Below is the next in our series of author interviews celebrating Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos Month by investigating how authors define the terms. Thanks to the Kevin Scott Joiner for his time, answers, and
Below is the next in our series of author interviews celebrating Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos Month by investigating how authors define the terms. Thanks to the Kevin Scott Joiner for his time, answers, and for providing a great story for us to publish this month! Check out our Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos Page for more interviews and Joiner’s “What the Light May Hide.”
How do you define the term Cosmic Horror?
I’ll answer this in two ways: as both a reader and writer of the genre.
Despite author H. P. Lovecraft’s early and excellent work in codifying the term, and decades of research and debate among scholars, the academic consensus on the fundamentals of cosmic horror (Call it theory.) remains somewhat nebulous. I think that has to do with the fact that nearly every author working in the genre puts their own unique stamp on it (Call it practice.), usually in a manner that tweaks the form according to their own preferred interpretation. I suppose this kind of evolution happens with all genres, but cosmic horror seems to do so at an accelerated rate. This has also given rise to a host of subgenres, to the point that it may be an easier task to answer, “What isn’t cosmic horror?”
Still, there are some touchstones that tend to loom large in any definition of cosmic horror, and I’d be shocked if the general opinion of the other authors in this interview series differ greatly from my own. So, I feel in good company when stating that I look to cosmic horror for themes, imagery, scenarios, etc., as well as a menagerie of characters and creatures, that evoke one particular idea: that humanity and all that stems from it are insignificant players in an otherwise disinterested universe. Furthermore, that universe, which is taken to be unimaginably vast in every conceivable dimension and aspect, is ultimately unknowable, and the deeper you probe its mysteries, the greater the risk to your being and sanity. Cosmic horror, then, as well as the philosophy of cosmicism underpinning it, lies at the shadowy end of what is implied by the famous quote by J. B. S. Haldane, “ … the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
So, that is, arguably, the most basic concept of cosmic horror as a genre. From that, we get a wealth of different approaches. But whatever the take, humanity is generally rendered as the neglected, middle child of existence, struggling futilely for meaning and purpose in the fleeting span between an origin it cannot fathom and an end it can neither foresee nor forestall.
As a reader, I live for exactly this kind of stuff. But as an author and artist in general, whenever I find myself inspired by this or any other genre or body of work, it becomes incumbent upon me to add my own unique take to the tradition. After all, if I’m doing it right, my own perspectives and prejudices of vision are going to come out on the page anyway. So, I might as well spike the crucible of my creation with a tangy dose of intention.
To that end, and to clearly express my own views on what constitutes truly cosmic horror, I find it essential to discuss what separates horror from related genres like the suspense story or the thriller (Michael Jackson’s masterpiece notwithstanding)? Fear, certainly, is the coarse, uncomfortable thread from which this coat of many unnatural colors is woven. But the presence of fear alone does not a horrific tale make. In fact, I would argue that much of what we call horror, particularly when absent any supernatural elements or intimation, is merely that heightened sense of fear we call terror. In my estimation, an aspect of profound revelation must be added to the equation in order to achieve true horror.
Of course, this shouldn’t be mistaken for whatever realization the protagonist has that now demarcates the before and after of some life-altering event. The disturbingly human monster at the end of the serial killer novel or the gigantic (but not impossibly so) shark lurking in the tranquil depths of tourist-laden waters, while terrible, do not change the protagonist’s fundamental understanding or relationship with the world. This kind of trauma and its resultant wisdom are certainly worthy of artistic expression, and can, in the right hands, be contextualized into a true horror tale. But they aren’t, in and of themselves, horror with a capital H.
Genuine horror alters more than the heart or the mind. It alters whatever it is in us that we attempt to encapsulate with the word, soul. The ordeals of violent crime, of natural disasters, of so-called untimely grief, these leave an indelible mark upon us, whether within or without. Usually both. But such trials and tribulations tend to draw us closer to our friends, family, communities, and faiths, as opposed to isolating us in our pain. Horror, on the other hand, even when its experience is shared by others, does not invite commiseration. Rather, it imposes an increasingly distancing and lonely silence on those who experience it. As such, horror is not something that you merely survive; it is something you, and you alone, bear with you to the end of your days. Perhaps beyond.
