Miniview – John Cash

Next in our Issue 1 table of contents comes John Cash. Let’s get right to it:

1. Describe “Shaper of Dreams” for us in one sentence.
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Alternatively:
A haughty psychic learns a humbling life lesson from everyone’s favorite green, sticky spawn of the stars, then promptly forgets it.

2. So obviously you’re an HP Lovecraft fan–when did you start reading him, and what drew you to his work?
I first started reading the old gentleman from Providence back in college, when I happened to pick up the first of those Del Rey Lovecraft anthologies that seem to come out every couple of years or so. A couple of … let’s call them quirky movies from the early nineties–Cast a Deadly Spell and Witch Hunt–had afforded me a nebulous sort of acquaintance with some of his creatures and themes, enough so that learning more seemed a productive enough use of my time. And with such gems as “The Dunwich Horror,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and, of course, “The Call of Cthulhu” to pore over during my sadly abundant free time, it wasn’t long at all before I was hooked.

It’s difficult for me to point out any one particular element that keeps me coming back to Lovecraft. Critically speaking, I recognize that his style isn’t without flaw; it can tend toward the abstruse and bombastic, and even at its most effective is kind of self-consciously old-fashioned. I suppose to me the most appealing thing in his tales are their scope, the horror evoked by sheer, unguessed magnitude. There is, I think, a tendency toward complacency with regard to the bounds of human knowledge and the accomplishments of the species. One doesn’t worry too much about what one does not know, owing to that comfortable and pervading notion that we’ve answered most of the big questions and are well on our way to resolving the few significant ones left in our ever-shrinking universe. We’ve gotten cozy with the idea of ourselves as masters of our domain, and even when we acknowledge our limitations its mostly because we’ve figured out clever ways to work around them.

Lovecraft tears apart the reassuring ideal of humankind’s limitless potential for benevolent enlightenment with the inexorable gusto of a shoggoth in a well-manned Antarctic research station. He gloomily points out that, even in those rare cases we don’t use our hard-won knowledge to work against each other at once, every secret revealed, every mystery plumbed brings us another inch closer to truths for which we may not be prepared. His nightmarish alien mythology confronts us with a universe in which all the devices of our civilization–our artfulness and ingenuity, our science and mysticism–count for nothing. Disorienting as it is, I find I like having the rug pulled out from under me once in a while. It’s very bracing.

Of course, I rather seriously doubt I’ve been able to mimic this effect to even the smallest degree. Call it instead a minor tribute from someone who still enjoys grappling with the unknowable horrors lurking behind the stars, in the back of the closet … between the very molecules of our being.

3. What are you working on now?
Maintaining the tattered remnants of my sanity. When that’s not occupying the bulk of my attention, I’ve got a few short story ideas zipping around through my head, predominately of the weird variety. There’s also a modest fantasy universe that I’ve been tinkering with off and on for the better part of the last couple of years … one that insists on accruing more and more sci fi elements as I go on. I suppose I’ll just have to hold on as best I can, and see where the muses carry me!

I can vouch for that “maintaining the tattered remnants of his sanity” bit. Thanks, John! If you haven’t seen John’s (not so minor) “tribute” yet, hit up Shaper of Dreams this weekend. Mmm eldritch horrors.