‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.’

― HP Lovecraft

HP Lovecraft is one of the most influential writers of our time. Robert E Howard, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Alan Moore, Dungeons & Dragons, HR Giger, the Warhammer setting… it’s easier to list who hasn’t felt the cold, clammy hand of Lovecraft upon their shoulder. Myself included! But rather than just wax lyrical about how much I love the guy, the point of this article is to explore what exactly ‘Lovecraftian’ means, and how you can incorporate Lovecraftian elements into your writing.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for some of Lovecraft’s stories. They have been published for nearly a hundred years, but I thought I should mention it, just to be fair.

So what is Lovecraftian writing?

Howard Philips Lovecraft (1890–1937) was an American writer of weird fiction. Now, weird fiction is a particularly slippery genre to pin down, flickering as it does between fantasy, science fiction, and horror. The big caveat is that it reinterprets or misses out entirely the traditional monsters of horror fiction. A normal ghost/vampire/werewolf story isn’t weird fiction. A thing from beyond the stars that exists in the space between spaces and moves effortlessly through time – that’s weird fiction. The other prong of weird fiction is its thematic exploration of the insignificance of humanity. Compared to the vastness of space or the power of otherworldly beings, we mere mortals are nothing.

Now, that is not to say all weird fiction protagonists are without agency or helpless. In Robert E Howard’s weird fiction, the character Conan faces down all kind of terrifying magic and monsters, surviving through cunning and a strong sword arm.

Most of the Lovecraft writing referenced by fantasy and science fiction authors takes place in the Cthulhu mythos, a sort of shared universe where Lovecraft’s stories take place, the vast majority of which share motifs that repeat themselves in Lovecraft’s writing.     

Cosmic horror is the biggest and most important motif. This is the sense of humanity’s insignificance in an uncaring cosmos.

The horror of discovery is another. Here’s a snippet from The Call of Cthulhu, one of his best and most famous works:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

 

Basically, Lovecraft tells us not to peek too closely behind the curtain. There’s a thin veil separating humanity from maddening truth. And too much exploration into science, magic, or the ‘real’ history of the world will lead to madness and despair. Forbidden knowledge is forbidden for a reason.

In contrast to Robert E Howard’s gung-ho, free-spirited protagonists, the unfortunates in Lovecraft’s stories are bound by fate. Blood will out, and if your ancestor was an insane cannibal (see The Rats in the Walls), part of a fish cult (The Shadow Over Innsmouth), or an ape-shagging degenerate (Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family), you will be too – or you’ll be driven mad by the knowledge.

Madness, incidentally, is another hallmark of a Lovecraftian work. Lovecraft himself struggled with his mental health all his life, and both his parents died while in a mental hospital. The overwhelming stress of having your view of the world cruelly shattered crops up time and time again in his writing. The universe is beyond our comprehension. And if you try to comprehend it, you’ll go mad.

Sorcerers are insane and immensely powerful, but at a horrible cost. For example, the imaginatively named Charles Le Sorcier in The Alchemist spends his time plotting to murder each generation of a family who had offended him. Similar to forbidden knowledge, those who dabble in the occult (Like poor St John and his companion in The Hound) will end up wishing they hadn’t. Certain phrases (‘Cthulhu fhtagn!’) or books, will instantly ring alarm bells for frequent readers of Lovecraft’s tales. When The Necronomicon comes out, you know the protagonist in for a bad time. When characters like Professor Henry Armitage use magic in The Dunwich Horror, it is at immense personal risk and danger even if it is to save the world. It’s very much a soft magic system, as specific knowledge of how it works would blast away your sanity.

Finally, and most importantly, the universe doesn’t care. The entities in Lovecraft’s work are at best apathetic to humanity, if not overtly hostile. Humanity is not special, things ruled this planet before us, and the world will continue after we are gone (a ‘mighty beetle civilization’ is next, if you’re curious). It’s as bleak and cold as the stars.

Other signs of Lovecraftian work

There are other, aesthetic touches which, although not essential to something being considered Lovecraftian, work as clear signposts to the reader.

The moon is always gibbous, for example. I’m not sure why that’s a particularly scary phase of the moon, but there we are.

Partly out of self-consciousness due to his lack of formal education, Lovecraft was sesquipedalian in the extreme. To save you getting your dictionary out, that means he enjoyed big words. Some of his favourites were:

abhorrent, antiquarian blasphemous cyclopean, eldritch, indescribable, loathsome, squamous, and unnamable.

Lovecraft was paid by the word for his stories, so with ones like squamous, it’s good to know his editors were getting their money’s worth. He uses these words time and again, and it’s become a hallmark of the subgenre inspired by his work. Too many of these words, and your writing will slip into unwilling parody. But used sparingly, they work nicely to signpost your reader.

Lovecraft’s descriptions are notoriously vague – and deliberately so. Let’s look at his description of the titular creature in Dagon:

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

In your own writing, when describing a Lovecraftian monster, don’t worry about describing every little detail. Lovecraft uses words like an impressionist painter and the reader’s imagination fills in the blanks. A comprehensive and overly detailed description will take away the shock and horror. Pick a few good lines and be disciplined about it.

How different genres work with the Lovecraftian

Sword and sorcery

The natural bedfellow is sword and sorcery fantasy. This was Robert E Howard’s bread and butter, and as he and Lovecraft were friends and correspondents, they slipped many references to each other’s work into their stories. One of the key hallmarks of a good sword and sorcery fantasy is the triumph of the physical over the metaphysical. If you’re not in the mood for fancy words, what that means is ‘big muscley men with swords are better than shifty, evil magic and unscrupulous “civilized” scheming’. Those last two frequently acted as foil to Conan’s savage, primary fury and ‘iron thews’. (Incidentally, Hobert E Howard does spend a lot of time talking about Conan’s thighs, but that’s another story for another time.)

If you’re writing sword and sorcery, then Lovecraftian ideas surrounding magic will act as a perfect obstacle for your protagonist to overcome. Also, as Lovecraftian-style monsters are by definition outside of conventional reality, they work well as antagonists compared to the natural, physical heroes of sword and sorcery.  

Comic fantasy

It might sound weird, but comic fantasy works really well with Lovecraft. Lovecraft is a very serious writer, with lots of quirks, making him the perfect target for satire.

The late, great Terry Pratchett was a master of parody who found inspiration in Lovecraft. Who can forget his Necrotelicomnicon, a.k.a. Liber Paginarum Fulvarum (that’s Book of Yellow Pages, in case your Latin is rusty)? His Bel-Shamharoth is a delightful nod to the Great Old Ones in the Cthulhu Mythos.

But here’s the thing – using Lovecraft in comic fantasy doesn’t have to be funny. It can be terrifying. One of the central themes in Pratchett’s Discworld books is the corrupting effect of too much magic.

Maybe I’ve read about when Rincewind is transported to the Dungeon Dimensions (the space between spaces). The Things from the Dungeon Dimensions are horrible, shapeless creatures: “the pretty ones look like a cross between an ugly octopus and an angry bicycle.” The descriptions are humorous, but there is still the Lovecraftian overwhelming sense of dread and menace about these Things who exist only enough to hate, desperate to break into reality.

Dark fantasy

Personally, I’m a dark fantasy writer. And you can see Lovecraft’s fingerprints all over this subgenre. In dark fantasy, the world is fundamentally not a very nice place. It’s full of corruption and decay. Places of safety are rare, and danger lurks round every corner. Seems awfully similar to Lovecraft’s description of rotting New England towns, like Innsmouth or the dodgier parts of Arkham: full of cold, hard people with unpleasant secrets.

In traditional fantasy, urban places are a refuge from the perils of the wilderness. In dark fantasy, civilization is still a source of danger and threat. Lovecraft hated cities, and crowds made him anxious and nauseous. (But to be fair, so did pretty much everything. The guy had issues). He used this in his writing to convey that sense of dread when describing settlements, and you can too. Read The Shadow over Innsmouth and look at how he describes the dilapidated houses and stinking streets as the narrator enters the town. It slowly builds up the reader’s anxiety, and consistently hammers home the point that this is not a safe place.

Rurality doesn’t fare any better in Lovecraft’s stories. My all-time favourite Lovecraft story is The Picture in the House, and it gives a fantastic snapshot of the bleak New England landscape. In Lovecraft, the wilderness leads to isolation and inbreeding. The people there are suspicious and brutish, cut off from the rest of the world, and given to debased practices. The natural world can also be readily corrupted, and its laws broken by outside forces, leading to mutation and madness. Just look at The Colour Out of Space as another example of rural Lovecraftian writing. In your dark fantasy, you can use these subtle taints.