If this is starting to sound to you a bit like existential horror, then you’re getting a good idea of what I seek to emphasize in my own writing. For me, existential horror and cosmic horror are two sides of the same coin, the latter being the former writ large. Maybe it’s my own love and emphasis of character over plot, but when the protagonist stands at the edge of the Void and stares out at an emptiness they now know is their own reflection, that is when I most share in their horror. In that moment, neither the protagonist nor I are contemplating what the revelation means for the rest of humanity. We’re thinking about what it means for ourselves, even if simultaneously recognizing its applicability to all others.
I have a working motto that is a sort of dark recentering of the famous maxim, “As above, so below,” which is itself a paraphrasing of the second verse of The Emerald Tablet, an 8th or 9th-century CE work of Hermeticism and alchemy. For me, “As without, so within” encapsulates an idea that, while evident in many works of cosmic horror, could stand to be emphasized more often. The basic idea is that, if:
a) the universe, as a whole, is incomprehensible and unconcerned with our well-being, desires, social structures, etc., and
b) human beings are an evolutionary product of this same universe, then
c) it stands to reason that our inner nature and all that proceeds from it are, ultimately, just as incomprehensible to us, and unconcerned with anything we might deem beneficial.
Our motivations, narratives, sense of freewill, etc. serve forces outside of our understanding or influence. In this context, all narrators become unreliable. The origins and goals of our desires, even seemingly moral ones, become suspect. Civilization is transformed to mere mechanism — one whose end product will shrug off its fleshy, sentient cogs once their usefulness is spent.
So, that’s cosmic horror for me. It’s the kind of horror that robs you of your ironclad faith in freewill, and your trust that the god you struggle to still believe in really has your best interests at heart. It forces you to forever question your inherent value as a member of this or any other society, and in your capacity to ever achieve happiness, find purpose, or derive meaning. It leads you to doubt even your understanding of what those things are. And like the patriarch Jacob limping toward dawn after wrestling an angel through the night, you can never again be so surefooted as you go about your now less colorful days.
Cosmic horror carves an unbridgeable chasm between the horrified and those still blessed with comforting illusions of an orderly, benign, and ultimately understandable universe and self. The bearer of horror might tell their story, but never as a tale in search of a sympathetic ear. It is expressed only to get the maddening memory out of your mind and into the world, all in a knowingly vain attempt to make sense of that which must, by definition, defy reason. Horror’s revelations remove our truths but replace them with doubt. Sometimes, not even that. All that remains in that empty aftermath are the unanswerable echoes of questions we’ve always had. And the loudest are those we’ve always been afraid to ask, the ones that only come to us in late hours of involuntary wakefulness, or in the thrall of dreams best forgotten. Cosmic horror, then, is not a hard-won enlightenment born of turmoil overcome, but an unavoidable and unending endarkenment unwelcomely gifted by forces beyond human ken or control or supplication. And, unfortunately, to those with a certain existential sensitivity, even ordinary trauma can become a doorway yawning upon deeper gulfs of truth. As such, it is my firm belief that, when properly presented, cosmic horror, no matter how metaphorical that presentation, is the most honest genre we have at our disposal.
How do you define the term Cthulhu Mythos?
Unlike the previous question, this one’s a bit easier to answer, though not easy by any stretch of the imagination. There’s a traceable history behind the term, but still a lot of debate about the particulars.
The titular Cthulhu, a colossal, tentacle-faced man-dragon (Sorry, Trogdor. You were not the first.), was a popular creation of Lovecraft himself, though countless other writers have incorporated this priest of the Great Old Ones into their own stories. Notable among these was August Derleth, an author and editor of cosmic horror and other genres. As a teenager and a burgeoning writer, Derleth wrote to Lovecraft via Weird Tales, a pulp magazine that often published Lovecraft’s tales and with which the man’s name has become inextricably linked. This began a correspondence and friendship that lasted until Lovecraft’s death in 1937. A greater part of that friendship saw Lovecraft encouraging Derleth’s writing, as the elder author had done with many others. Along with this encouragement often came his blessing to reference or even develop the many strange beings, locales, histories, and other elements of Lovecraft’s stories into their own. Likewise, Lovecraft borrowed similar references from other correspondents whose writing he admired. This “Lovecraft Circle”, as it came to be known, remains among the most fruitful collaborative writing groups in the history of literature, and its direct legacy continues today in various forms and branches.
