H. P. L. (1890-1991)
Howard Phillips Lovecraft died September 17, 1991, aged one hundred and one years. He was one of the greatest Science Fiction writers of our time, and also one of the lesser known, maybe because he was struck all his life with a horror writer reputation which didn’t go well with the statute of SF Great. His output was still occasionally worthy of a Heinlein or a Sturgeon, and it is hard to imagine how the field would have evolved without his discrete but indeniable presence.
Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on August 20, 1890. His father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft, died in 1898, and his mother, Sarah Phillips–who was afflicted with mentall illness–in 1921. He spent his childhood years in his maternal grandfather’s house, but mother and son had to move out when he died in 1904. Lovecraft was a solitary child, and a bookish one from an early date. His first amateur magazine was published in 1899.{74}
He was fifteen years old, and already an old hand at amateur journalism, when he wrote his first stories, mainly fantastic in tone. He stopped writing for eight years, until 1917 when he penned “The Tomb”{75}.
In 1922, he wrote his first letter to Frank Belknap Long, thus beginning what is probably the longest correspondence of literary history, since the last of Lovecraft’s letters to Long was written one week before his death. In 1924, he declined to become the editor of Weird Tales and married Sonia H. Greene, who was his senior by seven years. They eventually divorced at the beginning of the thirties, but they had lived separately –apparently following his wishes– since 1926.
It was at this time that he completed Supernatural Horror in Literature, an essay he would rewrite and update in 1962.{76}
He worked eight months on the first version, but never received any cent as it was published in a fanzine. At the time, Lovecraft didn’t mind this lack of payment; an amateur at heart, he would only change his way of thinking during the thirties, after a stay at the hospital left him without funds.
His not assuming the editorship of Weird Tales didn’t stop him to submit his stories to the magazine, which had featured him in its pages since 1923. The legendary pulp thus published minor masterpieces like “The Music of Erich Zann,”{77} “The Outsider,”{78} “Pickman’s Model”{79} and “The Silver Key,”{80} while Amazing Stories, edited by Hugo Gernsback, published “The Colour Out of Space.”{81}
All these stories have withstood the test of time, and it’s a pity that none of them–except for “Pickman’s Model,” which has been frequently reprinted in American anthologies–is avalaible for today’s readers.
Lovecraft’s ghost writing is probably one of his less known activities. Rather than becoming a professional writer “who extinguishes his own personality in a servile acquiescence to the puerile & artificial demands of an ignorant herd,”{82} he spent a lot of time revising–and sometimes rewriting from scratch–other people’s stories without getting any credit. Whenever this ghost writing was mentioned to him, he pretended he’d forgotten the names of the authors he had collaborated with, but according to Robert Bloch, one of his growing number of correspondents, he had written “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”{83} from a plot by Harry Houdini, and he would certainly have pursued his collaboration with the escape artist if Houdini hadn’t died shortly thereafter. L. Sprague de Camp, who is putting the finishing touches to his biography of Lovecraft, estimates that during the thirties he earned about a thousand dollars a year from his ghost writing, three times as much as from the stories he published under his byline.
When Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright rejected “At the Mountains of Madness” in 1931, Lovecraft was sorely tempted to stop writing altogether, but he was made of such stuff that, although he wouldn’t write for a living, he couldn’t live without writing, and at the end of the year, he had completed “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” a short novel mixing horror and weird science. While his early stories were blatantly horrific–though of a materialistic rather than a supernatural bent{84} –his later work gradually tended toward science fiction. This period also saw him recanting some of his pseudo-scientific beliefs, as well as the racist theories he had advocated during the twenties. We cannot ignore his early fascination for Hitler, but he gradually became “the old radical gentleman” whom Robert A. Heinlein castigated at the end of World War II. Lovecraft’s fascination for Nazism may seem surprising with hindsight, but the study of his letters–a long endeavor still in its early stages{85} –has shown he was a rampant xenophobe before he acquired more humane sensibilities.
