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- <title>In the Shadows of Madness</title>
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- <FONT SIZE=6>In the Shadows of Madness<br>
- <FONT SIZE=5>A Lovecraftian Look into the Babylon 5 Universe<br>
- By Mark W. Chase<br>
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- <PRE>
-
- "I have seen the dark universe yawning
- Where the black planets roll without aim-
- Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
- Without knowledge or luster or name."
-
- This brief poem named merely "Nemesis" was the opening for the
- terrifying story, "The Haunter of the Dark", by Howard Philips Lovecraft.
- It was a tale of a universe turned upside down, as were all the "Mythos"
- stories of this young, New England writer. The very essence of Lovecraft's
- mythos was that our universe was only a twisted delusion of a great, vast,
- inescapable darkness, of which mankind was nothing but the merest speck of
- insignificant matter. Rarely ever did the tragic hero of a story survive
- with his sanity, if he survived at all.
- Great, ancient beings, from the stars and beyond,prowl this universe--
- their nature and motives far beyond anything our feeble minds could hope to
- fathom. Fragments of the unspeakable darkness would float almost by
- accident to our world. By chance, some hapless mortal would stumble across
- it and his frail perception of reality would be shattered forever.
- The ultimate irony of it all was that mankind did in fact make a
- difference in the universe despite our apparent infinitesimal worth. The
- Great Old Ones did take notice of humans and had tried, and failed, to swat
- us from existence. Individuals, though driven mad, did affect the course
- of the dark fate within the mocking universe. Men fought against the
- darkness and won. Great Old One cults were defeated, Deep One outposts
- were destroyed, and unspeakable summonings were subverted.
- In possibly one brief glimmer of hope, mankind reached out and
- contacted the Elder Gods. They were a distant, but benevolent collection
- of entities who opposed the great darkness. They alone stood between our
- feeble world and the onslaught of unthinkable horrors.
- In the years of H.P. Lovecraft's mythos cycles from 1919-1937 a great
- darkness swept through the universe. In the years 2257-2262, it may have
- returned.
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- Already in its third season, Babylon 5 has taken on a mythos of its
- own. As the Babylon 5 saga moves into the Shadow War, the story has grown
- darker and more ominous. Or, as Susan Ivanova puts it in the third season
- introduction, "The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It
- failed."
- But, she goes on to assure, "In the year of the Shadow War, it became
- something greater. Our last, best hope for victory." Against all odds,
- hope is always present -- unlike Lovecraft's writing where there is no hope
- at all.
- There are many parallels between Babylon 5 and Lovecraft's works.
- These parallels may be intentional, some many have be unconscious, or, they
- may all be simply coincidence. Whatever the case may be, I give you the
- relationships which I have uncovered.
- The most obvious parallel is between the Shadows and Outer Gods or
- Great Old Ones. In the Cthulhu Mythos, the Outer Gods were the demonic
- pantheon of ultimate, unspeakable darkness. However, the Outer Gods
- themselves were the epitome of chaos and madness, without soul or mind.
- They twisted and wallowed in the eternal night, playing horribly mocking
- sounds with their demonic flutes, and orbited the ultimate nuclear chaos,
- Azathoth, who resides at the center of the universe. The Outer Gods have
- been stripped of reasoning and ordered thought (as we perceive it anyway)
- so they may not be a perfect parallel with the Shadows. However, as we
- shall see, some of the Outer Gods are not at all mindless.
- If not the ultimate Outer Gods, certainly the Shadows are mirrored by
- the Great Old Ones H.P. Lovecraft wrote about. Not nearly as powerful as
- the Outer Gods, the Great Old Ones do have ordered reasoning (though still
- vastly alien to human reasoning). Cthulhu is the foremost well know Great
- Old One, but there are others, such as Hastur, Dagon, and possibly Shub-
- Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth.
- Some Lovecraftian authorities believe that Shub-Niggurath and Yog-
- Sothoth were not Great Old Ones, but were in fact Outer Gods. If this is
- the case, it would mean that not all Outer Gods are mindless. In
- Lovecraft's stories, both of these god-like beings acted in logical, if not
- humanly comprehensible, way. It is important to note that these Outer Gods
- still exist as cognitive entities. It is possible that the Shadows are
- drawn from this surviving group of hideous gods.
- The Great Old Ones are described by Lovecraft as having come to Earth
- from the stars. They used technology, as did many other minor races, such
- as the Mi-Go, the Elder Things, and the Great Race. They were masters of
- all the technologies and sciences, to the point of it being ultimate magic.
- Dark, black, sinister magic.
- The Shadows of Z'ha'dum are certainly masters of dark technology, as
- seen by their unholy Shadow ships. They dominate forbidden areas of space
- with godlike powers. Revelations in Babylon 5 episodes such as "Voices of
- Authority" tell us that the Shadows can see into souls, but they are apart
- from the energy which binds all life together. The Shadows are in our
- universe, but forever separated from it. Dark, cold, and ancient, the
- Shadows have slept for a thousand years, and are now awakening to renew the
- war against the First Ones.
- To express this parallel, I will give your a brief quote from the
- "Encyclopedia Cthulhiana": "The Great Old Ones were at a time members of a
- company of beings titled the Elder Gods. Because they practiced black
- magic, or they stole certain of the Elder God's sacred records, or even
- that they had the temerity to attack the homes of the Elder Gods
- themselves, the Great Old Ones were cast out by their brethren and
- imprisoned in various places in the stars, and even other dimensions.
- Having done this, the Elder Gods returned to their homes near the star
- Glyu'Uho, leaving the Great Old Ones within their prisons. There will come
- a time, though, when the Great Old Ones will break free of the strictures
- imposed by the Elder Gods, and they will come forth from their jails to
- challenge the supremacy of their captors once again."
