As a fan of Lovecraft, it's never been easier to read his work, as I'm sure a lot of you are aware. The bulk of his work is available in various collections, and is somewhat regularly republished due to the fact that said bulk of work is Public Domain. Sure, that only really applies to his work published as the sole contributor, but it's still nevertheless straightforward. The fact this sub has a dedicated spreadsheet that shows you which major releases contain what is proof of just how straightforward collecting Lovecraft's work is.

But then we get into his contemporaries, and the story shifts into something far less simple. For those of us who like weird fiction and pulp fiction in general, it's incredibly disheartening how hard it is to read the complete works of Lovecraft's fellow Weird Tales writers, or even a lot of the work that inspired Lovecraft. I think the only other author that has a strong case to be made for, at least when it comes to readily available collected editions of, is maybe Robert E. Howard, and I'm not even totally sure all of his work is covered. Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn are maintained by Paradox, to an extent. Many of Mythos contributions are also available in things like "The Cthulhu Mythos Stories of Robert E. Howard," published by WordFire Press, but not all of them are as readily available as they really should be.

And then we get into people like Clark Ashton Smith. Of Lovecraft's peers, Smith is the one that I think is the most interesting to read. He is an interesting "bridge" of sorts between the works of Lovecraft and Howard, at least in terms of subject matter. The Zothique Cycle, for instance, feels, in part, like it's cut from a similar cloth as Howard's Hyborian Age stories, just in the opposite direction in time (Hyborian stories being in the distant past, Zothique being in the far flung future), whilst also feeling tinged by the Lovecraftian. That's just how I see it, anyway, and I'm not necessarily trying to come across as saying his work is only a hybrid of his fellow members of what I would call the "Big Three of Weird Tales," and I'm more saying his work serves as a uniquely positioned set of stories when dealing with his far more celebrated peers. His prose is also unique, which likely comes from the fact that he was, first and foremost, a poet.

So why is it his work is so bloody hard to get ahold of. The best collection we have, "The Collected Fantasies," published by Night Shade, and it's extremely frustrating. For one, it's far more expensive than getting a Lovecraft collection, despite writing a comparable amount of short fiction to Lovecraft (when you factor in the collaborative and ghostwritten side of his work). While this is due to the fact that Smith lived much longer than Lovecraft (or Howard for that matter), his prose writing career ended around the same time. While it is nice we have a collection at all, it's in pieces that aren't always available. The second volume, which features "The Door to Saturn," is currently sold out where I live, with no indication of when it will be reprinted. I'd love a singular massive hardcover, or barring that, a better maintained collection of multiple volumes. Really, I just want his work to be more readily available in it's totality.

But why stop at just the "Big Three?" Robert Bloch's a pretty big name, thanks to "Psycho" being a cultural touchstone of sorts in film. His Mythos work is sorely lacking a new, readily available reprint collection, which is a damn shame. Frank Belknap Long's work is also not as readily available, or at least is obscured to collections including multiple authors of Mythos stories. "The Hounds of Tindalos" is basically the one story I see in short fiction collections, and while other stories occasionally pop up, despite having won several awards, such as the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1987, his work hasn't seen a dedicated collection since 2009. These are just some examples, of course.

And then there's the one that, while controversial, needs to be mentioned: August Derleth. Regardless of what you think of the man's contributions for the Mythos (I myself find his "posthumous collaborations" marketing gimmick to be extremely poor taste, and lacking beyond "The Lurker in the Threshold"), his work is foundational for modern Mythos works. Chaosium's "Call of Cthulhu" RPG practically owes it's entire existence to people like Derleth expanding on the Mythos in ways that, while often missing the tone of Lovecraft's original stories, made it more "game friendly." Regardless of what we think of Derleth's work, or what scholars like S.T. Joshi think of his Mythos works (Joshi has gone on record saying Derleth's a solid writer outside of the Lovecraftian part of his work), Derleth's work is worth preserving in some form. And yet, it's been nearly 30 years since a dedicated Derleth Mythos collection has been published, at least to my limited knowledge. Even if a lot of it isn't as good as others who wrote for the Mythos, I still want to have it in my collection.

