THE DEEP ONES: "Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear

"Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear

Discussion begins June 26.

First published in the March 2008 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.



Online Versions

http://tinyurl.com/kvl5jbl

Bibliography

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?898306

Selected Print Versions

New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird
The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume
Shoggoths in Bloom

Miscellany

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/12/why-we-still-write-lovecraft-pastiche
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/feature-interview-elizabeth-bear/
http://www.elizabethbear.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bear
http://tinyurl.com/kbqhb83

Online for me.

There appears to be an audio version at starship sofa. The text of the story used to be on Bear's website but it looks like it was removed a couple of years ago. Still available at the wayback machine.

Re-reading it out of The Book of Cthulhu.

I'll be re-reading it from its first appearance in Asimov's.

New Cthulhu for me.

Online for me! This one won a Hugo. Looking forward to reading it.

I thought that the juxtaposition between Harding, a black intellectual in 1939 who has freedoms that his forebears in the recent past would not have expected, and the Shoggoths, who yearn to not be free was interesting, if a trifle pat. There were some fine moments, as when the Professor has his underwater meeting of the minds with the creature(s).

I enjoyed reading this, but it seemed more like encountering-an-alien-species SF to me, and really wasn't very scary or disturbing. Also, outside of references to current events, I had a hard time imagining the story as taking place in 1939. It could just as easily have been set in 2013 by simply changing the headlines.

> 5 Thanks for reminding me that I had this in-house.
> 2 I read the story then listed to the StarShipSofa version. Too bad the narrator pronounced Du Bois French fashion instead of checking that it is pronounced /duːˈbɔɪz/ doo-BOYZ. Having Harding teach at Wilberforce is a nice detail, given that Du Bois taught there before Harding was born in 1898.

This story worked for me on several levels. I appreciated the approach of including shoggoths as something that everybody knows about instead of a mystery to be discovered. The background on them was well done. I have visited Audubon's home Mill Grove but I don't recall the painting of a quiescent shoggoth.

The casual, unthinking racism is depicted not too heavily: the fisherman who had never heard of a 'colored professor' before, the restaurant patron who addresses Harding as 'boy', Burt Clay's reticence at first, the antisemitism. Clay's gradual warming to Harding is good, even though it might well have taken more than 3 days or so.

The Lovecraftian references are handled more subtly than in most pastiches. The Gilman who wrote Deep-Sea and intertidal species of the North Atlantic was presumably one of the Innsmouth Gilmans. The phonetic rendering 'Eyah, eyah. Fata gun, eyah' in the counting rhyme is a clever way to work in 'Iä! Iä! Fhtagn. Iä!'.

I'm intrigued by the endothermic reaction of the nodule from the fruiting body. What is the significance? The nodule is cold before Paul is called by the shoggoth and not cold after he was returned. So the nodule absorbed energy to power itself?

At the end Paul's philosophical commitments are handled deftly. He starts with Kant's Categorical Imperative when he declines to treat the shoggoth as a means to an end. He might have used the shoggoth the way Captain Nemo used the Nautilus, to make war on all imperial powers rather than just Nazi Germany, but he probably realized that using the ultimate weapon is addicting and he might not be able to give it up in the end (one shoggoth to rule them all ...). Finally, Paul moves on to Sartre as he explains that shoggoths are condemned to freedom. A pretty paradox, commanding someone to no longer take commands.

> 7 Yes, the weakness of the story is its didacticism: the choice of a black protagonist who is uniquely qualified to understand the shoggoth's dilemma. I appreciated the quoting of Du Bois's remarks about treatment of Jews in the Pittsburgh Courier that "it is an attack on civilization, comparable only to such horrors as the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade. It has set civilization back a hundred years."

Shoggoths taste like licorice! Who knew?

>8 bertilak:

The nodules are intriguing, but they aren't really explained, beyond that they have something to do with Shoggoth-mutation. Did I miss something or are they a literary McGuffin? What does crushing one underfoot actually do?

I liked Bear's style, such as "Harding points his toes, bends his knees - he'll have to jump hard, to get over the rocks", instantly followed by "The water closes over him, cold as a line of fire". Much more vivid, than simply saying that Harding slipped and fell in!

"Fruiting bodies" is a scientific term, but in this instance, I'll bet it's also a reference to Brian Lumley's story.

