Webupon

H.P. Lovecraft is best know as the Godfather of modern horror and without his work but horror, or weird fiction as it was then, is only one aspect of his life.  In his developing years he produced a voluminous discourse through a variety of magazines, both professional and amateur.  It is the amateur organisations that hold the most interest.  While modern newspapers generally bear little resemblance to their counterparts from the 1900s, the ideas that generated the amateur journalism organisations that endeared themselves to Lovecraft which have stayed with us.

These organisations seem to have been highlt beurocracised clubs for people who either wrote, edited, published or in some cases did all of these for amateur journals; i.e. they were not generally available at the news stand.  I think what hit me strongest of all when reading about Lovecraft’s involvement with them was the feeling of familiarity.  My friends and I (I think my sister also) used to regularly produce our own newspapers, magazines and even faux radio programmes for the enjoyment of ourselves and close family; although admittedly it was mostly we who enjoyed them.  I can’t think of anyone reading mine favourably and when I think back, they weren’t exactly anything you’d bring out now as an example of fine workmanship.

Lovecraft got heavily involved with one of the main amateur associations and ended up having long and in-depth conversations with other members, both through print in the various publications (his own and others) and through letters.  He struck up friendships, made enemies and generally wrote about things close to his heart while others wrote about things close to theirs.

Does all this sound familiar to any of you?  It does to me, that’s for sure.  Move the description away from the heady days of typesetting, ink and paper, substituting these for lights, electricity and HTML.  What do you have?  Websites.

Anyone who was around during the first Dot Com bubble or before Google will no doubt remember the glory days of the Webring; the system of linking together homepages and larger websites discussing favourite topics.  Anyone who has put together an even barely successful website will have had at least one person e-mail them about it, be it to either discuss a topic they have read about, or to belittle you for your opinions.  Nowadays web rings are mostly a thing of the past, although links pages do still frequent many sites.

It seems to me that the principles behind the amateur journalism associations of the past are still with us.  People want to talk about things close to their hearts and they want to share their thoughts with others.  We have a more informal method of doing this now, and in many cases the overheads of getting your message out to the masses are much lower.  The means have changed but the spirit is still the same.

In many ways it is a shame Lovecraft is not around now.  I for one would love to have read his blog.