Lovecraft was also one of the founding fathers of early fandom, and he maintained a steady correspondence with young fans and writers who sometimes idolized him. They found his erudition as impressive as his stories were frightening. He became friends with Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffman Price, Robert H. Barlow, August Derleth, Donald A. Wollheim, and so on. Julius Schwartz, who then edited The Fantasy Magazine, came up with the idea of a round robin, a story written by five different writers. Lovecraft had to follow in the footsteps of Catherine L. Moore and Abraham Merritt.{86}
He received the manuscript in Florida, where he was visiting the Barlows, and wrote the third section during his return trip. “I was reading over my contribution while I waited for a train in Charleston, & something happened which I cannot explain to this day. A man whom I had not noticed sat by me & told me, in a clear voice with an accent that was either Greek or Swedish, ‘Wait till you see what Two-Gun Bob will make of this.’ For an instant, but only for an instant, I was seized by the kind of shudder my characters demonstrate when they are face to face with the Unnamable. I turned towards the stranger & struggled against my seizure & told him that Howard would most assuredly bless this modest effort with his sense of the epic. He laughed & told me I would not be disappointed, then he bowed & went away. I watched him as he left the waiting room & went back to my manuscript, but I was unable to concentrate. How could this man know that Howard would take up the story where I had left it? I must confess that this remains a mystery to me.”{87}
When “The Challenge From Beyond” was published,{88} Lovecraft was recuperating at the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital, in Providence, where he had been operated for a cancer of the colon. The illness was still in its early stages and could be treated with a good prognosis. Apparently, Lovecraft had been subject to violent stomach pains and had consulted a specialist. When he got out of the hospital, he was on the brink of financial ruin, most of his meagre capital having been depleted by medical bills. Thankfully, F. Orlin Tremaine, editor of Astounding Stories, accepted two of his stories, “At the Mountains of Madness”{89} and “The Shadow Out of Time.”{90}
The first of these tales had been submitted on his behalf by Julius Schwartz, the second by Donald Wandrei, and Schwartz became Lovecraft’s literary agent until the early sixties.
The famous meeting between Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard took place in April 1936. Although they had exchanged more than a hundred letters, the two men had yet to meet face to face. They hit it off beautifully despite their vastly different personalities, and they even started to write a story together, but it remained unfinished after Howard committed suicide in June 1936.{91}
If Lovecraft was affected by his friend’s death, this had no bearing on his writing output; the debt-ridden amateur was slowly evolving into a true professional writer.
He had had four stories published in Astounding Stories when John W. Campbell, Jr. took over from Tremaine as editor. Legend has it that the first story Campbell picked up from the submission pile was “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,”{92} which he promptly bought. Lovecraft was to become a regular contributor to the magazine, which featured his byline thirty-two times between 1938 and 1950, when Campbell put a stop to their collaboration after their famous clash.
He was one of the guests of the First World Science Fiction Convention, which was held in July 1939 in New York City.
“I think that the rising generation of SF writers only discovered Lovecraft in New York City. Until then, we only saw him as a Weird Tales writer whom John [Campbell] stubbornly published in Astounding SF despite the protests of the readership. His archaic florid style and his horrific tales made him something of a throwback, but he was mainly criticized for not being ‘positive’ enough. The speech he delivered during the convention proved that his mind was anything but conservative, and the publication of ‘Anxious Color’{93} confirmed this.”{94}
This story, which revolves around the discovery of a strange extraterrestrial artifact, was indeed pure science fiction. And for the first time, Lovecraft eschewed the pessimistic outlook which had characterized his earlier fiction. His hero not only didn’t faint when he came face to face with the Unnamable, no more than he became crazy when he had to confront the Awful Truth, but he managed to defeat–albeit temporarily–Nyarlatothep’s avatar. “Anxious Color” took second place in “The Analytical Laboratory”, right behind the first SF story written by a fledging Theodore Sturgeon, and it was praised in the letter column by none other than Nat Schachner. This story was admittedly the best Lovecraft published during the Golden Age, and it was frequently anthologized thereafter. As for his few Unknown offerings, there were mainly trunk stories he’d written a few years earlier, when he was hesitating between horror and science fiction.
