What is 'Cosmic Horror'? [Illustrated]

Our Literature videos are back! This time the topic is ‘Cosmic Horror’ (sometimes referred to as ‘Lovecraftian Horror’); a dark, anti-anthropocentric genre replete with existential dread, and terrifying inferences about our place in the universe. Cosmic Horror ruminates on what lies out there in the ‘secret regions of astronomy or time’, and what inhabited ‘ancient and now incalculable twilights’ (as Borges would say); moreover, it concludes that we best not find out…
This video outlines four of what I consider to be the most common features of the genre. It’s quite a long one, hence it took a little while longer to produce, but I hope you find it interesting!
A massive thank you to the talented Walter Brocca, who kindly let me use his haunting illustration of Nyarlathotep to create the thumbnail for this video. He does lots of other pieces of Lovecraft-inspired artwork, so be sure to check out his work on ArtStation:
www.artstation.com/wall
As always, this video would also not be possible without a suitably atmospheric backing track by Scott Buckley!
[Music: ‘Beyond These Walls’ by Scott Buckley, www.scottbuckley.com.au]
Here are the shopping links for some of the texts used in the video:
Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden
www.amazon.co.uk/Dragons-Eden...
John W. Campbell Jr., Who Goes There?
www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Goes-The...
H.P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays 2: Literary Criticism (containing ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’)
www.amazon.co.uk/Collected-Es...
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
www.amazon.co.uk/Haunting-Hou...
Philip K. Dick, VALIS
www.amazon.co.uk/Valis-S-F-MA...
Johannes Kepler, Harmonices Mundi
www.amazon.co.uk/Harmonies-Wo...
Alastair Reynolds, Beyond the Aquila Rift
www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Aquil...
Algernon Blackwood, The Willows
www.amazon.co.uk/Algernon-Bla...
Euclid, Elements
www.amazon.co.uk/Euclids-Elem...
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
www.amazon.co.uk/Hamlet-Willi...
H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
www.amazon.co.uk/Mountains-Ma...
H.P. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction (including ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’)
www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Fic...
Thomas Huxley (Afterword), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin
www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Letters...
William Blake, Complete Poems
www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Poe...
Clark Ashton Smith, Lost Worlds
www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Worlds-...
Spinoza, Ethics
www.amazon.co.uk/Ethics-Pengu...
Robert Chambers, The King in Yellow
www.amazon.co.uk/King-Yellow-...
Robert E Howard, The Black Stone (and ‘The Thing on the Roof’)
www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Stone-...
Lin Carter, Xothic Cycle Legend
www.amazon.co.uk/Xothic-Legen...
Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand (including ‘There are more things’)
www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares...
- Miles

[@geraldqueener7861]

This was the best description of cosmic horror I have ever heard....far better and more entertaining than I thought it would be.

[@benhb2046]

Well done! Nice analysis and at a perfect timing for me. Gonna host my first call of cthulhu game tomorrow. Thx!

[@masongalioth4110]

Ah yes. My monthly reminder that the highest quality content passes unseen under the absolute SEA of trash. That my friends is the true cosmic horror Absolutely Brilliant video my friend. Also I now am not going to be able to sleep at all for who knows how long. So thanks for that 👏🧐

[@DanielJBlackwood]

This is the most unique video on the subject I've seen. Really good video!

[@lizc6393]

I find Spinoza as difficult to comprehend as he is captivating, comforting, confounding, and almost seductive. I just felt like expressing that. This essay is brilliant.

