Below is the fifth in our series of author interviews celebrating Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos Month by investigating how authors define the terms. Thanks to author Laura Keating for her time and answers! Check
Below is the fifth in our series of author interviews celebrating Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos Month by investigating how authors define the terms. Thanks to author Laura Keating for her time and answers! Check out our Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos Page for more interviews and original fiction.
How do you define the term Cosmic Horror?
Cosmic Horror is a subgenre of Weird Horror which, through increasing dread, forces the reader/viewer to confront human insignificance.
There are so many things we do not understand, so much we will never learn, and everything on this planet (including the planet itself) will one day die. The sun will expand into a bloated red giant, and this and all its history will all be gone. These are huge, terrifying truths, things that – to avoid constant existential crisis – we have mental blinders around. Cosmic Horror lifts those blinders slowly away, forcing you to stare into the inevitable and eternal drain we’re all circling.
I am very fun at parties.
How do you define the term Cthulhu Mythos?
The Cthulhu Mythos largely refers to the stories related to the pantheon of “Old Gods” created by Howard Phillips Lovecraft as a means of putting faces on the faceless Unknown terrors of the universe. But for the most part, these Gods are unseen, their hidden influence effecting characters who are close to learning or have learned too much about them. These stories usually had recurring motifs: cults, madness, forbidden text, lost cities, cursed people, or doomed scholars. When something is said to be “Lovecraftian” it is usually for the heavy use of one or more of these elements.
Another definitive element of the Cthulhu Mythos is its public nature. “Cthulhu Mythos” was not a term that Lovecraft used, but was coined by August Derleth, a fellow writer and fan of Lovecraft’s work, to describe the stories of Lovecraft with these shared motifs. Lovecraft was by no means the only person working with these ideas/themes in the early 20th Century but because his work entered the public domain so quickly it became abundantly accessible and was an open sandbox for others to play it. And so, over the last hundred years, legions of new fans have found the “Mythos” and have expanded upon it, adding lore and characters, and creating a strange universe far beyond the original stories. It’s still being written, which is pretty rad.
Can you recommend a tale of Cosmic Horror, in the Cthulhu Mythos, or both?
There is a gorgeous manga adaptation of “At the Mountains of Madness” by Gou Tanabe. The story itself might be Lovecraft’s best; Tanabe’s stunning and stark ink drawings bring it to life in a way that is unforgettable and genuinely terrifying.
Can you recommend something of your own work? Cosmic Horror, Cthulhu Mythos, or Otherwise?
My short collection The Truest Sense is strung through with cosmic horror (and many other Horrors, as it is my kind of love letter to the genre). I recommend starting at the beginning or the end or somewhere in the middle. Whatever makes sense.
About the Author
Laura Keating is an author from Saint Andrews, New Brunswick.
After graduating from Renaissance College of the University of New Brunswick with at Bachelor of Philosophy, Laura spent two years teaching English in Kagoshima, Japan. She has since worked as a legal assistant, a bookseller, an editor, and a freelance writer.
Her fiction has been published by Tenebrous Press, Grindhouse Press, Cemetery Gates, Ghost Orchid Press, and many others. She authors stories about monsters both human and unnatural.
A passionate traveler, she has visited twenty countries and is always looking for the next adventure. She now lives in beautiful south shore Nova Scotia with her husband and son. She is querying her first novel.
For more updates, please follow her on Bluesky (@lorekeating) and Instagram (@lorekeating); and Facebook (Laura Keating, author)
About the Interviewer
Jeremiah Dylan Cook is the author of A Mythos of Monsters and Madness, which includes Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos short stories. He founded Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos Month in January of 2023.