- This almost sounds like something Delenn might say! Replace Great Old
- Ones with Shadows and Elder Gods with the First Ones, and you have it.
- In Lovecraft's mythos, the Elder Gods are not seen nearly as much as
- the Great Old Ones, or even the Outer Gods. Likewise, we have seen many
- Shadows, and only one Old One (as of episode five of the third season). In
- H.P. Lovecraft's work, the Elder Gods took the back seat and almost never
- stepped forward. Nodens, possibly an Elder God, possibly a lesser god of
- the Dreamlands, did come forward briefly in the "Dream-Quest of Unknown
- Kadath". As far as I am aware, this is the only Elder God to be named by
- Lovecraft. If the First Ones of Babylon 5 are being treated like the Elder
- Gods of Lovecraft, the humans, Narns, and Minbari have little chance for
- survival.
- Many other ancient races are found throughout H.P. Lovecraft's work,
- and they cannot be ignored in the Babylon 5 context. There are the Mi-Go,
- the Elder Things, and the Great Race of Yith to name the major ones. All
- these races are extremely advanced in the sciences. We see this best with
- the Great Race in Lovecraft's excellent story "The Shadows Out of Time" (a
- title which catches me as being most significant in light of the ancient,
- dark race from Babylon 5).
- In the story "The Shadows Out of Time", we learn of the Great Race's
- outposts on primordial Earth, of their vast libraries cataloging all the
- billions of races in the universe, and maybe other universes, and a good
- deal of their history and technology, all vastly beyond human
- comprehension.
- The Elder Things from the story "At the Mountains of Madness" are
- described as having star ships, energy weapons, and other fabulous, magical
- technologies. However, in the story we learn that the Elder Things had
- been wiped out eons ago. Only the ruins of their ancient cities remain in
- forgotten places in Antarctica.
- The Mi-Go appeared in two of Lovecraft's stories. "At the Mountains
- of Madness" the Mi-Go (this name was not given in the story) were the
- enemies of the Elder Things. Many battles were fought between the two, and
- eventually the Mi-Go retreaded to the northern hemisphere of Earth. Later,
- in the macabre tale "The Whisperer in Darkness", the Mi-Go are busy
- collecting specimens of other races throughout the universe, collecting
- their brains rather, in very technology dependent ways.
- The Vorlons may be attributed to one of these races; most likely the
- Great Race of Yith, as the Great Race was scholarly and was much wiser than
- the other two races I have outlined. The other two are rather evil and
- sadistic. Unfortunately, according to H.P. Lovecraft, the Great Race was
- all but wiped out millions of years ago by another race of beings dubbed
- merely the "Flying Polyps". Strangely, these flying polyps can become
- invisible, just like the Shadows. In contrast, the Vorlons were not wiped
- out by the Shadows, the Vorlons helped to defeat the Shadows.
- It must also be put forward that Morden could very well be the
- equivalent of Nyarlathotep. In Babylon 5, Morden appears to be nothing
- more than a Shadow/Centauri (and Earth Alliance!) go between. In H.P.
- Lovecraft's works, Nyarlathotep was the messenger of the Outer Gods. In
- Lovecrafts poem "Nyarlathotep", this dark messenger was a man; a man who
- brought final destruction to the human race. In many stories Nyarlathotep
- was in the form of a man, though he also had many monsterous forms as well.
- In all appearance this "man" was mortal, but he had sinister, dark powers
- at his command. If Morden ever becomes some hideous flying monster as
- black as the night itself, this parallel will be complete.
- Could the Book of G'Quon be the Babylon 5 equivalent to the
- Necronomicon? On several occasions, G'Kar has pointed out references to
- the Shadows, even pictures of their ships, all with terrifying revelations
- behind them. He even gave the book to Garibaldi, telling him that it would
- be helpful. I doubt the Book of G'Quon is a forbidden tome written by a
- mad Narn named G'abkul G'alkazard; and, as Babylon 5 appears to be much
- more optimistic than Lovecraft's tales, I will propose that the book of
- G'Quon is a "holy analogue" to the Necronomicon.
- As I have stated earlier, these speculations are my own, and in no way
- do they express the views of J. Michael Straczynski, Doug Netter, or anyone
- working in the production of Babylon 5. These ideas are my own and should
- not be taken out of context. Babylon 5 is a unique and completely
- innovative universe of possiblities. Like the universe of H.P. Lovecraft,
- the Babylon 5 universe has its own dark secrets -- secrets which man was
- not be meant to know, and of things which should not be.
-
- And so, I will leave you with a quote from the classic story "The Call of
- Cthulhu". The tale which started it all.
-
- "We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of
- infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences,
- each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but
- some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such
- terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that
- we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light
- into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
-
-
-
- Bibliography
-
- Harms, Daniel - "Encyclopedia Cthulhiana" (1994)
-
- Lovecraft, H.P. - "At the Mountains of Madness" (1936), "The Case of
- Charles Dexter Ward" (1941), "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928), "Dagon" (1919),
- "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" (1948), "The Haunter of the Dark"
- (1936), "Nyarlathotep" (1920), "The Other Gods" (1933), "The Shadow Over
- Innsmouth" (1936), "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936), "The Whisperer in
- Darkness" (1931)
-
- Straczynski, J. Michael - the "Babylon 5" series (1993-1996), through
- Warner Bros. Television.
-
-
- Special thanks to Jon Fuller and Mathias Russ who assisted in the editing
- of this essey.
-
- If you have questions or comments to make, complaints or suggestions,
- please contact me at:
- <A HREF="mailto:mchase@cdc.net">mchase@cdc.net</A>
- or log on to my web page at:<A HREF="http://www.cdc.net/~mchase/mearth.html">
- http://www.cdc.net/~mchase/mearth.html</A>
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