Dreams of Terror and Death: The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft Book

Let's be frank -- I love Lovecraft. The "Necronomicon" that you've heard referenced a zillion times is a fictional tome of his invention. He was writing in the 1930's, and his work is dated by its slow pacing, Poe-like vocabulary, and predictability (now that he's fathered the entire horror genre -- nearly every successful writer from Neil Gaiman to Stephen King cites him as an influence -- and its tropes are so recognizable to us). But Lovecraft's style is entirely singular, so much so that the numerous homages to him, and writerly devotees of his, are blindingly obvious to anyone familiar with Lovecraft's stories. Despite this, his threats and monsters were so original they were surreal -- you cannot possibly guess the actual details of them -- and no one since has had the cajones to reuse them except in the most deliberately referential way.

Lovecraft was a skeptical, atheistic researcher of the occult who depicted a universe where cultists worship and summon "deities" that are really just alien beings with no more regard for humanity than we have for a colony of ants (to borrow a phrase from a recent NPR special), and that generally require blood sacrifices and want to consume us all. Magic is possible due to undiscovered laws of the universe, which challenge the sanity and morality of anyone who contemplates them. Anytime you see a horror story that involves that type of idea, or for that matter any Creepy Tome of Forbidden Knowledge that causes all the trouble, you're seeing Lovecraft's influence. Knowledge of the way things really are in the universe is dangerous, any gods you can contact are unthinkably evil and hostile to life, and the more you understand about it all the more you go insane.

Lovecraft was afflicted with nightmares his entire life, and often wrote them into his stories -- wrote his stories around them, in fact. His interpretation of magic and the occult has been so influential that I've even seen him cited by Christian extremists as someone who had genuine contact with, and knowledge of, Satan and his minions -- which is just to say that his world is quite convincing as depicted. If you were raised by enthusiastic Christians you were probably introduced in some way to the idea of the Great Satanic Conspiracy running the world; that is largely inspired by the Illuminatis trilogy, but also very heavily influenced, as I now understand it, by the ideas of Lovecraft and his devotees.

So, it's a little slow to read, but it's great fun. Hopefully you too will understand why the man, to this day, has a large and devoted cult following. (Pun intended, and highly apropos.)

P.S. No reason why I picked this volume of his work instead of one of the many others. I will say that this and the other two Del Rey volumes seem well ordered, and well chosen as far as which stories are collected in a volume (important because Lovecraft only wrote short fiction, and was never published in anthology form in his lifetime -- so you tend to get a lot of chaos and redundancy when you try to collect his works). And they certainly do have some beautiful cover art.