3. Ancient Aliens
Who doesnt love ancient aliens? They came here millennia ago, inspired our ancestors, helped build the pyramids, taught them about invisible star systems. Or so schlock-historians would have us believe. While the real ancient alien craze has faded, this theme has proven fodder for numerous sci-fi and horror tales. Most recently, of course, was Prometheus, but also Alien vs. Predator--which many of us wish had never seen the light of day--The Abyss and others. Even It, in novel form, contains ancient alien references. In many cases, these ancient aliens were responsible for human civilization, and sometimes for humanity itself. Ancient aliens basically drove Lovecrafts universe. Humans are not the first--and wont be the last--to inhabit the Earth; long before us, old gods of extraterrestrial origin reigned supreme. Some are still on Earth, waiting to be awoken--as in The Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness. Others have departed for other worlds and other dimensions, and are waiting to be called back; see The Dunwich Horror and The Whisperer in Darkness. And sometimes they just want to be left alone, like in The Other Gods. These ancient aliens are the cause of many of the supernatural occurrences in Lovecraft stories, and the sinister cults (see above) he scattered throughout his writings were often dedicated to bringing these gods back to life. I am going to go out on a limb and claim that Lovecraft invented the ancient alien meme. Just about every reference you can find in modern film and literature comes from Lovecraft; Guillermo del Toro even
claimed he abandoned attempts to make a movie out of At the Mountains of Madness--which would have been incredible--after seeing Prometheus (assumedly because of the similarity of the two stories). And
some have argued that beliefs in real-world ancient aliens arose from Lovecraft and his circle. So reading Lovecraft gives you a sense of where all this talk came from, but also improves upon modern depictions by creating an entire universe in which pre-human monstrosities can and do influence contemporary society.