Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Cosmic horror is an unhelpful term by itself. HP Lovecraft himself is quoted as saying that:

The fundamental premise [of cosmic horror is] that common human laws and interest and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.’

But Wikipedia seems to bring this down to a more personal level when it states:

The hallmark of Lovecraft’s work was the sense that ordinary life was a thin shell over a reality which was so alien and abstract in comparison that merely contemplating it would damage the sanity of the ordinary person.

To help us explore the subject of cosmic horror, we are joined by Premee Mohamed, whose debut novel, Beneath the Rising, is out now from Rebellion Publishing.

Texts and authors mentioned in this episode include:

• Alien
• Annihilation
• In the Mouth of Madness
• The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
• Othello
• Macbeth
• Event Horizon
• Cabin in the Woods
• Hammers on Bone (Persons Non Grata, #1) by Cassandra Khaw
• The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
• Caitlín R. Kiernan
• The Fisherman by John Langan
• Ruthanna Emrys
• Fatale by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
• Locke & Key written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The Information by Martin Amis
• The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft
• Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Euthyphro by Plato
• Arthur C. Clarke
• The Ritual by Adam Nevill
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
• Algernon Blackwood
• Spring
• The Thing
• Who Goes There by Don A. Stuart
• The Lord of the Dynamos by H.G. Wells
• Poltergeist

Premee Mohamed is a scientist and writer based out of Alberta, Canada. She has degrees in molecular genetics and environmental science, but hopes that readers of her fiction will not hold that against her. Her short speculative fiction has been published in a variety of venues, which can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com. She can be located with some reliability on Twitter at @premeesaurus.