Illustrator and designer Travis Pitts asked: “What if Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Nikola Tesla teamed up as paranormal investigators?” Then he drew this. Prints are available at travispitts.imagekind.com
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That is awesome. :D
I hate to be a party pooper, but…Lovecraft was a strict materialist. He didn’t believe in the “paranormal”. He was an avowed atheist. So…while this kind of picture is all in good fun, I’m pretty sure HPL is spinning in his grave!
Alas…another problem with this — Lovecraft was a xenophobe who — according to the documentary LOVECRAFT: FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN — once described eastern European/ Russian immigrants as “biologically inferior”. He’d probably find great difficulty in hanging ’round Tesla. And even if he DID hang with him, he’d probably insult him enough that Tesla would eventually wise up & leave him (as HPL’s wife did).
(Gee…am I a total, humorless killjoy or what?). ;)
I like to suppose that Lovecraft would have got a kick out of that picture. He had a sense of humour about the paranormal. His letters to Clark Ashton Smith, for instance, are full of mock invocations and such. This playful attitude is reflected In a few stories too. He showed up in Long’s The Brain Eaters and Bloch’s The Shambler from the Stars, to which he replied by writing Bloch into The Haunter in the Dark. And then there’s his delightful poem “The Messenger,” his mock-serious response to somebody joking that they would send a monster to his door. You’re right that HPL certainly didn’t believe in the paranormal, but he had good fun with it anyway so I don’t think he would have minded the picture.
I also don’t think he would have been rude to Tesla. He might have kept his head down or avoided eye contact on a ‘bus, but Lovecraft was never less than polite to acquaintances in person. Now, about Lovecraft and his wife, Sonia tried very hard to keep their marriage together. It was Lovecraft that left her.
Love the picture by picture by the way. It’s good to see updates, even the whimsical kind.
Well, what fun would it be if Lovecraft and Tesla got along as paranormal investigators? There always has to be a sceptic in the team. Mulder had Scully, after all. Though, I’m not too sure if Tesla was a believer in the paranormal either. So maybe they investigate in order to debunk. In that case, they could enlist the help of Houdini, too. Now that’s a team!
Yeah, Houdini for sure.
HP sort of teamed up with Indiana Jones in this:
http://www.amazon.com/Indiana-Jones-Tomb-Gods-Williams/dp/159582247X
kind of “Indiana Jones and The Mountains of Madness”