origin of the gates

[sargebaldy]

Just noticed when looking at something from Lovecraft that it showed the Doom teleport gates. Dunno if anyone noticed it before or not but I thought I'd point it out for random Doom trivia purposes.

*click*

[myk]

Hadn't noticed, but yeah, cool. And GATE3 is the star shaped one.

I don't think Lovecraft himself wrote that though; reputably the Necronomicon as distributed here and there was written by Lovecraft fans, he only mentioned it in his stories. Though this takes nothing away from the validity of this reference itself, of course: the id artists must have used a copy of the Necronomicon as inspiration. Note that the Necronomicon also appears in Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II, another verified DOOM influence.

[sargebaldy]

Yeah, I know the Necronomicon was just something he mentioned in passing in his stories, *this* Necronomicon seems to just be a book of info about Lovecraftian things, but it's still stuff he came up with.. somewhere (I think). I could have put up the star one too but I guess it was pretty obvious :)

[Ubik]

The Necronomicon is a fictitious book that H.P.Lovecraft used as a vehicle in many of his short stories. So the Necronomicon that you see in bookstores and stuff is mostly based on his old short stories and such.

Although I find it damned cool that the DOOM guys took those things from it. :)

If you want to see something REALLY Lovecraftian-looking, you should see the engineering fountain at Purdue. It's basically four upward-sloping slabs of concrete with lots of intricate patterns carved into them. It SO looks like a monument to one of the Elder Gods or something. :)

[Remilia Scarlet]

This makes me feel rather stupid, but...what did H.P. Lovecraft write again?

[sargebaldy]

Hm? If you mean genre, basically just horror. If you mean specifically, mostly short stories, you might have heard of 'The Call of Cthulhu' or 'Pickman's Model'. He also wrote one story of standard novel length called 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'.

[Ubik]

DJ_Haruko said:

This makes me feel rather stupid, but...what did H.P. Lovecraft write again?

He was a pioneer of horror fiction back in the 30s or 40s (I forget which), and his short stories have influenced modern SF and fantasy as well. He's most well-known for "The Call of Cthulhu," which introduced the infamous Elder God of which we're all so fond. Runners-up: "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," "The Reanimator" (I forget the full title), "The Colour Out of Space," "The Dunwich Horror," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and so forth.

He's most well known for exploiting man's fear of the unknown and overusing ridiculous and obtuse vocabulary like "Cyclopean." ;)

[Nanami]

Hey, that's pretty cool.

[Igor9]

You can find a whole bunch of Lovecraft stuff on the net. Someone at Id was quite the Lovecraft fan and I think it carries into their work with Doom and Quake. One of the Quake levels, the Nameless City, is the title a story from Lovecraft as well.

[Disorder]

Doom 3's pre-order boxart has the same logo's, combined. If I remember correctly.

[Russell_P]

sargebaldy said:

Just noticed when looking at something from Lovecraft that it showed the Doom teleport gates.

I have a copy of this book in a box somewhere.