Certainly an interesting read. The shoggoth is never really an object of horror here, but it's easy to extrapolate why Zadok Allen would have feared a shoggoth under the influence of the EOD or their marine elders. I agree that the allusions to HPL were both ample and deft.

Kantianism and existentialism aside, I found Harding's final treatment of the shoggoth to be strangely cruel. I can't imagine the same person being able to make that decision and subsequently enlisting in the FFL to fight the Axis.

The text's handling of race issues reminded me more than a little bit of Ellison's Invisible Man, with a strange science-fictional spin.

I got the impression that the endothermic nodules were taking up energy for analysis, thus providing for the basis for communication between the shoggoth and Harding.

Something that left me wondering was the removal of the shoggothically relevant pages in the book. In a "normal" Mythos story there'd be reasons obvious enough, but they don't seem to apply where shoggoths are, relatively speaking, well-known and not perceived as particularly hellish.

Glad to see that I am not the only one who was slightly underwhelmed by this tale; I thought I might have been in a bad mood or something the first time I read it, but when I reread it this week, it still didn't do that much for me. I understand what Bear was up to here; actually, she explicitly states her purpose for writing the story in that Tor.com article that Kenton linked to in #1:

I want to argue with his reflexive racism, which leads me to write a story like “Shoggoths in Bloom,” in which an African-American college professor confronts the immorality of slavery on the eve of one of our greatest modern atrocities.

This is laudable, but ideas like this seldom make for good art. Elvis Costello wrote a song called "The Loved Ones" back in the early '80s that was about playing to posterity. In an interview, he said that he didn't like the song. When asked why, he said, "That's too theoretical an idea for a song." Well, the idea behind "Shoggoths in Bloom" is a little too theoretical for a Mythos story, imho.

> 12

We never found out who removed the pages or why, but it seems significant to the story that Harding got the paper-cut. His blood could have interacted with the nodule to activate the link with the shoggoth.

I liked the idea of the shoggoths being known to science, but with the full implications of their existence not appreciated, like the evidence for evolution that Darwin put together, as the story referenced, but as things progressed I found myself wondering what point Elizabeth Bear was trying to make? Is it about racism, or interventionism in overseas conflicts (bearing in mind that the story was written during Iraq/Afghanistan)?

Or, if the WWII setting is what we should be focussing on, are the shoggoths perhaps being used as a metaphor for the A-bomb?

I'm not saying for a moment that a science fiction story (and yes, this reads much more like science fiction than it does horror or weird fiction) must be read as an allegory for a real-world situation. How boring and restrictive that mindset is.

But, all the same, I was struggling, as I said, to see the point of this one. Is it a clever literary idea yoked to a real-life historical situation of such sensitivity* (I know there's a much better word, but it's eluding me) that it overbalances the story; or is it an attempt to use the Mythos to illuminate the moral and ethical consequences of that situation (and/or modern-day parallels)? If it's that, our collective response suggests that it didn't really work.

I have to concede the possibility that I've missed some subtle clues that would through the events of the story in a different, and no doubt sinister, light. I didn't recognise 'Eyah, eyah. Fata gun, eyah' for what it was, for example.

* "back in the day", we were all a lot more carefree in our use and consumption of Nazis in popular culture - I can't help feeling that Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example, would have a harder time getting made today - objections being made to the effect that we shouldn't make light of the Nazis (and, by extension, their crimes).

I didn't recognize 'Eyah, Eyah. Fata gun, eyah' either, partly because in my mind, 'fhtagn' has just two syllables.

> 15, 16

Me neither. As written, I mentally pronounced Eyah with the first syllable as a-as-in-lake.

And I pronounce fhtagn with a single syllable (and a little surplus spittle).

Here's something that's bugging me that you folks can probably help me straighten out. This is out of whack with Cthulhu Mythos continuity, right? Because in the C.M. world, William Dyer writes a paper c. 1931 discussing the events of the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930-31 (said paper, of course, being the contents of HPL's At the Mountains of Madness in our world). I take it Bear is trying to tell us that Dyer's paper was suppressed in the C.M. world, because if it was not, we would have a very different narrative on our hands with "Shoggoths in Bloom".

Okay, but then there's this: in AtMoM, when Dyer & co. discover (or are discovered by) the Elder Things and the shoggoths, they're all like, "Holy shit! What the fuck are these things?" Well that doesn't make any sense vs-à-vis "SiB", at least not with the shoggoths, because shoggoths have been common knowledge in the scientific community, according to "SiB", at least since the Gilman monograph was published in 1839! What gives?

