H. P. Lovecraft

''Howard Phillips Lovecraft'' (August 20, 1890 ��� March 15, 1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, known then simply as weird fiction. Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror; the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fiction featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Christian humanism.<ref>The Strength to Dream: Literature and the Imagination by Colin Wilson,ISBN 1600250203,page 20 "Here is an imaginative attitude that takes the world-rejection of Yeats and Lovecraft one stage further. They only declared that they preferred the world of to the real world"</ref><ref>H.P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture by Don G. Smith, 2005, ISBN 078642091X,page 85, "Lovecraft never had much good to say about families either"</ref> Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality. Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades, and he is now commonly regarded <ref>Joshi, 2001</ref> as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.<ref>[http://www.mythostomes.com/content/view/51/89/ Out of Space, Out of Time]</ref> Stephen King has called Lovecraft "the twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."<ref>King quoted on front cover of 1982 paperback edition of 'The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre' published by Del Rey Books with introduction by Robert Bloch. Other sources quote King as calling this judgement of Lovecraft "undeniable"[http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Fantasy/lovecraft.shtml] or "beyond doubt."[http://ebooks.ebookmall.com/ebook/102153-ebook.htm]</ref><ref></ref>