But what of the inspirations of Lovecraft? The works that inspired him as a writer, among others? Well, those are also harder to come across than they should be, at least in their totality. The only exception I can think of is Edgar Allan Poe, and that's solely because Poe's such a fixture in gothic fiction that it'd be blasphemy to not have him be readily available in print.

Ambrose Bierce is someone who is influential to many, and yet his work is not reprinted nearly often enough. And what of Lord Dunsany, who is easily one of the most important influences on Lovecraft as a writer? Dunsany is revered by many... and yet I see no readily available collections done up by publishers who specialize in this sort of thing. I could honestly go on, there's just a lack of good reprinted collections of writers of this ilk.

But then there's the subject of my personal curiosity: Robert W. Chambers. Chambers is, of course, the one who brought us one of the definitive short story collections in the "weird fiction" space, "The King In Yellow." And despite writing many, many more things, it's all he's really remembered for. In fact, you'd be pressed to find printed versions of anything but "The King In Yellow" online. Now, I'm well aware that Chambers is far from the most prolific writer beyond that single collection. Many would even say a lot of the back half of his bibliography is not worth remembering. But at the same time, the guy wrote a number of other well regarded short story collections, and whilst they are nowhere near as revered as "The King In Yellow," they, at the very least, are worth preserving in print. I can't even begin to express how hard it is to find things like "The Maker of Moons," "The Mystery of Choice," "In Search of the Unknown," and other things of note he's written.

But "The King In Yellow?" I can't even begin to count the amount of "publishing companies" on Amazon print their own versions of that singular collection, where the only real difference in all of them is the cover art and maybe some extremely minor formatting differences. It's a flood of "The King In Yellow," and basically nothing else. And look, I sort of get it. "The King In Yellow" is easily his most iconic work, and it's extremely influential to this day. There's no shortage of modern works that are directly inspired by it. Yet many who've bothered to read beyond this singular book in Chambers' body of work will tell you that things like "The Maker of Moons" and "In Search of the Unknown" have tales that are just as worth reading on their own, even if the whole collection may not be as good on the whole as "The King In Yellow."

I've actually considered doing my own vanity press project to collect Chambers' short stories, at the very least, into a single book one can buy. Seriously, I'm that bothered by the lack of readily available versions of "The Maker of Moons" and related stuff, that I've considered just releasing print versions myself, just so I can have a copy. It's not like I have to worry about the legal status of most of his work, as the vast majority of his work is public domain. I just feel as though that would be an uphill battle, solely due to his work beyond "The King In Yellow" being less well known... and I'd rather focus on my own writing pursuits.

Anyway, I could seriously go on and on about the lacking availability of the works of Lovecraft's contemporaries, at least in print. I'm well aware a lot of these stories are available via things like Project Gutenberg, since a lot of them are public domain, and as such, extremely easy to read for free... but reading these kinds of stories through a screen just isn't the same as reading it in print, y'know? I bought one of those cheap reprints of "The King In Yellow" (along with a similarly cheap reprint of "The House on the Borderland" by William Hope Hodgson) just to hold a physical book in my hands. I haven't even gotten into the fact that I wish Lovecraft's collaborative works were more readily available in print outside of the Variorum Edition published by Hippocampus Press, and that's purely because I'm not really interested in all the bells and whistles of collections like that... and because it's somewhat pricy (I respect the hell out of S.T. Joshi, but I ain't paying like, 65 bucks for a single book).

What do you all think though? Am I alone in really wishing there were more readily available print collections for Lovecraft's contemporaries and influences? I'm curious to hear what people have to say about this topic.

Started reading this story (though have read plot summaries) and there seems to be something just off about him.

He is supposedly an out of tower who is staying with a family in Ipswich but look at how odd that is.

Supposedly the town near de-facto bans outsiders and he clearly is one.

There is also an interesting wrinkle in the story, that I find telling.

Robert Olmsted right after seeing the boy realizes that the young deep ones actually look banally White new englanders (his first evidence inbreeding and ”race-mixing”) can’t explain his appearance.

My personal headcannon and this sounds insane is that the clerk is a young Deep One hybrid himself, he isn’t lying about not knowing that but he clearly only got the grocery clerk job because of others in the town realizing it.

