Post by krusader74 on Aug 4, 2023 16:42:32 GMT -6
The Beast in the Cave (1905) by H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)
Motivation
In the post D&D Meets the Electronic Age, I pointed out that Will Crowther programmed Colossal Cave Adventure (the precursor to Zork) for his daughters after playing D&D in 1975. I should have mentioned that the game was also based on Crowther's maps and experiences in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the longest cave system in the world. It was the recent resurrection of that thread that led me to re-read and re-evaluate Lovecraft's "The Beast in the Cave," which also takes place in the Mammoth Cave.
Falconer mentions this story a couple times in the Most important Cthulhu stories thread, but so far there doesn't appear to be any in-depth discussions of it yet...
Summary
SPOILER WARNING!!! If you haven't read this short story, you can do so now. The text is online here. It's about a 10-15 minute read. There are audio versions here and here. And there are animated adaptions here and here. There is also a free online 8-page comic adaptation by Jason Thompson (2013):
—Jason Thompson, Comic adaptation (2013)
A man exploring Mammoth Cave gets separated from his tour guide and wanders in the dark. His lantern falters, and he's alone in the dark. He hears a strange creature approaching him, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. Fearing for his life, he throws a rock at the creature, killing it. When the tour guide finds him, they discover that the creature was actually a human who had been lost in the cave for a long time and had devolved into a blind, white, ape-like creature. The man is horrified by the realization that he has killed one of his own kind.
Analysis
Lovecraft wrote this story when he was only 15 years old. He was a science nerd, who got his ideas reading Popular Mechanics and National Geographic (much like my other favorite writer PKD would later get his ideas from reading the science supplement in the Sunday newspaper). (Note: National Geographic started in 1888, while Popular Mechanics started in 1902.) At the time, Lamarckism was still a prevalent theory of evolution, and Lovecraft would have seen books and articles on the topic.
The Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants
One influential book Lovecraft might have seen is The Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants, Or Descriptions of the Fishes, Insects and Crustaceans Found in the Cave (1872) by Alpheus Spring Packard and Frederic Ward Putnam. And even if he did not see this particular book, he may have read similar articles in his science mags.
—Packard and Putnum, title page of their book on The Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants (1872)
Packard and Putnum were Lamarckists who believed that living in the darkness of the Mammoth Cave turned fishes and insects blind and white/bleached:
There is one very interesting reference to "bleached" out animals on page 26 that contains a footnote explaining their origin:
Note: Darwin isn't really advocating Lamarckism. Darwin says evolution occurs "after numberless generations" as opposed to within the lifespan of one individual; and he says that the mechanism behind these changes is "natural selection." Unfortunately, his use of the term "disuse" has been latched onto and over-emphasized by Lamarckists like Packard and Putnum.
Lamarckism
In order to fully appreciate Lovecraft's story, it's important to understand its historical context. In particular, the way biology and evolution were commonly understood at the time the "Beast in the Cave" was written (1905). I've been using the term "Lamarckism" quite a bit to describe this understanding, so I really ought to define it:
Lamarckism is a theory of evolution that proposes organisms can pass on traits that they acquired during their lifetime to their offspring. E.g., a giraffe that stretches its neck to reach higher leaves would have offspring with longer necks. The main ideas of Lamarckism are the use-disuse principle and the soft inheritance principle. The use-disuse principle states that organs or parts of the body that are used more often become stronger and larger, while those that are not used deteriorate and shrink. The soft inheritance principle states that the changes that occur in the body cells due to use or disuse can be transmitted to the sex cells and inherited by the next generation. Lamarckism was widely accepted in the 19th century and early 20th century, but was later displaced by Mendelian Genetics and Darwinian Evolution.
What's most important in Lovecraft's story is Lamarck's use-disuse principle: The tourist who got lost in the dark cave system for years and years had to adapt to lowlight conditions, and so his pupils became extremely dilated (they turned black), or perhaps he went completely blind from disuse; also, without exposure to daylight, his skin pigment (melanin) got disused, and so his hair and skin turned pale, sickly white. Packard and Putnum's book on the Mammoth Cave notes similar changes to the fish and insects in the caves. Lovecraft would use these ideas over and over again in his mature works, e.g., the eyeless penguins in At the Mountains of Madness.
