THE DEEP ONES: "The Other Gods" by H. P. Lovecraft

"The Other Gods" by H.P. Lovecraft

Discussion begins February 8, 2023.

First published the November 1933 issue of The Fantasy Fan



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41882

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Dagon and Other Macabre Tales
The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories
H.P. Lovecraft: The Fiction: Complete and Unabridged
The Doom That Came to Sarnath

ONLINE VERSIONS

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Other_Gods

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8smICpbKQrI

MISCELLANY

https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:425257/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Fan
https://www.hplhs.org/index.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Cycle
https://tinyurl.com/4zvfkjkn

It's worth noting that this one was written in summer 1921, then languishing unpublished for over twelve years.

Knowing how it ends, I had to believe it was tongue in cheek irony to name his protagonist “Barzai the Wise” In Kadath there are old wise men and bold wise men but none that are both.
The Miscellany link about Fantasy Fan was a cool bit of pulp lore.

Seen one way, this is a conventional enough tale of hubris. Was there any precedent, though, when HPL wrote, for higher-order gods protecting the weak gods of Earth?

>4 AndreasJ: I seem to remember the theme was repeated in DQoUK

>5 papijoe:

Not merely the theme - we get to meet Atal again, and Barzai is mentioned, and Mt Ngranek plays a bigger role there.

Eru Ilúvatar’s intervention against the Númenóreans in The Silmarillion is similar, though his existence is not a surprise, and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen similar scenario’s in later literature. But I can’t seem to think of any earlier ones that might have inspired Lovecraft.

This is a story where you can really feel HPL's Cosmic pessimism impinging on and changing the tone of his Lord Dunsany pastiches.

Barzai''s final cry"Merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky!" has great pulp energy (and irony, calling on the gods he's only just been jeering at).