A superficial look at the sub-genre will show tentacled monsters lurking at the bottom of the deepest parts of the ocean and the crazed cultists that worship them. But further reading will show existential themes questioning free will and the significance of humanity. Spoiler alert: humanity, much less an individual human, isn’t significant at all.
The term “cosmic” horror relates to the idea that the creatures featured in stories of this sub-genre are often powerful aliens who seem more like gods than anything out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But cosmic horror is as much about inner space as it is about outer space with themes related to the human condition, otherness, consciousness, and self-determination.
Cosmic horror is one of the few genres of literature that can be traced back to a single individual: H. P. Lovecraft, which is why cosmic horror is sometimes referred to as Lovecraftian horror. To quote H. P. Lovecraft from the first paragraph of his short story “The Call of Cthulhu”:
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
Themes
The themes found in cosmic horror have a bleak and pessimistic tone and seek to rob us of our sense of control and meaning.
The Unknown and the Unknowable
Lovecraft is famous for his ponderous language and refusal to describe the awful things he put in his stories, and contemporary authors of the genre like to follow in his footsteps. His use of dense writing with long, running sentences and archaic words such as eldritch, squamous, and Cyclopean was an homage to the authors of weird fiction that influenced him, namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Robert W. Chambers.
His lack of description of the creatures or events in his stories, other than unnameable, blasphemous, or loathsome, lent to his belief that phenomena that are unknown, or unknowable are far more terrifying than anything that could be described easily. Two quotes from him sum up this idea best:
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is the fear of the unknown.”
“Explain nothing.”
The Insignificance of Humanity
H. P. Lovecraft was a student of astronomy in the 1910s and 1920s, a new Golden Age of astronomy. This was a time of discoveries that we simply take for granted today. The idea that our solar system is just one of billions in a galaxy in an ever-expanding universe of countless galaxies is taught in middle school science classes around the world today. But back then, these were new concepts to a culture that was still rooted in the Biblical teachings of history. For instance, the Scopes Monkey trial which challenged a teacher’s ability to discuss Darwinian evolution was in 1925.
I believe these new discoveries, as well as his atheism, led Lovecraft to conclude that humanity can’t be special in the grand scheme of the universe, and therefore creatures far older and far more powerful than humans must exist. Perhaps some exist on Earth today…
Madness and Insanity
The themes of the unknowable as well as the insignificance of humanity carry through to the theme of insanity as the minds of the characters in the stories break from the strain of trying to understand that which the human brain is simply incapable of understanding. This is such an important theme to cosmic horror that it has carried over into other depictions of the genre. Any role-playing or video game that features anything remotely Lovecraftian must include some kind of system to show a character’s descent into madness through their experiences in order for it to be taken seriously by fans of the sub-genre.
Legacy
A common theme in cosmic horror is the notion of a familial line that carries down to the protagonist. Whether it is an unknown bloodline like in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” or a collection of newspaper clippings leading to a global doomsday cult in “The Call of Cthulhu,” the protagonist is lead through a series of horrific encounters that have been determined before they were even born, questioning the whole notion of free will.
This theme most likely grew out of Lovecraft’s past. Both of his parents were mentally ill and spent at least some of their time in insane asylums. Considering his lifelong struggle with his own mental and physical ailments, he must have wondered how much of them were due to his family’s lineage.
Tropes
The Great Old Ones
This trope is so prevalent that it has also crept into the mainstream. The Great Old Ones, Elder Gods, Outer Gods, however they are named, are powerful alien beings who seem like deities to us. We might think of them as evil, but they don’t think of us at all. Their “evil” comes from their complete indifference to humanity. In some stories, the destruction brought on by the Great Old Ones is more of a side effect of their presence than any conscious act of malice on their part.
Fitting with the theme of the insignificance of humanity, there is nothing that humans can do to stop the inevitable rise of the Great Old Ones from their slumber and their annihilation of the world. The only thing saving humanity is that these great evils are hidden or locked away, saving us from the mind-shattering knowledge of their existence.
Cults
Despite the nihilistic indifference of the Great Old Ones, there is always a group of people who worship them. These cultists are usually insane, because only a crazy person would worship an alien being that is more likely to squish you like a bug than give any kind of blessing. Sometimes the cultists are global secret societies or sometimes localized into a small, remote area. There are also stories featuring just one person who has gained power from an ancient text or artifact, and desires more even if they don’t fully understand what that will cost them.
Cursed Objects
Sometimes evil isn’t a person, but a thing. Cosmic horror stories often feature an item that will corrupt the body or the mind of someone simply being exposed to it. Reading forbidden texts is the most common theme with the information hidden away inside unlocking the reader’s mind to terrible knowledge. Or, as in the case of the play The King in Yellow or the movie Cigarette Burns, a piece of art is created with the express purpose of driving people insane.
Things That Should Not Be
Creatures that do not fit into any evolutionary tree created on Earth or architecture that follows non-Euclidean geometry that bends the senses are also common features in cosmic horror. Oftentimes, just the sight of these Things is enough to shatter the common mind.
Examples of Cosmic Horror
Literature
Just about anything by H. P. Lovecraft, but a few stories stand out: At the Mountains of Madness, “From Beyond,” “The Colour Out of Space,” and “The Call of Cthulhu” The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers “The White People” and The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen The Hyperborean Cycle by Clark Ashton Smith “The Black Stone,” “The Children of the Night,” and “The Haunter of the Ring” by Robert E. Howard
Movies
In the Mouth of Madness Cigarette Burns (from the Masters of Horror series) Dagon The Mist The Void The Thing Annihilation
After Sprague’s H. P. Lovecraft biography was published in 1975 this beautiful collection of Lovecraft’s nonfiction essays was published by Donald M. Grant in 1976. In the introduction Sprague writes, “In researching for my book Lovecraft, I read many non-fiction writings by the great American writer of weird and macabre fantasy […] not currently available.” The introduction is reproduced below:
This book is divided into four sections. Below is de Camp’s original Table of Contents. In the final version “Astronomical Columns” was separated into four separate entries: Trans-Neptunian Planets (1906), November Skies (1915), June Skies (1916), and May Skies (1917). Thus, changing the total essays from 14 to 17.
(1.) Science: Lovecraft wrote many essays for the local newspapers describing the night sky and the legends and the myths behind them. He almost certainly wrote the essays for free as he thought it was ungentlemanly to ask for money for one’s work. Sprague also found a 1906 letter to the Scientific American (published here as “Trans-Neptunian Planets”) where Lovecraft suggests looking for an extra outer planet. This foreshadows the discovery of Pluto by over 20 years and of course we remember Pluto as Yuggoth!
Sprague read these essays carefully and he shows his “Mastery of Lore” in the footnotes. On page 22 in note #4 he corrects Lovecraft by writing “In the Greek legend, Perseus flew, not on Pegasus, but by the winged sandals Hermes had lent him.” And on page 27 his note reads “Classical sources (e.g. Apollodoros, III, i.4) usually describe the Minotaur as a bull-headed man.”
I am impressed by the amount of knowledge the young Lovecraft showed in these essays. A sad note by Sprague on page 13 reminds us that “During high school, Lovecraft casually assumed that he would go on to Brown University, major in astronomy, and become a professor of that subject. His neuro-physical collapse in his fourth year of high school and his failure to graduate ended his prospects of a scientific career.” It’s strange to be reminded that the Eldritch Yankee Gentleman was a high school dropout!
In the article above from The Phoenician Lovecraft guesses that there might be life on Mars. The jury’s still out on that one!
(2.) Literature and Esthetics: Here are some of what Sprague describes as “many lively opinions on the crafts of prose and poetry.” Sprague acknowledges Lovecraft’s “ultraconservative outlook,” but Sprague always agreed with Lovecraft (and for what it’s worth, Moi!) when Sprague writes that since Lovecraft’s time “serious poets have almost entirely abandoned fixed forms in favor of free verse. Their product has disintegrated into mere concatenations of free association verbiage, which can be and have been composed as well by a child or a computer as by a mature poetic artist. So, perhaps, there is something to be said for Lovecraft’s views. Moreover, his opinions on this subject, as on others, became broader and more tolerant in his last years.”
Sprague shows us his lore chops when he writes “In ‘The Allowable Rhyme,’ Lovecraft assumes that Pope’s rhyming of ‘join’ and ‘line’ is a case of mere laxity. In fact, in the speech of many of Pope’s time, ‘join’ and ‘line’ did rhyme, using the same diphthong, intermediate between those now heard in those words, in both.” Of these essays, my favorite is Lovecraft’s “The Literature of Rome.”
(3.) Philosophy: Here we read of Lovecraft’s “formidable” nontheistic materialism. Lovecraft was a keenly logical thinker concerning the supernatural. And Sprague does not spare us Lovecraft’s notorious racism or ethnocentrism. You get to read “The Crime of the Century” and “Nietzscheism and Realism.” Sprague is very careful to remind us that Lovecraft was far from the only intellectual to harbor such thoughts at the time and that “In his last few years, he one by one abandoned these animosities until they were practically all gone.” Also Sprague reminded us that a lot of these fulminations and rantings now seem far more sinister after Dauchau and Treblinka and Auschwitz than they did at the time.
(4.) Travel, Description, and History: Lovecraft in his later years was what Sprague described as “quite a gadabout.” These are very charming essays again showing Lovecraft’s delight in travel and history. This was the first publication of Lovecraft’s “Quebeck.” It was a 75,000-word essay written in long hand over 3 months describing the wonders and beauty of Quebec. As a pro, Sprague could only shake his head at “A professional writer, in precarious financial shape, would think himself mad to spend over three months on unpaid hobby writing.” Sprague always thought that with a little editing this would have been an excellent Quebec travel guide and it was a shame that it did not seem to occur to Lovecraft to try to professionally publish the essay.
Sprague spent a lot of time ensuring the spelling and accuracy of names and places in this essay. He sent several back-and-forth letters to M. Louis Paré, the Quebec Tourism Director to ensure corrections were made and dedicated the book to him for his help.
All in all, this is a beautiful and fascinating book. As far as I know there was never another edition after Donald M. Grant published it.
I thought I would add a little to Brian’s excellent Lovecraft book review. My correspondence with Sprague was just hitting its stride when Lovecraft came out and I remember the controversy and the hue and cry. Lovecraft was debated at the World Fantasy Convention. Sprague pointed out to critics that he did not like or dislike Lovecraft because he never met him. Lovecraft was a historical figure. And to me what was often overlooked was that Sprague took pains to point out that Lovecraft kept learning his whole life and that Lovecraft was a man who always “tried to do the right thing.”
I have a copy of a very bitter review of Sprague’s HPL biography by a devoted fan of the time named Dirk Mosig. Mosig managed to get under Sprague’s skin and he and Mosig had some pretty rancorous exchanges. Sprague and Catherine were worried enough about all the animosity that they actually requested that myself and a friend be on hand at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention to try to prevent any physical assaults!
In conclusion, if you ever find a copy of To Quebec and the Stars, grab it! It’s a beautiful and endlessly fascinating volume. Besides being an excellent writer Sprague was also an outstanding editor!
Lovecraft: A Biography (Doubleday, 1975) was one of de Camp’s most ambitious works of nonfiction, and, at 175,000 words, one of his longest. It was originally even longer. De Camp notes in his autobiography that the manuscript was 200,000 words, which Doubleday considered too long, and was shortened at the publisher’s request. For the Ballantine paperback version he had to shorten it even more. Loay H. Hall writes (in Laughlin and Levack’s De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography, 1983) that in the abridgement “de Camp cut the text by about 13,000 to 16,000 words, deleting repetitions, digressions and speculative obiter dicta [and] eliminated the notes section, bibliography and index.” He reports “de Camp was rather unhappy about the required excision of the end matter.”
In either version, it was an impressive achievement. Hall sums it up as the “definitive look at the life, times and writings of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), creator of the Cthulhu Mythos … and one of America’s greatest epistolarians … considered by many to be the Edgar Allan Poe of the 20th century.” It “is de Camp’s most controversial book … a candid ‘warts and all’ examination” of the writer and his fiction. While it has since been superseded in regard to definitiveness, it’s safe to say that it remains controversial, in common with much else written on Lovecraft.
The bibliographical history of the book is a bit complicated. It originated in a pair of articles de Camp wrote on Lovecraft for Fantastic; “Eldritch Yankee Gentleman,” Parts 1 and 2. They appeared in the v. 20, no. 6 (August 1971) and v. 21, no. 1 (October 1971) issues, and were part of a series on “Literary Swordsmen & Sorcerers,” telling the life stories of ten early twentieth century fantasy authors, which ran in the magazine between 1971 and 1976. Lovecraft was the only author in the series rating two articles, doubtless because his life was so well documented and he was so influential. The series later became the basis of a book, Literary Swordsman and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (Arkham House, 1976) — and a few of the articles were expanded into full-length biographies as well. One is the book currently under review; the other (Dark Valley Destiny, on Robert E. Howard), isn’t. Maybe another time.
The two pieces on Lovecraft might well have been all de Camp ever wrote on the man, had it not been for one important event. Even as they were first seeing print, August Derleth died. Derleth was the long-time publisher of Lovecraft’s works and guardian of his legacy; he had, indeed, encouraged and facilitated de Camp’s articles. It was generally assumed, however, that Derleth would himself be the eventual author of any book-length exploration of Lovecraft’s life. His passing precluded that, and de Camp concluded “it seemed logical for me to undertake the work.” Why? Well, why not? He was well positioned to step in; with his articles and the research for them fresh in mind, he had, essentially, already started.
He may well have found a bigger audience for it than Derleth would have. Derleth was accustomed to publishing everything Lovecraft through his specialty press, Arkham House, and a biography by him would almost certainly have appeared there as well. Arkham was an important player in speculative fiction circles; indeed, de Camp’s own Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers book would be issued by it; But it wasn’t exactly in the big leagues of publishing. De Camp’s biography went to Doubleday, a lot bigger fish with quite a bit more reach.
Ostensibly, Doubleday’s first edition was published in hardcover in 1975, but if we dig a little deeper, the picture blurs. One record in OCLC gives it a 1974 date—probably a preliminary, pre-publication entry, and the Internet Speculative Fiction database, while providing a firm February 1975 release date, also notes a “gutter code P48” on page 510 supposedly indicating a November 1974 date. Doubleday’s gutter codes refer to printing or manufacturing dates, which can come four to six weeks before the book is made available to the public. My own copy was evidently printed somewhat later, as it has a gutter code of Q17, translating to April 1975. The upshot is that the first copies of the first edition were indeed printed late in 1974 and released in early 1975, with more copies printed as needed, into 1975.
As indicated, the first edition is the one I own, the dustcover of which is scanned for this review. The front of it has a washed-out portrait of Lovecraft by Nicholas Gaetano (based on a photo reproduced inside the book, titled “H. P. Lovecraft in his forties”), positioned beneath the title and author on a beige background. The jacket typography is credited to Jonathan Field. The back of the dustcover has a large portrait of author de Camp over a blurb on the same. The end flaps provide a brief resume on the subject of the biography. Beneath the dustcover, the binding is “black paper wrapping the spine and with reddish brown paper boards [with g]old lettering on the spine.” (Laughlin & Levack, which I can confirm from my own copy.) A dignified if rather staid presentation.
A British edition was issued by New English Library in 1976, also in hardcover. It appears a straight reprint of the Doubleday edition, right down to duplicating the original front dust cover. The differences are slight. The New English Library device and name appears at the bottom of the spine in place of Doubleday, the de Camp portrait (sans blurb) is expanded to occupy the entire back cover, and the resume on the end flaps (textually different but functionally the same) starts higher up. The book is bound in light brown cloth boards, with gold lettering on the spine exactly like that on the dustcover. Inside, NEL’s data replaces Doubleday’s at the bottom of the title page, and the title page verso is altered to show the NEL edition is dependent on the Doubleday. That’s it.
Ballantine Books published a mass market paperback, “abridged by the author,” in August 1976. Its cover, by Murray Tinckleman, features a different portrait of Lovecraft (also based on a photo from inside the book, titled “H. P. Lovecraft, 1934,” and credited to R. H. Barlow), within a dragon-haunted graveyard, enveloped in the horn-and-claw style spiky bordering Ballantine used for all its Lovecraft books at the time. All on a Navy-blue field.
Aside from reprints, that was the last English language edition until 1996, when Barnes & Noble Books reissued the original hardcover version under the revised title H.P. Lovecraft: A Biography. Its dustcover uses a cropped version of the Barlow photograph beneath the title, with the author’s name in smaller letters at the bottom.
The next, and current, English language edition was once again a British one, this time an Orion/SF Gateway ebook, issued in 2011. It originally bore Gateway’s characteristically horrid style of cover, consisting of publisher name, brief blurb, title and author in black or red letters on a yellow field. This was replaced at an unknown date by a somewhat better baby blue cover featuring a drawing of Cthulhu amid esoteric symbols over the author’s name and title in black, with a yellow banner at the bottom reading “Gateway Essentials.” Gateway’s edition, unlike the various hardcovers, appears to use the abridged Ballantine version of the text. In common with all the publisher’s de Camp offerings, it is not offered in the U.S., but only to overseas readers.
With the ongoing rise in interest in Lovecraft and all things Lovecraftian, there would likely have been additional editions had not de Camp’s book been superseded by S. J. Joshi’s more up-to-date, comprehensive and definitive biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (Necronomicon Press, 1996), later abridged as A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time (Liverpool University Press, 2001) and expanded as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2 volumes, Hippocampus Press, 2010).