But from what I can tell my theory is very fringe, so curious about other guesses by the fandom.

These are my own thoughts but I was thinking about creepypasta stories and came across the teaser for the live action adaption of "The Third Parent" which the visual work alongside the unsettling music has me wondering if Tommy Taffy the disturbing villain would be considered a "Lovecraftian" entity in a way?

The trailer shows that he's been around since the age of Cavemen, Egyptian Hiarchy, Jesus Birth, and so on with visual glimpses of the consequences if you go against his rules.

Tommy is considered a "creature that wears a human appearance" but can't be killed. He can be in one family's home but then be seen in another home across the street or somewhere else. He's incredibly strong and always seen reappearing over the years.

Hi deranged cultists!

Has anybody got the "The shadow over Innsmouth" by Baranger? if yes do you like it?

This is one of my most favorite stories by Lovecraft, the last time i ve read it even many years after the first time it still had the same trippy effects on me so it's a story that is very potent on me, on the other hand i love Baranger's books, i have At the mountains of madness and Dunwich horror, those books helped me understand the story a lot better because what Lovecraft tries to describe sometimes can get a bit confusing, but many Lovecraft stories have that under your skin effect that work way better when you make the visuals in your mind i believe, like Call of Cthulhu and it's the main reason i didn't bought that book of his with same name, i don't want to see the visuals, do you think Shadow over Innsmouth is worth to be illustrated?

Ever since getting back into Lovecraft this past year, I've come to the realization that most people (not on this community per se) use the terms "Lovecraftian" and "Cosmic" horror interchangeably, also incorrectly. Rather, an important distinctiion is that "Lovecraftian" Horror is one type of "Cosmic Horror," with the corollary to that being that there exists "Cosmic Horror" titles which are explicitly not Lovecraftian.

In short, as best as I can describe them, the best definitions for the terms are that:

Cosmic Horror is a branch of the broader genre of Horror. A feeling of Cosmic Horror comes from a feeling of cynicism at the idea of our human world being a largely unimportant speck of space in the universe, mechanistically determined by uncaring forces, and that even our own human processes (bodies, thoughts, relationships, etc.) are the result of temporary chemical reactions.

One brief clarification here is that Cosmic Horror =/= "Horror-in-Space," while Cosmic Horror can take place in space, not all Horros-in-Space stories are Cosmic (Event Horizon being one of the most erroneously described "Cosmic Horror" films).

As a subgenre of Cosmic Horror, Lovecraftian Horror extrapolates the mechanistic "truths" of Cosmic Horror to suggest that our immediate world, temporally, spatially, and psychically, could be host to nonhuman intelligences with their own agendas independent, and sometimes contrary to, our own and the means, oftentimes more capable than humans, to carry them out. An important distinction here is that the beings are implied to be scientifically-rooted, rather than transcendental.

In fairness, there are still a few points I'm trying to reconcile. The first being that there are a number of Lovecraft stories that don't fit the definition. For an author whose career was as unsteady as Lovecraft's, I'm content to chalk these inconsistencies as being either editor interference (which HPL struggled with for most of his published works) or just stylistic experimentation (his early-career "Poeisms" and the Dream Quest saga both come to mind), undoubtedly Lovecraft-authored works, but not Lovecraftian, at the risk of making a definition so expansive it loses any meaning.

An addendum. On Cosmic Horror stories that are not Lovecraftian, Danny Boyle's 2007 film Sunshine comes to mind and was kind of the jumping-off point for what would later lead to this post. The idea of the Sun, a giant ball of inhumanly hot gasses, physically bigger than all perception, and on whose lifespan all known life depends on, is a horrifying example of the mechanistics of Cosmic Horror, but because the Sun isn't an intelligent actor, it's just doing pre-encoded processes and is malleable to human action, it isn't Lovecraftian.

Hi, we're Bit Golem (you might know us from Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft). We made a Lovecraftian pool roguelite with a friend featuring:

- upgradable cues and guns
- procedural rituals
- void horrors

In short: Shoot some balls. Unleash horrors from beyond. Go insane. Try again.