I liked the story and thought that, while hitting the racism and slavery theme pretty hard, those themes were handled well enough. Partially by avoiding any simplified, perfect one to one mappings to the real world (as housefulofpaper says in 15 there are echoes of a bunch of stuff but I think that adds to the richness). Other nice touches include Harding's own biases such as when he admits that he had misjudged the fisherman when he needs to be rescued.

As for the end, while the slavery analogy is there, it's not so straight-forward. At least I don't Bear is arguing that slaves really wanted to stay slaves. I agree with others that for the most part the story is more of a sci-fi piece like At the Mountains of Madness* but without that work's horror tone. I do think a bit of dread slips in at the end. Either Harding's command is successful and there's now a new dangerous sentient race that can't be easily checked or it doesn't work before someone else learns to control them. There's also that other species out there in the Adriatic right next to the Axis. Given the biological and geographical distances would Harding's command even reach them?

* There's also a nice nod to AtMoM here when the shoggoths give Harding a series of mental pictures of their past echoing the explorers learning about the elder things from their reliefs.

> 18

It's been so long since I red "At the Mountains of Madness," I really can't say. I don't recall there being any live Elder Things in that story at all.

But remember that in Bear's story "shoggoth" is a name newly applied to the old "submersible jellies."

>18 artturnerjr:, 20

I think Art is probably correct, although I got the idea right from the beginning of the story that this was taking place in an alternate reality. AtMoM need not even have taken place in Bear's CM world.

20 > We don't meet any live Elder Things in AtMoM, but some of those found by Lake are more than implied to have been merely dormant, and to have revived and gone to the city before Dyer's company.

In AtMoM we also learn that Abdul Alhazred discussed shoggoths, but frantically denied they could be seen on Earth outside of drug-induced visions - a tad odd if they lived inoffensively in the Adriatic. Then again, he's the Mad Arab.

>20 paradoxosalpha:-22

Thanks, guys. I suspect that Kenton is right in saying that "SiB" takes place in an alternate reality, which isn't really that strange considering, for example, if you follow DC comics, you know that there's like 6 different universes that have a version of Superman (in the old continuity, anyway).

Could the discrepancy be explained by the ATMOM shoggoths being an isolated population that hasn't changed over millions of years, as the Atlantic and Adriatic shoggoths have?

>24 housefulofpaper:

Good question. This discussion is making me want to read AtMoM again (like I need an excuse)!

I first read this story in 2009 and, while I thought it was ok as a science fictional takeoff -- minus the horror -- of some of Lovecraft's personal and literary ideas, I thought it was very overrated. I'm afraid it's made me a bit cranky on second reading.

I'm afraid the modern tendency to see racism as the world's greatest evil and, by extension, Lovecraft as some sinister, deeply and uniquely flawed man, bores me. And, as one local movie reviewer said years ago, when reviewing Alien Nation, "Science fiction fans already know it's not cool to be racist." That said, the race relations are done deftly and realistically -- especially between Harding and Clay. And race has certainly been a topic of American science fiction since almost its very beginnings. I just weary of the theme.

>8 bertilak: Harding's refusal to use the shoggoths as a weapon is the thing that interested me more on the second reading. I believe we are to see his decision as heroic. But you could also see it as ineffectual posturing from a man who could, perhaps, use shoggoths as a more powerful weapon to save Jews than his own single talents as a soldier.

>19 lucien: And that decision may be noble but lead to bad consequences with a new enemy created for man.

I just read the Bear blog post at the top of the "Miscellany" links (thanks, Kenton!), where she says that she writes Lovecraftian pastiche because "I want to pick a fight with him." Unfortunately, reading that casts "Shoggoths in Bloom" into what I consider to be its least favorable light, as an exercise in didactic, ideology-focused fiction. I really think there are qualities to enjoy in this story, although as far as the Hugo goes, I strongly suspect that there were worthier SF novellas in 2008, and probably worthier Yog-Sothothery too.

She makes an odd remark that her favorite "Lovecraftian" story is "More Light" by James Blish. It's a stretch to attach that story to HPL. It has none of Lovecraft's Yog-Sothothery at all. Can Bear be one of those who thinks that Chambers was influenced by HPL, rather than the other way around?

