UC Irvine

In this dissertation, I examine the work of André Breton, H.P. Lovecraft, and Richard S. Shaver for the way that each writer conceives of the fantastic as an atmospheric phenomenon in culture. By characterizing the fantastic as an atmospheric phenomenon, I argue that each writer is responding to a broader process taking place in the twentieth century, whereby technological and scientific innovations increasingly made it possible to intervene into background conditions of life that were hitherto beyond the scope of human access or understanding. In their recourse to the language and imagery of the fantastic to describe this process, I suggest not only that each writer reaches for an adequate metaphor to express it but also that the fantastic offers an especially effective means to intervene in it. Rather than a retreat from the world into private fantasy or psychological delusion then, I suggest that each writer wields the fantastic in response to and in furtherance of a process I call atmospheric war. In doing so, I offer a new reading of the relationship between Surrealism and science fiction by examining how writers such as Lovecraft and Shaver carry forward Surrealism’s project to develop a collective myth that would make art the basis of a new, revolutionary life praxis. By conceiving of the fantastic as an atmospheric phenomenon, each writer I discuss expands the scope through which their artistic interventions take place, often to startling effect.