Paradoxically, the Joshi bio may also have helped boost the later de Camp editions. The same year the first version of Joshi’s book came out, de Camp’s was reissued in the Barnes & Noble edition. B&N reissued a number of de Camp’s non-fictional works during this period, but it is likely not a coincidence its edition of the de Camp Lovecraft coincided with that of Joshi (in fact anticipating it; the B&N came out in February 1996, and the Joshi in October). Likewise, publication of Joshi’s expanded 2010 edition was followed in 2011 by that of the first Gateway e-edition of the de Camp. Could it be that B&N and Gateway sought to capitalize on the upticks in interest in Lovecraft occasioned by the appearance of the Joshi works with competing and lower-priced rival editions? Well, come on, of course it could!
Meanwhile, foreign language versions of de Camp’s book also proliferated—again, in more recent years, likely prompted by publishers hoping to compete with and undercut Joshi’s. The first may have been a German translation, which according to Laughlin and Levack’s de Camp bibliography was published by Insel Verlag in 1976. I have, however, found no other references to this edition, so perhaps it was stillborn.
The next foreign language edition (if Laughlin and Levack can be trusted), or perhaps the first (if not) was Spanish; Lovecraft: biografía, translated by Francisco Torres Oliver (Ediciones Alfaguara, Madrid, 1978). It was reissued in 1992 and 2002 as Lovecraft: una biografía (Valdemar, Madrid); on the later occasion in ebook as well as print. The cover of the 1978 version uses a waist-up photo of Lovecraft (not from the book) casting an impressive shadow. The 1992 version has a monstrous eye beneath a line of four Lovecraft silhouettes (these reproduced from one in the book, titled “Silhouette of H.P. Lovecraft” and attributed to Perry). The 2002 version uses a cartoon caricature of Lovecraft at his writing desk. I have not seen an artist credit.
There was also a French version, H.P. Lovecraft, le roman de sa vie : biographie, translated by Richard D. Nolane and issued in print and ebook (NéO, Paris, 1988); it was reissued in both forms in 2002 (Durante, Courbevoie). The cover art for all these editions has Lovecraft surrounded by a crowd of ghostly spirits and monsters. It’s quite good. I have not seen an artist credit for this one, either. Again, the portrait appears based on a photograph, but not one from the book.
Finally, the earliest German edition I have actually been able to verify is Lovecraft, Eine Biographie, translated by Rainer Schmidt (Ullstein, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1989); it is stated to be the first German edition, and an abridged one, though whether Schmidt did the abridging or merely used the Ballantine edition as his source text is unclear. Likely the former, as his version is very abridged, with only about half the page count of subsequent editions. In the great German tradition of repurposing material originally used elsewhere, it takes its cover art from a dramatic but unrelated piece by John Rush previously applied to the Stephen Leigh novel Dance of the Hag (Bantam Books, 1983).
The Schmidt translation did not last, being replaced by a new one by Andreas Diesel for the next German edition, a hardcover retitled H.P. Lovecraft: Eine Biographie (Festa, Almersbach, 2002). At close to double the page count of the Schmidt, my presumption is that Diesel worked from the Doubleday text. The Diesel translation was reissued in trade paperback ten years later (Festa, Leipzig, 2012). Both the Festa editions use yet another Lovecraft photograph on their covers (not from the book), jazzed up in greens and yellows by “asuka,” which seems to be some sort of cover mill operation rather that an actual artist.
I am unaware of any other foreign language editions.
Okay, so what’s in the book? In content, it consists of a preface (supplemented in the Ballantine and Gateway editions by a note regarding the cuts), nineteen chapters on Lovecraft’s life, letters and works, and (in the uncut editions) notes, a bibliography, and an index.
De Camp’s chapter headings, often allusive and sometimes amusing, provide some indication of his treatment of Lovecraft’s career; College Hill, Bent Twig, Night-Gaunts, Spoilt Genius, Haunted House, Amateur Superman, Wasted Warrior, Ghostly Gentleman, Journeyman Fantasist, Bashful Lover, Quixote in Babylon, Gunnar in the Snake Pit, Cthulhu Alive, Recusant Spouse, Footloose Connoisseur, Baffled Bard, Thwarted Thinker, Guttering Lamp, and Posthumous Triumph.
He takes a whole picture approach to his subject. He covers the man’s family background, the physical environment to which he was so attached (home, town, and region), his odd upbringing as the coddled but belittled child of troubled parents, his early brilliance and subsequent emotional stagnation amid health problems, and his irregular education. De Camp goes on to discuss Lovecraft’s self-imposed physical and social isolation, early affluence succeeded by crippling poverty (which his self-image as a gentleman who should not be expected to earn a living needlessly exacerbated), his amateur hobbies and pursuits that led to what living he did earn, and his various fixations and strong prejudices. We learn of the wide-ranging contacts through amateur journalism and correspondence that established and broadened Lovecraft’s reputation and (incompletely) brought him real friendships and even a brief marriage. His travels, financed on a shoestring but thoroughly enjoyed, receive due attention.
We also learn of Lovecraft’s literary output, the triumphs and faults of which are explored extensively, right down to summaries of many of his stories. (One literary fault, in de Camp’s eyes, is Lovecraft’s addiction to adjectives, to which he turns a brilliantly wry and humorous eye in a manner that I expect infuriated many devoted Lovecraft fans.)
Most of the lived experience treated in the text was unremarkable, even mundane, but Lovecraft had a way of making the mundane seem remarkable, and so does de Camp. He was, as his biographer paints him, both ordinary and somehow fascinating, at once a poseur and a genius, whose personality thwarted his own success—he was truly his own worst enemy. De Camp, the consummate professional author, tries to hold his criticism in check, yet he is still manifestly aghast at his subject’s “gentlemanly” amateur pose, which forbade self-promotion and demonstrably hindered the man’s writing career.
De Camp does not neglect the elephant in the room, which looms larger in Lovecraft’s literary afterlife than it did in his actual lifetime. I refer to the man’s extreme xenophobia. This is displayed most starkly in the chapter de Camp heads “Gunnar in the Snake Pit,” a title than on its face has no obvious connection with Lovecraft; the title, rather, refers to a particularly horrific episode in the Norse legend of the Volsungs. But it does indeed relate, as the chapter treats Lovecraft’s visceral reaction to the immigrant populace of New York, among whom he found himself during the period covered. The experience brought all the man’s simmering racism to the surface; for Lovecraft, New York was a snake pit.
Lovecraft’s xenophobia was a disturbing but fundamental aspect of his character. However charming and pleasant he was in person, he privately viewed whole classes and nationalities with extreme revulsion, condemning them on the basis of bigoted and largely unexamined stereotypes. All who read his works, fans or not, should realize that unless they are thoroughbred “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” or some other Nordic type of equally fictitious purity, they are Abominations Unto Lovecraft, and would have been targets of his loathing. Including me! While I have roots in the U.S. as deep as his, I also have forebears he considered among the mongrel hordes he wished extirpated from the earth.
De Camp, while not neglecting what we might call the “problematic Lovecraft,” appears nonetheless to give the man a pass, citing the perils of rating people of former eras by present standards, and pointing to a gradual liberalization he perceives in Lovecraft’s views over time. We, too, could give him a pass. After all, he died young, and is long since gone. So we certainly have the luxury of looking back and finding his attitudes quaint and unalarming. Only, they aren’t. Even today many among us share his contempt for much of humanity. Are we to extend whatever understanding and charity we’re inclined to feel for him to them as well, even as they howl for our blood?
How Lovecraft’s views would have changed had he lived a fuller lifespan, we have no way of knowing. What we do know is that he could have found support, in his old age, for both the better angels and worst devils of his nature. The man he might have become could have been a very unlovely Lovecraft indeed.
Perhaps it’s as well that Lovecraft’s true fame came after he was gone. His lack of it when living kept him relatively humble, countering the dark undercurrents of his personality that success might have given looser rein, and I daresay helped him grow as a person. It may have been his saving grace and fortune that renown came from promotion by acolytes like Derleth, oblivious to Lovecraft’s private hates and knowing only his charm, which they repaid with devotion and advocacy.
Turning to a less tricky topic, how should one rate de Camp’s exploration of Lovecraft and his works? He was unquestionably a formative figure in the subsequent history of speculative fiction, for good or ill, and an understanding of the man is therefore essential. Does de Camp give us this?
I would say he does. He brings to his subject his characteristic thoroughness, erudition, humor, and a certain amount of sympathy. He was, as well, a near contemporary of Lovecraft, of similar background and social class, and so was able to provide a contemporary perspective—nuanced, to be sure, by close to forty additional years of lived experience. These are advantages not possessed by later researchers.
He covers the life in a good degree of detail, the fictional works as they relate to the life and interests of the subject, and the correspondence as it relates to both. De Camp is reasonably detached, and mildly judgmental, in the way only a professional author can be in regard to a perpetually self-sabotaging amateur. He is, to be sure, a bit more judgmental than he thinks he is, though possibly not as much as our present day perspective might deem warranted.
He conveys well Lovecraft’s facility for making himself personally loved among his peers, both by missive and in person, an astounding talent for a person of such reclusive habits, and one that ensured his work would have champions after his demise—champions who would do much more for it, and much more effectively, than he ever managed himself. We see how the man made himself Important with a capital I by the way he encouraged and fostered so many would-be and fledgling authors who later became important themselves, and how this made him a pivotal figure in the history of speculative fiction.
Of course, de Camp’s word was not, and could not, be the last one on Lovecraft. More has been learned, and more uncovered, since de Camp wrote, and he was not so obsessively focused on his subject as, say, S. T. Joshi. I am not going to weigh in on the relative worth of the de Camp and Joshi bios. For one thing, I have not read the Joshi (in any of its versions); for another, the matter has already been pronounced on by those more qualified to do so, and the nod has gone to Joshi. Which is not at all surprising. Joshi has made Lovecraft his life’s work, and had the benefit of working with additional material that has come to light since de Camp wrote, enabling him to effectively second-guess his predecessor. Still, from what I know, or think I know, of Joshi, I suspect his view of Lovecraft may be less balanced than de Camp’s, and that de Camp’s take remains and will continue to remain a valid one.
There is one more matter to be addressed about de Camp’s book—the controversy over it. It was controversial when first published and has remained controversial since. Why? Likely because Lovecraft is a figure who prompts strong likes and dislikes, so a judicious treatment satisfies few. To devotees, he has no faults, and to disdainers, no virtues. Uncovering such faults and virtues as he actually had is like simultaneously waving a red cape towards both ends of a bull ring. For that matter, de Camp was writing at a time when many people who had known Lovecraft personally were still living, and they all had their own impressions of him based on their own experiences. Nothing controverting those impressions would have pleased them, and matching everyone’s impressions would clearly have been impossible. Nor would the revelation of material undercutting any of their preconceptions have been welcomed.
There is another question that has emerged in recent years adding another dimension to the controversy—why write of Lovecraft at all? Many in the present generation of speculative fiction fans (and writers) are inclined to dismiss him entirely as just another dead white male writer who not only fails to speak to their own experience but would happily have negated their very existence. A viewpoint I can certainly understand. His legion of devotees notwithstanding, Lovecraft these days is very much in danger of erasure.
At one time, it was possible to believe that “the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice;” that ignorance and hatred were on the wane. The resurgence of intolerance in the final quarter of the last century and the first of the present one has shaken this faith. De Camp looked at Lovecraft and saw a man slowly expanding his sympathies and discarding his prejudices. Today some find it difficult to believe people with detestable beliefs can change for the better at all, or to forgive those who have ever held them.
