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Lovecraft meets Cyberpunk.

The works of the great old master, HP Lovecraft introduced the world to cosmic horror. That deep creeping dread, the maddening feeling that the universe is not a warm and kind place. At best indifferent and more likely alien and insane. Arcane technology, time shifting aliens, dark mad gods howling at the center of creation, the great master saw it all.

Lovecraft was also a man of his time, or even slightly earlier; racist, unable to form deep relationships with women, his writing is fixed in time. Forever a visionary and guide to the world of horror and dread, but these tales were the tales of straight white men only. They also lacked real traumatic human experiences like sexuality, addiction and emotional trauma. Lovecraft was a man trapped inside his mind. The body, our feelings, deep human interactions were secondary at best.

Cyberpunk is a bombastic, dark and creative genre that brought many new voices into science fiction. Always about radical freedom and self expression, lust, sex, drugs, addiction, mental health issues all abound in cyberpunk. "Low life, high tech" defined the genre, technology didn't make mankind happy and free, the solar punk dream didn't even exist in the foundational authors minds. Characters were male, female, all colors of skin and shades of the LBGTQ+ flag, cyberisation and surgery allowed powerful metaphors for trans characters to exist, genomic modification "Biopunk" brought in terrifying body horror themes. Advances in the sciences and a commitment to hard scifi by some authors allowed further exploration of human psychology, identity and of course the terrifying and all consuming threat of AI.

Yet the bombastic explosive energy of much cyberpunk led many authors almost into the realm of parody, street samurais, really? Orientalism just as strong as in Lovecraft's work with a focus on Japan, given the 90's rise of that nation, led to works that are sometimes dated and hard to read. Authors romanticized the rise of Asia without a deep understanding of eastern culture. Sometimes great works would introduce dark and philosophical themes but they lacked the true creeping dread and mythos building of the great master.

They are more than the sum of their parts when brought together; an alien meta mind. From Lovecraft we can take; the cosmic horror, the sense of deep dread and despair, the unexplained deep mythology. "Explain nothing" spoke the master, he left generations of readers hungry for more, combing through letters and begging other authors to fill in the gaps. From cyberpunk we can take the energy, the creativity, the more real sci-fi world, the deeper human connections and themes, and a richer cast of characters, unheard voices from the whole world. Now our protagonists can not just go mad in their heads but in their hearts too, they can be addicts, develop sexual and emotional coping strategies and deform and upgrade their bodies with science and technology. Alien and arcane technology can be used as the inspiration to write code that becomes malevolent alien AI's, because at its heart, what is a superhuman AI other than an unknowable elder god...

Lovecraft meets cyberpunk; a match simulated in hell, at the heart of dying star that hosted an imprisoned elder god.