7 ARTIGO http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/abusoes.2017.27816 01 LOVECRAFT’S TERRESTRIAL TERRORS: MORALLY ALIEN EARTHLINGS Greg Conley (EKU) Recebido em 05 mar 2017. Greg Conley is Adjunct Instructor of Humanities, Aprovado em 30 mar 2017 Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies, MFA in Creative Writing, of the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Humanities. Expert Areas: Victorian Literature; Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror. Email: gregory.
[email protected]. Abstract: Lovecraft’s cosmic horror led him to create aliens that did not exist on the same moral spectrum as humanity. That is one of many ways Lovecraft’s work insists humans do not matter in the cosmos. However, most of the work on Lovecraft has focused on the space aliens, and how they are necessarily alien to humans, because they are from other worlds. Lovecraft’s terrestrial aliens, such as the Deep Ones, the Old Ones, and the Shoggoths, are less alien, but just as morally strange. Lovecraft used biological horror to create his terrestrial aliens, and in turn used them to claim that morality was a product of human evolution and history. A life form with a separate evolutionarily history would necessarily have a separate and incomprehensible morality. Lovecraft illustrates that point with narrators who are ultimately sympathetic with the aliens, despite the threat they pose to the narrators and to everything they have ever known. Keywords: Fiction; Cosmic horror; Biologic horror. REVISTA ABUSÕES | n. 04 v. 04 ano 03 8 ARTIGO http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/abusoes.2017.27816 Resumo: O horror cósmico de Lovecraft o conduziu a criar alienígenas que não existem no mesmo escopo moral da humanidade.