First up, a quick warning. This blog entry discusses a very... notorious and controversial and heavy topic in Sci-fi and horror literature, as you can probably see from the title. There will be some unfortunate language used in quotes as a result in this entry. Be aware that the opinions expressed in this piece are not intended to belittle or in any way cause offense to anyone, of any race, color, or creed. I am aware my own privilege may play into what I am about to say here today, and I am aware of how serious this issue is. But as a female horror author with mental illness, I would be stupid not to comment on this very, very serious issue that, to my knowledge, I wasn't aware that people didn't know about and were still very troubled by. So, here goes nothing. This is your final chance to leave if you think this entry might be problematic for you, or if you just don't want to get involved.
So guys, H. P. Lovecraft was a Jazz Era (20's-30's) Horror and Sci-fi author who wrote a great number of stories and poems. In many of his stories, the pervasive themes of human insignificance in the universe and the fear of the unknown and other are prominant. They speak to a paranoid place in our minds, the part that wonders if something... evil and other isn't watching us as we speak, something dangerous and disastrous and beyond our mortal ken. What do we really know about the universe, even with all our scientific advances? What can we really hope to achieve when humankind itself is so primitive, backwards, and pointless compared to the rest of what's lurking out there? How much knowledge do we really have on the earth's history, or hell, even our own family history? No, better to remain blissfully ignorant, for ignorance is bliss.
Anyhow, Lovecraft's legacy left a huge impact on science fiction and horror as a whole, and introduced the Cthulhu Mythos (which Lovecraft himself actually referred to as "Yog-Sothothory" due to Yog-Sothoth being a more important figure in his work than Cthulhu himself) to the world. Vast, abyssal cosmos of monstrous creatures, blind idiot gods at the center of time and space dancing to the beat of blasphemous drums and flutes, Pharaohs that embodied a crawling chaos and black goats of the woods that spawned thousands of monsters... This and more Lovecraft brought to the imagination of hundreds, and eventually, millions. There are RPGs, video games, movies, and all sorts of other cool as fuck things based on his works. He's part of the reason giant monsters are so damn awesome. And not only that, but his (admittedly purple prosy) literary works have inspired today's horror authors, names like Neil Gaiman and Brian Lumley, and, of course, yours truly.
Lovecraft was also a racist dumbfuck. Like, really a racist dumbfuck. Like, more so than most people in the 20's, a racist dumbfuck. He basically believed Hitler was "too optimistic" in his genocidal plans, he felt that people of color, immigrants, and non-city-dwellers were moronic and subhuman, and he was anti-Semitic as fuck. The man literally wrote a poem called "On the Origin of Niggers" and his cat was named "Niggerman". I swear to Azathoth I am not making this up, because I couldn't if I tried. There is simply no two ways of getting around it - Lovecraft had some very, very nasty, venomous views, and these nasty and venomous views are intricately woven into his work.
If you're a Lovecraftian like I am, and that paragraph up there made you twinge, or made you angry, or made you burn inside... Good. Absolutely, positively good. Because it should make you angry, it should upset you, and it should horrify you to know that the very author you idolize was a bigot. That means that you, on the inside, know those same bigoted beliefs are 100% wrong, and it means you are a much better person for it. It's also completely okay to feel that way. It's okay. Really. I promise.
It's also okay, then, to do what Nnedi Okorafor, a sci-fi and fantasy author of color, did and express concern about a notoriously and overtly racist person like Lovecraft being used on an award for fantasy works. She was apparently not aware, until a close friend of hers showed her a particularly... virulent poem written by Lovecraft, that Howard was very much not fond of non-whites. This, understandably, gave her a lot of reservations about her recent awarding of the "Howard" (as it's come to be known) for her novel. And to be honest? I 110% do not blame her for that - hell, I'd be a bit offended too, even if my own privilege shields me from the kind of vicious racism people of color face. Is it any wonder she and others feel it's time to change the World Fantasy Award design from something other than a guy who believed that people of color were "Filled with vice"?
But then again, here's the question - should this award's design be changed at all? Obviously, yes, the design itself is ugly as fuck - I mean, have you seen what this award looks like? It looks like Lovecraft and a Deep One mated and had an unholy abortion. Yes, it's that ugly-looking, as Goomi pointed out in his hilarious Cthulhu Mythos webcomic Unspeakable Vault of Doom. But of course, that's not what I'm talking about - I mean, should we keep the award's design or not, however ugly its implications may be, based on what it says about the past?
Let me explain this another way - yes, Lovecraft was racist, extremely so, and anti-Semitic. He also was damn imaginative and damn creative, as even one look at any of his works shows. The fact that his bigotry played a huge part in his work, especially his early work (by the 30's, even he realized how ass-backwards a lot of his views were, mostly because he had since gone out into the world and realized they were wrong), is undeniable - come on, the man made one of his primary big bads, Nyarlathotep (my favorite of his creations), have avatars in the form of dark-skinned men, and basically dehumanized the cultures of Africa as backwards worshippers of things that should not be. That's pretty damn blatant. But does it change the fact that this same work is considered to be part of classic horror literature, or that this same work inspires many, many people to write? Does it change the fact that, in many people's opinion, the man's work was some of the best horror authorship and creativity of all time?
In the end, I am ambivalent to the changing of the award, although I do hope they make it something less hideous-looking if they go for changing it. I am, however, with Miss Okorafor on one thing - how to deal with the beliefs of who the award was modeled after, and how to deal with the fact that our idols often are flawed and fallen in ways we can't help but be disgusted by. On that, I'll just close this by quoting her own words, because I feel she says it better than I can:
"This is something people of color, women, minorities must deal with more than most when striving to be the greatest that they can be in the arts: The fact that many of The Elders we honor and need to learn from hate or hated us.
Do I want “The Howard” (the nickname for the World Fantasy Award statuette. Lovecraft’s full name is “Howard Phillips Lovecraft”) replaced with the head of some other great writer? Maybe. Maybe it’s about that time. Maybe not. What I know I want it to face the history of this leg of literature rather than put it aside or bury it. If this is how some of the great minds of speculative fiction felt, then let’s deal with that... as opposed to never mention it or explain it away. If Lovecraft’s likeness and name are to be used in connection to the World Fantasy Award, I think there should be some discourse about what it means to honor a talented racist."
I couldn't agree more, Nnedi. I couldn't agree more.