New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

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What was the Cthulhu Mythos, to begin with?

The question needs to be asked for clarity's sake, for the Mythos has been so elaborated and overpopulated, reworked in attempts to give it unity, explained and contradictorily reexplained, that it is now impossible to distinguish a total structure - by no means wholly a bad situation, as I hope to show. So what was the Mythos in the first place?

August Derleth has pointed out that it was not a planned development on Lovecraft's part; indeed, Lovecraft never even gave it a name. Rather it was a step in Lovecraft's search for the perfect form for the weird tale. By 1923, in 'The Rats in the Walls,' Lovecraft had refined his method: the story's movement has far less to do with plot than with a gradual accumulation of telling detail, presented with relentless logic; the story moves single-mindedly toward terror. Yet in 'The Shunned House'

the search continues; the detective-story structure which Lin Carter has analyzed, and which has its roots in Machen's 'Great God Pan,' is yet more skilfully used, but Lovecraft is still seeking a background which will make his horrors both plausible and suggestive. He found it not in occultism, which he thought banal, but in a subtle, often vague, blend of science fiction and the supernatural. In 'The Shunned House' it is the weakest element in a powerful story: the explanation of the haunting, with its 'certain kinetic patterns' continuing-to function in 'some multiple-dimensioned space along the original lines of force,' seems a muddle.

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