What Is Cthulhupunk?
The Cthulhupunk genre is a combination of the Cthulhu Mythos and the Cyberpunk genre. It paints the same bleak picture of mankind's future that Cyberpunk does, with one brutal addition... no matter how much you improve yourself, no matter how much you rely on your technology and science, there are still things in this universe that will eat your lunch without looking at you twice.
Cyberpunk blends very well with the Horror genre. Man submerging into the machine, technological terrors roaming the streets. Those cloning accidents didn't just vanish, there's one in the house right now!
Many Cyperpunks can get jaded to that which causes horror. "What, there's a guy with a chainsaw in the basement? Let me put on my Low-Lite goggles and grab my assault shotgun." "There's a vampire in the building? Probably some guy with a freaked out Bio-sculpting job. Hand me my chainsaw." The classic elements of horror come to exist in a Cyberpunk world very naturally. Is that a Werewolf, someone in a high-tech Werewolf suit, someone genetically altered to look like a Werewolf, or a cybernetically modified dog? Who cares, a chaingun full of depleted uranium will make them all go away.
Now, enter the Cthulhu Mythos. That Smartgun won't lock on something that doesn't really exist in our dimension. That vibroblade can't seem to penetrate the flesh of that gibbering ghoul that's eating your dead friend's foot. Did that thing really change shape and smother Fred? Oh my GOD... that thing's the size of a Tuna boat! No, wait... it's EATING a Tuna Boat!
Much of Lovecraft's work called on the nature of the world at the time... even though technology was expanding the places that man had settled, there were still vast tracts of land settled by inbred families and degenerates, with no contact with humanity for decades. Wanderers through the fields and back-roads of New England would come across the most horrific attrocities, hidden from common society by isolation. But in the Cyberpunk world, these isolated communities are finally surrounded by advancing land developers, the old ramshackle farm houses are just across the street from the new Seven Eleven.
In Cyberpunk, man's audaciousness has brought him to the edge of whole new vistas of exploration and knowledge... the other planets, the depths of the ocean. In the Cthulhu Mythos, there are huge eyes and clawed tentacles, waiting just on the other side of that edge.
Where they meet... you have Cthulhupunk.
What is Cyberpunk?
What is the Cthulhu Mythos?
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