From: lizi@ocf.berkeley.edu (Cosma R. Shalizi)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories,alt.horror
Subject: Re: Cthulhu for Prez!!
Date: 30 Sep 1992 01:30:21 GMT
Organization: Vampire Research Group at Berkeley :)
NNTP-Posting-Host: earthquake.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Sep29.151119.1@ulkyvx.louisville.edu> kamata01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu writes:
>Hello everyone.  My name is Kymberli... and I just noticed this group today..
>It looks really interesting.  I just thought I'd intorduce myself since I had
>already made some general comments.... I just have a question....
>Who is ....
>> CTHULHU 
>Thanks
> Kymberli
    Great Cthulhu is a monster invented by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft
in the 1920s (maybe early '30s - my memory grows hazy). He - it, really - is
at once an alien being of unimaginable powers (etc., etc.) and worshipped
by some particularly benighted/insane/science-fiction-fannish folks, who
work to hasten the day he will return from his tomb/city/condo called R'yleh,
currently sunk beneath the Pacific. This will happen "when the stars are
right." (I wrote a paper once on the parallels between Cthulhu and Jesus.
It got published. Ask me & I'll email a copy.)
    Lovecraft wrote a fair number of stories about Cthulhu, his relatives,
minions, etc. They are known, collectively, as "The Cthulhu Mythos."
If you can overcome his adjectivitis, they're quite good, and in paperback
(look in either the SF or horror section of your favorite bookstore). It's
not a terribly pleasant universe - Lovecraft was a materialistic atheist
with a fairly grim outlook on life, and his gods are at best inclined to
leave us alone - but it has a definite hold on the imagination. This is not
hurt by a role-playing game named CALL OF CTHULHU (like the story which
introduced G.C.) put out by Chaosium (they people selling the "Cthulhu for
President" stuff).
    (One of the bits of "corroborative detail, lending an air of artistic
verisimlitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative" HPL used
was an occult book called the _Necronomicon_, supposedly a translation of
the _Kitab al-Azif_ by the "mad Arab Abdul Alhazrad," which in addition to
telling you more than you ever wanted to know about the Cthulhu Mythos did
horrible things to your mind in the process. "Abdul Alhazrad" was a name
Lovecraft made up for himself when he was a kid intoxicated with the
_Thousand and One Nights_; it makes no sense in Arabic. The book itself,
needless to say, also does not exist. This has not prevented practical
jokers from inserting it in library catalogs, etc., or con-artists from
selling "the authentic version" to ignorant and/or foolish people who then
bother the Hell out of alt.horror.)
    I hope this answers your question.
	Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
	In Real Life: lizi@ocf.berkeley.edu
	larval physicist
	VP, Campus Crusade for Cthulhu (Berkeley) for which I DO speak
CTHULHU IN '92! DON't SETTLE FOR THE LESSER EVIL!

P.S. They don't teach classical literature at Louisville? :)
-- 
"Some savages are persuaded by the 'natural light' that it is their duty to
 eat people, and even Voltaire's savages, who are led by the voice of reason
 to hold that one should only eat Jesuits, are not wholly satisfactory."
-Bertrand Russell on Rousseau in _A History of Western Philosophy_, p. 694
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories