Saturday, July 16, 2005

ive been noticing the name of Lovecraft and Lovecraftian fiction for some time now. curious, i decided to find out more on this man. apparently, he was one of the most influencial writers in his genre of horror ficiton. a pity since this only happened after he died.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was also one of the greatest letterwriters of the century thanks to his copious coropondence with his friends and collegues.

however, i think that his Cthulthu Mythos is his crowning achievement. Lovecraft writings were based on his nightmares and they were indeed quite terrifying. The Mythos was about a patheon of extra-dimensional entities that predated humanity and were hinted of in myth. however, lovecraft himself did not come up with the term himself, the name was coined by his correspondent and fellow authour, August Derleth. Later, Derleth would publish Lovecraft's writings, after making a few changes to them to include his own Christian belief of dualism. Many say that this was un-lovecraftian since it underminded the simple chaos of the world lovecraft portrayed.

in any case, lovecraft was indeed a great writer. the power of his works were so deep that many people started to beleive that they were based on real myths. his necronomicon, a plot device he used in some of his works was so believably real that people bagan to think that it was a real book.

Since Lovecraft's time, many writers including Clive Barker ,H.R. Giger, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth,Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Alan Moore, and Brian Lumley, have written stories that seem to be set in his "universe".