H.P. Lovecraft's stories are available in numerous overlapping collections and from many publishers, a fact attesting the still-burgeoning tsunami of interest in his seminal work. Lovecraft was both a connoisseur and a historian of what he called "spectral fiction" or "weird fiction." He was mightily influenced by various elements of the work of his favorite authors in the genre. His faux-documentary style on display in "The Statement of Randolph Carter," "The Call of Cthulhu," and At the Mountains of Madness reflects his youthful absorption in scientific texts and detective fiction. From Lord Dunsany he learned the Irish baron's craft of telling dream-like fables set in imaginary worlds. Algernon Blackwood's stories inspired his sense of the uncanny presence of the menacing shadows of Infinity. He hybridized Dunsany's gift for creating fictive pantheons of fantastic deities with Arthur Machen's hints of elder races hiding or imprisoned away from the complacent ignorance of modern men, yet ready to re-emerge, to our peril. This heady mixture produced his disorienting philosophy of cosmic despair in the face of man's ultimate insignificance. And this philosophy he embodied in parables of haunting but enthralling horror. The chief reason for presenting such a volume of stories that all Lovecraft fans already own in multiple copies (!) is editor Robert M. Price's extensive introductions and commentaries, themselves well worth the cost of the book. This is the first in a series of five volumes. The Madness out of Time will feature all of HPL's ghost-written tales of his alternative "Revision Mythos." Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New-English Canaan collects his non-Mythos tales set in New England, New York, and England. Past the Gate of Deeper Slumber presents all of HPL's "Dunsanian" and related fiction and verse. Finally, The Book of Hidden Things consists of Lovecraft's juvenilia and marginalia, as well as several surviving drafts of stories rewritten by HPL for his revision clients. All five volumes of this "Lovecraftian Pentateuch" will offer new insights into Lovecraft's justly famous work.
