My friend Oscar has it right again. I first started reading Lovecraft as a teenager and found him boring and incomprehensible. As I grew older, though, and re-visited his work, I found myself more and more intrigued by his often nightmarish imagery, his shiver-inducing visions. His work is indisputably uneven; his writing style tended to be florid and melodramatic, in the style of the pulp magazines that he earned his "living" and earliest reputation from. However, his influence on the culture of horror literature, movies, TV-shows, graphic comics, etc. has been profound, and the best of his stories, such as "Cool Air" and "Herbert West, Reanimator", are still, all these decades later, gruesomely chilling and grisly (I find far less interesting the arcane "Old Ones" and "Ancient Ones" mythology Lovecraft created and disciples such as August Derleth continued to perpetuate long after his death). As a person, Lovecraft was certainly flawed, complex, mysterious. Until the end of his life, he was, as Oscar notes, a rabidly conservative bigot and Anglophile (he later revised some of his opinions) who married a Jewish woman from NY; an erudite man of high intelligence who was unable to earn a living in even the most mundane of jobs; a kind and outgoing friend to countless amateur writers who nonetheless remained an emotionally remote enigma to many who knew him all his life. Some have suggested he was a latent homosexual (not me; I'm uncomfortable psychoanalyzing the living, much less the long dead). Still, for all his faults, deficiencies, and eccentricities, the best of his work is still vibrant and evocative in a way that even the most imaginative contemporary authors (including Stephen King) can't match. He may never have written as well as Poe, but nobody is more influential today than Lovecraft (his beyond-the-grave presence can be felt in everything from "Creature From the Black Lagoon" to "Outer Limits" to "Evil Dead" etc. etc.), who died bravely in his native Providence in 1937 (his humble grave, located in Swan Point Cemetery, has become a shrine to many; when I visited it several years ago, someone had left fetishistic objects and defaced the stone with quotes from the Necronomicon- "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die"). Say what you will about what's lacking in his work, or his character as a man, but no horror author is more imitated and revered today...by film-makers, by writers, by TV-show creators...than Lovecraft. His "cult" shows no signs of abating. R.I.P., Howard. (For those who are interested, S.T. Joshi has written an excellent biography on Lovecraft.)

'Call of Cthulhu' is a fabulous story, and why it has not been made into a movie I can't understand. 'Escape from Innsmouth' is another story that unfolds in an interesting manner. A man of many faults (died at 37 from colon cancer), possibly a bigot, but came up with some really weird ideas. King steals from him, and a whole genre of books has been built up around his Cthulhu mythos. Hell, some people even thing the Necronomicon is real.

Wildly uneven, his work is all over the place, and sometimes ponderous to read. A bigot of the first order, with ridiculous, antiquated views on races and immigrants, That aside, he was unique, influential, and genuinely innovative at his peak.

Great storyteller with mediocre writing skills. Still in my top 5 authors, though. There wouldn't be and Steven Kings or Robert McCammons if it was not for this talented man. Though his writing leaves something to be desired, he still delivers terrors that gave me nightmares.

Lovecraft is the best horror writer ever. He scares you without having to use the knives, blood, and beheading that are so popular nowadays. That made his job harder, but he still did a great job. The Call Of Cthulhu is probably my favorite book of all time

Lovecraft is the undisputed master of horror. His style is unique, thought provoking and generally scary. He manages to entertain and frighten without resorting to the usual gratuis violence or cliches.

If I were writing this review back in the twenties and thirties, when Lovecraft was actively writing, he probably wouldn't have gotten any more than a 2 out of 5. This is because back then, what he did was known as pulp and there were a million pulp writers out there. Of course, in hindsight, he turns out to have been one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Seriously, he is the godfather of modern horror fiction. The term 'horror fiction' was practically invented because of him, to describe what he was doing. While at first he had no great appreciation for the beauty of the English language (he seems to have been doing his damnedest to destroy it, actually), he eventually improved to become quite readable and page-turning. Besides, in the fantasy and horror genres, ideas and imagination are more important than mellifluous prose. He gets 5 stars because of his influence and importance to an entire genre of writing, kind of like how you need to give props to Black Sabbath for inventing heavy metal, because their lack of talent is trivial compared to their innovation and influence. One last thing, you won't understand many of the words Lovecraft uses but don't bother looking them up in a dictionary, because they aren't there. They are either archaic or made up - I don't think Lovecraft was very well educated, but tried to sound like he was.

There's nothing I can add to the accolades H.P. Lovecraft has earned over the years. He is the grandfather of all modern horror, even more so than Poe in my opinion (well, I consider them equals anyway). Nobody and I mean NOBODY had a better grasp of horrifying the reader through the terror of the unknown than Lovecraft. NOTE: be sure to get the Del Rey editions and NOT the Carroll & Graf books; the Carroll & Graf editions were NOT written by H.P. Lovecraft, they were written by his editor and notorious hanger-on August Derleth. Please do not support Derleth's rip-off material.

Lovecraft wrote quite along time ago when the stuffy sort of prose that typifies his style was more expected. I bought and read an anthology of many of his works. The stories were great but not easy reading. Robert.E.Howard (creator of Conan) was a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and was much influenced by him - evident in many Conan stories and short pieces that actually revolved around the Cthulhu and other mythos. Overall, I prefer R.E. Howard's more lucid writing style in spite of Lovecrafts greater mastery of the macabre.

Essential reading to appreciate this writers contribution to the horror genre. BUT, if you are someone who is much less than an aspiring horror buff or completist, reading a few stories while sitting in Borders will give you enough to understand this mans style, and range.

He is the forefather of 20th century horror and his ideas were *incredibly* innovative for his time. His horror was very creative, but remained believable (in its own way), which is what made it so horrifying. My only criticism is that he could, at times, be a bit too wordy.

Best horror writer ever. Period.

True horror master. One of the writers that started it all. Nearly every horror writer since his days have been influenced by his work. From Masterton to King!

This is supposed to be SCARY? What an excellent sedative.

Lovecraft was a visionary.

Every major Horror writer of the 20th century was influenced either directly or indirectly by Lovecraft. From Brian Lumley to Stephen King, all of the big names have written a story or novel in Lovecraft's universe, many of them using his period, pulp style. If that isn't the greatest form of flatery from his peers, nothing is.

true legend !

His stuff freaks me out!

Lovecraft was one of the first American writers to create a universe in which to set his stories. He took the idea of fear of the unknown to heights only being equaled by todays horror writers. He invented goofy terms and adjectives and tried to write in a lyrical style (perhaps none too well). He and Poe are the two biggest influences on modern horror fiction.

H. P. Lovecraft was an entertaining storyteller, but as a literary craftsman he left much to be desired. He wrote for the pulps and his audience will probably always be those readers for whom the pulps were most appealing. Despite the popularity he stills enjoys in some circles, the man really wasn't a very good writer.