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Encyclopedia > Great Race of Yith

The Great Race of Yith are fictional aliens in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. They first appeared in Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow out of Time" (1936). They are called the Great Race because they are the only beings to have conquered time. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, currently used by the SETI project in the search for extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life is life that may exist and originate outside the planet Earth, the only place in the universe currently known by humans to support life. ... Cthulhu Mythos is the term coined by the writer August Derleth to describe the shared elements, characters, settings, and themes in the works of H. P. Lovecraft and associated writers. ... Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy, horror and science fiction, noted for combining these three genres within single narratives. ... This article is in need of attention. ... The Shadow Out of Time (1936) is a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. ... See also: 1935 in literature, other events of 1936, 1937 in literature, list of years in literature. ...

Contents

The Great Race in the mythos

[T]he Great Race ... waxed well-nigh omniscient, and turned to the task of setting up exchanges with the minds of other planets, and of exploring their pasts and futures. It sought likewise to fathom the past years and origin of that black, aeon-dead orb in far space whence its own mental heritage had come – for the mind of the Great Race was older than its bodily form. . . The beings of a dying elder world, wise with the ultimate secrets, had looked ahead for a new world and species wherein they might have long life; and had sent their minds en masse into that future race best adapted to house them – the cone-shaped beings that peopled our earth a billion years ago.
—H.P. Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

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One of the Great Race, under green lighting

The Great Race are beings of enormous intellectual and psychic powers that once dwelt on the dying world of Yith. They escaped the destruction of their home planet by transferring their minds to the bodies of a species native to the Earth in the far distant past. They lived on this planet for 200 million years or so, in fierce competition with the flying polyps, until this enemy finally destroyed their civilization near the close of the Cretaceous era (about 50 million years ago). Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (518x741, 670 KB)[edit] Summary A member of the Great Race of Yith as they appear in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (518x741, 670 KB)[edit] Summary A member of the Great Race of Yith as they appear in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. ... Intelligence is a property of mind that encompasses many related mental abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. ... A psychic is a person who has the abilities of extra-sensory perception, such as clairvoyance, psychometry, premonition and precognition, or other paranormal abilities such as psychokinesis. ... The eight planets and three dwarf planets of the Solar System. ... In transhumanism and science fiction, mind transfer (also referred to as mind uploading or mind downloading, depending on ones point of reference), whole body emulation, or electronic transcendence refers to the hypothetical transfer of a human mind to an artificial substrate. ... Earth (IPA: , often referred to as the Earth, Terra, the World or Planet Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth largest. ... Flying Polyp is a fictional species which appears in H.P. Lovecrafts novel The Shadow out of Time. ... Cities are a major hallmark of human civilization. ... The Cretaceous Period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic Period (i. ...


In the bodies they inhabited on the Earth, they were tall and cone-shaped, rising to a point with four strange appendages – two terminating in claws, a third in a "trumpet", and the fourth, a yellow globe which functioned as a sensory organ. The unique ability of this scientifically-advanced race was to travel through time by swapping minds with creatures of another era. This allowed them to satisfy their interest in human culture, science, and occult beliefs. Occupied beings, their minds transferred to Yithian bodies against their will, learned as much as possible about the societies in which they dwelt; meanwhile, the "captive minds" were simultaneously queried by skilled inquisitors. Many fantasy stories and worlds call their main sapient humanoid species races rather than species. ...


Although captive minds were prisoners, they were nonetheless granted some freedoms in exchange for their cooperation. Those captive minds who cooperated with the Great Race were allowed to wander the Yithian cities at will and to browse the Yithians' gigantic library, which contained metallic tubes with scrolls that recorded the histories of uncounted alien races, including humanity. Creatures inside a Yithian body could also communicate with other captive minds from across the universe (and beyond). Once the Great Race had learned all they could from a captive mind, the occupied being's intellect was swapped back, with the additional precaution of erasing all knowledge of the Great Race. A scroll is a roll of parchment, papyrus, or paper which has been written upon. ... HIStory: Past, Present and Future – Book I (or simply HIStory) is a double-disc album by Michael Jackson released in 1995 by the Epic Records devision of Sony Music. ... The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, currently used by the SETI project in the search for extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life is life that may exist and originate outside the planet Earth, the only place in the universe currently known by humans to support life. ... Humanity refers to the human race or mankind as a whole, to that which is characteristically human, or to that which distinguishes human beings from other animals or from other animal species primal nature. ... The deepest visible-light image of the cosmos, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. ...


Coleopterous race

Because the Great Race travelled to the future as well as the past, they foresaw their own destruction by the flying polyps. Before the fateful day, the Great Race transferred their best minds forward through time into the bodies of the "beetle folk" (the Coleopterous race), Earth's dominant species after humankind. One of the factors involved may have been the fact that the flying polyps are completely gone by this point in time.[1]


Pnakotus

The Lost City of Pnakotus (also called the Library City) is located in Australia's Great Sandy Desert. This primordial city is where the Great Race housed their enormous library. The Great Sandy Desert is a 360,000 km² (223,700 mi²) expanse in northwestern Australia. ...


The library of Pnakotus held the Pnakotic Manuscripts, a legendary tome containing a detailed chronicle of the Great Race's history, among other things. Copies of this manuscript would later be passed down through the ages, eventually falling into the hands of sinister cults which would guard them into modern times. The Pnakotic Manuscripts (or Pnakotic Fragments) are fictional grimoires invented by H. P. Lovecraft in his works Cthulhu Mythos of science fiction / horror. ...


The Great Race in popular culture

  • In the Futurama episode "A Bicyclops Built for Two", a creature resembling a purple Yithian can be seen as a would-be bride.
  • In Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, the Great Race and its advanced technology play a part in the story.

Futurama is an American animated sitcom that follows Philip J. Fry after he is cryogenically frozen at midnight, January 1, 2000, and is revived a thousand years later in the year 2999. ... A Bicyclops Built for Two is episode 9 in season 2 of Futurama. ...

References

  • Harms, Daniel (1998). “Great Race of Yith”, The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, 2nd ed., Oakland, CA: Chaosium, pp. 128–30. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
—"Pnakotic Manuscripts", pp. 242–3. Ibid.
—"Pnakotus", p. 243. Ibid.
  • Lovecraft, Howard P. [1936] (1982). “The Shadow Out of Time”, The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, 1st edition, Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-35080-4.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy, horror and science fiction, noted for combining these three genres within single narratives. ...

External links


  Results from FactBites:
 
Great Race of Yith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (753 words)
The Great Race of Yith are fictional aliens in the Cthulhu Mythos of H.
The Great Race are beings of enormous intellectual and psychic powers that once dwelt on the dying world of Yith.
Those captive minds who cooperated with the Great Race were allowed to wander the Yithian cities at will and to browse the Yithian's gigantic library, which contained metallic tubes with scrolls that recorded the histories of uncounted alien races, including humanity.
Flying polyp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (540 words)
Their minds were so strange that the Great Race could not to perform any sort of transfer on them.
When the Great Race of Yith came to Earth, they warred with the polyps and soon drove them underground with their advanced technology.
The Great Race then sealed the entryways to the polyps' subterranean abode with trapdoors, which afterwards were diligently guarded.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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