Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

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check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

This episode is sponsored by Brilliant.

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity,

and perhaps it was not meant that we should voyage fall.

So today's topic is gods and monsters, space, as Lovecraft envisioned it, our poll winning

topic from back in September.

Always tricky doing poll winners because I'm never quite sure beyond the title what

the audience wants.

What audiences didn't want, back in the 1920s and 30sP. Lovecraft wrote his work, was most of his work.

Today, he is one of the best known and most influential science fiction horror writers,

receiving even the ultimate accolade of his name becoming an adjective, Lovecraftian,

for stories of cosmic horror and existential dread. But he was quite poor when he lived and fame only came much later.

I suspect that's because a lot of his writing was in reaction to what science was starting

to tell us about the immense scope of space and time, something the public didn't really

understand yet.

A generation later, this was finally sinking into the public awareness and his work gained

a large following and great acclaim.

It's often hard to look through the worldview of our ancestors, they weren't stupid, at least

no more than we are, but they had long believed that there was no history before that of

...