Decvember 2024: Through the Gates of the Silver Key

[Dan]

For our final Lovecraft group read, let's finish with this, our final tale of the Dream Cycle: "Through the Gates of the Silver Key." E. Hoffmann Price is credited as Lovecraft's co-author for this story. It's part of a sequence of stories that focused on Randolph Carter, starting with the July 1934 issue of Weird Tales.

According to Wikipoedia, the story has its origins in Price's enthusiasm for an earlier Lovecraft tale, one we read recently here. Price wrote in a 1944 memoir, "One of my favorite HPL stories was, and still is, 'The Silver Key'. In telling him of the pleasure I had had in rereading it, I suggested a sequel to account for [protagonist] Randolph Carter's doings after his disappearance." After convincing an apparently reluctant Lovecraft to agree to collaborate on such a sequel, Price wrote a 6,000-word draft in August 1932; in April 1933, Lovecraft produced a 14,000-word version that left unchanged, by Price's estimate, "fewer than fifty of my original words,"

I have had a similar experience as Price's with a co-author. It's most unpleasant and feels highly insulting, cordial as the "co-author" might otherwise be. Some people (like HPL) are clearly never meant to co-author anything at any time. In any event, the story idea might be Price's, but I think it safe to say we are reading an HPL short story as our finale here. Let's start December 1, shall we?

[Kevan]

I have not read much HPL and I have only read a couple of these Dream Cycle stories. There were a couple of references to things from other stories that I’m not familiar with, but for me it stood well enough on it’s own.

Here's a few thoughts:

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It’s interesting to see the exploration of concepts beyond human comprehension and how to represent that for our time constrained three dimensional brains. It was fun to read Lovecraft/Price’s explanation of time and space. Reminded me of the concepts in Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, but this story took it further.

This story seems to be part fantasy, part hard sci-fi, and part cosmic horror, although it didn’t seem to have much actual horror, so a interesting mixed bag.

I felt sorry for Zkauba, he was just minding his alien business, when things took a significant turn for the worse as soon as the Randolph facet showed up.

Hopefully Randolph has learned his lesson and remembers to take all available esoteric parchments with him next time he wants to cross boundaries of time and space.

I didn’t 100% follow what happened with Randolphs handkerchief. My best guess is 1928 Randolph lost it before performing the ritual that allowed him to become nine year old Randolph in 1883, and then as a nine year old he has awareness of it from his 1928 self. And presumably that's also how 1883 Randolph then had insight into future events.

The passage about the self was interesting:

“to know that one is no longer a definite being distinguished from other beings—that one no longer has a self—that is the nameless summit of agony and dread.”

Which is the opposite idea to the Buddhist concept of no-self.

And lastly, I understand the story proposed the idea that there is no free will or determinism.

“Time, the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously.”

I assume that only applies to us insignificant creatures in our three dimensional existence.

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Overall this was enjoyable read for me, and I suspect I'll appreciate it more once I've read some of the other related HPL stories.

[Rosemarie]

I've just finished reading the story-there's a lot happening in this one. The ending is something else!

[Dan]

I keep rereading the first chapter. I'm struggling to get into this one. I can definitely see Price's influence even if it is Lovecraft's wording.