Hence, historical racists like H. P. Lovecraft or John W. Campbell, however revered or influential in their fields, are targets for condemnation and are stripped of any honors still adhering to their names. Evil, evidently, has grown so strong it must be fought wherever encountered, in the past as well as the present. Moderation has become a dirty word, and allowing latitude to opposing viewpoints a luxury. When the other side seems to live at the extreme, it’s difficult to even recognize when one’s own goes a step too far. Yet, a certain detachment, a moderation, a tolerance for human failings, and for imperfect humanity in general, remain virtues. In fact, they remain necessary, both for balance and sanity.
Perhaps that is what I prize so much in de Camp. Despite his ability to unblinkingly recognize the worst in humanity, he remains able to recognize the good in it. This is a feature of moderation, not zealotry. He has it and brings it to his subject. Those seeking either a perfect or irredeemable Lovecraft will not find it in de Camp’s biography. A partisan can certainly find weapons in it, but to do so must reach past de Camp’s mediation, which reveal them as weapons likely to turn in the hand.
The book was dedicated “To the memory of the Three Musketeers of Weird Tales: Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith.” And rightly so. The man and the two greatest of his contemporary authors in his chosen field and forum, all of whom he knew well—by correspondence, if not in person.
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Bonus: In the above article Brian Kunde speculates that Barnes & Noble reprinted de Camp’s HPL biography in anticipation of Joshi’s HPL biography being published. I may have assumed that as well, but as the letters below show it was more complex than that. It appears that de Camp was simply aware of growing interest in HPL and started looking for a publisher to publish a revised version of his book first. When his proposal was turned down by Arkham House he wrote to Barnes & Noble knowing they have been republishing some of his earlier books (and perhaps a bit miffed that Joshi didn’t mention his bio in an article) beat Joshi to the punch and collected a neat $2,250 without having to do any rewrites. Below are the letters I have for that period and on that topic. (De Camp kept only unsigned carbons of letters he mailed out. The carbons are not always in the best of shape!)
Overview I’ve been playing tabletop roleplaying games ever since the kid across the alley showed me the Basic Set ofDungeons and Dragons in 1981. And though D&D has dominated much of my gaming life, I have also played many other games. In this article, I want to discuss one of my favorites: Call of Cthulhu.
What is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game? For decades, we just discussed “roleplaying games” (RPGs) with no other distinction. An RPG is a game in which players take on characters and go on some kind of adventure, solve a mystery, or complete a mission. Usually, there is one player who is in charge of running the game and challenging the players. In D&D, that person is called the Dungeon Master (DM). In Call of Cthulhu, that person is called the Keeper.
A tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) is an RPG played in the same way we did in the 80s with a group of people sitting around a table, rolling dice, and referring to physical copies of books to play the game. The term TTRPG distinguishes that sort of RPG from other kinds. For instance, a VTRPG is a virtual tabletop roleplaying game. These games are run like a TTRPG except they are played over the internet like some kind of Zoom conference call. Then there are the myriad forms of computer games which are also RPGs but have nothing to do with the sort of game I’ll be discussing in this article.
What is Call of Cthulhu? Call of Cthulhu (CoC) is a TTRPG that has been around since 1981, which makes it almost as old as D&D. It was created by Sandy Petersen and based primarily upon the horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft though it also pulls in references from Robert W. Chambers, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and many of the pastiches that came out after Lovecraft’s death in 1937.
The game gives players a chance to live the life of one of Lovecraft’s protagonists. These are often ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. The game focuses on investigations in order to solve a mystery which usually involves some of the Mythos from Lovecraft’s weird fiction. As such, CoC has developed a reputation among fans of roleplaying games: you play until your character either dies or goes insane.
Though CoC invented the use of insanity as a mechanic and combat is often deadly, the game has this reputation because of 1) poorly run games, 2) stupid decisions by players, or 3) a game experience that’s limited to one-shot, demonstration scenarios that aren’t meant to last more than a few hours. These games should be thought of as a horror movie in which success, much less survival, is not guaranteed.
Though it’s been around almost as long as D&D there are significant differences between the two games in character creation and how the game is played.
Character Creation In D&D, player characters are called “adventurers,” but in CoC, they are called “investigators.” This first distinction should give you a good idea of the major difference between the two games. Investigators are just everyday humans. One might be a psychic, a military veteran, an accountant, a private detective, or even a world-renowned scholar of antiquities. But otherwise, they are just like anyone on the street.
Unlike in D&D, there are no classes. Instead, players choose an occupation. Everything I listed in the paragraph above is an occupation that one can play in CoC (yes, including the accountant). With D&D, a class gives the character abilities that are usually not available to other classes. But in CoC, the choice of occupation doesn’t limit what the character can do but describes what they are most likely good at when they start. After all, an accountant can shoot a machine gun, but the military veteran is probably better at it.
The difference between occupations is their skills.
Skill Mechanics During character creation, the player will get assigned skill points based on the occupation they choose. As you’d expect, a military veteran is going to get more skill points in firearms and an accountant will get more points in…well…accounting. But players are also given some extra points to put in whatever skills they want. So that accountant could spend a lot of weekends at the gun range and be pretty handy around a rifle.
Here’s a selection from the few dozen or so skills in the game:
• Appraise (determining something’s value)
• Charm (impressing someone)
• First Aid (keeping someone alive during combat)
• Library Use (researching)
• Psychoanalysis (helping characters recover from the mental trauma of investigations)
These skills are assigned a percentage. For instance, our world-renowned scholar of antiquities might have a 60% in Archeology, the skill of knowing about ancient artifacts. So when our scholar is presented with a strange statue made from an unknown black stone, the player rolls dice and tries to get a result of less than 60. If the player succeeds, then the scholar knows something about the statue. If they roll higher than 60, then the scholar either doesn’t know anything about the statue or might even get something wrong and think they know something when they’re actually incorrect. As you can see, the higher the skill, the less likely a character is to fail at a skill. Of course, our accountant with a 1% in Archeology doesn’t stand much of a chance.
