The Shadow Out of Time
When the days grow short and the chill of Autumn creeps into the air, when the clouds hang low and heavy in the west and the trees explode in fiery bursts of color, a strange and unearthly sound like the pitched wailing of primordial pipes calls out to me across the mists of time and summons me to the rituals of the Festival. As though my body were but the plaything of some giant puppeteer, I am drawn inexorably to the shelves of my library and lay my quivering fingers upon the spine of the most forbidding grimoire in the archive. I blow dust from the tome and leaf through its ancient, yellowing pages, marveling at the sublime horrors contained therein, though occasionally recoiling at the shameless excesses of the mad author’s lurid prose. The words are familiar, but the sensation is always fresh, for it is His season: the time when the mad scribe of Providence reaches out from the tomb and feeds afresh on the minds of men. It is the time of H.P. Lovecraft.
As such, I am embarked on my annual October project of re-reading a portion of Lovecraft’s horrific oeuvre. I can’t remember exactly when I began this tradition, but I’ve been doing it for many year now, progressing from my well-thumbed Ballentine paperback copy of The Colour Out of Space to spiffy hardcover Arkham House editions of the master’s collected trove of short stories and novellas. It simply wouldn’t be autumn without my required dose of gothic gore.
For the uninitiated, Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote horror, fantasy and science fiction stories for the pulp magazines (principally Weird Tales) from about 1918-1937. He is often compared to Poe, whom his ornate, literary writing style somewhat resembles. His principle contribution to the literature was a loosely-connected cycle of tales premised on the idea that long before the advent of humanity, the earth was once inhabited by several races of demon gods. These creatures now lie sleeping in hidden places, communicating with cults of followers and leaving breadcrumb traces of their fiendish ambitions threaded through history. Lovecraft not only used this concept in his own work, but also propagated it to a group of fellow-writers with whom he corresponded, including Robert E. Howard (creator of “Conan the Barbarian”), Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth and Robert Bloch (later known for writing Psycho). The resulting body of work is known to fans as the Cthulhu Mythos (named for one of the nastiest of the pantheon), and its influence is felt in much contemporary popular horror and fantasy literature and films.
His important published work fills three bulky anthologies: The Dunwitch Horror and Others, At the Mountains of Madness and Others, and Dagon and Other Short Works. There is a further edition of his collaborations with other writers and a volume of his interesting but inconsequential non-fiction, plus five volumes of letters. In addition, his best stories like “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Colour Out of Space,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” “The Dunwitch Horror” and “The Shadow Out of Time” are frequently anthologized in collections of twentieth century fiction. Over the years there have been numerous efforts to capture his vision on film. Most have been disastrous failures to be avoided at all costs, although Stuart Gordon’s recent Dagon is excellent and worth a look.
The persistence of Lovecraft’s appeal has baffled many of his critics, who condemn his work as florid hackery – stilted, overwrought and boring. The objections are not without merit: Lovecraft’s writing style can be stiff and affected (see the opening paragraph of this piece as a barely-exaggerated parody), and he had little talent for dialogue or the creation of believable characters, particularly women. Nevertheless, he remains unsurpassed in the power of his imagination and in his ability to create an atmosphere of real dread and strangeness.
However, perhaps the most compelling factor is Lovecraft himself. He was a fussy, old-fashioned New England snob possessed of towering intelligence, dry wit, an encyclopedia of neurotic fears and ugly racial prejudices. The details of his strange life are available to readers in intimate detail through a voluminous body of correspondence (published in five volumes to date, and much more enlightening than several flawed biographies which have appeared), which is in many ways at least as interesting to read as his fiction. The morbid quality of his writing was a direct reflection of his fearful, inverted personality, and his attention to internal consistency and continuity in his work can be seen as a result of his social and psychological isolation from outside stimulus. He was, to be blunt, the prototype of the awkward, geeky science fiction fan. He was and remains easy for fans to identify with, despite his unfortunate attitudes on many subjects, and sympathetic readers are inclined to give his work the benefit of the doubt when more objective critics see only the flaws.
I would also add that once you come to an appreciation of his style, with all its tics and nuances, most of his work is quite enjoyable to read. If you can get into Lovecraft’s world, he will get into yours. That’s why every year at this time, I haul down one of the collections and read it cover to cover.
12:17:02 PM 
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