Within two years of Lovecraft’s death, Derleth, along with author Donald Wandrei, founded the publishing company Arkham House. Taking its name from a fictional town of Lovecraft’s creation, Arkham House was created for the express purpose of publishing Lovecraft’s works in book form. Soon enough, the company was successful enough to publish other writers, with a focus on Lovecraft’s correspondents and new authors of cosmic horror and other genres falling under the weird fiction umbrella. Common among these many tales were elements that expanded upon Lovecraft’s creations, in ways both concrete and conceptual. Dubbing this growing body of work and its wealth of lore the “Cthulhu Mythos”, Derleth went far in spreading, along with Lovecraft’s fame, its unifying practice of collaborative, loosely connected mythopoeia. He also added plenty of wood to the pile himself, and undertook attempts to more formally codify these myths into various, interrelated pantheons and bestiaries.
The most important thing to note is that this practice still persists, making the Cthulhu Mythos very much a still living, evolving phenomenon. Arguably, the practice is more common than ever, though what works and elements should be grouped under the moniker of Cthulhu Mythos is hotly debated. That ongoing debate and the confusion that engenders it are, I think, entirely the point, and should be considered just as much a part of the Mythos as any of the gods, aliens, tomes, locales, and the like. Lovecraft seems never to have sought any rigorous canonization of his creations, and to my knowledge, his encouragement to other writers to borrow freely from his works came without any obligation of faithfulness or even coherence to his own plots or histories. So, in my opinion, the more loosely connected the various member entities, artifacts, regions, etc. of the Cthulhu Mythos, the better, and the closer in spirit to Lovecraft’s approach to this kind of thing.
For the record, I regularly participate in this practice myself (Thanks, Jeremiah, for letting me namedrop the Living Void!) and am always plumbing my subconscious for new personalities and abominations to fill out the roster of my own, Cthulhu-adjacent, Nulliversal Mythos and its Amber Pantheon. But in doing so, I make little to no effort to adhere to any perceived canon or history outside of my own, which I purposefully leave vague and self-contradictory. At best, I’ll briefly mention some deity or similar whose membership in the Cthulhu Mythos is well-established. Even then, I’ll often alter the name or description just to sow a little more chaos in this creatively fertile field. And while I have no idea what Lovecraft would have thought about my work (something something derivative, second-rate excrement), I have reason to believe that he would have appreciated the effort, or lack thereof, to add to the ever-expanding intangibility that is the Cthulhu Mythos.
Can you recommend a tale of Cosmic Horror, in the Cthulhu Mythos, or both?
While I have a love for all forms of cosmic horror, and all corners of the Cthulhu Mythos, I have a particular affection for the weirder stories of Robert W. Chambers. The King in Yellow, his 1895 collection of short stories, has been so massively influential to writers of cosmic horror that it has spawned its own continually growing branch of the Cthulhu Mythos. The list of inspired authors includes Lovecraft, who not only spoke very highly
of Chambers’ work, but borrowed some elements from The King in Yellow for his own stories. While Chambers’ book, in turn, borrowed a few terms from Ambrose Bierce’s short story, “An Inhabitant of Carcosa”, it was Lovecraft’s continuation of this process that really seeded the ground of what we might call the Carcosan Mythos.
Only the first few stories in The King in Yellow are generally considered to be cosmic horror, or even just general weird fiction, but they are masterpieces of the form. In particular, “The Yellow Sign” and “The Repairer of Reputations” are standouts. Both are loosely connected to each other and to an additional two stories in the collection, “The Mask” and “In the Court of the Dragon”. But their collective influence on the cosmic horror genre, and specifically the Cthulhu Mythos, cannot be overstated.
