Following on from Linda's post: a further demonstration of Lovecraft's virulence as an agent of hyperstition here and here, wherein it is argued that the 'ancient astronaut' hypothesis popularized - or should that be pulpularized - by Velikovsky, Von Daniken, Temple and later adherents such as Graham Hancock, derived from HPL. This pulp archaeocosmology maintains that the destiny of humanity was altered by the intervention of aliens (who were thought of as 'gods') during humanity's pre-history.
Temple is the most interesting of these thinkers, if only because his The Sirius Mystery was, for a time, given serious shelf-space in academia. The hyperstional tangle in which Temple, the Dogons and Griaule are implicated is one that I hope we can explore here at more length in future.
Hubbard, another propagator of the 'ancient astronaut' theory, is of course one more writer who is fascinating from the point of view of hyperstition; though, as Burroughs shows in 'Naked Scientology' 'bare-faced messiah' Hubbard diluted the hyperstitional potential of Scientology by demanding belief, locking down any polyvalences or ontological disturbances his mythos threatened to provoke by insisting on a single, Authorized interpretation.
Further to Reza's post: Lovecraft is also deeply implicated in videogame hyperstitional fictional systems. Lovecraft has been repeatedly referenced and (unconsciously and consciously) appropriated since the inception of the PC Horror game genre, but it was only last year that Headfirst returned to the ur-source and released a Cthulhu game.
Posted by mark k-punk at June 21, 2004 02:55 PMAgree about Temple, but what about Vallee? Surely his work is the most overt Hyperstitionally-loaded contribution to the 'genre' - especially with the invocation of (Islamic) Occasionalism - which is to say the hyper-cosmos of invocations in general.
Posted by: Nick at June 23, 2004 02:07 AMObviously Valee is one of the principal hyperstitional agents, but is he, strictly speaking, a proponent of the 'ancient astronaut' hypothesis?
Actually, Nick, was hoping that you'd get something together on Valee...
btw, you've played the Lovecraft PC game haven't you?
Posted by: mark at June 23, 2004 04:06 AMPoint taken - although Vallee's conflation of 'fairies' with ETs does some of the same work that the Ancient Astronoaut Hypothesis does. It's a kind of Plutonic looping I guess, putting the Outside on the inside (of history), the 'future' (or at least 'spaceships') in the deep past, ultra-science in myth.
Definitely keen to start making a contribution here - Vallee being a prime candidate (although there might be aomething of a book-access problem). Anyway, I'm on it.
Spent a day with Ccru-frags playing the Lovecraft game a couple of years ago - seemed quite cool (with narrative embedding and time rupture being major elements). One of the most exciting things about this blog is the re-animation of the game-format issue for Hyperstitional material IMHO.
Posted by: Nick at June 23, 2004 05:29 AMThink memory + internet shd be fine for Valee - think there's a real virtue in just laying out some of the territory/ concepts/ figures...
Agree abt games, naturally --- Reza is the expert on this area, I think ----
Posted by: mark at June 23, 2004 05:48 PMMark, do you know the title of that Lovecraft game? ... I played an adventure game based on the Cthulhu mythos sometime ago but it was so tasteless compared to similar titles.
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