Miskatonic Arcihves

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An encyclopedia of strange fiction, its creators, places and mythos. Follow the sources; draw your own conclusions.

Tagged: Prehuman civilizations

Themes & context

Sea and submerged worlds

The sea in Lovecraft’s fiction can conceal a civilization, interrupt communication, carry a dream voyage or expose human knowledge as a narrow surface view. Its functions differ between stories. The submerged city in The Temple, R’lyeh in The Call of Cthulhu, the ancient seas reconstructed in At the Mountains of Madness and the navigable horizons of The Dream-Quest should be compared without treating them as a single mapped kingdom.

5 min read · 899 words

Literature

The Nameless City

An explorer enters an unnamed ruin in the Arabian desert and follows an underground route into the history of its reptilian builders. He repeatedly mistakes evidence of a nonhuman civilization for the symbolism of a human one. The Nameless City combines archaeological discovery, immense antiquity and a final encounter that turns recurring desert winds into something alive and hostile.

7 min read · 1,339 words