The Thing about Lovecraft...

I feel my first official blog entry should be about H.P. Lovecraft, the creator of the blog's namesake, and how I came to discover him and his writings:

Prologue

Back when I was in my teens, my Dad took me to a bookshop where I found a nice, thick horror-story omnibus. I had soon read a few of the stories within, one of which was titled "Pickman's Model" by an author I'd never heard of, named H.P. Lovecraft...

The Thing

John Carpenter's "The Thing" has been one of my favourite films since I first saw it. I can't remember when that was exactly, but I know that I have watched it many times since. It was at the end of 2006 that I decided to look the movie up online and try to find any information I could about it. It seemed that every website I came across had references to this H.P. Lovecraft fellow. At the time, I thought I recognised the name, but couldn't think where from, so I started to research further. I found a bibliography and noticed a story named "Pickman's Model"... and then it clicked!

An Obsession Begins

I began looking further into his writings and with the help of certain websites, in particular, Wikipedia, I started learning about his "Cthulhu Mythos" and quickly found myself fascinated. On January 7, 2007, I ordered a book of Lovecraft's works off of Amazon. It took me a while to get through it, but with each story I read, my obsession grew.

Modernising The Mythos

As with most major fiction writers through history, several of Lovecraft's works have been translated into film, and even into games. I quickly compiled information on many of these, trying to find the ones worth watching. It turned out that I had actually heard of a few of them in the past, the most notable of these being Stuart Gordon's "Re-Animator". Though I'd never seen the film, I did know of it. I sadly learned that most of the adaptations were rather bad, however I did discover a few gems amidst the dirt. As well as the films, I discovered a computer game called "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth", and being an avid gamer, procured myself a copy post-haste. While not being the greatest game in the world, I did enjoy it, and thought it did more justice to the mythos than any of the movies.

I'm Not The Only One

Now with my obsession in full-swing, I found myself searching for "Lovecraft" in any avenue possible, and discovered a mass of fans, not just on dedicated forums, but on MySpace, Facebook, and now even Twitter! It seems that the bulk of these are from the U.S., which is understandable being that's where Lovecraft's from, but however limited, his reach seems to be global, which I think is truly deserving.

Epilogue

And so that brings me to this blog, titled from a popular line within H.P. Lovecraft's story, "The Call of Cthulhu", and which will most-likely have entries referring to him or his work at some point, seeing as my obsession certainly doesn't appear to be going anywhere any time soon...