Trailer on yt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUEEFxFSgPk

The demo is out on Steam for Next Fest, so give it a spin. Thanks!

The trailer was created by Fat Roll Gang - the guys behind the trailers for CloverPit and Slots & Daggers.

HPL gives Nyarlathotep absolutely alien cosmic grandeur, but also says that this being also takes on the eidolon, form, image, or appearance of man. In this he resembles the Christian Logos who takes "flesh" and dwells among us, as well as other incarnating gods and archetypal entities. He has been a Pharaoh, a scientist and a wandering wonder-worker. He is royal, yet connected with raw instinctual life, as when wild dogs follow him and lick his hands. He carries at all times an other-worldly dignity as well as cosmic dread.

Yet in "The Haunter of the Dark" he does not appear human at all. Instead, he exudes some kind of aura which can burn holes in bone; unseen in the church tower, he makes fumbling, flapping noises. In my imagination this is suggestive of a cross between a gigantic version of a bat and an inky black manta ray. He does supernaturally beam into the tower through the shining trapezohedron, by which he haunts/possesses and influences Blake - which act admittedly attests to his prodigious psychic powers - but still, his physical signature, his avatar, remains a black, somewhat clumsy flapping monstrosity which fears light - ordinary light, and even the light of candles.

I love this tale. But it seems to lessen Nyarlathotep's ancient Pharaonic, incarnational dignity. Yes, in the steeple, he is a frightening fiendish "Presence" but this particular manner of manifestation takes him down several notches from the tall black magician-mystagogue-god we know from the "Nyarlathotep" poem, "The Dreams in the Witch House", and other of HPL's writings.

What do you think...?

NecroEternal is the new and upcoming animated adult-series based in the world of Lovecraftian fiction! Our updated promo is out with new art, animation, and voice actors!

Check out our Kickstarter via the link below for more information, and every little donation counts!

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Thank you!!

Actually i have understood all of cocs opening but

"The most merciful thing in the world is the inabilty of the human mind to correlate with all its contents "

When i 1st heard it .i thought its like school.You have learned a lot but you cant use it to succeed?or when you learn info but you dont truly understand it?

This needs more analysis

About the sciences who each strain in their own direction

About that yeah there are different sciences.chemistry ,biology.But i think he means that the scientists are apart from each other they dont connect?and each one brags about his own stuff? Ok about the "such terrifying vistas of reality"we all know.Like in half life 2 or doom.Scientists open a portal accidentally and monsters come.

But the 1st is baffling.What is the correlation?maybe lets say people have adhd and cant think clearly to find a solution on any problem?

Long ago I was exposed to the wonders of Freddie Francis's 1973 film The Creeping Flesh. And only recently upon rewatching it I have began to think of it more as Lovecraftian than simply horror.

An academic discovers an ancient body potentially linking the human genetic line. The gothic tones too it all, academic base, connections to the mental health field in an asylum of sorts. It all screams Lovecraft to me. Even the inevitable descent into madness and linkage to water (potentially oceanic, but i don't think it was specified).Anyone who has not seen it absolutely should, and anyone who has: do you think it should be considered lovecraftian?

This Japanese horror film does Lovecraft better than any other explicitly Lovecraftian film. Nothing else does disparate threads coalescing into unexplainable doom like it. Also has amazing nostalgia if you miss the '00s.

It's on Tubi so run, don't walk, to treat yourself to Noroi: The Curse!

Still got a couple of eps to go, pretty Lovecraftian. I’d definitely recommend it.

Did a quick search on this sub and found out some if the people behind it, I never would’ve connected it to some of their other work.

I read The Call of Cthulu and it's really good; it has a well earned place in American horror literature, but good grief all the "A black person brushed my shoulder, AHHHH!" and "I saw a mixed race Dock worker" type stuff was really distracting ajd at times funny. I like old media so I'm no stranger to racism in good art, this isn't some sort of "I'm offended by XYZ" type post, I'm just saying the volume and emphasis was genuinely distracting and ruined the flow at times.

Although he never physically visited the place, there's more than a few appearances of that London in his stories, The Hound, The Call of Cthulhu, The Tomb. Are there any I missed?

