As a writer who greatly admires H. P. Lovecraft despite of his obvious shortcomings (such as being dead, and thus hard to invite to fan meetups), I was poring over a black tome containing descriptions of many amorphous, chaotic, ichor-spewing vicious, viscuous entities... and I was struck by their resemblance to our most-discussed editing environment.

This poll is for the Mythos fans among us. Which of these entities out of time and space, of dubious and hard-to-define colour is closest to Wikipedia and its coterie of shrieking editors and admins?

"Jim-Sothoth knows the gate. Jim-Sothoth is the gate. Jim-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Jim-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread."

Well, that was difficult. The various foul and tenebrious horrors on WP sometimes defy description. The geometry of the place is somehow wrong and imparts nameless feelings of dred. It radiates tenticles in all directions, like Yog-Sothoth. And is amorphous and absorbing like a Shoggoth. Perhaps it should not have been created.

In the end I had to go with Azathoth for Jimbo, since he really has no plan, and more or less just sits there in the middle of everything, piping madly and ineffectually. But there's a case to be made for Shub-Niggurath of the woods-- “The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young” a.k.a. “The Black Ram of The Forest with a Thousand Ewes.” Some of whom have BLPs that need work.

The Elder Things, ultimate nerds, are of course administrators. Though some administrators remind me of the great race of Yith, in a strictly scholarly way. Plus that slime trail.

And where are the Mi-Go? My favorite flying fungi from Yuggoth, where under the always-dark sky, there flow rivers of pitch...

The Mi-Go will take you to space
With charm and with wit and with grace
And they'll make your excuses
And run little ruses
And all to make sure you save face...

Possibly WR has them? Have Spacesuit Will Travel does. The Mi-Go are everywhere.

I awoke after hitting 'submit' and heard the chanting, the whistling of the wind through the trees, and the relentless clicking of a thousand keyboards, overwriting all that made sense...

AN/I - At the Mountains of Madness.

Shub-Niggurath and her "Thousand Young."

Hey, if you are talking unstoppable chaos, it's Azathoth Wikipedia!

Wikipedia might be sort of reminiscent of The Shadow Out of Time, maybe. The description of Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee's behavior during the period in which his consciousness has been swapped with an (ancient?) "Yith" might explain similar Wikipedian behavior, especially the strange reliance on jargon and arcane procedures.

Also, there was mention somewhere (probably in The Whisperer in Darkness) of a planet or something called "Yuggoth," which is where all the evil ancient god-monsters might have originally come from. I think there was even a "lake of shit" involved, or something along those lines, but I'd have to look it up. (It's got its own Wikipedia article, but I'm not sure I trust it.)

Of course, the problem with all this is that the god-monsters in the Lovecraft stories are all ancient, and Wikipedia is far from ancient. Other than that, and maybe the whole "god" thing, sure.

It's a lot like being a newbie...

Yuggoth is Pluto, which had been discovered the year before this story was written in 1931. The Mi-Go there are sentient fungal creatures whose faces are made of wriggling cilia, hence my Heinlein allusion. (Heinlein also was a Lovecraft fan).

The Mi-Go are some of the first alien abductors to appear in literature. They kidnap troublesome and inquisitive humans and put their brains into cylinders, after which the bodiless victims can only communicate with the outside world by being hooked up to microphones and speakers (no interent in 1931, but you get the idea). One of them tells the protagonist he should try it; it's very liberating. You can do be a space travel tourist then, if you like: Lovecraft developed the concept of the helpless spam-in-a-can astronaut before anybody! Certainly long before the disconnected Donovan's Brain (1942, later made into a film with Nancy Davis before she took up the even more unbelievable role of First Lady. In the film you keep waiting for her to say "Just say 'no'!").

Remind you of WP yet?

Lovecraft was himself an atheist. His fantasy/SF is in the service of attempting to assemble, somewhat like Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley who were his influences, the ultimate vision of horror. Which usually turns out to be social isolation from all normal human contact, lacking your own body, and put out of touch with your society and your world and your time, and perhaps only a few monsters slobbering around to keep you on the toes you probably (by that time) are lacking. Lovecraft's stories are a series of experiments in complete alienation, which is why so much of stuff derives directly from his own dream-images. And probably why he's eternally popular with the sort of people who write Wikipedia. Which I think some of them do from the containers of fluid in which their brains reside, connected to the outside world by wires. And they don't like Nancy Reagan much, either.



Donovan, BTW, has not filled out his advanced directives, so his doctors are required to keep him alive by any means. It's a very pro-life film.

Although I totally agree with Milton's statements above, Lovecraft's writing is not just about alienation, but is also about the absolute rightness of prejudice as well.

It is shocking at time how bigoted he is about the essential distance in ethical purity between his people and the others, who are of a lower class or race or ethnic group.

It's all very Thirties... or very cliqueish. Or very, very Wikipedian.

You must mean "ethnical purity." He was rather snobbish about his now-decayed family (like the decayed Watleys!) which had seen better times in the past, and he makes the usual racist comments about blacks. However, he moved to New York City and married a Jewish baker, so you can't call him an all purpose bigot about "his people" in all respects. The marriage didn't last, but that was because Lovecraft couldn't find a job and wasn't about to be supported by his wife. Had somebody given the man a job in the city, one imagines that he'd have raised a bunch of Jewish kids. Probably eventually named one of them Derleth. Derleth Lovecraft.

He's definitely on board with the whole early 20th century "The Rising Tide of Color" proto-eugenics bit, which adds to his unintentional hilarity ("Ooooh noooooo! Black people and hillbillys!"), much like his archaic prose. He's warning us about the unspeakable horrors from beyond and yet still finds time to be racist? That's dedication It would be despicable now but most past people would be by modern standards so I just try and ignore it when ole Howard goes off on another rant against degraded bloodlines.

For funsies: if you haven't read it before, a recent re-mix of Lovecraft and the Cold War in short story form A Colder War.