Good idea to spin this thread off. I hereby christen it with Cthulhu-kitten:
(Also, would love to see one of those photographs of Lovecraft smiling, from the later years, mentioned in the gaming thread.)
One of the most fascinating things about this author is that he essentially initiated a movement of "professional fan fiction" writers. His body of work is large but reputedly his body of correspondence dwarfs it, and a few of his contemporaries and proteges took to writing their own works of fiction dealing with the creations of his mythos. Robert Bloch, August Derleth and others have extended the notoriety and popularity of the "Elder Gods" Cthulhu, Nyarlothotepp, etc into a well-known tapestry of fictional narrative, well after Lovecraft uncelebrated and impovershed departure from this mortal plane. Derleth in particular seemed so make it his life's work to celebrate and develop the works and the name of Lovecraft, though his own writing's integrity to the original spirit of the Cthulhu mythos has been questioned.
Still, I read this:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0760702535/?tag=neogaf0e-20
...and recommend it for curiosity, if nothing else. And, to be fair, Lovecraft wrote in a rather dense style that can be difficult with which to find a good flow. In Derleth's best works, you can read a story true to the spirit of Lovecraft in a more casual, readable style.
In his worst, he distorts the original intention with his own flavorings, adding alignments to earthly elements to Elder Gods not of this Earth, and seeming to create more benevolent Elder Gods. From the original gaming thread:
DiscoJer said:
Be very cautious about August Derleth's stuff
He meant well (though he also sort of changed HPL's original intent with the mythos by adding Good Guys), but a lot of his stuff is just really poorly done. Either badly written (The Lurker at the Threshold) or just re-telling Lovecraft.
That said, a few are pretty decent and pretty much all these are in his collected "The Watcher out of Time". The Shuttered Room in particular is very good (it even got turned into a movie, though taking out all the Lovecraft elements).
Of course, nowadays you see a lot of this sort of 'picking up the baton,' as in "Tom Clancy's (Insert Title)"--not at all written by Tom Clancy, or the continuation of the Dune series, or the Wheel of Time series. Its also very possible there are plenty of examples of this around Lovecraft's time that I'm not aware of. Certainly there are no new stories under the sun and even Shakespeare proved the phrase 'talent borrows, genius steals.'
Yet, even with all that said, I think the reason Lovecraft's work has endured as long as it has is that it really did show a remarkable amount of ingenuity and originality in the worlds and beings he imagined. That originality made its mark, and inspired a lot of imitation (the sincerest form of flattery).
EDIT: Added a link instead of a picture of the book... fixed.
EDIT 2: Cthulhu kitten beaten!
