Lovecraft's otherworldly visions of cosmic horrors, alien beings and a world not quite our own remain immensely powerful and able to terrify even the most resolute readers. The stories here span the breadth of Lovecraft's literary career, from his early forays into the Dreamlands to his mature writings in the Cthulhu mythos. This volume includes such cult classics as 'The Call of Cthulhu', 'The Whisperer in the Darkness' and 'The Shadow over Innsmouth'. Includes the favourite stories of one of America's greatest ever horror writers. The Cthulhu universe has been adapted into several different formats, including the Alone in the Dark video game series and countless movies.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.
Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.
Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe. See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Fascinating, my first interaction with Lovecraft, though I'd heard of him many places before. The style requires intense focus to suspend disbelief, but the stories themselves are really quite well-fashioned; you never quite know what you're going to get.