First life - David Attenborough, H.P. Lovecraft and the primordial

[qcrisp]

I really, really enjoyed watching this recently:

YouTube

YouTube

I couldn't help thinking, throughout, how Lovecraftian it all was.

Borges, apparently, said a great writer creates his own precursors. It seems like he said it more than once, in fact.

Quote

"Wakefield" prefigures Franz Kafka, but the latter modifies, and sharpens, the reading of "Wakefield." The debt is mutual; a great writer creates his or her precursors. He or she creates them and in some fashion justifies them.

And:

Quote

In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

It seems that the precursors Lovecraft created for himself include prehistoric arthropods, charnia, and Precambrian ooze.