Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Lovecraft, H. P. - Robert Weinberg (essay date 1987)
Lovecraft, H. P. - Robert Weinberg (essay date 1987)
Robert Weinberg (essay date 1987)
SOURCE: Weinberg, Robert. “H. P. Lovecraft and Pseudomathematics.” In Discovering H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, pp. 113–17. San Bernardino, CA: The Borgo Press, 1987.
[In the following essay, Weinberg views Lovecraft's invented mathematics in several stories as a blending of science and fantasy.]
One of the strongest points in the Cthulhu stories by H. P. Lovecraft is the skillful blending of the unreal and the real. True and false are juggled together until one is undistinguishable from the other. Probably the most mentioned example of this work is Lovecraft's invention of a number of fictitious books complete with quotes, mysterious authors and histories. However, little attention has ever been given to the mathematics, or in reality, the pseudomathematics used in several of the Cthulhu tales. In this [essay], I hope to cover this area, however briefly.
In the period that...
[The entire page is 1620 words long]
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Criticism
- T. O. Mabbott (review date 1940)
- Punch (review date 1951)
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- Robert Weinberg (essay date 1987)
- Donald Burleson (essay date 1991)
- Stefan Dziemianowicz (essay date 1991)
- Douglas E. Winter (review date 1997)
- Darrell Schweitzer (essay date 2001)
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