In particular, “The Yellow Sign”, with its many vaguely outlined beings, locales, objects, and symbols, casts a broad shadow over countless works of cosmic horror. It is, for instance, no great stretch to draw a straight line from Lovecraft’s utilization (if not creation) of the celebrated, fictional history, The Necronomicon, in his stories, and Chambers’ similar use of the forbidden play from which his own book gets its title. Much of my own work (and I’m far from alone here) is heavily inspired by these elements, and I consider my own developing mythos to be largely an expansion of these ideas.
Another, more well-known example of The King in Yellow’s influence is the exceptional first season of HBO’s anthology crime drama, True Detective, starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. Though its themes borrow more (to the point of plagiarism) from Thomas Ligotti, its characters and plot devices make specific references to elements of Chambers’ work. The mentions, which are vague but heavy with implication, are used to great effectiveness in building a sense of eerie mystery. And the fact that Chambers and his writings either do not exist in that universe or are unknown to our out-of-their-depth heroes only makes things that much more unsettling.
So, if you consume your cosmic horror in more than just the written form, you could do a lot worse than watching the show’s first season. As to the following seasons, only the fourth presents any strong connection to the first or has an is-it-supernatural-or-not quality to the plot. On top of that, its story is pretty hit or miss, as are those of seasons two and three. That said, there was much I enjoyed about them all, and it’s as easy to find viewers who loved every season as it is to find those who didn’t.
Can you recommend something of your own work? Cosmic Horror, Cthulhu Mythos, or Otherwise?
Well, there’s the obvious example of “What the Light My Hide,” the story Jeremiah so graciously featured this month on New Pulp Tales, and which I wrote under the name of fictional author Holt Keystone. Many thanks to my friend and frequent collaborator, Alan Hughes (aka Samuel Mancier), for the excellent artwork that accompanied the story.
Besides that, I’d recommend Forbidden Cassettes: Consummation. It’s a twelve-episode cosmic/analog horror audio-drama for which I was co-creator along with Adrian Vanderbosch. In addition to writing the story, I co-starred in it, and composed and produced all of its music.
The show is an intentionally slow burn at first, as we took a page out of Lovecraft’s approach by aiming for an extreme sense of reality and verisimilitude. But stick with it. As Jeremiah can tell you, once it gets around the end of episode 3, we really put the pedal down and don’t let up. Things get real dark real fast. And if you enjoyed this
month’s featured story here on New Pulp Tales, you’ll be happy to know the show references Keystone and his works and even features one of his poems set to music.
Forbidden Cassettes: Consummation is a high-concept, character-driven cosmic horror, and fans of Lovecraft, Ligotti, Chambers, and Stephen King should get a lot out of it. You can find it anywhere you get your podcasts.
Beyond that, I have a lot more work actively in process, including several collaborations with Alan Hughes. In the cosmic horror queue are more short stories, a couple of novellas, and some multimedia projects centered around music. Most of these are being written as Keystone or other characters from that universe, and a few will be available very soon. To find out more about my projects, both current and upcoming, find me on Patreon under Silk House Productions.
About the Author
Kevin Scott Joiner has long been a writer and performer in many forms and mediums but considers himself a worldbuilder above all else.
His most recent work has been focused on establishing and expanding what he calls his Nulliversal Mythos. The first major project in this ongoing process is the cosmic/analog horror audio-drama, Forbidden Cassettes: Consummation, for which Kevin served as co-creator, story writer, co-star, and soundtrack composer. This twelve episode limited series features “The Cat Alone Will Remember,” an in-universe poem written by Holt Keystone and set to music by the apocalyptic prog rock band, Æ.S.C.
Both that writer and band are fictitious, however, and operate somewhere between pseudonyms and characters adopted by Kevin. “What the Light May Hide,” the featured story for Cosmic Horror and Cthulhu Mythos Month, is Kevin’s most recent tale as Keystone. It also features illustrations by Kevin’s friend and frequent collaborator, Alan Hughes.
When not busy creating universes or being a woefully inattentive husband and father, Kevin can be found working in his recording studio, or performing live, improvisational film scores with his experimental rock band, City in Fog.
To find out more about Forbidden Cassettes, visit www.forbiddenpod.com or download the show wherever you get your podcasts. Or visit Silk House Productions’ page at Patreon to learn more about Kevin’s latest projects.
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.
