Happy Birthday, H.P. Lovecraft: Authors and Editors on His Legacy

Happy birthday to H.P. Lovecraft! Today is his 120th birthday. In his relatively short lifespan of only 46 years he managed to leave a lasting impression on the world around him, with authors from Stephen King and Peter Straub to Jorge Luis Borges and Michael Chabon tipping their hats to the genius and horror of his fiction.

Lovecraft’s body of work is somewhat modest in size – the entirety of his fiction can fit within the covers of a single book – but has been reproduced in countless editions from publishers both large and small, and has served as a gateway to the world of weird horror for numerous generations of adventurous readers. His tales of cosmic horror and madness have spawned games, movies, music, comic books and more, ultimately making his most infamous creation, the alien god Cthulhu, recognizable even to people who have never actually read any of Lovecraft’s work.

In recognition of Lovecraft’s birthday, I asked a few authors and editors to comment about his legacy and influence. This is what they said:

“H.P. Lovecraft was the expert at depicting cosmic dread, and despite his faults as a writer, his work has influenced other writers for the past seventy plus years. I think he would be pleased to know that there are still so many works of horror being published today directly and not so directly paying homage to his mythos.”
-Ellen Datlow, editor, Lovecraft Unbound.

“H.P. Lovecraft is easily the most important American horror (or fantasy, for that matter) author of the twentieth century. By translating Gothic horrors into the modern world of Einstein and Hubble, he rescued a vital literature for us; the impact of his art continues to emerge, like some sub-oceanic monstrosity, in all reaches of 21st-century culture. Also, his stories will terrify you down to your fingernails.”
-Kenneth Hite, author, Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales.

“There are just a few authors I can point to and say, “If not for X, I might never have become a writer.” Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Angela Carter, Harlan Ellison, Peter Straub, and, of course, H.P. Lovecraft. And I think what Lovecraft taught me was the paramount importance of mood if one is to create genuinely masterful dark fantasy. And, also, he taught me the power of suggestion, that it’s so much more effective to hint at the nature of the unknown than to throw the door wide open, that it’s the unknown that truly terrifies and inspires awe and wonder. The known can always be dismissed. Too few people ever get past his god things and arcane texts, which are really only window dressing, to find the heart of some of the most powerfully atmospheric prose of the weird ever written. Lovecraft’s “mythos” is only a delivery device for his deeply subversive cosmicism, in which all of human history is, at best, a dust mote in an indifferent gulf of time and space.”
-Caitlin R. Kiernan, author, The Red Tree.

“Where would we be today without H.P. Lovecraft? Well, we wouldn’t have any Old Ones to be worried about, but then would that be a good thing? We’d miss the uncomfortable feeling when confronted with Cthulhu and cohorts. We’d be lost without such film classics as The Dunwich Horror, Dagon, Die, Monster, Die and Re-Animator. What kind of acting career would Jeffrey Combs have? Indeed, where would Weird Tales be? I shudder to think….So today on the anniversary of his birth, I raise a glass and say “Happy Birthday, Mr. Lovecraft. Long may your tentacles wave.”
-Ann VanderMeer, editor, Weird Tales magazine.