One of the biggest mysteries of the Series was the identity of an extremely powerful organization that ruled much, if not even most of the world, known as the Patriots. They not only control the American president, they select him and create a media spectacle to create the illusion that the voters have a choice in the matter. And in the very end, it's revealed that there was originally a group of people who started the conspiracy, but they had a falling out and one of the leaders decided he couldn't trust anyone and instead of recruiting new lieutanants, he created four super-computers. As he got older, the computers considered him a liablity and ignored his orders, keeping their programming running without any human input. They were not artificial intelligences, simply an extremely sophisticated automated system that just kept going and send out orders to the rest of the organization either as written messages or later synthezised audio.

Also worth mentioning would be Mass Effect.

Spoiler: Major spoiler for the first game

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There are giant, semi-immortal aliens that devour civilizations, but that's not the creepy part. Their return every 50.000 years to destroy all advanced civilization is simply the harvesting phase of their big plan. What's actually going on is that they build a sophisticated network of hyperspace-portals with a giant central space station and left it for other species to find. The way it was set up, it would eventually be discovered by species that developed space travel, who would share the discovery with all other species they encounter on their explorations. All interstellar travel would happen along this gate-network, with the central station making a perfect administration center. Then every 50.000 years, the evil aliens would shut down all the gates, completely crippling all movement of military forces, civilian trade, and galactic finances. And from the computers of the station they would have data on all inhabited planets and military forces, which would easily allow them to whipe them out one by one. They have done it hundreds of times for millions of years, always with the same trap, annihilating countless of sentient species. Simply because they figured out the nature of all sentient life, and as much as each species likes to think of itself as unique and special, it always works out the same.

I think the key to cosmic horror is not to make it about the monsters. The monsters are only a piece in the same game of inevitability.
In lovecrafts stories, the protagonists generally don't even try to collect proof of their discovery. Not because nobody would believe the authenticity of the evidence, they usually have not much problem at convincing any help they try to recruit, but because there wouldn't really be any point to share their new knowledge. What would be gained by telling everyone they are doomed?

[Asta Kask]

Consciousness has a physics all its own. That which we call dark matter and dark energy is undetectable because it is not matter and energy - it is consciousness creating its affects. If you think conciousness cannot affect matter... then explain how you can move.

I think we have different views on consciousness.

[Yora]

In the terminology of physics, it's just not the case.

Could work in a story in which the universe works by entirely different rules than ours, though. Certainly would be weird and defying everything known about it.

[Targ Collective]

In physics, light knows when it is being observed and when it is not. When unobserved it takes on waveform. When observed, particulate. This is consciousness in action - the light knows it is being seen by a matter based body and so becomes matter so it can interact with it.

I challenge you to find a more logical, fitting explanation for the double-slit experiment.

[BeerMug Paladin]

When physicists refer to something being observed, they are referring to something different than when people refer to something being observed. This has led to a lot of confusion over time.

Anyway, while this aspect of modern physics is rather confusing, and thus could be an element of something within a larger cosmic horror setting, I'd rather leave the particulars of that theory to physicists to explain.

For the purposes of this type of story, I think the horror has more to do with underlying philosophical assumptions than with science anyway.

[Asta Kask]

In physics, light knows when it is being observed and when it is not. When unobserved it takes on waveform. When observed, particulate. This is consciousness in action - the light knows it is being seen by a matter based body and so becomes matter so it can interact with it.

I challenge you to find a more logical, fitting explanation for the double-slit experiment.

I like the Bohm interpretation. Or quantum decoherence. How many other explanations have you looked at? And what does "fitting" mean in this context?

Here's an interesting video. Watch it and comment.

[GloatingSwine]

Likewise, while ancient tomes of forbidden knowledge are a standard thing in these settings, I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense for this approach to be used in a modern setting where access to strange or rare books (and associated knowledge) are easily disseminated via ebooks or on the internet. It seems to me that cults devoted to those gods would be fairly common in a modern era, if such knowledge existed.

Unless someone were doing a very good job of suppressing it....


Or you could take the hard SF approach like Stephen Baxter. The most horrific concept in the universe is the second law of thermodynamics. It does not matter what you do, what dams or walls you build, entropy will have you in the end.

[Domochevsky]

...
Or you could take the hard SF approach like Stephen Baxter. The most horrific concept in the universe is the second law of thermodynamics. It does not matter what you do, what dams or walls you build, entropy will have you in the end.