During the forties, Lovecraft was one of the mainstays of fandom. He was too old to be drafted–or even to consider enlisting–when the war broke, but he wrote numerous letters to the writers who had joined the Army, exhorting them to fight the hated Nazis.
“The more I see what Hitler is doing, the more this old gentleman asks himself how he could be so stupid and so blind to praise this madman. […] There was a time when I advocated racist theories for which I strove to find scientific rationalizations. ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ which I wrote more than ten years ago, is a shameful example of my bygone views. […] There is no master race, there is no slave race, and the ones who say otherwise are criminals and idiots. As a proof of this, consider that all the true German scientists have fled their country, leaving it into the hands of charlatans who seek power rather than knowledge.”{95}
He took part in the war effort in his own, peculiar way, and he was delighted when, in February 1944, two OSS agents called on him and asked him who had helped him research “The Killing Light,” a story Astounding Science Fiction had published in its latest issue. This story contained information that the agency considered as confidential, since Lovecraft–acting on Campbell’s instructions–had actually described the making of an atomic bomb!
“He greeted them very affably and drowned them under such a deluge of words that they must have thought him a madman when they left. They couldn’t have grasped half of what he told them. He showed them various graphs and charts, as well as his private library of scientific publications, and he even gave them a lecture on general relativity… And as he went on talking, he became more and more enthusiastic as he is wont to do.”{96}
The OSS closed the case, but in June 1945, when Campbell waxed extatic, heralding the triumph of predictive science fiction, Lovecraft was considerably more sober.
“This old gentleman feels both tired and worried when he reflects on these words printed on pulp paper which have now become a menace to all mankind. […] I do not know if I will be able to understand, let alone accept, the crime that my country has committed in the name of peace.”{97}
In 1947, science fiction fandom organized a poll to select the ten most popular stories ever published. “Anxious Color” came second, being outclassed only by A.E. van Vogt’s “Slan.”{98}
But although Lovecraft was a fan favorite, he was not quite so popular with the bulk of the readers, who took him to task for his archaic style and for his reluctance to use dialogue. His collection Anxious Color and Other Horrific Science Fiction Stories, the first book published under the Arkham House imprint, sold so poorly that publisher August Derleth had to close shop almost instantly. Furthermore, his “inconsiderate tampering, which betrayed the letter if not the spirit of my [Lovecraft’s] work”{99} –Derleth had toned down the scientific content of several stories in order to have them pass as fantasy– marked the end of his friendship with the writer,{100} who was also quite peeved when he saw that his name had been spelled “Lovercraft” on the cover of the book.
The famous feud between Lovecraft and Heinlein began the following year with the publication of the full-length version of Beyond This Horizon.{101}
“Our constitution gives every citizen the right to bear arms to defend himself, but when Mr. Heinlein posits a society where unarmed individuals have to bow down before armed individuals, what he does is condone the creation of a secondclass citizenship, which brings to mind some dire theories that were once advocated on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.”{102}
Heinlein didn’t appreciate being compared to the Nazis, and his reaction was quite blunt. “Maybe Mr. Lovecraft would rather have a State where only Government Forces have the right to bear arms, a State where the citizens must kowtow to a dictatorial power that doesn’t tolerate freedom.”{103}
Campbell took sides with his most popular writer, but kept on publishing the stories submitted by Lovecraft.
His second novel, Gossamer Wings, was published at this time (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, written much earlier, only saw print at the beginning of the seventies{104}).This novel, serialized in Astounding Science Fiction,{105} is a nigtmarish dystopia eerily similar to Nineteen Eighty-four.{106}
Wheras Orwell wrote: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face–for ever,” Lovecraft was clearly as lucid: “This society has only one creed: to crush, to eradicate, to destroy any thought of resistance. And if you believe in Justice, you are sorely wrong: there is no salvation for anybody outside Conformity.”
The publication of Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science,{107} the essay where L. Ron Hubbard laid the ground for his infamous pseudo-science, infuriated the rational side of Lovecraft, whose relationship with Campbell was more strained than ever. Suddenly bitten by the satirical bug who had once launched him into a crusade against astrology, he wrote in one night his “Diuretics: The Devolution of a Fiction,”{108} winning the enmity of Hubbard.
