Cthulhu mythos n.
the fictional universe used as the setting for a range of works by H.P. Lovecraft, later used as a shared world
Wikipedia
H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
SF Criticism
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[1933
August Derleth
His chief tendency right now is toward imitation…. I’m trying to steer him away from this, and also from the use of the Cthulhu mythology, until he is capable of doing the material justice.]
Letter to H.P. Lovecraft in D.E. Schultz & S.T. Joshi Essential Solitude (2013) II. 589 -
1942
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August Derleth
It was written before The Haunter of the Dark, The Dreams in the Witch-House, and The Thing on the Doorstep, and only At the Mountains of Madness apart from The Shadow Out of Time followed it in the Cthulhu Mythos.
Letter in Weird Tales Jan. 125/1 -
1944
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Anthony Boucher
The Cthulhu Mythos is one of the extraordinary imaginative achievements of our times, and I want to know everything I can about it. But I don’t care much what HPL thought about life and manners and things. It is as the transcriber of the Myth that he looms incomparable.
in Acolyte (#7) Summer 29 -
1953
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What is she trying to do—start another Cthulhu Mythos?
Letter in Future Science Fiction Jan. 94/2
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1966
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Lin Carter
bibliography
Suppose your fan activities are confined to writing scholarly treatises on the Sources Used by H.P. Lovecraft in creating his Cthulhu Mythos.
Handy Phrase-Book in Fannish in Worlds of If Oct. 66/2 -
1979
The first three titles in the series will be JOHN SILENCE by Algernon Blackwood, PHRA THE PHOENICIAN by Edwin Lester Arnold and a collection of Robert Bloch’s ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ stories, tentatively titled WHEN SHADOWS LENGTHEN.
in Science Fiction Review (#32) Aug. 43/3
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1997 Spinoffery in Interzone (#121) July 65/4
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It consists of pastiche Lovecraftiana, in the shared ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ orchestrated after Lovecraft’s death by August Derleth.
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2005 Locus Feb. 32/1
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Lovecraft is big in the first-novel horror books, with the Cthulhu mythos featured in Mamatas’s Move Under Ground, where Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassidy, and William S. Burroughs battle Old R’luyeh, and in Wheeler’s The Arcanum where a secret society with A. Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, and Harry Houdini battle nameless horrors in early 20th-century New York.
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2014
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Paul Simpson
bibliography
Creatures from the Cthulhu mythos arrived in the London suburb of ‘Crouch End’, and the Bradbury children get some help from ‘The House on Maple Street’ to deal with their hated stepfather.
Brief Guide to Stephen King xiv. 201
Research requirements
antedating 1942
Earliest cite
August Derleth
Research History
Suggested, and many cites submitted, by Bill Mullins.Bobby Derie submitted a 1933 cite from "Essential Solitude" (the Derleth – Lovecraft letters) for the form "Cthulhu mythology".
Last modified 2023-10-05 20:22:47
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