Since the Outer Gods can travel between realities, you can read Lovecraft and know that “The Crawling Chaos” made his way into the King reality. King has all but said Randall Flagg–especially in The Stand and The Dark Tower series–is one of the many guises of Nyarlathotep. He influences the deeds of men, and carries out the evil of larger Outer Gods as well as the wishes of cults devoted to him. He is deceptive and manipulative, and even uses propaganda to achieve his goals. Unlike most of the Outer Gods or Great Old Ones who rarely take a form fathomable by the human mind, Nyarlathotep often takes human form in order to collect devotees and spread chaos. This figure directly mirror’s Lovecraft’s Outer God, Nyarlathotep, who is likewise the most frequently featured entity in the Cthulhu Mythos. He’s the big bad–known as The Man in Black–in The Dark Tower and is the nemesis of all that is good and pure. Appearing in seven novels, either as main antagonist or merely a cameo, Flagg is responsible for some of the worst and most decidedly evil deeds in any of King’s canon. He’s described as “an accomplished sorcerer and a devoted servant of the Outer Dark” and generally aims to bring down civilization through destruction or sewing discontent and conflict in humanity. King’s most frequent villain is the necromancer/sorcerer known by many names, but most consistently Randall Flagg. And while King mainly made up his own extensive mythology of gods and demons, several of them borrow heavily (or at least reference) some of Lovecraft’s creations. This hierarchy is one of the most complex and varied of any in high-fantasy or science fiction, and he was always very open about other writers adding to and changing the mythology. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, which spans many stories and is the author’s most famous contribution to horror literature, discusses beings from such groups as Great Old Ones, Elder Gods, Outer Gods, and more. Lovecraft, who is basically the inventor of cosmic horror. Learning about Stephen King’s deep cosmic horror should prompt a deep dive into one of King’s biggest influences, the early 20th Century horror and sci-fi writer H.P. It is in many ways the keystone work from King and determined a lot of what would come later, while hinting at a greater celestial tapestry of monsters and gods that he’d connect fully in his The Dark Tower series. One of the great things about this Stephen King re-re-awakening is that people get excited about the author’s classic novels again.
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