Campbell’s reaction was even worse. As soon as he read Lovecraft’s scathing attack, he sent him back all his stories and told him not to bother to submit any others. But Lovecraft got a lot of positive mail, winning the support of several of his fellow writers, among whom a young Philip K. Dick. Lovecraft started to correspond with him, and did so until Dick’s untimely death in March 1982. “Voices Green and Purple,”{109} the story they wrote together a few years later, is one of the strangest artifacts of the history of science fiction, as it features creatures that live on several reality planes and Reality Worms burrowing between probabilities.
Lovecraft was not overly worried by Campbell’s ostracism, for the science fiction market was expanding at the time. He had already sold two stories to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the first of which, “It’s About Time,”{110} deserves closer examination. At first glance, it reads like a traditional tale of time traveling and alternate universes, where a man from the future tries to alter the course of history–or, in this case, an individual’s fate. Joseph Edward, a man from the year 2370, steals a time machine and meets a painter from the twenty first century in order to save him from an accidental death at the age of twenty-eight. He is only motivated by the desire to see how the artist would have evolved if he’d got a longer lifespan. His only reward is esthetic in nature. It should be noted that this story features an unusual amount of dialogue.
Galaxy Science Fiction welcomed Lovecraft in its pages from the first issue, with the superb “Keeper of the Keys”{111}, which Frederik Pohl praises as “one of the best stories ever written on the theme of perceptual aberrations.”{112}
But when “An Experimented Terror” was serialized in three parts from April to June 1953, reactions were unanimously positive from readers and critics alike. This novel was published in book form the following year,{113} but Lovecraft vetoed its reprinting as a paperback.
“This kind of publication seems vulgar to me. Granted, it allows access to the masterpieces of world literature which would otherwise remain unknown to the bulk of the population– but it generally helps the propagation of violence and pornography. My natural reluctance prevents me from joining the mass of the writers, and my finances allow me to act in this manner since, besides having earned quite some money in the last ten years, I have yet to make a dent in my beloved aunt’s legacy. Thus I do not see why I should prostitute my work.”{114}
In 1954, Lovecraft was summoned by the commission headed by senator Joseph MacCarthy. He was suspected of Communist sympathies, an accusation which he met with utter contempt, not realizing that his attitude could only prove harmful.
“I do not understand how the scion of one of the oldest New England familes can be accused of un-American activities. I have always loved and respected my country, whose strength comes from democracy and freedom of speech. […] I will never tolerate thought control, I will never tolerate censorship. I am not a Communist, I do not even condone Communism, but when I see the treatment the Marxists are afforded with nowadays, I can only protest at the way their fundamental rights are trod upon in the land of the free.”{115}
Such a proclamation could only come from a very naïve man; other writers–mainly from Hollywood–were blacklisted from much less. In spite of his rigid stand, Lovecraft didn’t become a witch-hunt victim. But the memory of the incident was painful, and some of the stories he published at the end of the fifties clearly bear its mark. “May the Circle Remain Unbroken” and “Long Day’s Flight,” both published by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction{116}, are virulent attacks against what he called “the totalitarian temptation.” The first one features an inquisitor character who bears a striking resemblance to Robert A. Heinlein–which is ironic in hindsight, since we know now that it was probably thanks to Heinlein’s testimony that Lovecraft wasn’t thrown in jail. “They asked me if, in my opinion, he [H.P.L.] was in contact with Communist agents, and I emphatically told them no. The man who had written ‘Gossamer Wings’ could never be seduced by the siren song from Moscow.”{117}
The launch of Sputnik One by the Soviets was a surprise to Lovecraft, who had praised “James Gunn’s lucidity when he postulates that only the combined resources of all countries or, at least, of all industrialized countries–will make possible the exploration of space by mankind.”{118}
He was also amazed when Galaxy Science Fiction seralized Fritz Leiber’s “The Big Time,”{119} which he judged “confusing and of minor interest to the SF reader, although I found here a quite interesting philosophical undercurrent.”{120}