>26 RandyStafford:, 27

Well put, Randy, but would the shoggoths become the enemy of man, or would they simply bide their time, for assuredly they''d find a more sympathetic human eventually? But then again, what if the Nazis became the shoggoth-overlords? Yikes! Sounds more like Mignola territory there, however.

I think that while Bear might admire Lovecraft to some extent, she doesn't really understand him or his writing. She groks that racism is bad, of course, but in good Lovecraftian horror, human ideology is a moot point because humankind is a moot point. After his earlier tantrums, HPL himself realized this and tried to get the idea across to the reader.

I, too, wonder how this rated a Hugo. Here are the nominees for the 2009 awards:

“Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Jan 2008)
“The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
“The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner (Asimov’s Feb 2008)
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s Mar 2008)

I've never read any except for Bear's. I noticed that she also won Best Novelette the year before, too.

Agree with you on "More Light" paradoxosalpha. Odd choice, but then again Blish is an SF icon, so perhaps Bear is gravitating toward familiar company?

> 28. Right. This is the game-theoretic logic of arms races. We've got to get the bomb before Hitler. We've got to have H-bombs because Stalin has A-bombs. Then there is Dr. Strangelove's classic 'mine shaft gap' (assuming he wasn't saying meinschaft).

>27 paradoxosalpha:
Someone mentions the Chambers thing in the comments. Bear's response: " It's a King in Yellow story, and at this point, for purposes of general subgenreization, I think Chambers has been subsumed under the Lovecraft umbrella. Blame the guys at Chaosium?"

While there's probably some truth to that for casual fandom, I too found it odd, that one would right an article about enjoying writing Lovecraft pastiches and mention a favorite work that isn't a Lovecraft pastiche. Shows some taste though. That was a good story.

>28 semdetenebre:, 29 Thomas Sturgeon use to advise writers to ask the next question, the next progression in the consequences of their speculative idea. I think either a shoggoth arms race or Nazi-dominated shoggoths would make an interesting story, one more speculatively novel than this one.

>28 semdetenebre: As for awards, I've given up on the notion that they are any sort of marker of quality or sign of enduring significance -- unless you very carefully define your criteria. I think I read Gardner's "Ray-Gun" that year and voted for it in the Locus Poll (which I just do for the free issue added to my subscription).

I think (and I'm surprised to find it not mentioned) this slots in nicely as a prologue to A Colder War. But it's great the way we arrived back at "mineshaft gap," mirroring the discussion of the Stross short story itself and it's direct strangelove reference "shoggoth gap."

>20 paradoxosalpha:
As pointed out here shoggoths were known as "submersible jellies," until recently. This serves to set this story nicely as a point where you might branch into the "real" world, where Sothothery remains in the shadows, or step into ACW's strangelovian (strangelovecraftian?) deployment of shoggoth bioweapons. But overall I wouldn't call it "mythos," nor ACW, which really is speculative.

On the nodules, I do wonder why the shoggoths might extrude as many as they do. It seems like Harding collects several samples. I assume they're a means by which the shoggoth may be commanded by some master or another, although you might think they'd learn to just present themselves to a human population if they've been around that along and apparently aren't that fussy about who commands them.

>26 RandyStafford:

I'm afraid the modern tendency to see racism as the world's greatest evil and, by extension, Lovecraft as some sinister, deeply and uniquely flawed man, bores me. And, as one local movie reviewer said years ago, when reviewing Alien Nation, "Science fiction fans already know it's not cool to be racist." That said, the race relations are done deftly and realistically -- especially between Harding and Clay. And race has certainly been a topic of American science fiction since almost its very beginnings. I just weary of the theme.

Yeah, me too. It just seems like such an obvious and facile topic to write a story about, and it's doubly frustrating when you are aware of speculative fiction stories that deal with the subject of race in much more interesting ways (Harlan Ellison's "Paladin of the Lost Hour" (http://harlanellison.com/iwrite/paladin.htm), which I read recently, springs to mind). This is more like Driving Miss Daisy, or (if you prefer television analogies over cinematic ones) one of the later episodes of M*A*S*H or Star Trek: The Original Series.

>29 bertilak:

Then there is Dr. Strangelove's classic 'mine shaft gap' (assuming he wasn't saying meinschaft).

Ha!