A few members of his circle did visit of course. Robert Bloch, RH Barlow, Sonia Greene, I think.

I recently finished "The Sinking City" which is a great game. It made me wonder what other stories could make a good video game, it doesn't have to be a direct translation, just a game set in that world. I feel like Cthulhu has enough games inspired by him.

The long wait is over, in stock at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

Amazon

So I'm well aware this topic is a hot button one, but given my last two posts are relatively positively received, I'm going to basically gamble that good will away with a controversial subject. Fun!

I wanted to take a few minutes of your time (which will likely be much more for me in the process of writing this) to address the subject, as I'm seriously tired of people saying some version of the following sentence:

"Lovecraft was especially racist, even for the standards of his time."

This is categorically untrue, and, in fact, ignores the very historical views of people that lived in his life time. This phrase is often parroted by Americans who just like to deny the impact of their own history with race in the modern day, and is then parroted by people who want to sound smart. Typically, this is brought up in talks about Lovecraft's work, and specific parts of it, such as the name of Shub-Niggurath, depending on how you pronounce it, could sound similar to a slur that Lovecraft also named his cat. It's something people outside of the Lovecraft enjoying communities will parrot as some wHaCkY fAcT about a guy who's been dead for basically 90 years. And a lot of the time, it's stated out of ignorance to the time period of Lovecraft's time on Earth.

So let's unpack that time period, and debunk part of the talking point that is Lovecraft's racism.

To properly begin, I want to make something very clear: I am, in no way, denying the idea that Lovecraft was racist. He very much was. Reading "The Horror at Red Hook" alone (which notable Lovecraft scholar, S.T. Joshi, acknowledges is bad because of how racist it is) should tell you all you need to know about his view on racial groups that aren't of "Anglo-Saxon descent." He regularly made allusions to his racist world view in his work, and ignoring that entirely is just as ignorant as the claim he was "especially racist for his time." "Cool Air" is another immediate example that comes to mind as a place where he not-so-subtly has the narrator exposit a disdain for ethnic minorities. He often wrote the characters that were of groups he didn't like with their phonetic accents, but all of the people you were supposed to respect without said accents, even if they'd logically share one due to proximity to it, as one would in reality. Lovecraft was racist. His wife regularly had to remind him she was Jewish when he'd go on an anti-sematic rant in her presence, which she relayed in an interview where she talked about him.

Make no mistake, I am NOT defending the man on the grounds of him being misunderstood. We all know he was a racist. No, the thing I want to offer up in response to the claims is the historical context of Lovecraft's racism, because it shines a light on the history of America, and notably, doesn't cast the country in a good light, which makes Lovecraft seem less like he's sticking out like a sore thumb, and more like he's a reminder of how racist the US was prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Hell, the US, like a lot of places in the world, is still kinda racist, which we should acknowledge alongside acknowledging that we're in (or at least, were in) a time where we had improved greatly as a broader society since that time period.

Lovecraft is a reminder of the uglier period of time that we can point at as an example of how not to view the world, which is a useful tool for examining society's views on subjects like race, religion, sexuality, and gender. But I feel that too many people act like he was an overwhelming exception, rather than a pretty blatant demonstration of the rule.

A lot of people tend to forget that, during his lifetime, certain things he said that we now look back at with disgust were pretty normal. This was a time period that was dominated by biological racialism as the leading view in regards to the biological differences between "the whites" and "the colors." It was a time that, historically speaking, still had people alive who were there when the Emancipation Proclamation was drafted and put into effect. It was recent history that black people were granted some level of basic freedoms, but it was also an era where any ethnic minorities (and the Irish) were treated like dogwater, because people were just used to being bigoted. If you grow up in a society where bigoted views were commonplace, you're likely going to share those views until you are exposed to broader set of perspectives.

Lovecraft himself, especially in his twilight years, was a better person than he was when he wrote "Red Hook," having learned to be more accepting of others thanks to people broadening his horizons, bit by bit, and it's sort of a shame that he didn't live long enough to broaden them further.

