"Pickman's Model"

© 1927

by

H. P. Lovecraft

You needn’t think I’m crazy, Eliot-plenty of others have queerer prejudices than this. Why don’t you laugh at Oliver’s grandfather, who won’t ride in a motor? If I don’t like that damned subway, it’s my own business; and we got here more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We’d have had to walk up the hill ( Read more... )

“Facts Concerning the
Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family”

© 1921

by

H. P. Lovecraft

I.

Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate ( Read more... )

“The Colour Out of Space”

© 1927

by

H. P. Lovecraft

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and ( Read more... )

I discuss its relevance as a source of inspiration to Lovecraft for "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928).  Available here.

"Polaris"
(c) 1920
by
H. P. Lovecraft

Into the North Window of my chamber glows the Pole Star with uncanny light. All through the long hellish hours of blackness it shines there. And in the autumn of the year, when the winds from the north curse and whine, and the red-leaved trees of the swamp mutter things to one another in the small hours of ( Read more... )

"The Picture in the House"
© 1919
by
H. P. Lovecraft
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The ( Read more... )

Recently I published a review of Marc Laidlaw's excellent short story "The Boy Who Followed Lovecraft" on Fantastic Worlds.  Laidlaw's story was in my opinion inspired by two particular Lovecraft stories:  "Medusa's Coil" for one of its themes and "The Outsider" for its other.

I was not particularly surprised that some people had never read "Medusa' ( Read more... )

Recently I posted a review of Marc Laidlaw's excellent "The Boy Who Followed Lovecraft" (2011) on Fantastic Worlds (review available here, story available here), and I mentioned that it was in many respects inspired by two particular Lovecraft stories:  "The Outsider" for some elements of structure, and "Medusa's Coil" in terms of the final ( Read more... )

"Review of

'The Boy Who Followed Lovecraft'

(c) 2011

by Marc Laidlaw"

(c) 2012

by Jordan S. Bassior

This is a genuine horror story, set in Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall of 1929, about Douglas, an imaginative and intellectual boy who becomes fascinated by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.  When Douglas learns that Lovecraft lives in the same ( Read more... )