The publication of Starship Troopers{121} gave him an opportunity to renew his feud with Robert A. Heinlein. The conditional democracy which this book painted in a favorable light was for him a new step toward totalitarism and dictatorship. When Starship Troopers was awarded the Hugo for best novel in 1960, the old gentleman swore that he would never attend a convention again; he kept his word until his death, even though he made peace with Heinlein in the mid-sixties, after the publication of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,{122} which he deemed “one of the most realistical works about the future of mankind after the end of the Cold War.” But the two writers were to take opposing sides during the Vietnam War, Lovecraft being hostile to American intervention in South East Asia. This time also saw him lessening his output; between 1957 and 1969, he only wrote five stories and two novels. “Spider and the Fly,” serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,{123} was shrugged off by the readers as an old-fashioned horror yarn, but Five Years Ahead of His Time, which Doubleday published at the end of 1965, was awarded the Hugo for best novel the following year. This tale, in which a man gets a lifeextending treatment from a masked stranger, is one of the most exciting–and one of the most cryptic–of his works; Lovecraft brilliantly develops the theme of precognition, one of the consequences of the protagonist’s extended lifespan.{124}
In 1967, Lovecraft had a very strange visit. Bill Traut, an executive of Dunwich Records,{125} wanted his go-ahead before he launched a new rock band he was managing. The band’s name was to be H.P. Lovecraft, and their first album was to feature an adaptation of “The White Ship.”{126}
Since the old gentleman didn’t own a record player, Traut bought him one at the nearest store so that he could listen to the band’s music.
“So this is what they call ‘psychedelic rock?’ I confess I was utterly irritated and somewhat bemused by this music–if such it be. When the first side of the record came to an end, I turned toward Traut, intending to convey my refusal to him in no uncertain terms; but the hope that illuminated his eyes and the tension I perceived in his body broke my resolve, and this old gentleman said with a quavering voice that he was flattered by the honor bestowed upon him and that he was happy to lend his name to what perforce must be called ‘a musical experiment.’”{127}
The band’s first album, simply titled H.P. Lovecraft,{128} was released a few months later, with a strange jacket featuring a collage of dead leaves and colored drawings, plus a black and white photo of the musicians. Lovecraft claimed to like the artwork very much, although it didn’t correspond to his tastes in this matter. But he disliked the blazing colors on the jacket of At the Mountains of Madness,{129} and disapproved the not-soslightly veiled references to LSD in the songs’ lyrics. He wrote to Traut and asked him to change the band’s name–only to learn by return mail that it had disbanded.
This incident had two happy consequences: the name of Howard Phillips Lovecraft became familiar to the baby-boomers, and his brand new record player incited him to explore the world of music. During the following months, he spent quite a lot of money buying several dozens of records–mostly music from the seventeen and eighteen centuries, but also some jazz and a few Sinatra albums. His letters were often devoted to his musical judgments, which were sometimes quite surprising, like these musings inspired by sax player Art Pepper: “If I were much younger, I think I could easily venture down into one of these smoke-filled, beatnik-plagued Greenwich Village basements and listen to his heart-breaking instrument. Pepper marvelously conveys man’s inner torments. He is worthy of a Mozart, worthy of a Purcell.”{130}
During the early seventies, Lovecraft wrote fifteen stories, including some novellas, and three novels, one of which was six hundred pages long. I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night{131} is his last major opus and probably his masterpiece. Thematically, it’s a throwback to the period where he wrote such stories as “The Call of Cthulhu”{132} and “The Colour out of Space.”{133}
The narrator, an archeology student, discovers a strange subterranean city that is several millions of years old and whose denizens had nothing human about them. He loses his way, then falls asleep. His mind is haunted by weird dreams, and when he awakes, he realizes that his presence has stirred from their slumber a number of hostile characters like Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu itself–not to mention some Great Old Ones from Yuggoth and other monsters from the author’s early days. He manages to escape, helped by weird human-like cat creatures. Then comes the first surprise: a series of fight scenes featuring these creatures from the past, which are more akin to movies like King Kong vs. Godzilla or to comic books like The Fantastic Four than to the works of Lovecraft. While Cthulhu and a huge blob-like creature lay waste to New York City, the narrator learns that only the Necronomicon{134} will help him free the world from the horrors he has inadvertently unleashed on it.