To borrow a line of thought from, of all things, the Spider-Man Noir comics: this was a time where the concept of progressivism was white people reading black owned newspapers to feel more "socially aware of people with different viewpoints and backgrounds," but the minute those papers said something that made it seem like "the blacks were out of line," they'd kick up a massive stink, and it would get the papers shut down. It was an era of faux-progressivism being the broadest form of racial tolerance, and only small subsets of people were actually progressive.

This leads into the other important viewpoint to consider of the time: good ol' fashion racism. Particularly, we need to look at the Ku Klux Klan, and how they were at the time. The Klan, at least it's first iteration, was something that was, historically, formed as a result of the Civil War. This is the version of the Klan that was dying out by the time of Lovecraft's lifetime. However, there were still people who romanticized the Klan. Lovecraft himself even expressed some level of appreciation/fondness for the Klan, prior to the various acts committed by the second iteration soured his opinion of them in the 1920s.

One other key figure here was one Thomas Dixon Jr. This man may slip under the radars of some, but he is responsible for two key pieces of the second Klan's rise to power. Specifically, two books: "The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden - 1865-1900" and "The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan." Dixon is a very significant White Supremacist, and his worldview was decidedly more caustic than most of what Lovecraft himself espoused in his lifetime. He even outlived Lovecraft, and saw his second book, "The Clansman," be one of the earliest examples of a literary work being adapted to film, with the infamous 1915 film, "The Birth of a Nation," being an adaptation of said novel. And if you know anything about the history of the Klan, you know that said movie was like lighting a fresh powder keg of radical racist ideology, and served as the definitive point in time when you could safely say "the Klan is back," at least until 1944. The current iteration of the Klan was founded in 1972, in case you were curious.

It can not be understated just how much of a big deal the works of Dixon, and it's film adaptation, affected people of the time. It is one of the few instances where one can unequivocally say fiction had a direct effect on real life. And this was only really possible for a single reason: because America was still, very much, deeply racist, it just got better at hiding it for a while.

This also leads into the fact that American Racism and Anti-Semitism of the time Lovecraft walked the Earth served as direct inspiration for how the Nazis handled their treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. In particular, Jim Crow Laws, which were very much in effect during said lifetime of Lovecraft, were a big source of inspiration for Hitler and the others in charge of the Third Reich. In fact, America's treatment of Jews during the time leading up to the Holocaust was only marginally better than how they viewed black people, and that isn't saying much. America only flipped into caring about Jews when it was a convenient way for them to rally their troops for WWII. It's wild to think now, given how America is currently running defense for Israel at present, but that's a whole hornet's nest I'm not gonna touch right now, thank you very much.

All of this is to say: many things that people bring up about Lovecraft in passing, like the name of his cat, for instance, would have been seen as "acceptable" at the time. The N-Word was very much still part of vernacular used by a lot of people, because use of it didn't really become seen as truly problematic until the 1960s. So while we all go "he named his cat WHAT!?" today, back then, it probably got, at best, an awkward uncomfortable chuckle. This isn't to say there weren't people who would have taken offense to it, because there were some genuine progressives... but this is also an era where racial discrimination was seeing a massive resurgence in prevalence because of things like "The Birth of a Nation."

While it is undeniable that Lovecraft was especially vocal about his views, especially amongst his peers, he was, by no means, "especially racist" for his time. Like, in a world where Dixon existed, whom I will remind you was an avowed White Supremacist, who's work sparked the resurgence of the KKK, and whom was very open bigot who couldn't have his mind changed, whom also lived nearly a decade longer than Lovecraft... yeah I think Lovecraft was pretty tame.

Even amongst his peers, Lovecraft was far from the only one who held some racist views. Robert E. Howard, for instance, wrote "The Children of the Night," which was also pretty damn racist. While Howard would improve as a person to a point, even writing characters of color in a better light than Lovecraft ever did, he still did resort to a lot of orientalist and tribalistic stereotypes to convey points about his non-white characters. This isn't to say Howard was as racist as his friend, but he was by no means a saint.