[@nohandle498]

This my friend, was one of the most incredibly well done videos on this subject matter that I have ever seen. Every illustration, every explanation, and every piece of research that went into this was completely significant and completely necessary for this subject matter to make sense. Beautifully crafted video

[@jeanetten.s.8557]

Oddly enough (maybe its due to exposure) but the horrors of being faced with the unimportance of human existence has never really horrify me as much as the other aspects of Lovecraftian horror. Knowing how vast the universe truly is and how insignificant my life is, never really challenged my perspective enough to horrify me. I mean, sure, I'm surprised by the sheer size of it all, but I can't say it horrifies me. It doesn't change the way I live my life, nor does it change the fact that I need to live my life. It doesn't change what I eat for breakfast the next morning or how I sleep the night before. It just......is..... The universe is big, my life is small, humanity is still young and my actions may seem are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But if I wake up tomorrow and make breakfast for my sister she smiles just a bit wider for the rest of the weak. If I give the beggar down the street an extra sandwich for us to share, he would have more energy for the day. The vastness of the universe can't do that and to me, it doesn't demean me of my actions, life or time.....

[@luciuscarter1233]

I like that the perception u have is astounding really wide take on this video

[@Xena9002]

For me the unimportance/ insignificant spectacle that we are as individual humans in this vast galaxy serves as a big halt when I’m stressing about my job, money, friends or family. It makes me think that I’m unnecessarily putting so much stress on myself about the uncontrollable things in my life so I also think this concept doesn’t scare me rather it helps me put a stop to my overthinking cycles.

[@luciuscarter1233]

@@Xena9002 same here I relate to this comment

[@ElJaf17]

you keep telling yourself that. defo sounds like you're trying to convince yourself more than others!

[@bromazepam781]

From one grain of sand to another - here, have a like.

[@remuvs]

Dead Space is my favourite example of Cosmic Horror. Humanity believed they were alone amongst the stars. But really, the emptiness was the aftermath of a war between an extra terrestrial war of alien moons and an intelligent alien species trying to stop universal decimation. It's when the weapons of the moons, the marker(s), are found we get a reminder of how insignificant and powerless we are in the grand scheme of the universe.

[@pikappa_5432]

I don't get how this channel doesn't have more subs. Well done

[@DevinBradleySmith]

Extremely well made! Thanks for the great vid :)

[@sprooka9527]

I feel inspired!

[@Fantomatika]

The irony of the title didn't go over my head.

[@danielgranda896]

Great job! Excellent synopsis and thank you for taking the time to include influences and contemporary thoughts and philosophy’s. I have always been fascinated by the unknown. It is both terrifying and exhilarating to consider the possibilities. The key for my being, I can”t strop looking. It is this overwhelming desire that makes Cosmic Horror so compelling for me. I would want to know, and just knowing, would drive me mad. A glimpse, will damage you to permanent paranoia, but to look, and focus, to stare, is dooming you to utter madness…

[@EzraTillman1]

Great research and thorough analysis!!

[@DapperHesher]

This is fucking brilliant. Great work, sir!

[@Parietal-Polymath]

Ahhh a fellow polymath! Nice to meet you.

[@PapaBellyGames]

This is the best video on cosmic horror I have seen

[@ErtosAcc]

Very well done video. Keep it up!

[@brothertsoker635]

Fantastic Work!

[@James009D]

These are very well made and researched.

[@MrZoora23]

This is great. Helps a lot with my research

[@dofostaine4514]

My reaction to Cosmic Horror is more of wonder, imagination and unquenched curiosity vs. raw terror which is something I would feel when watching a Japanese horror movie. This is maybe because the relateability of Cosmic Horror is so distant compared to that of the other genre, almost like a "geeky" horror of some sort.

[@albinkuttamath]

I think what makes cosmic horror so alluring compared to others is the conflict it creates in the mind between the curiosity to know the unknown, and the sense of self preservation screaming at you to keep away from it.

[@pwestonewriter5847]

Outstanding.

[@Noe-ov8mi]

Amazing! Very very very good!!!!! Bravo

[@GeminibBorn]

Seriously great video

[@ianbrewster8934]

Great stuff

[@arnoldgrunwald3989]

wow nice i see a lot of work behind this video

[@JohnDoe-ef3wo]

Dang. This was great👍

[@ss-oq9pc]

Well done.

[@trubadorn8573]

on point ! informative and entertaining

[@samnangpoe]

wow!!