Unlike in D&D, characters don’t acquire experience points as the game progresses. There are no levels in CoC. Instead, when a character succeeds at a skill roll, the player puts a little check next to that skill. At the end of the game session or scenario (depending on what the Keeper wants), the player then can attempt to raise that skill. So, the more a character tries new things and is successful, the more likely they are to become better at it. Nothing succeeds like success!
Skills are also an integral part of combat in the game.
Combat In CoC, combat skills are just like any other skill, and the mechanics are essentially the same. If a character wants to shoot the raving cultist, he rolls against his Firearms skill using the appropriate subskill. (Pistols, rifles, heavy weapons, etc.). Of course, most people won’t politely stand still and let someone shoot at them, so they are going to dodge, hide behind something for cover, or at least wear some kind of body armor. Because of this, combat is a little more complicated than the usual skill tests. But rather than get into all the crunchy details of how combat works, let me highlight some of the ways it differs in CoC versus other RPGs like D&D.
First, there is no such thing as Armor Class (AC). An attacker rolls a combat skill to hit the defender who can then decide if they want to dodge the attack or fight back. The attacker and defender roll their appropriate skills and see who is successful. Then the damage is rolled and applied to the loser. Armor is rather rare in the game and only lessens the amount of damage taken rather than making the defender more difficult to hit.
The damage taken by the defender is removed from their current hit points. It is not uncommon for characters to start with as little as 8 or 9 hit points. And because there are no levels, you are unlikely to ever get more than that. And a single shot from a 1911 .45 ACP pistol can easily do 15 points of damage in one shot.
The reputation of CoC as a deadly game is very true. Just like in real life, being shot can instantly kill a character or, at the very least, take that character out of the game for some time as they heal. In CoC, there are no clerics, no healing spells, and no healing potions. Characters can use the First Aid skill to prevent other characters from dying, but that’s as close as it gets. Otherwise, healing can take weeks or months and may result in permanent damage to the character. Take an arrow in the knee? You might have a limp for the rest of your life.
The upside to such a deadly combat system is that it forces players to think tactically. There won’t be a fighter with 157 hit points in a full suit of plate armor with a shield standing in a doorway taking all the hits while the cleric stands safely in the back of the party and casting healing spells to keep him alive. In CoC, players have to think of ways to protect themselves while trying to beat the bad guys.
This creates a combat system that is dynamic and fun.
Sanity One of the other reputations of CoC is that characters will eventually go insane. CoC was the first game that I’m aware of that created a system by which characters are affected by the things they see and do. No wizard in D&D has ever had to risk going mad from summoning a demon. But in CoC, just reading about one can drive a character insane.
As the title says, this is a horror roleplaying game in the world of H. P. Lovecraft. Anyone familiar with his stories knows that insanity was an integral part of his fiction. And this insanity wasn’t due to some failing on the part of the characters. They were driven mad by understanding the true history of humanity and the actual nature of the universe. In CoC, “knowing isn’t half the battle” and “ignorance is bliss.”
At creation, characters will have a certain number of Sanity Points. Unlike hit points, these can be as high as 100 and can rise and fall (but mainly fall) during the life of the character. Whenever a character comes across something awful (the rotting corpse of their best friend) or becomes aware of the truth about our world (sees an actual Deep One for the first time), then the character must make a sanity test.
This is done by rolling dice and trying to get under the character’s current sanity. If the character fails the roll, then they lose a number of Sanity Points based upon what it was they experienced. But some things are so disturbing that the character may lose some Sanity Points even if they succeed. If a character loses all of their Sanity Points, then they become permanently insane and are essentially dead as a character.
Though some people think of Sanity Points as another form of hit points, the sanity system is really a great tool for roleplaying. For instance, if a character loses five or more points in one instance, they go temporarily insane. This doesn’t mean that they become a drooling vegetable (though that’s a possibility), but they could also flee by any means necessary, convinced that singing is the best way to resolve the situation, or obsessed with getting a precious item back from a certain Hobbitses.
Magic For those used to D&D and the fantasy genre in general, magic is an important and common part of the game. This is somewhat the case in CoC. Just like in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, spells, witches, and necromancers are a part of the game. But also like in his fiction, these are not the purview of normal humans. Even understanding that magic Is real challenges the preconceived notions of what constitutes reality. As such, using spells drains a character’s sanity and maybe even hit points.
Does this mean that no one can use magic in CoC? No! But it does change the way the players think of magic and how capricious they are in its use. There are no frivolous or utilitarian spells in CoC. No one casts a spell at a party to impress chicks. (Well, unless they’re an insane cultist searching for new recruits.) There is no “light” spell. (Well, unless it involves using your own rotting eyeball that you cut out with an obsidian blade during a dark moon.)
In CoC, magic is dark, strange, and scary. It’s something that only desperate characters would study. Whether they are desperate for survival or desperate for power is up to the player.
Ways to Play CoC can be played in a variety of ways. The original game was conceived to take place in the United States during the 1920s, the time period in which H. P. Lovecraft wrote most of his fiction. But the game can also be played during the modern era. Also, there are many supplements that give players and Keepers options to play in Australia, Berlin, or Harlem. Also, games can take place in the Wild West, Ancient Rome, or the Middle Ages.
Pulp Cthulhu is a variation of CoC that puts the game in the 1930s and follows more of the action-packed pulp fiction of that time. Characters usually have more options, and the system allows for more survivability. Globetrotting to foil some world-ending plan is a common theme in these games.
Another form of CoC is Delta Green. These games follow a short plot point at the end of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” in which federal agents descend upon the town to clear out the dangerous and degenerated inhabitants. Delta Green plays with the idea of what it would mean if the US Government became aware of the horrors of the universe and allows players to play characters along those lines. Think “X-Files” meets “Call of Cthulhu.”
Final Thoughts Call of Cthulhu has been one of my favorite games for years. Unfortunately, I haven’t had many opportunities to play it because either not enough people know about the game or they have no interest in playing it. This article was meant to address the first issue. But let me explain who this game is for.
