Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Exception

It occurred to me after reading what I last wrote.  Although, Sci-fi writers quietly eschew the impossible task of creating the truly alien (while pretending to do otherwise) the one glaring exception is H.P. Lovecraft.  Instead of politely ignoring the problem, he reveled in it.  He took the impossibility of it, built a gilded frame around it, and shined his spotlights into the abyss.  (Of course, for Lovecraft, it wasn't so much the impossibility of creating the truly alien that he found vexing, but rather the impossibility of being able to cope with it.)

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