H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) and Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) are two pillars in the New World Gothic castle of fantastic fiction. They are especially interesting in their surprising aspects. They both died young, they both lived sheltered and geographically-constricted lives, they both absorbed influences from wide and deep sources which they then used to create wonderfully complex and vast universes that they have shared with writers long after their passing, and they both lived for sharing their creative energies with other writers through letters and encouraging words, including each other.
Lovecraft the New Englander drew from Poe, Machen, and Dunsany to fashion the crucible from which his Cthulhu Mythos emerged, the indifferent and destructive universe of what humans would call monsters from beyond space and time. He was a master at delineating the gulf between what terrible fate was suggested and why it could not be described in all its horror.
Robert E. Howard the Texan connected to semi-mythic history and the existential journey of one determined man through all the dangers of men and beasts. He is the father of an American sword and sorcery, a juxtaposition of power that seems illogical but also somehow inevitable, almost an allegory of the wars of the 20th Century -- what you cannot see may kill you from afar, and what you can see may kill you up close. The survivor must be ready and skilled and wary at all times.
The legacies of these two writers last and grow to this day in literature, art, and film, even language. We stock their writings and associated contemporary writers as well as some of the more interesting and provocative writers working with the generous heritage that Lovecraft and Howard bequeathed to an increasingly uneasy world.
Résumé with Monsters
Résumé with Monsters
Philip Kenan does not appear to be the most reliable narrator. Obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, he keeps malign cosmic entities at bay by constantly revising his novel, The Despicable Quest. While Philip's preoccupied with the monsters lurking behind every cubicle at his dead-end job, his exasperated girlfriend flees — heading straight into the horror that lies at the heart of the corporate world.
William Browning Spencer's imaginative update on Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos offers a witty and wicked satire of office culture. This macabre masterpiece from one of America's foremost cult authors won the 1995 International Horror Critics Guild Award for Best Novel.
"If Woody Allen had ever written a Cthulhu Mythos novel, it might have come out like this." — The New York Review of Science Fiction
"An explosive story of menace, suspense, mystery, and love. Don't miss it." — Roger Zelazny
Author William Browning Spencer is "a brilliant writer of fantasy who’s also a very considerable serious novelist." — Kirkus Reviews
Reprint of the White Wolf Publishing, Clarkston, Georgia, 1995 edition.