[@markbenand]

Hello Polymath Paradise. I want to thank you for letting me know about Beyond the Aquila Rift. Good story. I would also like to know your opinion on my feelings about the story. Beyond the Aquila Rift is very good and I liked it a lot but I would argue that it's not cosmic horror as lovecraft intended or presented the genre he codified. It's more Lovecraft Lite. While everything in the story touched on the key elements of cosmic horror, they are personal and subjective. It's only the protagonist that is personally affected by the revelations not humanity as a whole. The alien creature while unsettling and messed up is looking after him the way a healthcare professional works with a trauma victim and while other "Greta" isn't really incomprehensible just foreign in the way people from other countries would be to you. My main reasons for believing Beyond Aquila Rift isn't fully lovecraftian or cosmic horror, at least as lovecraft wrote and intended is this: 1) The protagonist knows fully his situation and how he got there. The revelations while breaking him don't have him question reality on an objective level nor do they imply some darker nature revealed about the universe. (From Beyond had a parallel dimension full of monsters. Colour Out of Space, had an energy being that sucked life energy, destroyed a farm and left, At the Mountains of Madness revealed horrible truths about the nature of earth) There's no ambiguity and implications that would leave humanity without sleep and fearful of the future. 2) The alien beings in Lovecraft's work were indifferent to humans for the most part and regarded us the way we regard ants. The alien in the story "cares" about the protagonist and is trying to help him. Only one of the entities in Lovecraft was interested in us and that was Nyarlathotep who simply liked to burn ants. 3) It doesn't make humanity "small" or on the bottom of the celestial food chain. While we aren't important on the grand scale, we aren't depicted as food for much greater beings either. The alien creature and world come off as like the Mi-Go or Elder Things. Just other intelligent life forms. Not an eldritch demigod or protogenio abomination.

[@careyatchison1348]

Arthur Machen - pronounced [Mack-n], (Great vid, BTW!)

[@RSEFX]

For those who like to play Halloween with themselves and spook their minds, their emotions, this is for you. I think Lovecraft is fun to read, enjoyable to dip into this kind of dark imagination from time to time, but I suspect so much of his own fascination with and in such areas stemmed from his own personal loss, his anger at the changing world and a combination of generally poor-ish health and poor eating habits. I also wonder about his word "unknown": What kind of unknown?--it really needs to be defined, since there are a tremendous number of things in our daily lives that are, essentially, unknown, but the vast majority of those "unknowns" don't produce a shred of fear. Maybe what HPL meant was the "unknowABLE", or, even more so, forces and things that are uncommon, suggest danger and are, indeed, almost impossible to understand, no matter how hard we try. But the simple word "unknown" is pretty darn vague.

[@BlueArcStreaming]

Spinoza, Blake, awesome

[@princessmaly]

To be perfectly honest, I'm not afraid of being wrong. Curiosity is a fundamental aspect of human psychology, and science is an extremely powerful tool. So powerful, in fact, that its greatest strength isn't when people are right, but when they are wrong. Lovecraft had an *interest* in science, but he was clearly not thinking very scientifically. Any real scientist would LOVE to be proven wrong, to have their current models upended. It's a normal and healthy part of the scientific process, when we have data that goes against our models, we are now able to learn more and have a more complete understanding by creating a hypothesis based on the new information. There's nothing scary aboot it at all. Lovecraft just plain didn't seem to understand this, and other aspects of his character and base assumptions come through in his writing that both date and negatively affect its impact. The other aspects include me not being afraid of fish or people who are a different color than me. Cosmic horror certainly can work and it has many, many times, but effective cosmic horror isn't simply aboot disproving a hypothesis, it's aboot presenting a situation of a kind of existential dread that being chased by a guy with a knife can never match. But simply put, no one's afraid of discovering weird looking aliens. You need no further proof of this by looking at how Lovecraft's own design philosophy completely backfired on him. The worlds, creatures, books, etc. he and his friends and those writing after him created have some of the most exhaustive and detailed lore in the history of fiction, more than Star Trek and Lord of the Rings combined. If people were really scared of Cthulhu just because he shows humans that they're "not important," why can you read his entire life history on multiple wikis? Cthulhu is a character people are curious aboot, they want to know more, they want to know the history of all the various aliens, their technology, their culture, all of this stuff has been rigorously documented for a century and to my knowledge it hasn't driven anyone mad yet. It's a lot like when people say aboot monster movies that you "don't show the monster." Nobody comes into a monster movie not wanting to see the monster. Like, come on.

