* Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos by Lin Carter ( cover illustration )

* Lin Carter, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos.

* Lin Carter, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos.

Like his creation the Necronomicon, Alhazred is often referenced in works that are not generally considered part of the Cthulhu Mythos, either as a subtle nod to Lovecraft or to create a connection to his world.

Additional milieu were provided by Chaosium with the release of Dreamlands, a boxed supplement containing additional rules needed for playing within the Lovecraft Dreamlands, a large map and a scenario booklet, and Cthulhu By Gaslight, another boxed set which moved the action from the 1920s to the 1890s.

Lovecraft Country was a line of supplements for Call of Cthulhu released in 1990.

The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.

The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu — a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus of Lovecraft's famous short story The Call of Cthulhu ( first published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928 )— to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors.

Robert M. Price described in his essay " H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos " two stages in the development of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Lovecraft himself humorously referred to his mythos as " Yog Sothothery " ( Mosig coincidentally suggested the term Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth be substituted for Cthulhu Mythos ) and at times had to remind readers his mythos creations were entirely fictional.

Price's dichotomy dictates the second stage commenced with August Derleth, the principal difference between Lovecraft and Derleth being the latter's use of hope and that the Cthulhu mythos essentially represented a struggle between good and evil.

Smith wrote most of his weird fiction and Cthulhu Mythos stories, partially inspired by H. P. Lovecraft.

* The Mi-go aliens in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, first appearing in the story " The Whisperer in Darkness " ( 1931 ), can transport humans from Earth to Pluto ( and beyond ) and back again by removing the subject's brain and placing it into a " brain cylinder ", which can be attached to external devices to allow it to see, hear, and speak.

The term " Cthulhu Mythos " was coined by Lovecraft's correspondent and fellow author, August Derleth, after Lovecraft's death ; Lovecraft jocularly referred to his artificial mythology as " Yog-Sothothery ".

This group of writers became known as the " Lovecraft Circle ", since they all freely borrowed elements of Lovecraft's stories – the mysterious books with disturbing names, the pantheon of ancient alien entities, such as Cthulhu and Azathoth, and eldritch places, such as the New England town of Arkham and its Miskatonic University – for use in their own works with Lovecraft's encouragement.

While Lovecraft never considered his pantheon of alien gods more than a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the good Elder Gods and the evil Outer Gods, such as Cthulhu and his ilk ).

Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos stories went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements of fire, air, earth and water-an artificial constraint which required rationalizations on Derleth's part as Lovecraft himself never envisioned such a scheme.

* Cthulhu Mythos / Lovecraft Mythos stories ( approximately 1925 – 1935 )

Several video games are based on or influenced heavily by Lovecraft such as Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Shadow of the Comet, Prisoner of Ice, Shadowman, Alone in the Dark, Chzo Mythos, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Cthulhu Saves the World, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Dead Space, Splatterhouse, Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder, Penumbra, and Quake.

Regardless of the legal disagreements surrounding Lovecraft's works, Lovecraft himself was extremely generous with his own works and actively encouraged others to borrow ideas from his stories, particularly with regard to his Cthulhu mythos.

* The Strange Sound of Cthulhu: Music Inspired by the Writings of H. P. Lovecraft ( ISBN 978-1-84728-776-2 ), written by Gary Hill.

David E. Schultz, however, believes Lovecraft never meant to create a canonical Mythos but rather intended his imaginary pantheon to merely serve as a background element.

Derleth expanded the boundaries of the Mythos by including any passing reference to another author's story elements by Lovecraft as part of the genre: just as Lovecraft made passing reference to Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon, Derleth in turn added Smith's Ubbo-Sathla to the Mythos.

The most significant of these was H. P. Lovecraft who also wrote an excellent conspectus of the Gothic and supernatural horror tradition in his Supernatural Horror in Literature ( 1936 ) as well as developing a Mythos that would influence Gothic and contemporary horror well into the 21st century.

