DKapple: If you've got Tesla, you've got to have Edison somewhere in the game, too, especially as Tesla's competitor or arch-enemy. And possibly Einstein and Poe with their tie-ins to Lovecraft.
faroot: Edison, yes, like you said. Poe wasn't in Lovecraft's generation but I suppose you mean, as a genre founder.
But what's this about Einstein? His lifetime overlapped with Lovecraft, but beyond that, I'm coming up blank. Both were highly unconventional thinkers?
Sorry for the late reply.
Tesla and Edison were direct competitors in their day, with Edison promoting DC electrical transmission and Tesla promoting AC. Edison allegedly even made a show of electrocuting dogs with AC to show how dangerous it was, but in the end, AC won out due to its efficiency. I believe Tesla even worked for Edison at one point. They would be natural opposing forces for such a game.
And yes, Poe came almost a century before Lovecraft, but Lovecraft references him in his own work, and the two themes of existential dread and cosmic horror go hand-in-hand.
Einstein's work was becoming very well known in Lovecraft's time, with its emphasis on weird time and quantum effects and the whole unraveling-the-secrets-of-nature thing that would play nicely into Lovecraft's mythos.