First, it’s a horror game. Themes of murder, suicide, abuse, and insanity are quite common. Players have to be ready to accept these dark themes in order to really enjoy CoC. If you love horror movies, then this game is for you. If you’re rather squeamish, then you either should stay away or talk with your Keeper about how much you’re willing to deal with. After all, this is a game, and games are supposed to be fun.
Second, being a horror game, characters can die or become changed in ways that aren’t beneficial to the character. Players have to be ok with losing control over their character’s destiny. Unlike in D&D and most other RPGs, the player can’t really plan out the development of their character as they develop. Sometimes things go sideways during a scenario that no one can predict.
Third, being a game focused on investigations, it is great for players who love mysteries and trying to solve them.
This game is certainly for people who like being surprised about where their character goes in the future. This is one of the things that I like about the game. For instance, our accountant might have never heard of or experienced anything supernatural. But through no fault of his own, he gets pulled into an investigation for which he is completely unprepared.
Having survived and learned that monsters are very, very real, how does he respond? Does he get to the gun range and the gym to prepare for the next fight? Does he seek out ancient tomes that might help explain what is happening to the world? Does he break every accounting ethic he knows to embezzle money from his clients to fund a secret society dedicated to fighting those monsters? What does he do when he loses his job as an accountant? What does he do when he loses a hand because a Deep One bit it off?
This is the sort of thing that keeps me going back to the game.
Jason Ray Carney is undoubtedly a name known by several REH fans. He and his wife, Nicole Emmelhainz Carney, are the main editors of The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies. The Dark Man is a great scholarly outlet for readers interested in that sort of thing. Nevertheless it is prone to print nonsense like calling L. Sprague de Camp, “one of Howard’s biggest detractors.” But even with digressions of that nature the journal is worth reading! (For the humorless, let it be known that I’m placing my tongue in cheek with this criticism.) The Dark Man is a well-rounded publication that has even published the likes of me!
Weird Tales of Modernity is a concise (and expensive!) book published by McFarland & Company. A new copy of the book will set you back $40. But since it was published in 2019, some reasonably priced used copies are available.
Besides looking good on your bookshelf, reading the book will make you smarter. It forces you to look up words like “ekphrasis.”
Realistically a stupid person shouldn’t even try to review a book like this but a stupid person doesn’t always know any better… Hence this review.
Carney starts the book with the oft-quoted H. P. Lovecraft on fear. “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
The focus of the book is on the works of “the Weird Tales Three.” Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft are now commonly known as the three “stars” of Weird Tales. The first time I heard these writers discussed as the most significant Weird Tales writers was in the introduction to Conan, Lancer Books, 1967. De Camp pointed out that Robert E. Howard “was a pen pal of the fantasy writers H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.” And later in Lovecraft: A Biography, Doubleday & Co., 1975, de Camp dedicates the book “To the memory of the Three Musketeers of Weird Tales.”
Perhaps someone earlier came up with that notion; but de Camp through these best-selling volumes is certainly the one who popularized the idea.
Carney writes: “The three writers who are treated in this book were united in their fear and hatred of modernity and the modernist art that seemed to them one of its primary symptoms.”
Carney modestly states that his book “makes no claim to be anything other than a speculative enterprise, the articulation of one complex thematic pattern among many possible ones. Literary interpretation is an art and consists not simply in uncovering hidden messages, as if by x-ray, but also in artfully composing compelling readings of works that can bear multiple readings by virtue of their vital complexity. In this context, the question is not of the truth or falsity of claims but of their plausibility and viability. Too often do literary critics demure from acknowledging the obvious fact that we project ourselves onto the works we read, as if the painter is ashamed of his or her brush strokes.”
I’m not really qualified to evaluate whether Mr. Carney defends his thesis or not. But I will write my thoughts on the following chapters.
The introduction focuses on what is understood by “pulp” fiction. Carney contrasts modernist fiction writers with pulp writers and makes a case for the value of both. Following that is the rationale for claiming the Weird Tales Three to be ekphrasists. All three writers did write about modernism (and art) in their works. Lovecraft and Smith directly so (Pickman’s art, Malygris’ sorcery, are given as examples) for Howard, the mirrors of Tuzun Thune is given as an example and previously it was mentioned that REH’s fears about miscegenation and crumbling civilizations shows fears about modernism.
Weird Tales, as a magazine, is discussed at length in chapter 3. I found this to be interesting and was intrigued by the question, “Is Weird Tales Exceptional?” From my personal knowledge of the pulps I do think Weird Tales was exceptional. I think of Tarzan, The Shadow, Doc Savage, Zorro, and Black Mask, when I think of popular (lots of copies sold) pulps. My impression of Weird Tales is that it was a niche magazine and sold modestly (perhaps even poorly) compared to the “hero pulps.” Horror, as a genre, has historically produced artistic works, Poe and Hawthorne come quickly to mind. It doesn’t surprise me that pulp writers working in that milieu produced artistic work.
I’m less studied in the works of Clark Ashton Smith and H. P. Lovecraft than I am with Robert E. Howard so I will forego commenting on those chapters.
In the chapters about REH, Carney confirms that Weird Tales “was a magazine that catered to the tastes of a small, specialized readership, and therefore had tenuous commercial viability.” Carney restates his thesis about the “ephemerality of the ordinary” in a way I understood when he says: “[The Weird Tales Three] work expresses a radically conservative ethos toward the process of modernization: they view modernity as a catastrophe, as a process of cruelly accelerating change that heralds an approaching crisis.”
While I agree for the most part I think Carney spends too much time on the non-fiction of REH to prove his case. He discusses REH’s correspondence and his fictionalized autobiography Post Oaks and Sand Roughs to help prove his case and I think the weird fiction, except for the Kull stories, is somewhat overlooked.
Reading REH’s fiction is tantamount to having an enjoyment of REH. But literary studies like this one are of value. I can’t honestly say I understood EVERYTHING in this book but I did read it and it gave me things to think about while doing so. That is the main thing I ask for in any book.
spraguedecampfan 