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Location
Weatherford, Oklahoma
Document Type
Paper
Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-54.htm
Start Date
26-7-2026 3:30 PM
End Date
26-7-2026 4:20 PM
Description
Jason Colavito notes that “cosmic horror” developed in response to the counterintuitive and unsettling repositioning of space and time within Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity, as embodied in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The horror of such a “weird tale” derives from the violation of already unnatural seeming physical law by the influence of super-natural powers. Lovecraft himself defined a weird tale as containing at least a hint of a “suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature, which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.” Surely the singularity of a black hole is such a daemon, as a locus in space-time where the very laws of physics break down. Thus works that focus on terrifying interactions with a black hole should have significant Lovecraftian elements. The same is potentially true of works that invoke the closely-related phenomenon of wormholes, theoretical tunnels through space-time that require “negative energy” to hold their throats open.
The eponymous experimental spacecraft of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1997 cult classic filmEvent Horizon (1997) uses an artificial black hole to punch a hole in the fabric of reality, sending its crew through a wormhole to an unnamed dimension of madness and extreme body horror. I argue that Event Horizon is decidedly Lovecraftian, especially when considered in concert with Lovecraft’s 1932 short story The Dreams in the Witch House. Here a brilliant but troubled student likewise uses the mathematical science of Einstein to transgress the boundaries between sanity and madness, finding a way to transport himself into a chaotic realm ruled by the daemon Azathoth. Despite the 65 years that separate the two works, and the fact that Lovecraft’s story predates the first significant work on wormholes by several years, there are uncanny similarities, not only in their use of Einstein’s work, but the cautionary undercurrent and condemnation of their mad scientists.
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Included in
“The daemons of unplumbed space”: Einsteinian Portals Into the Unknown in Paul W. S. Anderson’s Event Horizon and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dreams in the Witch House
Weatherford, Oklahoma
Jason Colavito notes that “cosmic horror” developed in response to the counterintuitive and unsettling repositioning of space and time within Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity, as embodied in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The horror of such a “weird tale” derives from the violation of already unnatural seeming physical law by the influence of super-natural powers. Lovecraft himself defined a weird tale as containing at least a hint of a “suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature, which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.” Surely the singularity of a black hole is such a daemon, as a locus in space-time where the very laws of physics break down. Thus works that focus on terrifying interactions with a black hole should have significant Lovecraftian elements. The same is potentially true of works that invoke the closely-related phenomenon of wormholes, theoretical tunnels through space-time that require “negative energy” to hold their throats open.
The eponymous experimental spacecraft of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1997 cult classic filmEvent Horizon (1997) uses an artificial black hole to punch a hole in the fabric of reality, sending its crew through a wormhole to an unnamed dimension of madness and extreme body horror. I argue that Event Horizon is decidedly Lovecraftian, especially when considered in concert with Lovecraft’s 1932 short story The Dreams in the Witch House. Here a brilliant but troubled student likewise uses the mathematical science of Einstein to transgress the boundaries between sanity and madness, finding a way to transport himself into a chaotic realm ruled by the daemon Azathoth. Despite the 65 years that separate the two works, and the fact that Lovecraft’s story predates the first significant work on wormholes by several years, there are uncanny similarities, not only in their use of Einstein’s work, but the cautionary undercurrent and condemnation of their mad scientists.
https://dc.swosu.edu/mythcon/mc54/schedule/32