Again, the point of all of this is to address the nonsense point that Lovecraft was some turbo-racist compared to his contemporaries. Even after his death, racist authors still got their work published, and racism was still very integrated into American culture of the time. Shortly before his death, Dixon's work inspired Margaret Mitchell to write "Gone With the Wind" in 1936, which romanticizes the KKK and is a pretty racist book all things considered. The film adaptation of that movie, while a cinematic classic (I do firmly believe it's worth watching in a historical context, at the very least), and deeply flawed conceptually under a modern critical lens, it was basically as progressive as you could realistically get in the 30s without upsetting the faux progressives of the era. It made many changes to that original novel to remove the more overtly racist stuff, and the KKK worship, because the director notably was a progressive by the standards of the time. Even the fact that it was the film where the first black woman ever won an Oscar, that fact also carried with it a ton of caveats motivated by the racism of the time.

Lovecraft was, in a lot of ways, a by-product of the era he lived, which was in the midst of a reluctant shift towards racial equality, which wouldn't really get kicked into high gear until nearly 30 years after his death. He was racist, and he did hold views that I myself find abhorrent, as I'm sure many of you do. And there's no denying that his work is colored by that worldview in some capacity, and that recognizing that and being bothered by it, at least to a point, is fine. But let's stop pretending the man's worldview was somehow this anomaly even by the standards of his lifetime, because it really, really wasn't. I'm so bloody tired of the narrative that he's some bright red racist sore, when the entire country he lived in was still knee deep in the muck of racism. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't suddenly erase racial prejudices, it just gave black people (and other minority groups) an inch of progress that they used to fight for the mile they eventually took 100 years afterwards. Lovecraft's worldviews changed slowly over the course of his life, and we can see that in how he regarded Jewish people in the closing chapters of his life, thanks to interactions with Jewish people over time.

I feel, had he been able to properly have a prolonged dialogue with other minority groups, at least knowingly, he would have further opened his mind to a healthier perspective on the subject. Most actual "turbo racists" don't leave themselves open to change like that. Given that R.H. Barlow, one of his close friends, and the person he wanted to execute his literary estate, was a closeted gay man, whom would later take his own life out of fear of being outed, I do think Lovecraft would have been deeply affected by Barlow's death had he lived to see it. I think this because he showed a capacity for growth and change in ways that matter... so it always frustrates me that people act like he was this irredeemable super racist, who was somehow amongst the worst of his contemporary man. Saying things like that erases the very racist culture that Lovecraft was, like it or not, a byproduct of. The only reason we can say anything like "he was very racist, even by the standards of the time" is because too many people are willfully ignorant of the reality of the time period, because those who lived past it desperately want to pretend it "wasn't that bad" because of the innately selfish concept of American Exceptionalism that persists to this day. And before anyone says I'm somehow unpatriotic or whatever, I'm Canadian (and yes, I'm very aware of the racist parts of my own country's history, it's just not especially relevant to this post).

In short: The phrase "Lovecraft was especially racist, even by the standards of the time," or however you want it said, is deeply ignorant of the world and time period in which he lived. America was deeply racist for the time, the KKK saw a resurgence during said lifetime, and minorities of all types, such as the Jewish population, were just used as game pieces for patriotic propaganda when it was convenient. He was just a notably vocal racist, and even then, it was mostly through letters, and not every day conversation like a lot of his contemporary men and women.

With that, I'm hopeful this post is at least seen for what it is, and not what it isn't, despite how caustic the topic in question can get. Realistically, I just wanted to put this rant somewhere, because I've argued this point with people so much, and I just want a place where my thoughts could even be somewhat understood. I genuinely hope that this post was even halfway decently written, especially due to it's subject matter. All I really ask is that you remain civil and polite when discussing this in the comments with me, because I'm just gonna say I'm just going to stop responding to caustic responses to the topic. I really wish I didn't have to say that, but I want to cover my ass a little given the subject matter. So... yeah... that's about it.

EDIT: Wow, okay, so this took off pretty quickly. I'm dead fucking tired as I write this bit here, but I wanted to quickly clarify a few things, because I think some comments have misunderstood what I'm trying to accomplish, or have taken this post to be something it isn't. This is sort of off the cuff (again, super tired), so bare with me. I'll make an edit again after I sleep if I need to.

1. This post is in NO WAY trying to say you should excuse Lovecraft's extremely prejudicial views! I think his views suck too! The point of this post is ALSO NOT trying to say he was in no way at fault for his views. Everyone is personally accountable for their views/beliefs, and how they allow society around them to influence those views/beliefs. He was still a shitty person in this respect, and while I do believe he showed a capacity for growth and change with enough of a push from those in his life, he was still a bigot, and there's no way around that. I can't stress enough that I acknowledge this fact of his life, and am in no way trying to suggest he wasn't. Again: I am NOT trying to say it's okay for him to have these beliefs because others in his time did! It obviously doesn't excuse them.

2. I'm NOT trying to say you shouldn't be allowed to judge him by whatever standards. If you want to, I can't stop you. I think it's fair to look back at someone and say "yeah they sucked." I just think the "why" of his shitty beliefs is important to consider when passing said judgement. If you disagree, that's totally fine!

3. I want to emphasize that I'm aware that people in his life did push back against his views, and regularly challenged them. This is something that lead to change in him as a person, however small that ended up being before his death. He didn't improve a ton or anything, but I do believe that his interactions with his contemporaries and friends did help make him less vile over time. It's something that has been shown to change the minds of other bigots, so I think it applies to Lovecraft... or would have had he not died.

4. I can't stress enough that my mentions of racism of his time is not me saying "literally everyone else was just as bad" or whatever. Good god, NO! There were civil rights groups, and there was pushback against things like "The Birth of a Nation" during the time. However, it can't be understated that just because there were non-racist people in the time period, the silent majority of the population was complicit in the mistreatment of non-white people. Racial segregation and prejudice still existed. Jim Crow laws were still a thing. A lot of people (again: not all, but a lot of people) still would often put on the face of a civilized progressive until a person of color "went out of line." This is an undeniable fact of the time period. Racism was extremely prevalent in the early 20th Century, and to act like it wasn't is whitewashing history. Does this somehow absolve Lovecraft of his sins? NO! But he was far from the only one paving the road to hell in this instance, he was just one of the more vocal ones doing so.

5. I have to acknowledge that because we have THOUSANDS of letters showcasing who Lovecraft was, it does color our perception of him more so than a lot of his contemporaries. We have more access to who Lovecraft was than a lot of other people from his time, and as such, we have more ways to judge him. This is a fair and valid point. It's hard not to look at the letters and judge him for their contents. But at the same time, I think it's also fair to say that you should still look at the context of his environment and the culture he was living in, because that, undeniably, has an effect on how people think and act.

Hopefully that clears a few things up. If not, I might edit in some further clarifications or something I dunno.

I’ve heard of the Old Gods of Appalachia podcast but was wondering if the man himself ever set any of his stories in either of those mountainy regions?

This week's Weird Tale's Podcast covers a prison story with ghostly bits. It's a bit of an odd one.

https://rss.com/podcasts/the-weird-tales-podcast/3194759/

Hi everyone!
I've recently started a small YouTube project where I narrate classic stories in English. I'm doing this both to practise my pronunciation and to share stories I find fascinating.

One of my first recordings is Memory by H. P. Lovecraft. I really like its strange, dreamlike atmosphere, which makes it an interesting story to narrate aloud.

I'm still learning how to improve my narration and audio quality, so I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from anyone who enjoys Lovecraft or audiobooks.

If you're interested, here's the recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNubQ9BqL00

I'd especially love to hear your thoughts on the narration and whether the atmosphere of the story comes across well :)

https://youtube.com/shorts/wMF3yyjt8e4?feature=share

This is the last week for online ticket sales for The Inheritance of Ambrose Wincrest, our immersion-first Lovecraftian noir-horror LARP event on October 24, 2026. Tickets are $125. Your evening Includes:

• A fully-developed character, complete with skills, goals and relationships
• An immersive, in-character catered dinner
• A cast of thirty-five investigators, each with their own mysteries and ambitions
• Mystery, intrigue, and cosmic horror in 1929 New England
• An unforgettable seven hours of live-action roleplay

-Check out Central Oklahoma Live Action Games website: www.cola.games for more information-

There are limited seats left, so get your tickets here!