Weird News: Colossal Squid Thawing
Monday, April 28, 2008
Scientists in New Zealand, not far from delirious R'lyeh itself, are busy thawing out an immense captured colossal squid for dissection. Somehow, it's impossible not to think of the mysterious colossal squids as being pretty damned close to the spawn of Cthulhu and lesser tentacled entities from H.P. Lovecraft's mythos. The chilly gulfs of ignorance near Earth's glacial continent--the natural habitat of most massive squid species--are also of interest. Besides carrying overtly Lovecraftian connotations, the malicious alien life of John Carpenter's "The Thing" cannot be forgotten when real life monstrosities come out of the region.
Most interesting of all, though, is the enduring ability of the oversized squid to incite terror and fascination in human observers. While the utterly foreign aspect of the squid celebrated in mariners' tales and appropriated by Lovecraft for weird atmosphere has been somewhat diminished, the beast remains a deadly and awesome marvel. In fact, it should not be surprising to see a modernized, ocean-set version of "At the Mountains of Madness" appear within the next decade. Even without blatant Lovecraftian overtones, such a film or novel could be quite successful. The unknown horrors of Antarctica's sea life remains just as enticing as the continent's landscape in HPL's day.
