Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

Preface

At the first World Fantasy Convention, in 1975, the mayor of Providence gave me a key to the city.

I appreciated the gesture, but it wasn’t necessary. My welcome to Providence had come almost half a century earlier, in 1927, from the hand of its distinguished citizen, Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

His was the hand penning the stories which enthralled me when I first encountered them in the pages of Weird Tales magazine. And early in 1933 it was through that same hand I was ushered into Lovecraft s private world as we began a personal correspondence. Thus he opened the gates of his cherished Providence to me long before I ever actually arrived there.

Not every reader of his work was so singularly fortunate. But all were free to enter the realms he roamed, realms born and borne out of imagination and dreams.

In tales embodying a revised concept of the cosmos, Lovecraft literally re-created the universe, restructuring space and time, reconciling ancient witchcraft with modern mathematics. He invented blasphemous books of forbidden magic, secret cults worshipping star-spawned monstrosities lurking beneath land or sea. As a sardonic twist he altered the geography of his beloved New England and linked its legends to those of his own devising.

Avid readers soon became familiar with the look of Innsmouth, the horror of Dunwich, the contents of Miskatonic University’s archives in archaic Arkham. Many virtually memorized his Mythos.

Some of them didn’t stop there, but went on to imitate and emulate him in tales of their own. Through the years H. P. Lovecraft has shaped and influenced fantasy and horror fiction more than any other writer in the genre. The stories which Lovecraft scholar and authority

Robert M. Price chose for this compendium illustrate how his contemporaries responded to Cthulhu’s call.

I myself was one of them, though later years found me straying far afield. But in a sense all of us began our journey in Providence, guided by the hand of the man we referred to as “HPL.” And our stories included here, whether the early efforts of aspiring authors or the deliberate homage of established writers, serve as testament to his impact on his colleagues.

Truly, they are Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos.