[Andrea Pearson]

I'm interested in seeing the answers to these questions:

1. When did you discover HP Lovecraft?
2. What was your initial reaction?
3. Has your opinion of him changed?
4. What is your favorite story of his?

For me:
1. When my hubby made me read his stories.
2. Too much description and backstory at the beginning, then awesomeness later.
3. Not really. I still like his writing but dislike the backstory at the beginning.
4. So many choices. At the Mountains of Madness or the Mole people one. (I can never remember the title. The people have two different colored eyes and live underground.)

 

[Sam Kates]

I have his complete works on my Kindle, but haven't yet got to them. Will do very shortly.

 

[Andrea Pearson]

I have his complete works on my Kindle, but haven't yet got to them. Will do very shortly.

Nice! I've got smatterings of his stuff here and there in different collections, but would love them all to be in one spot.

 

[Mike D. aka jmiked]

I read pretty much all of his work back in the sixties. Several years ago I got an ebook collection and am working though that every so often. I like his stories a lot.

Mike

 

[Andrea Pearson]

I read pretty much all of his work back in the sixties. Several years ago I got an ebook collection and am working though that every so often. I like his stories a lot.

Mike

Since I only just discovered him a couple years ago, I'm always slightly envious of people who've known of him for a long time.

 

[NogDog]

I like that most of his work is in short stories, so that I can enjoy them in small doses; as it's not something I want a steady diet of, but it is a refreshing alternative from time to time.

 

[Tony Richards]

1. Soon after leaving college -- I studied law (groan!) and didn't read a word of fiction for three years.
2. I thought the singularity of his vision was amazing.
3. I still think the singularity of his vision is amazing.
4. The Shadow over Innsmouth.

 

[Sam Kates]

I studied law (groan!) and didn't read a word of fiction for three years.

I studied law for five years, then practised it for fourteen. I was still crap...

 

[CoraBuhlert]

I'm interested in seeing the answers to these questions:

1. When did you discover HP Lovecraft?
2. What was your initial reaction?
3. Has your opinion of him changed?
4. What is your favorite story of his?

1. Sometime in the early to mid 1990s. I had already picked up his name somewhere, so I recognized it when I spotted a Lovecraft collection in paperback at the local bookstore and bought it.
2. Oh my God, must we really learn every single detail about this Antarctic expedition? And this guy is famous again why?
3. My opinion changed as soon as they dug up the frozen Elder Things, which promptly unfroze, and when they discovered the city of the Elder Things. By that time my reaction was, "Oh my God, I so want to visit that place. I want to go on one of those Antarctic cruises and visit that city." My opinion changed again years later, as I learned more about Lovecraft and that he was not a very pleasant person and unrepentant racist. Still, when he's good, he's very good.
4. Still At the Mountains of Madness, because you'll never forget your first one.

 

[Ty Johnston]

1. I don't remember exactly when I became aware of who he was, but probably late '70s or early '80s, my late grade-school and early teen years. I do remember the first time I read anything by him, and that would have been '84 when I purchased a collection of his works from a local book store.

2. Interesting ideas, intriguing background material, but a clumsy prose writer. There were much better writers, though not necessarily as imaginative, during his lifetime.

3. Not really, no.

4. Hmm, probably "Shadows Over Innsmouth." Or, at least, I think it is his most tightly constructed story.

 

[Guest]

1. When did you discover HP Lovecraft?
2. What was your initial reaction?
3. Has your opinion of him changed?
4. What is your favorite story of his?

1. Aged about twelve in the local library in an omnibus of Mythos stories by various authors.
2. Scared out of my mind, and impressed because most modern horror authors had failed to do that. I managed to find a collection of his very short (few hundred word) works and I think he is definitely an author who is actually scarier in the shorter stories where a lot of the fear is done by implication.
3. I think I'm more aware of unfortunate subtexts in his work, but his stories are still terrifying and gripping.
4. A tie between "The thing on the doorstep" and "At the mountains of madness"

 

[Ann in Arlington]

1. vaguely
2. negative -- not into horror
3. 4. never read anything

 

[Tony Rabig]

1. Around 1965, with a paperback (title may have been THE DUNWICH HORROR AND OTHER STORIES, but I've slept since then, so I may have that wrong).

2. Found I enjoyed him more at short story length than at novelette and longer, but then I feel that way about a number of writers.

3. Not that much, but it's been some time since I read him; picked up a Kindle edition with all the stories, but haven't started re-reading him yet.

4. Until I get around to re-reading, I'd go with "Pickman's Model," "The Outsider," and "The Thing on the Doorstep."

 

[Andrea Pearson]

My opinion changed as soon as they dug up the frozen Elder Things, which promptly unfroze, and when they discovered the city of the Elder Things. By that time my reaction was, "Oh my God, I so want to visit that place. I want to go on one of those Antarctic cruises and visit that city."

