an anecdote i think ive neglected to share with you up until this point is about this one time when h.p. lovecraft was part of a round robin exercise with a bunch of other well-regarded pulp weird fiction writers
the resulting story, “the challenge from beyond” is, frankly, not….good. like, at all. what it is, however, is HILARIOUS, particularly when conan the barbarian creator robert e. howard, taking his turn at the writing wheel directly after that other howard, slam-dunks every single generally accepted round robin rule about not contradicting things that the previous writers have already introduced/established in the story, not dramatically shifting the tone, etc. STRAIGHT IN THE GARBAGE in one of the most gloriously petty displays of trolling/ Fuck That-itis i have ever seen in this kind of game (and i mostly hung out with the creative writing + theater crowd in college, soooo)
basically you have lovecraft being lovecraft, going on and on and on, making the protagonist faint from terror a solid three times in maybe 1,500 words (just a guess there, i didn’t actually bother to count), and concluding with a HORRIFIC REVELATION:
But even this vision of delirium was not what caused George Campbell to lapse a third time into unconsciousness. It took one more thing—one final, unbearable touch—to do that. As the nameless worm advanced with its glistening box, the reclining man caught in the mirror-like surface a glimpse of what should have been his own body. Yet—horribly verifying his disordered and unfamiliar sensations—it was not his own body at all that he saw reflected in the burnished metal. It was, instead, the loathsome, pale-grey bulk of one of the great centipedes.
yup. dude turns into a grotesque giant centipede alien monster and TOTALLY LOSES IT. truly, this hellish transformation is too great a burden for his fragile human mind to comprehend, let alone bear while remaining conscious, or sane–
but wait! ENTER ROBERT E. “CONAN THE BARBARIAN” HOWARD:
From that final lap of senselessness, he emerged with a full understanding of his situation. His mind was imprisoned in the body of a frightful native of an alien planet, while, somewhere on the other side of the universe, his own body was housing the monster’s personality.
He fought down an unreasoning horror. Judged from a cosmic standpoint, why should his metamorphosis horrify him? Life and consciousness were the only realities in the universe. Form was unimportant. His present body was hideous only according to terrestrial standards. Fear and revulsion were drowned in the excitement of titanic adventure.
THE EXCITEMENT OF TITANIC ADVENTURE
talk about mood (and philosophical outlook on existence) whiplash, right??!
the best part, though, is that he KEEPS GOING ON LIKE THIS for about four more paragraphs:
What was his former body but a cloak, eventually to be cast off at death anyway? He had no sentimental illusions about the life from which he had been exiled. What had it ever given him save toil, poverty, continual frustration and repression? If this life before him offered no more, at least it offered no less. Intuition told him it offered more—much more.
With the honesty possible only when life is stripped to its naked fundamentals, he realized that he remembered with pleasure only the physical delights of his former life. But he had long ago exhausted all the physical possibilities contained in that earthly body. Earth held no new thrills. But in the possession of this new, alien body he felt promises of strange, exotic joys.
etc., etc.
…and then george-as-centipede monster goes on a STRAIGHT UP BLOODTHIRSTY RAMPAGE like some arthropodian conan and then just totally CONQUERS THE FUCK out of the ENTIRE centipede planet because why not and someone please make john darnielle write a song about this, i am begging you
Robert E. Howard had one fucking speed and that speed was “titanic adventure.”