—Cave beast image, the Lovecraft Fandom Wiki
Some similar theories that differ from Lamarckism are:
Kentucky Cave Men
About a week ago, I read a Smithsonian article called "How the Kentucky Cave Wars Reshaped the State's Tourism Industry" (July 25, 2023) by Eliza McGraw, History Correspondent.
Most of the article is about how cave tour business owners waged (sometimes violent) trade wars against each other. This was going on when Lovecraft wrote "The Beast in the Cave," and so it might have been an influence.
The most salient part of the Smithsonian article is a real-life horror story that occurred 20 years after Lovecraft wrote "The Beast in the Cave." It is the true story of Floyd Collins, a Kentucky cave owner who was exploring his cave in 1925 when he got stuck in a narrow tunnel. His ankle got pinned down by a boulder. His lantern faltered, leaving him alone in the dark. He was exhausted. He began to starve. Water dripped from the cave ceiling onto his forehead for days, slowly driving him mad. Unfortunately, the first person who discovered him, a reporter named William "Skeets" Miller, was unable to free him. Collins died before a team of rescuers could get to him. Miller won the Pulitzer Prize for his interviews with the dying Collins. Collins' story inspired a book, a song, a musical and a 1951 Billy Wilder movie starring Kirk Douglas.
—Floyd Collins, National Park Service website
Inspiration
Re-reading this story and the related materials on Lamarckism and the Kentucky Cave Wars has inspired me to think about a 1920s Call of Cthulhu adventure scenario about the Mammoth Cave.
—David Ardito and Steve Meretzky, Zork map from the Zork Users Group (1982)
Conclusion
The main lessons I got from re-reading this story:
Motivation
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
—Zork (1977)
—Zork (1977)
In the post D&D Meets the Electronic Age, I pointed out that Will Crowther programmed Colossal Cave Adventure (the precursor to Zork) for his daughters after playing D&D in 1975. I should have mentioned that the game was also based on Crowther's maps and experiences in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the longest cave system in the world. It was the recent resurrection of that thread that led me to re-read and re-evaluate Lovecraft's "The Beast in the Cave," which also takes place in the Mammoth Cave.
Falconer mentions this story a couple times in the Most important Cthulhu stories thread, but so far there doesn't appear to be any in-depth discussions of it yet...
Summary
SPOILER WARNING!!! If you haven't read this short story, you can do so now. The text is online here. It's about a 10-15 minute read. There are audio versions here and here. And there are animated adaptions here and here. There is also a free online 8-page comic adaptation by Jason Thompson (2013):
—Jason Thompson, Comic adaptation (2013)
A man exploring Mammoth Cave gets separated from his tour guide and wanders in the dark. His lantern falters, and he's alone in the dark. He hears a strange creature approaching him, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. Fearing for his life, he throws a rock at the creature, killing it. When the tour guide finds him, they discover that the creature was actually a human who had been lost in the cave for a long time and had devolved into a blind, white, ape-like creature. The man is horrified by the realization that he has killed one of his own kind.
Analysis
Lovecraft wrote this story when he was only 15 years old. He was a science nerd, who got his ideas reading Popular Mechanics and National Geographic (much like my other favorite writer PKD would later get his ideas from reading the science supplement in the Sunday newspaper). (Note: National Geographic started in 1888, while Popular Mechanics started in 1902.) At the time, Lamarckism was still a prevalent theory of evolution, and Lovecraft would have seen books and articles on the topic.
The Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants
One influential book Lovecraft might have seen is The Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants, Or Descriptions of the Fishes, Insects and Crustaceans Found in the Cave (1872) by Alpheus Spring Packard and Frederic Ward Putnam. And even if he did not see this particular book, he may have read similar articles in his science mags.
—Packard and Putnum, title page of their book on The Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants (1872)
Packard and Putnum were Lamarckists who believed that living in the darkness of the Mammoth Cave turned fishes and insects blind and white/bleached:
- Here is a link to all references in the book to blind cave animals.
- Here is a link to white cave animals.
