An American writer of tales of supernatural horror (1890-1937). - isfdb:author/H._P._Lovecraft - dmoz:Arts/Literature/Authors/Horror/L/Lovecraft,_Howard_P - http://www.hplovecraft.com/ - http://www.gizmology.net/lovecraft/ - http://www.rt66.com/~kalmoth/hpl.html He is one of the titans of his genre, and indeed of SpeculativeFiction as a whole, although he is often overlooked by those with a ScienceFiction background; such oversight is a grave and terrible mistake. HPLovecraft is perhaps most famous for nightmaring up the CthulhuMythos. _Has anyone else noticed the resemblance between 'AtTheMountainsOfMadness' and JohnCarpenter's movie 'TheThing'? Obviously, it's only superficialities, but nonetheless, it's cool. It seems JohnCarpenter made a film called 'In the mouth of madness' which has some vaguely Lovecraftian themes, and has been involved with other HPLovecraft-related projects, so it's probably not a coincidence._ Random links: - http://www.hplovecraft.com/popcult/moviestv/non-hpl.htm _ToDo: write lots more about HPL!_ Apparently he was inspired by the occultish books hanging around the house during his childhood because his father was a Freemason. More concretely, his CthulhuMythos works were an inspiration to the artist HRGiger. Although HPLovecraft's writing is universally classed as supernatural horror, it in fact generally has a concretely material basis and a very HardSF outlook on the world - there's no god or devil, no ghosts, demons or angels; just monsters. Indeed, it is stated or implied that the various horrors are from outer space; the five-winged OldOnes flew across the cosmic void and settled AntArctica, the FungiFromYuggoth are from, well, Yuggoth (which is another name for Pluto) and the star-spawn of Cthulhu are from, er, somewhere else in space. True, he does demur over whether Cthulhu and his mates are ultimately from another dimension or not, but still, it's a pretty materialist worldview. It's all the more chilling for it, in fact. CategoryAuthor