California

California is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is the setting of H. P. Lovecraft's revision tale "The Last Test," and is mentioned elsewhere in his fiction. It frequently appears as a setting in later Cthulhu Mythos fiction.
California was originally inhabited by Indigenous peoples, including the Yurok, Pomo, Miwok, and Chumash, among many others. Starting in 1769, the area was colonized by the Spanish Empire; when Mexico gained its independence in 1821, Alta California became a territory of the new nation. It was seized by the United States in 1846 during the Mexican-American War, and became a state in 1850. Since 1962, it's been the most populous state in the union.
Sacramento is the capital of California, and Los Angeles its largest city. Other prominent cities include San Francisco and San Jose in the Bay Area, and San Diego near the southern border with Mexico.
== In Lovecraft's Fiction ==
"The Last Test," a story Lovecraft wrote with Adolphe de Castro, is set in California; one of its characters, James Dalton, is in fact governor of the state. The story's central character, Dr. Alfred Clarendon, lives in San Francisco after being appointed the medical director of the California State Penitentiary at San Quentin. His arrival makes California "a centre of medical scholarship with earthwide influence and reputation."
The narrator of Lovecraft's story "Dagon" wakes up in a San Francisco hospital after his encounter with the giant on the risen sea floor.
"The Call of Cthulhu" names California as one of the areas where Cthulhu's influence is felt in the spring of 1925: Among George Gammell Angell's notes are a "despatch from California [that] describes a theosophist colony as donning white robes en masse for some 'glorious fulfilment' which never arrives."
In The Whisperer in Darkness, Henry Wentworth Akeley has a son, George Goodenough Akeley, in San Diego, California; Henry plans to relocate to his son's home when he begins to fear for his life from the Mi-Go. Later he despairs: "They don’t mean to let me get to California now—they want to take me off alive, or what theoretically and mentally amounts to alive."
== Other Mythos Writers ==
"The Return of the Sorcerer" (1931), by Clark Ashton Smith, is set at John Carnby's house in the suburban hills of Oakland, California. Smith's "The Hunters from Beyond" (1932) takes place at the studio of Cyprian Sincaul in San Francisco.
Henry Kuttner's "The Invaders" (1939) takes place in Michael Hayward's "isolated cottage on the beach north of Santa Barbara." His "Bells of Horror" (1939) is set in the fictional town of San Xavier, not far from Los Angeles. The main action of Kuttner's "Hydra" (1939) takes place in Hollywood, with the fatal book purchased in San Pedro, a seaport neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Fritz Leiber set his story "The Terror from the Depths" (1976) in Vulture's Roost, a fictional community in the Hollywood Hills above Los Angeles. The story describes Southern California as a "land of sunlight, crumbling sandstones, and sea-spawned hills." His novel Our Lady of Darkness is set in San Francisco, and treats the city almost as a major character.
The beach in Alan Dean Foster's "The Horror on the Beach" (1978) is near Santa Barbara, along the Pacific Coast Highway.
Dunhill Sanitarium, the setting of Lin Carter's "Something in the Moonlight," (1980) is found in the fictional Santiago, California.
"Fat Face" (1987), by Michael Shea, occurs in the demimonde of Los Angeles. Kim Newman's "The Big Fish" (1993) borrows Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles for its backdrop, including Bay City, Chandler's fictionalized version of Santa Monica.
Category:Locations Incorporated From the Real World
Category:Regions/Territories