Lovecraftian adj.
of, relating to, or characteristic of the writing of H. P. Lovecraft, esp. in featuring elements of supernatural and often existential horror
SF Criticism
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1927 Letter 5 July in A. Derleth & D. Wandrei Selected Letters II (1968) 151
H. P. Lovecraft
I’ll enclose, purely for your personal perusal…two characteristic neo-Lovecraftian outbursts—The Silver Key and The Strange High House in the Mist.
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1936 in Weird Tales May 637
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Robert Bloch
Got the March issue today, and Kuttner’s story appealed to me strongly. I deem it a fine little tale in the Lovecraftian manner.
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1946 Comments on the Spring Mailing in Fan-Dango (#12) Summer 6
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Francis T. Laney
If he was other than a slight influence, why is it that, outside of stories written by his own most intimate friends, there exist scarcely any stories which can possibly be called Lovecraftian?
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1953 Fantasy Fiction Nov. 4
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All good students of their grimoires…recognize the need for a full understanding of Latin strung between the names of Lovecraftian gods which can’t be pronounced.
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1976 Night Chills (1983) ix. 342
Dean R. Koontz
bibliography
The atmosphere was Lovecraftian, a dank seed bed of paranoia.
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1995 Books in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction June 28/1
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Robert K. J. Killheffer
It’s hard to say exactly how a novel about a man’s mid-life despair can be funny; the juxtaposition of workplace ennui and Lovecraftian horrors certainly produces a pervasive sardonic tone, but even the scenes that aren't played for satirical laughs have a kind of exaggerated emotional quality (like that of Lovecraft’s own fiction) that adds a note of grim humor to even the darker scenes.
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2007 Halting State (2008) 298
Charles Stross
About a quarter of a million lines of source code, squirreled away among the skeletons and treasures guarded by a fearsomely large shoggoth; if you want to keep some data secure, there’s nothing quite like sticking it in a record in a holographic distributed database that’s guarded by Lovecraftian horrors.
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2015 in A. Grossman Crooked (front flap)
Combining Lovecraftian suspense, international intrigue, Russian honey traps, and a presidential marriage whose secrets and battles of attrition were their own heroic saga, Grossman’s novel is a masterwork of alternate history.
Research requirements
antedating 1927
Earliest cite
H. P. Lovecraft himself, in a letter
Research History
Jeff Prucher has a cite from Asimov's 12/03, 136/2.Fred Galvin submitted a 1982 cite from Baird Searles' (et al.) "A Reader's Guide to Fantasy".
Irene Grumman submitted a 1995 cite from Robert K. J. Killheffer in F&SF.
Fred Galvin submitted a 1955 cite from an editorial blurb in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Fred Galvin submitted a 2006 cite from an article by Thomas Hull in Math Horizons.
Last modified 2022-05-08 18:25:47
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