After a long quest in a ravaged world, he finally locates the book. But before opening it, he takes a dose of neuroleptics, hoping to escape the madness that comes with reading the Necronomicon. He actually becomes the first man–its author excepted–to read the dreaded book from cover to cover. Worn down by the task, he falls asleep and his visited by mad dreams. When he wakes up, the neuroleptics’ effects have dissipated and he falls prey to madness. Mankind shall not survive.
This novel can be considered as an answer to August Derleth, who had come up with a far-fetched theory according to which Cthulhu and company were actual gods. He went as far as prentending that Lovecraft was a kind of adept and that his stories were open to occult interpretation. Not only did he manage to teach this nonsense in the halls of academe, but he found a sizable number of fanatical followers, most of whom were devotees of astrology, cheap mysticism and two-bit spiritualism.{135}
“No writer ever had readers so alien to him. Robert [Bloch] got for me one of the fanzines devoted to my humble self–or to their vision of him–and I had a lot of trouble believing what I read therein. One of the articles claims that I used black magic to keep you from being drafted! Another that I received the teachings of Atlantean priests in a cave near the Miskatonic River! How can anybody write such nonsense? If I had known of this situation fifteen or twenty years ago, I would have penned a scathing retort and sent it to this rag, but I am getting older and my hand goes more and more slowly on the paper…”{136}
I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night, in which Lovecraft took pains to give a–more or less–scientific rationale to his creations, from the rampaging monsters to the madness-inducing capacity of his imaginary tome,{137} leaves no doubt about his materialism, and includes a virulent attack against what he calls “the Bazaar of the Bizarre.” This great horrific SF novel was quite successful and allowed its author to live comfortably until his death. He stopped writing professionally and went back to his first love, amateur journalism. His last published story was “I’m a Living Sickness,” which saw print in the July, 1979 issue of Robert A. Heinlein’s Science Fiction Magazine.
Lovecraft quietly faded away during the eighties. He devoted his time to letter-writing and only saw the few friends who regularly called on him. Except for a few reviews and poems he published in various fanzines, his only project of note during this time was Matters of Fact: An Analysis of Materialism in American Science Fiction, an essay which he privately printed in an edition of three hundreds copies and gave away to whoever came to visit him–he must have got quite a number of visitors, for he had only one copy left when he died around midnight on September 17, 1991.
When his will was made public, his friends learnt that, as he had no known heir, he was donating all his worldly goods to one Joseph Edward of London, England. It then transpired that said Joseph Edward was but a baby, who was born at the exact time of Lovecraft’s death. Thanks to the tabloid press, this story was soon known to the whole planet, with headlines such as “TRANS-ATLANTIC METEMPSYCHOSIS” and “HORROR WRITER REINCARNATES TO BECOME HIS OWN HEIR.” To this day, no one has been able to come up with another explanation–though Lovecraft himself would have vigorously dismissed this one as irrational.
This mystery was then the final bow of one of the strangest writer of the century. It seems fitting that this obituary should be concluded by Howard Phillips Lovecraft himself.
“When I decided to save your life and thus to alter the past, I knew that I could never go back to my time. I have then resigned myself to live in this century, to explore the new universe born of my meddling. This is much more exciting for me, and I will follow the evolution of your art as it unfolds before my eyes; I will keep in touch with you, from one painting to the other. And when you die, I will write your obituary with the satisfaction of a job well done.”{138}
Joseph Edward
The author wishes to thank the following people who, in one way or another–and most often unknowingly–have played a part in the genesis of this story: Joseph Altairac, Stan Barets, Jean-Daniel Brèque, Alain Fuselier, Yves Lagache, Philippe Laguerre, Xavier Legrand-Ferronnière, Yves Letort, Michel Meurger and Norman Spinrad.
RCW