Another year has passed, and it’s Lovecraft’s birthday again. (It’s also my mother-in-law’s but that’s beyond the scope of this post.) I’ve been planning a post on Lovecraft (yes, Dave H., the one we discussed at Howard Days and Armadillcon), but it’s not the right time for it. It’ll piss people off. Trust me.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was one of the most influential writers of the weird and fantastic of the 20th Century.
I was thinking the other day about my own writing, and I realized that I have written more fiction with lovecraftian themes in the last year than I have in all other years combined. No, you can’t read these stories. They haven’t been published, although not for lack of trying. Two are under consideration and one isn’t quite finished.
I’ve seen more anthologies devoted to Lovecraft’s works this year. Maybe I’m just paying more attention, but it seems like there’s not going to be a decline in interest in his works.
I will make this observation, though. I don’t see a lot of middle ground with Lovecraft these days. Among the people who are familiar with his work, and by familiar I mean have actually read his stories as opposed to hearing about them from others, people seem to either love him or hate him.
That is influence.
I was a little lazy – I didn’t dig deep for a birthday re-read. I went with “The Colour Out Of Space” because it is in the Baen anthology, THINGS FROM OUTER SPACE, which I’ve started working through, anyway.
It is still one of the great scifi-horror stories.
As for influence – NecronomiCon Providence appears to have a been a smashing success this weekend. The “weird” continues to grow and thrive. I think they struck a good balance between old and new, with newer writers and reading and panels covering both past and present. There were panels for Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and R. H. Barlow.
I need to finish THINGS FROM OUTER SPACE. I’ve still got the last third to go. I didn’t do any birthday reading yesterday. I’ve got a work situation that has me distracted at the moment. Necronomican sounds like a great convention. I’m hoping to make it up there one of these years.
Back when I was still attempting to write fiction, I think I did more work like his Dunsay-inspired dream-lands stories. Of course, you could just say that mine were Dunsany-inspired as well.
I think my favorite HPL books were the Selected Letters
My stuff has been along the lines of his later work. I should probably read the Selected Letters at some point.