Saturday, January 24, 2009

Aliens on Earth -- Part 2: Revisions

In the last post, I covered the aliens in H. P. Lovecraft's solo work. Moving to his revisions and co-authored stories, the picture gets muddier.

In "The Mound" a race of humans or semi-humans is found in vast caverns under Arizona. Despite their human appearance, though, they claim to have been brought to Earth by Cthulhu. Even they have begun to doubt it at this late date, but they do have strange idols of a metal not found on Earth to back up their beliefs. The rest of humanity is descended from them, and their history seems to cover a vastly greater span of time than that of surface humans - "they knew of the outer world, and were indeed the original stock who had peopled it as soon as its crust was fit to live on." If taken literally, this would mean that their species is billions of years old. I frankly don't think this can be harmonized with Lovecraft's other writings: it seems like they would have shown up in the histories of the Yithians or Elder Things, not to mention all the references to "pre-human" this, that, or the other. It can work, though, if we take "as soon as its crust was fit to live upon" as hyperbole, putting their arrival on Earth sometime in the late Cenozoic (though it might have to be earlier, if they were in fact brought by Cthulhu; the geological period of R'lyeh's sinking is unclear).

In "Out of the Aeons", Ghatanothoa is the god of a race from Yuggoth (that is, Pluto) that came to Earth "before the birth of terrestrial life" and built great cities and fortresses, but then died out. Ghatanothoa, apparently being immortal, is the only survivor, but he may not actually be of that race. It seems that this species is not the Mi-Go/Fungi from Yuggoth from "The Whisperer in Darkness", since the Mi-Go seem to have arrived later in Earth's history, and "The Whisperer in Darkness" says that Yuggoth was once inhabited by another species before the Mi-Go arrived. We are not told why this species settled Earth; but if they were natives of Pluto, Earth would not be far away.

"The Challenge from Beyond" describes a cube used for mental transmissions and transfers by the centipede-like Yekubians; but these had no special interest in Earth until they struck it by accident, having scattered the cubes across all of space where they would hopefully land upon inhabited worlds. Later they made mental contact with the Yithians, and Earth became more interesting to them.

So, in summary: The only species whose reasons to choose Earth are uncertain are the Elder Things, earlier Yuggoth creatures, and Yithians: and all of these have credible reasons. The excessive number of species doesn't seem so excessive after all...

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Aliens on Earth: Part 1 (Lovecraft)

One of the big mysteries about the Cthulhu Mythos universe is – why are there so many alien species on Earth? What is it about our planet that has attracted at least five major alien species (the Mi-Go, the Antarctic Elder Things, the Flying Polyps, the Yithians, and the spawn of Cthulhu) in Lovecraft’s works alone, plus many others in other Mythos stories?

Well, nobody really knows, but here are my speculations:

If we look just at Lovecraft’s work, we see that aliens show up for several reasons. Earth is simply one of many planets the Mi-Go visit, useful for mining as well as occasional studies of humans. Their interstellar civilization is said to include not only a major base on Pluto/Yuggoth, but other star systems, other galaxies, and even worlds “beyond the last curved rim of the universe” (The Whisperer in Darkness). Thus, it’s not too surprising they use Earth. We’re not particularly special to them, just one of countless worlds, and a relatively unimportant one at that – there don’t seem to be permanent Mi-Go colonies on Earth.

The Yithians arrived to escape a gigantic cataclysm that destroyed their original world, Yith– it isn’t clear they had much choice in where to go. However, Yith is described as “trans-galactic” (Shadow out of Time); if it’s on the other side of the galaxy, surely we weren’t the nearest acceptable planet? The Yithians could only move their minds, so they needed a planet with an intelligent species. If the Mythos universe is so full of aliens, though, that doesn’t seem too difficult. Perhaps the Cone-Beings they took over were simply easier to control than other species in our galaxy. This does make sense; many Mythos creatures have exceptional mental abilities and might be able to prevent or repel a Yithian mind’s takeover attempt.

The Elder Things, Flying Polyps, and spawn of Cthulhu engaged in full colonization of the Earth, but at separate times. The Elder Things arrived first, before terrestrial life; their colonies centered in Antarctica and the surrounding seas. At some uncertain later point, Flying Polyps arrived and dominated much of the Earth until defeated and trapped underground by the Yithians. The spawn of Cthulhu arrived much later. During long and inconclusive wars with the Elder Things, they seem to have mostly been restricted to a continent which no longer exists, which eventually vanished, trapping them: “all the lands of the Pacific sank” (At the Mountains of Madness). The Yithians and Elder Things left in control of the Earth engaged in wars, but apparently rarely.

The Deep Ones and the Nameless City’s reptilian beings seem to be natives to Earth, though they do form two additional sentient races. It is not clear that the Deep Ones are older than primitive forms of humanity, so they may have arrived on the scene after most of the alien species had departed or been trapped. The Nameless City reptiles seem to have remained in their own area, far from the Yithians and Polyps centering in Australia, the Elder Things centering in Antarctica, and the Cthulhu spawn in the Pacific.