Yet Lovecraft's texts are exemplary of Weird, rather than straightforwardly Gothic, fiction. Weird fiction has its own consistency, which can be most clearly delineated by comparing it to two adjacent modes, Fantasy and the Uncanny. Fantasy (and Tolkien is the exemplar here) presupposes a completed World, a world that, although superficially different to 'ours' (there may be different species, or supernatural forces) is politically all-too familiar (there is usually some nostalgia for the ordered organization of feudal hierarchy). The Uncanny, meanwhile, is set in 'our' world - only that world is no longer 'ours' any more, it no longer coincides with itself, it has been estranged. The Weird, however, depends upon the difference between two (or more) worlds - with 'world' here having an ontological sense. It is not a question of an empirical difference - the aliens are not from another planet, they are invaders from another reality system. Hence the defining image is that of the threshold, the door from this world into another, and the key figure is the 'Lurker at the Threshold' - what, in Lovecraft's mythos is called Yog Sothoth. The political philosophical implications are clear: there is no world. What we call the world is a local consensus hallucination, a shared dream.

it is already a palimpsest, spooked by itself; at least two versions are playing, out of sync

invective and lampoonery becomes delirial