There is one very interesting reference to "bleached" out animals on page 26 that contains a footnote explaining their origin:
On introducing the wingless locust Ceuthophilus maculatus into a cave where it must live not under stones but by clinging to the walls its legs would tend to grow longer its antennæ and palpi would elongate and become more delicate organs of hearing as well as touch*, and the body would bleach partially out, as we find to be the case in H subterranea and C stygia.
* After writing this article and without knowledge of his views we turned to Darwin's Origin of Species to learn what he had to say on the origin of cave animals. He attributes their loss of sight to disuse and remarks:–"By the time an animal has reached, after numberless generations, the deepest recesses, disuse will on this view have or less perfectly obliterated its eyes and natural selection will often have other changes, such as an increase in the length of the antennæ or palpi as a for blindness." 5th Amer Edit p 143. We are glad to find our views as to increase in the length of the antennæ and palpi compensating for the loss of eyesight confirmed by Mr Darwin.
* After writing this article and without knowledge of his views we turned to Darwin's Origin of Species to learn what he had to say on the origin of cave animals. He attributes their loss of sight to disuse and remarks:–"By the time an animal has reached, after numberless generations, the deepest recesses, disuse will on this view have or less perfectly obliterated its eyes and natural selection will often have other changes, such as an increase in the length of the antennæ or palpi as a for blindness." 5th Amer Edit p 143. We are glad to find our views as to increase in the length of the antennæ and palpi compensating for the loss of eyesight confirmed by Mr Darwin.
Note: Darwin isn't really advocating Lamarckism. Darwin says evolution occurs "after numberless generations" as opposed to within the lifespan of one individual; and he says that the mechanism behind these changes is "natural selection." Unfortunately, his use of the term "disuse" has been latched onto and over-emphasized by Lamarckists like Packard and Putnum.
Lamarckism
They were black, those eyes, deep, jetty black, in hideous contrast to the snow-white hair and flesh. Like those of other cave denizens, they were deeply sunken in their orbits, and were entirely destitute of iris.
—Lovecraft, "The Beast in the Cave"
—Lovecraft, "The Beast in the Cave"
In order to fully appreciate Lovecraft's story, it's important to understand its historical context. In particular, the way biology and evolution were commonly understood at the time the "Beast in the Cave" was written (1905). I've been using the term "Lamarckism" quite a bit to describe this understanding, so I really ought to define it:
Lamarckism is a theory of evolution that proposes organisms can pass on traits that they acquired during their lifetime to their offspring. E.g., a giraffe that stretches its neck to reach higher leaves would have offspring with longer necks. The main ideas of Lamarckism are the use-disuse principle and the soft inheritance principle. The use-disuse principle states that organs or parts of the body that are used more often become stronger and larger, while those that are not used deteriorate and shrink. The soft inheritance principle states that the changes that occur in the body cells due to use or disuse can be transmitted to the sex cells and inherited by the next generation. Lamarckism was widely accepted in the 19th century and early 20th century, but was later displaced by Mendelian Genetics and Darwinian Evolution.
What's most important in Lovecraft's story is Lamarck's use-disuse principle: The tourist who got lost in the dark cave system for years and years had to adapt to lowlight conditions, and so his pupils became extremely dilated (they turned black), or perhaps he went completely blind from disuse; also, without exposure to daylight, his skin pigment (melanin) got disused, and so his hair and skin turned pale, sickly white. Packard and Putnum's book on the Mammoth Cave notes similar changes to the fish and insects in the caves. Lovecraft would use these ideas over and over again in his mature works, e.g., the eyeless penguins in At the Mountains of Madness.
—Cave beast image, the Lovecraft Fandom Wiki
Some similar theories that differ from Lamarckism are:
- Pangenesis is an ancient theory that says every part of the body produces tiny particles called gemmules, which are collected in the reproductive organs and then passed on to the offspring. For example, according to pangenesis, a blacksmith who develops strong arms would produce gemmules from his arms and pass them on to his children, who would then inherit his strength. This theory was rejected by modern genetics, which showed that traits are determined by genes located in chromosomes within the nucleus of the cell.
