On Sat, 16 Jan 1999, Nightman wrote:

Hey, I'm replying to everyone at once!


Right. Nodens is an  HPL creation, not something cooked up by a contemporary
or successor. Later authors may have embellished his concept of a
mostly-distant and impersonal force that opposed the Old Ones, but the precept
was his. I think this rubbish got started by certain critics who had

It's not entirely rubbish.  Some of the later writers did dilute a lot of
HPL's original concepts, taking them directions he didn't intend.  I'm not
too surprised; HPL was ultimately a reluctant nihilist, and while nihilism
makes good horror, it can also be rather depressing.

Also, unless August Derleth lied though his teeth about it, HPL described to
him that his original concept for his mythos was that a group of beings reined

Yes he did.  Derleth said a lot of incorrect stuff, as lovecraft scholars
have shown.  I've read scholarly biographies of him, and Derleth did
distort many of Lovecraft's ideas.  I still like some of D's stories
anyway, but he didn't quite get the point.

Hmmmm..sleeping in a cold-place: i'd say Ithaqua, but I'd probably be
wrong,as he's more associated with the western side of that country.

Wisconsin, actually.  And since Toronto is on a major waterline, if there's
been sufficient global flooding to inundate Panama, wouldn't the St. Lawrence
seaway be one Great Lake? (Lucky Michigan has some mountains still...)

Hmm.  Good point.  Maybe it's actually Toronto-3...:)
 

Onto Mr. Biles:

odd ... not sure what the point of the brooms was ... from cleaning up
inside maybe?

That would be telling. :)
Think about what happens later.

Oh dear, I hope that's not a deliberate cheap shot at my religion (wicca --
aka "witchcraft") -- I would be ever so offended.

Does the word 'Wicca' appear anywhere in this story?
No.

However, HPL wrote about witches, and they certainly were not Wiccans.
Any witches appearing in this story will bear no resemblence (ideally) to
any modern day real people choosing to claim that identity.  Brown Jenkin
was not working for a Wiccan.

Haiku typically make some reference to nature.

Neat, I didn't know that! (... sheesh, simple enough detail, don't you think
my 4th grade teacher could have thrown that in along with the syllable
counts?)

Well, Haiku are hard to do in English, anyway; a syllable carries less
communication ability in English than a Japanese Kanji or a Chinese
ideogram.

 

She doesn't have renter's insurance?

Only a maniac would insure anything in Tokyo-3.

At first glance that seemed logical, but it's not; how would any insurance
company know that T3 is going to become Monster Central? Assumably, the city
is also billed as being built with the best tech available to help weather any
future "natural disasters" which might occur.  If anything, I'd think the
rates would be lower than typical, and breaking and entering would be a pretty
common thing to insure against.

It's a city built on top of a military base for a war which is expected to
happen and is thus target #1.  I'm fairly certain the military isn't able
to take out insurance on its bases.


John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu       
rhea@tass.org              http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html
rhea@maison-otaku.net      http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/

If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that
was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the
Marring be amended, Manwe and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it,
and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.
--Final Line of The Silmarillion