by Walter Phippeny
Everybody loves Lovecraft. In fact, that would make a great sitcom idea! The wacky antics of a misanthropic Lovecraft as he tries to make it as a pulpfiction writer in New York. I’d watch it.
Actually, everybody doesn’t love Lovecraft; as we enter an age of increased tolerance, Lovecraft’s long diatribes about racial purity and how these ideas find their way into his fiction – Shadow over Innsmouth, or The Horror at Redhook – have polarized the community. But lots of people still read Lovecraft and his creations continue to worm into pulp culture. But Lovecraft didn’t write alone; despite being a very strange human being, Lovecraft was very social and gathered a wide circle of writers around him: Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, et al. Lovecraft encouraged his friends to reuse ideas from his works, and they all worked together to create the Cthulhu Mythos, developing a kind of shared universe for their creations. I’d like to introduce you to one of the overlooked members of the Cthulhu Mythos Circle: Clark Ashton Smith.