[@qetoun]

Sweet dreams everyone!

[@jaredprice4415]

What's the background music?

[@vonnyXD]

Beyond the Aquila Rift🕸

[@gdl-nik]

Nice channel

[@undefinedvariable8085]

Great breakdown, but how can we talk about the fundamentals and origins of cosmic horror and not mention William Hope Hodgson and his works; The Night Land, and The House on the Borderland? "... but for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality [it] would be a classic of the first water." H. P. Lovecraft on "The House on the Borderland" in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" "... one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written." H. P. Lovecraft on "The Night Land" in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature"

[@luciuscarter1233]

One of my top 5s is annihilation

[@DapperHesher]

Hell yeah. Check out the Aqualia Rift if you get a chance. It's short but so well done!

[@danielkibira4064]

🤯💯👌🏾 concise and Mama Mia! Good brain food🤔🧐🥸 cosmic cool🥺😱 vistas of the unknown 🙈🙉 Barakha 🙌🏾 Shalom 🌾🙏🏾

[@aryang1232]

Amazinf

[@MrMuel1205]

I have often struggled with depression. From what I've read that's probably true of Lovecraft too - he was a troubled guy. And I love Cosmic Horror as a genre, I find it to be the realest form of human artistic expression. Yet I also find it oddly uplifting. I find the eternity of the cosmos and its uncaring nature invigorating when I see brutality and nastiness on Earth. The fact that the laws of nature work, regardless of our cruelty and bigotry and general flaws... that I find a happy fact. Unlike a borderline Nazi like Lovecraft, I love the fact that all the bigots in the world, all the racial mythology builders... are insignificant. I'm a nihilist, true, but I believe in optimistic nihilism. If we're here, if we perceive, we should make the most of it. The universe is vast beyond comprehension. The distance between the Sun and Alpha Proxima is too vast for human comprehension, let alone the span of the Milky Way Galaxy. Early geologists, realising the age of the Earth reported finding the true age of Earth dizzying, as they peered back into the abyss of Deep Time. If the pyramids are ancient at a few thousand years, the time separating us from the anomalocaris is truly disturbing. Yet we see this creature's remains. I can remember looking across the empty steppe of Patagonia and being blown away by its vastness and emptinesss... yet compared to true reality, Patagonia is lively and thriving. Critically, unlike Lovecraft, I'm a scientist. That makes the scale of the cosmos more apparent, but it also diminishes the strangeness of it.

[@daisywang7961]

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[@smellslikenoodles]

I got to be the 1k likee

[@zed3ty]

may i add that lovecraft was not actually "well-versed" in science but rather he lacked a lot of the technical comprehension of the subject which, combined with his reactionary beliefs, lead to novels such as "Cool air". lovecraft's life as a recluse made him fear so much of the world that he ended being is the perfect example of the "fear of the unknown" he portrays in his novels, albeit at a human scale : he feared technological advancement yet was fascinated by it, and he was xenophobic and racist towards cultures he did not understand (even if it was basically everything that was not white and/or not from the old english aristocracy). edit : typos

[@herptek]

Quite a prejudiced opinion you have of Lovecraft and of his racial views. I find your take highly problematic and uncultured, ignorant even. Fiction is fiction and you obviously don't get to complain about it if some short story doesn't correspond with actual science.

[@Trustworthy_McLegitimate]

Its horroifying to people who dont like the thought of NOT being the center of the universe.

[@avelynday6266]

Hey love the new vid Sincerely chiplock2020#0459