In this third article on H.P. Lovecraft and Albert Einstein, we focus on where HPL cited Einstein or his theories in his fiction. In HPL’s stories the first reference to Einstein, although not specifically by name, was in Hypnos. “One man with Oriental eyes has said that all time and space are relative, and men have laughed. But even that man with Oriental eyes has done no more than suspect.” Thus, here HPL is points to the fact that Einstein understood something of the universe that few did, however, even Einstein did understand the true nature of the cosmos. Hypnos by Verreaux (deviantart.com)
Einstein was specifically mentioned in The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward. In the story Ward was working on uncovering the “neglected arts” of his ancestor Joseph Curwen. On the consideration of these forbidden and nearly unknown arts, “Not even Einstein, he declared, [Ward], could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.” Again, HPL is making the point that not even humanity’s most innovative and “out of the box” thinker could grasp what he [again Ward] was trying to accomplish.
The great Vince Price as Charles Dexter Ward in Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace, which is based on Lovecraft’s The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward
In The Whisperer in Darkness there was a distinct shift in how HPL incorporated Einstein in his writings. Specifically, this shift moves from Einstein not understanding what lies beyond or the forbidden arts, to having an encounter with beings or situations outside of what has been established as the Einsteinian universe of relative space-time. The first instance of this was when the recording was played of occurrences near the Akeley farmhouse on May Eve 1915. Between the letters and the recording, Wilmarth and Akeley hypothesize that the strange creatures in Vermont were an….”interstellar race whose ultimate source must lie far outside even the Einsteinian space-time continuum or greatest known cosmos.”
In The Whisperer in Darkness the thing posing as Henry Akeley in that lonely farmhouse in Vermont tells Albert Wilmarth all sorts of strange facts about our solar system and beyond. As part of this conversation, the Akeley-Thing make the statement – “Do you know that Einstein is wrong, and that certain objects and forces can move with a velocity greater than that of light? With proper aid I expect to go backward and forward in time, and actually see and feel the earth of remote past and future epochs.”