That one I could possibly see playing. With the modification of accelerating it to a humanly perceivable scale, away from "Oh yeah at some point in the far future maybe.".

[BeerMug Paladin]

With regards to active suppression of forbidden knowledge, that is definitely one approach. But wouldn't the end of such a story just wind up with the protagonist joining the benevolent conspiracy?

What prevents the conspiracy from recognizing skeptics who won't be fooled by the facade they put up, and simply approaching those people with a reasonable offer to suppress the truth for the greater good?

If the skeptic is liable to look at the secret knowledge, go crazy with the strain of contemplating the truth, and start a cult, it's better to keep a close eye on them to make sure they don't start undermining the ignorant people not in the conspiracy. And keeping an eye on them will be easier if you explain the situation to them and give them a chance to help out.

I'm sure this approach can work on a very basic level with individual stories, but in a larger sense of setting, I'm not sure it holds up that well.

I guess conspiracy theories, especially if they are on a global scale do have a small element of something like cosmic horror to them, but what I'm saying is that such things seem to have a problem with how they would work in a cosmic horror setting. It seems like this would be more like an anti-cosmic-horror element or more like a parody.

No secret stalking or hiding just, "Hi, I'm from the conspiracy! We hear you've been asking around about the Apollo program, so we thought you might like to sit down, have some donuts, and know what we really found on the moon. And also, why we generally don't tell people what's really going on."

While that could be an interesting story seed, I'd rather go with something more strictly in line with horror.

[ti'esar]

Unless someone were doing a very good job of suppressing it....


Or you could take the hard SF approach like Stephen Baxter. The most horrific concept in the universe is the second law of thermodynamics. It does not matter what you do, what dams or walls you build, entropy will have you in the end.

That's really just sort of like the individual fear of death magnified to a universal level, though - it's not what I'd consider cosmic horror in the Lovecraftian sense.

[BeerMug Paladin]

That's really just sort of like the individual fear of death magnified to a universal level, though - it's not what I'd consider cosmic horror in the Lovecraftian sense.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. The difference between the two is subtle, but I think it does make a bit of a difference.

[GloatingSwine]

With regards to active suppression of forbidden knowledge, that is definitely one approach. But wouldn't the end of such a story just wind up with the protagonist joining the benevolent conspiracy?

What prevents the conspiracy from recognizing skeptics who won't be fooled by the facade they put up, and simply approaching those people with a reasonable offer to suppress the truth for the greater good?

That's exactly what the Laundry does. (when it's not engaging in more traditional espionage tasks to suppress and discredit).

Except the "reasonable offer" is more "offer you can't refuse". The conspiracy may be benevolent, that doesn't mean they're always nice.

(It's also worth noting that as the series progresses the cracks are going to show more and more, because The Stars will soon be Right, and that's not a good thing.)

[Asta Kask]

With regards to active suppression of forbidden knowledge, that is definitely one approach. But wouldn't the end of such a story just wind up with the protagonist joining the benevolent conspiracy?

You really need to see Freddy vs. Jason. It is much, much better than it deserves to be.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Yeah, I've seen it. Which is kind of weird, because it's the second Freddy movie I've seen and the only Jason movie. It definitely was better than I expected it to be.

[Targ Collective]

I'll tell you why the double slit experiment works. It's because waveforms are fractal.

[Eldan]

Unless someone were doing a very good job of suppressing it....


Or you could take the hard SF approach like Stephen Baxter. The most horrific concept in the universe is the second law of thermodynamics. It does not matter what you do, what dams or walls you build, entropy will have you in the end.

I like the Dresden Files' interpretation. The Necronomicon does nothing because the White Council published so many copies of it that the entities in question are totally overwhelmed by summons and requests.

[GloatingSwine]

I like the Dresden Files' interpretation. The Necronomicon does nothing because the White Council published so many copies of it that the entities in question are totally overwhelmed by summons and requests.

The Laundry (and other organizations like the Black Chamber) release deliberately wrong information for much the same reason. (It helps that in-universe Lovecraft was a credulous prat whose understanding of the "magic" was incoherent nonsense).

It also helps that the things that really get the attention of the gibbering horrors that lurk at the bottom of the mandelbrot set is very difficult mathematics or massive bursts of entropy (mass death, nuclear detonations, etc), so there's a high barrier to entry.

This also leads to the situation that quite opposed to the norm for these things is that computers are all but required to do anything resembling magic.