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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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								"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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