H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos
Taught by James P. Fitzsimmons
Fitz is an Anthropologist, Event Security Specialist, and Sideshow Enthusiast. His experiences have ranged from Music Promotion, a brief foray into Silicone Alley before the Dotcom Collapse, years involved in Pharmaceutical Research, Safety and Litigation Support, and Archaeological projects involving Pre-Contact New York and Early Stone Age Tanzania. He has a strong interest and background in the biological and behavioral understanding of Modern Human Origins. For the last ten years he has been involved with the operations of Coney Island USA's Mermaid Parade and is a graduate of their Sideshow School. He is presently involved in an Anthropological Analysis of Art Theft and Restitution related to Vichy France and has a lifelong
interest in nearly all things just at the edges of respectability.
The Cosmos is ruled by a Blind Idiot God churning at its center, attended to by emerging and vanishing monsters. The Earth was once the battle ground of psionic cephalopodic monsters, imprisoned by a shift in the stars. And mankind, in its ignorance, has become the instrument of their return.
These strange visions of Howard Philip Lovecraft populated the world of 1920s pulp fiction where they were little regarded. But beginning in the 1960s his work was re-evaluated by literary greats like Jose Luis Borges and began to slowly permeate popular culture, beginning in the fringes and have decade by decade moved closer to the center. Known collectively as the Cthulhu Mythos the ideas begun by Lovecraft has attracted contributions and expansions by writers such as Stephen King, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and have been the inspiration, whether acknowledge or not, but many of the horror films and genre entertainment of the last two decades.
This presentation will act as an introduction to the Mythos of Elder Gods, Great Old Ones and Servitor creatures which populate Lovecraft's Work and influence.