Science fiction

If you’re incorporating Lovecraft into science fiction, there are a few things to beware. Firstly, the Lovecraftian element will very much change the tone. Space will no longer be a thrilling frontier full of possibility and wonder, but instead a cold, dark void full of terror. Lovecraft does not go well with optimism and utopian stories like Star Trek.

That being said, Lovecraftian elements do pair very well with space opera, time travel, and obviously sci-fi horror stories. The vastness of an uncaring universe is a constant theme in Lovecraft’s work, and that reality is beyond mortal perception and logic. Warp travel in the Warhammer 40000 setting is a good example of this.

If you’re looking to incorporate Lovecraft into your science fiction writing, it’s more than just sticking in a bunch of aliens with tentacles. It’s about punishing hubris, and the consequences of looking too closely or exploring too far into things which you shouldn’t.

To quote the great man himself:

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Things to avoid

Lovecraft is my favourite writer and, by anyone’s standards, a creative genius. But that doesn’t make him perfect or immune to criticism. Let’s look at how you can learn from and avoid his mistakes, then common pitfalls for writers attempting to work Lovecraftian elements into their work.

Accent overload

Firstly, for the love of God, don’t stick everything in accented text. A word here and there is fine. But look at this extract from The Shadow Over Innsmouth from the local wine-o Zaydock Allen:

‘Then’s the time Obed he begun a-cursin’ at the folks fer bein’ dull sheep an’ prayin’ to a Christian heaven as didn’t help ’em none. He told ’em he’d knowed of folks as prayed to gods that give somethin’ ye reely need, an’ says ef a good bunch o’ men ud stand by him, he cud mebbe git a holt o’ sarten paowers as ud bring plenty o’ fish an’ quite a bit o’ gold. O’ course them as sarved on the Sumatry Queen an’ seed the island knowed what he meant, an’ wa’n’t none too anxious to git clost to sea-things like they’d heerd tell on, but them as didn’t know what ’twas all abaout got kind o’ swayed by what Obed had to say, an’ begun to ast him what he cud do to set ’em on the way to the faith as ud bring ’em results.’

If you managed to wade through that, congratulations! The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a fantastic story and one of Lovecraft’s best. But it’s definitely in spite of rather than because of Zaydock’s weird speech patterns. This kind of thing is hard to read. Don’t do it.

Racism

I hate to bring this up, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t. The other thing to avoid is the racism. Lovecraft was incredibly racist, and not just in an ‘it was the olden days’ way. I will make no apologies or excuses for him. It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now. Lovecraft’s protagonists share his views, and his descriptions of ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ cultures are, if you’ll pardon the use of one of Lovecraft’s big words, abhorrent.

You don’t need to include it in your writing. Throw out the trash and keep the good stuff.  

Going overboard on the monsters

The other big thing is, don’t treat Lovecraft like a Dungeons & Dragons monster manual. It can be really tempting when you’re getting into Lovecraft’s works and learning about all these new, weird creatures to just throw them at your protagonists one after the other. Don’t.

The reason why Lovecraft’s monsters are so effective is because they are both alien and dangerous. Having Deep Ones attack only to be effortlessly blasted apart followed by a cool quip from the hero takes that away. Lovecraftian monsters are not mooks, they need to be capable threats to the safety and sanity of your protagonist.

Equally, they need to be unknown. If your characters encounter the aforementioned Deep One, say, ‘Oh, it’s a Deep One. The aquatic servants of Dagon, high priest of Great Cthulhu’ and rattle off factoids like they’re describing the #19 bus, then the creature loses a bit of its mystique. 

Don’t lose your voice

Speaking as a huge Lovecraft fanboy and an author who uses a lot of Lovecraftian stuff in my writing, the best advice I can give is this: don’t lose your own voice.

Lovecraft is rightly considered to be one of the most important fiction writers of all time. But it’s your book. Not his. Don’t ever feel constrained by the ‘facts’ of the Cthulhu Mythos. Don’t ever feel like your writing has to go in one direction because that’s what everyone else has done with this particular monster.  

Lovecraft’s ideas have echoed through the ages, and if you use any in your own work, please make sure to let me know!  And remember:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.