Tag Archives: lovecraftian

goodness, nerd

Fun with words

I cannot recommend the H. P. Lovecraft reading experience highly enough.  In addition to being totally immersed in his fantastic writing style and dark, misty universe full of monsters and ancient, unspeakable evil, Lovecraft is making me a smarter person.  New vocabulary for the win!

smooth with bubbles inside

smooth with bubbles inside

Word of the Week: Fulgurite
Fulgurites are awesome.  They’re the result of a lightning strike (or some other intense discharge of energy, like a downed power line) to the ground.  The soil/sand fuses and liquefies, then instantly hardens, creating a tube in the shape of the path the discharging energy took.

Here’s the really cool part: Fulgurites can be found all over the Sahara desert.  Why would that be?  There’s no lightning in the Sahara desert today, but the presence of fulgurites demonstrates that what is now a desert used to have completely different eco and weather systems.  So tubes of glassy sand buried deep in the desert tell us that the driest desert on the planet used to have intense rain and thunder storms.  Super cool!

fulgurite 1

the path of lightning

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goodness, nerd

Rapidly falling in Lovecraft

creepy genius

I bought the entire collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories (for a dollar!) on my Kindle Touch, and… I’m in love.  This man’s writing style is everything I crave when I pick up a book: damned souls pulled in by seductive haunts and eerie landscapes, written in the turn-of-the-century style that takes its time to set the mood and make me feel actual fear for the main characters.  What was frightening in 1900 is frightening now.  No hyper-clever plot twist needed, just a draining sense of safety.  Like a shadow creeping with unnatural quickness, like the slow approach of distant drums, a cloak is cast over my shoulders as I read, bringing a chill draft and a musty scent of old lunacy.

I just can’t seem to get enough of it.  His writing is more than descriptive, it’s airtight.  I hope others in my generation will allow their curiosity to take hold, and take the time to read his stories (instead of just alluding to them endlessly).

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