The Cthulhu Mythos: Fantasy or Sci-Fi?

[Kyriakos]

I have often read that the Cthulhu Mythos got reinvented as sci-fi with the writing of At the Mountains of Madness. Before that it could be argued that it was not as clear if the horrors in Lovecraft's stories were of this world (albeit of un-named and forgotten times) or came from a different cosmos.

My own favorite Lovecraft story is The Music of Erich Zahn, and in it there is very little to go by in terms of a mythology. One could even argue that the whole experience of the narrator was a hallucination brought by his "ill-health" at the time.

Two more stories which i like have a similar motif. The transition of Juan Romero, and the Cats of Ulthar.
While the latter is perhaps clearly a fantasy tale (even magic is used) the former consists of a quite clever in my view plot, according to which the death of a man is attributed to the dream another had of him dying.

Poll will be up soon so that you can vote if you think the Cthulhu Mythos is mostly fantasy, sci-fi, OR even Reality :D

[Calidore]

I thought it was always considered horror.

[Kyriakos]

Horror, in my view, is a subjective term, since most people probably do not feel frightened by any of the Cthulhu Mythos. However it clearly belongs either to fantasy (being made up as something which supposedly exists in this world) or in science fiction (argued to be existant in other realms and worlds, the elder things comming from space).

Whereas "Horror" does not place the origin of the mythos anywhere in particular.

[JuniperWoolf]

Lovecraft uses alternate dimensions, technology and space travel in his stories, and that's sci-fi stuff. I would call the majority of his stories sci-fi, and those that aren't sci-fi are simply horror (like The Picture in the House - there's no element of sci-fi or fantasy in that story). Many of the creatures just straight-up come from space, like the alien miners in The Whisperer in Darkness, and many, like Cthulhu, have origins left in mystery (and that's always more exciting), but I don't think you're supposed to assume that their origins are earth. Also, humans sometimes get to visit or see these alternate dimentions using science (like that guy who built the machine that allowed him to see the two different kinds of "shapes" fighting each other everywhere, or in the Witch House where the geometry of the room itself is what causes the "dreams"). Very sci-fi.

It seems fantasy-like in terms of Lovecraft's epic creatures like Cthulu and Yog-Sothoth or to the ancient books or cities (which almost always exist in alternate dimensions, and that's sci-fi stuff) so I guess it sort of resembles fantasy writing in that way, but I wouldn't say that his work could be directly classified as "fantasy" - it's more like sci-fi/horror writing which often incorporates the author's own ongoing invented mythology.