- Mendelian Genetics is the theory of inheritance developed by Gregor Mendel, who studied the patterns of inheritance in pea plants. Mendel discovered that traits are controlled by discrete units of inheritance called genes, which occur in pairs and segregate during gamete formation. He also found that some genes are dominant over others, meaning that they can mask the expression of the recessive genes. E.g., a plant with a gene for purple flowers (P) and a gene for white flowers (p) would have purple flowers, because P is dominant over p. Mendelian genetics contradicts Lamarckism, because it shows that traits are not acquired or modified by the environment, but are inherited according to fixed laws of probability.
- Darwinism is the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin, who observed the diversity of life forms and their adaptation to different environments. Darwin’s theory is based on the concept of natural selection, which states that organisms with variations that make them better suited to their environment will survive and reproduce more than those with less favorable variations. Over time, this will result in the evolution of new species from common ancestors. E.g., giraffes evolved long necks because they had an advantage over shorter-necked giraffes in reaching food sources in tall trees. Darwinism differs from Lamarckism, because it does not assume that traits are acquired or inherited by use or disuse, but rather by random mutations and differential survival.
- Lysenkoism: A few months ago, I read the OUP's Very Short Introduction to Pseudo-Science which discussed Lysenkoism. In short, Stalin put a guy named Lysenko in charge of turning Lamarckism into official state ideology in the USSR. This episode in history became a real-life horror story as geneticists and biologists who opposed Lysenko's Lamarckist views were imprisoned and executed. This led to the deterioration of Soviet biological research and agriculture. Lysenkoism was eventually discredited and denounced in the late 1950s and early 1960s, after Stalin's death and the rise of Nikita Khrushchev.
Kentucky Cave Men
I noticed a small drip-drip-drip from above. Each drop struck Collins' face. The first few hours he didn't mind, but the constant dripping almost drove him insane.
— William "Skeets" Miller, Courier-Journal
— William "Skeets" Miller, Courier-Journal
About a week ago, I read a Smithsonian article called "How the Kentucky Cave Wars Reshaped the State's Tourism Industry" (July 25, 2023) by Eliza McGraw, History Correspondent.
Most of the article is about how cave tour business owners waged (sometimes violent) trade wars against each other. This was going on when Lovecraft wrote "The Beast in the Cave," and so it might have been an influence.
The most salient part of the Smithsonian article is a real-life horror story that occurred 20 years after Lovecraft wrote "The Beast in the Cave." It is the true story of Floyd Collins, a Kentucky cave owner who was exploring his cave in 1925 when he got stuck in a narrow tunnel. His ankle got pinned down by a boulder. His lantern faltered, leaving him alone in the dark. He was exhausted. He began to starve. Water dripped from the cave ceiling onto his forehead for days, slowly driving him mad. Unfortunately, the first person who discovered him, a reporter named William "Skeets" Miller, was unable to free him. Collins died before a team of rescuers could get to him. Miller won the Pulitzer Prize for his interviews with the dying Collins. Collins' story inspired a book, a song, a musical and a 1951 Billy Wilder movie starring Kirk Douglas.
—Floyd Collins, National Park Service website
Inspiration
Re-reading this story and the related materials on Lamarckism and the Kentucky Cave Wars has inspired me to think about a 1920s Call of Cthulhu adventure scenario about the Mammoth Cave.
- The map would be loosely based on maps from Zork. Zarf Updates has a Treasury of Zork Maps.
- The creatures would be men and animals who got lost in the cave and devolved according to Lamarckian principles. Fandom has a list of the Creatures in Zork.
- The Kentucky Cave Wars would be raging, and the PCs might get caught in the cross-fire between rival cave owners, or hired to sabotage a competitor.
- The PCs might find Floyd Collins trapped in the Crystal Cave. Can they rescue him and change history?
—David Ardito and Steve Meretzky, Zork map from the Zork Users Group (1982)
Conclusion
The main lessons I got from re-reading this story:
- Science mags and books can be a great source of inspiration for writing sci-fi/horror stories or RPG adventures.
- When reading older fiction, it's important to understand the historical context in order to get a full appreciation.
- If you ever find yourself lost and alone in the dark in the Mammoth Cave, you'll probably go mad, and maybe even get eaten by a grue!