I felt the exact same way when I read At the Mountains of Madness.

And many of you have mentioned stories of his that I really enjoy. Shadow over Innsmouth had such a surprise ending, and I really like that.

Still haven't read The Thing on the Doorstep.

 

[William Meikle]

I discovered the writing of H P Lovecraft back in the very early Seventies. I came to him, not looking for horror, but for Science Fiction as that was where my prime interest lay back then. I believe the first story I read was THE DUNWICH HORROR in one of the cheap UK paperback editions. That was enough for me to seek out the rest, and I remember reading AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS while sitting on the back steps of our house on a hot summer's day.

It was only natural that I should turn to some Lovecraftian conceits in my own writing, and in recent years I've found there's a wide variety of markets willing to share my obsession. My list of Lovecraft-inspired works grows apace, and here's where you can find the most recent.

Novels / Novellas

• The Creeping Kelp (Hardcover / Paperback / Ebook / Dark Regions Press)
• Clockwork Dolls novella (Hardcover / ebook / DARKFUSE)
• The Midnight Eye Files: The Amulet (Ebook / Black Death Books)
• The Invasion (Paperback / Ebook / Dark Regions Press)
• Island Life (Ebook / Generation Next)

Short Story Collections

• Carnacki: Heaven and Hell (Hardcover / Paperback / Ebook / Dark Regions Press)
• Dark Melodies (Hardcover / Paperback / Dark Regions Press)

I also have numerous lovecraftian anthology and magazine appearances of my stories and I've also recently finished a Lovecraftian Space Opera novella. PLASM, coming in 2013 from Dark Regions.

I'm currently writing a short story for another Lovecraft themed anthology.

I probably won't stop until the stars are right.

 

[Betsy the Quilter]

I'm interested in seeing the answers to these questions:

1. When did you discover HP Lovecraft?
2. What was your initial reaction?
3. Has your opinion of him changed?
4. What is your favorite story of his?

I've vaguely heard of him, but since I haven't read any of his works, I have no initial reaction and no favorite story.

Some of what I've read here makes me want to try him, though if he's primarily short stories, those aren't my favorite form, so that makes me less likely to try.

Betsy

 

[James Everington]

1. When did you discover HP Lovecraft?
When I was about 15, I think. I knew Stephen King had praised him and I got a cheap paperback of what I now realise were some of his weaker stories.

2. What was your initial reaction?
I probably loved him at that age, because his vision was so strong and unique, and even then I had the impression there was some interesting small-p philosphical underpinning to his work...

3. Has your opinion of him changed?
I still rate him as being exceptionally influential and no serious reader of horror/weird fiction can ignore him. His best work is amongst the best there is. However it's harder nowadays to overlook both his prose-style (which whilst unique led him to write some hideous sentences on occasion) and the undercurrent of racism in some of his stories.

And I'd say Blackwood is better...

4. What is your favorite story of his?
Agree that his short stories are where to start; The Call Of Cthulhu is my favourite.

 

[VondaZ]

I've always been aware of Lovecraft, but I didn't start reading him until a couple of years ago when I picked up the Halcyon Classics Lovecraft anthology for my Kindle. At first, I was blown away because it was so different from the horror that I was used to. But I stopped reading that book about 40% into it, after finishing the Mountains of Madness. While each story is different, they all have that same Lovecraftian uniqueness that kind of made everything seem like more of the same after a while. The evil frequently felt like it was the same evil in just another incarnation. And it was sometimes difficult to relate to that evil, which takes a little of the horror out of it if it doesn't feel like it could reach out and touch you where you are. It felt a little distanced from me.

Probably my problem was reading it all at once, rather than mixing it in between other things - I just became oversaturated with it. Also, the archaic style gets old after a while. I get into it for a while and then I get tired of it.

I am not sure which is my favorite. The one I remember most because it always felt a little different than the rest was the one about the meteor. I think it was "The Colour Out of Space" - but I am not positive. "Dreams in the Witch House" also stands out in my memory.

 

[Mike D. aka jmiked]

Probably my problem was reading it all at once, rather than mixing it in between other things - I just became oversaturated with it. Also, the archaic style gets old after a while. I get into it for a while and then I get tired of it.

That's the way I feel about it also. I'm going through the entire collection, but I only read something from it every four or five months.

Mike

 

[balaspa]

1. When did you discover HP Lovecraft? - as a horror fan, I was aware of him for a long time.  Stephen King, for example, has dabbled in the Lovecraft mythos.  I didn't actually read any of Lovecraft's work, however, until a few years ago.
2. What was your initial reaction? - I thought he was OK.  I liked the ideas of his work - the complexity of the Lovecraftian mythos and the creatures and beings he invented, more than the stories. 
3. Has your opinion of him changed? - Yes, I have grown to appreciate his work more and more as time has gone by.
4. What is your favorite story of his? - I have to go with the classic "Call of Cthulhu" of course.