Lovecraft stuff

Hmmm, that is tough.

The "Cthulu Mythos" idea was kind of put together after Lovecraft's death. He had several stories that fit together in odd and kind of unclear ways, and several contemporary (Howard) and later (Derleth, Smith) friends and authors added to and fleshed out the "Mythos". Lovecraft himself used a bunch of reoccuring themes in stories and you can cleary point to "X resembles Y" and "A resembles B" at several points, I'm not 100% sure he had a serious overarching logical cosmology in mind.

Example: Dagon and Shadow Over Innsmouth both have a simillar... (I don't know if I should be spoilering stuff or not lol) themes, but it is unclear if Lovecraft intended for them to be related. In the hindsight of the "Cthulu Mythos" makers years later though I think they are. If that makes any sense.

Anyways, what was I saying?

Oh yeah, some stuff is in fact cleary "Cthuluy" and some isn't. Working from memory and a Wiki copypasta, let me see if I can choose between the two for you (bolding the Cthuluy ones). This will be debatable I'm sure, as I haven't read every one of these and wht qualifies as a "Cthuluy Story" is debatable as well.

Novellas:
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath ?
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward ?
At the Mountains of Madness ?
The Shadow Over Innsmouth ?
The Shadow Out of Time

Short Stories
"The Tomb" ?
"Dagon" ?
"A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" ?
"Polaris" ?
"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" ?
"Memory" ?
"Old Bugs" ?
"The Transition of Juan Romero" ?
"The White Ship" ?
"The Doom that Came to Sarnath" ?
"The Statement of Randolph Carter" ?
"The Street" ?
"The Terrible Old Man" ?
"The Cats of Ulthar" ?
"The Tree" ?
"Celepha?s" ?
"From Beyond" ?
"The Temple" ?
"Nyarlathotep" ?
"The Picture in the House" ?
"Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" ?
"The Nameless City" ?
"The Quest of Iranon" ?
"The Moon-Bog" ?
"Ex Oblivione" ?
"The Other Gods" ?
"The Outsider" ?
"The Music of Erich Zann" ?
"Sweet Ermengarde" ?
"Hypnos" ?
"What the Moon Brings" ?
"Azathoth" ?
"Herbert West-Reanimator" ?
"The Hound" ?
"The Lurking Fear" ?
"The Rats in the Walls" ?
"The Unnamable" ?
"The Festival" ?
"The Shunned House" ?
"The Horror at Red Hook" ?
"He" ?
"In the Vault" ?
"Cool Air" ?
"The Call of Cthulhu" ?
"Pickman's Model" ?
"The Strange High House in the Mist" ?
"The Silver Key" ?
"The Colour Out of Space" ?
"The Descendant" ?
"The Very Old Folk" ?
"History of the Necronomicon" ?
"The Dunwich Horror" ?
"Ibid" ?
"The Whisperer in Darkness" ?
"The Dreams in the Witch House" ?
"The Thing on the Doorstep" ?
"The Book" ?
"The Evil Clergyman" ?
"The Haunter of the Dark"

So good.

Hmmm, it probably doesn't need to be said but just because something isn't "Chtulu Mythos" specific by Lovecraft doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. Also a lot have cool supernatural horror plots/themes even if not really Cthuluy, like Rats, Outsider and Herbert West. All good stories on their own with clear supernatural crazyness but no direct Mythos links.

Yeah. I haven't read everything that he ever wrote, but there's only 3 stories I can remember reading by Lovecraft that had anything to do with Cthulu.

What you think you're going to be getting when you start reading Lovecraft is not what you wind up getting. What you get is actually much better than mythological horror. Lovecraft was very good with the English language in a way which is difficult to explain but easy to understand when you read him. It's like watching a really talented artist work on an oil painting. If you've ever done that -- there's just something really satisfying about sitting there watching it happen.

Also bear in mind that Lovecraft has been republished a lot. I have 2 different collections on my shelf which include Dream Quest, and a stand alone novella of Dream Quest. It's 3 different Dream Quests. The novella actually mashed in 2 other short stories at the end of Dream Quest. I figgure it was serialized at the time and Lovecraft himself probably DID sell them that way, but they weren't printed that way initially. You'll run into some stuff like that. At least I did.

Edit: People make a big deal about Cthulu and Lovecraft so much because Cthulu is so fucking awesome and a fairly good overall indication of what Lovecraft WILL give you. Boatloads of fucking awesome and the assured knowledge that it is indeed best to be the first to die. But it's not like Simarrilion-esque treatsies on the geanologies of Nyarlathotep, The Whispering Chaos who gnaws at the Dark. Like Zhaun said, other writers did that. And they did it fairly well.

Yeah the "Dream" series was pretty neat, it started I think with the novella "Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" and then he went back and touched on it a few more times. It is basicly Lovecraft writing what we would consider fantasy*.

As for other writers, August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith I think are the two biggest contributors. Derleth was late life friend and went on to start Arkham House publishing if I recall and really wonderfully "carried the Lovecraft Torch" so to speak. Another neat kind of easter egg is Robert Howard wrote a few Lovecraftian/Cthuluesque stories*.

Basicly if you look for the older published (preferably old Arkham House) Cthulu Anthology type books you'll have like 5-10 stories only 1-2 will be from Lovecraft, Smith and Deleth filling out at least half to two-thirds more and then the rest miscilaneous people. There have been some newer Anthologies, including a Steven King short story, but... ehhhh.


*This is kind of an awesome magical footnote of the writing universe that the guy who created Conan and the Hyborian age (Howard) and the guy who invented Cthulu and that mythos (Lovecraft) were good friends and wrote each other up until the time of Howards suicide. Including trading writing ideas and concepts from each other. Inseveral Conan stories he encounters "unknowable things from beyond the universe" that are much like reoccuring Lovecraft nasties. When you consider the Hyborian Age of Conan was supposed to be a kind of pre-historical Earth type thing and add in the unknowable montsers parrelels, one could argue the Hyborian Age could be part of the Cthulu Mythos. But anyways, Howard does have a punlished Cthuluy story I know that Derleth put together in an anthology. Supposedly there is a Lovecraft Conan story, but I have never seen it.

Hereis a link to a page with downloadable versions of the entire H.P. Lovecraft collection. To include Kindle and Nook versions.