Long was a friend and correspondent of Lovecraft, as well as a fellow fantasist who wrote a number of Lovecraft-influenced Cthulhu Mythos stories ( including The Hounds of Tindalos ).

Author H. P. Lovecraft is alluded to often, with many mentions of characters ( e. g., Robert Harrison Blake, Henry Armitage, Klarkash-Ton ), monsters ( e. g., Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth ), books ( Necronomicon, Unaussprechlichen Kulten ) and places ( Miskatonic University ) from his Cthulhu Mythos.

Writer August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft and co-creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, placed R ' lyeh at.

Shub-Niggurath, often associated with the phrase “ The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young ”, is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft.

* Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe ( ISBN 0-8131-1728-3 ), by Donald R. Burleson, PhD, a longtime scholar on Lovecraft and acquaintance of S. T. Joshi, is probably the only book analyzing Lovecraft's literature from a deconstructionist standpoint.

* The Gentleman From Angell Street: Memories of H. P. Lovecraft ( ISBN 978-0-9701699-1-4 ), written by Muriel and C. M. Eddy, Jr. is a collection of personal remembrances and anecdotes from two of Lovecraft's closest friends in Providence.

* The first full-length biography was Lovecraft: a Biography ( ISBN 0-345-25115-6 ), written by L. Sprague de Camp ; published in 1975, it is now out of print.

* Frank Belknap Long's Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside ( Arkham House, 1975, ISBN 0-87054-068-8 ) presents a more personal look at Lovecraft's life, combining reminiscence, biography and literary criticism.

* A newer, more extensive biography is H. P. Lovecraft: A Life ( ISBN 0-940884-88-7 ) written by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi.

An alternative is Joshi's abridged A Dreamer & A Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time ( ISBN 0-85323-946-0 ).

* An English translation of Michel Houellebecq's H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life ( ISBN 1-932416-18-8 ) was published by Believer Books in 2005.

P. Lovecraft: Alone in Space ,” chapter 3 in Emperors of Dreams: Some Notes on Weird Poetry by S. T. Joshi ( Sydney: P ’ rea Press, 2008: ISBN 978-0-9804625-3-1 ( pbk ) and ISBN 978-0-9804625-4-8 ( hbk )), discusses some of Lovecraft's weird poetry.

Lovecraft to Leslie Marmon Silko edited by Amy H. Sturgis and David D. Oberhelman ( Mythopoeic Press, 2009: ISBN 978-1-887726-12-2 ).

* Return to Lovecraft Country Book ( ISBN 1-57502-535-3 )

* Eternal Lovecraft Book ( ISBN 0-9655901-7-8 )

Chaosium included d20 stats as an appendix in three releases ( see Lovecraft Country ), but have since dropped the " dual stat " idea.

Although not formalised and acknowledged as a mythos per se, Lovecraft did correspond with contemporary writers ( Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner, and Fritz Lieber – a group referred to as the " Lovecraft Circle ") – and shared story elements: Robert E. Howard's character Friedrich Von Junzt reads Lovecraft's Necronomicon in the short story " The Children of the Night " ( 1931 ), and in turn Lovecraft mentions Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten in the stories " Out of the Aeons " ( 1935 ) and " The Shadow Out of Time " ( 1936 ).

Themes from Gothic writers such as H. P. Lovecraft were also used among gothic rock and heavy metal bands, especially in black metal, thrash metal ( Metallica's The Call of Ktulu ), death metal, and gothic metal.

Other notable works with Lovecraft as a character include Richard Lupoff's Lovecraft's Book ( 1985 ), H. P.

Lovecraft's: Necronomicon ( 1993 ), David Barbour and Richard Raleigh's Shadows Bend ( 2000 ), Peter Cannon's The Lovecraft Chronicles ( 2004 ) and Stargate SG-1: Roswell ( 2007 ).

Lovecraft's poetry is collected in The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft ( Night Shade Books, 2001 ), while much of his juvenilia, various essays on philosophical, political and literary topics, antiquarian travelogues, and other things, can be found in Miscellaneous Writings ( Arkham House, 1989 ).

), Night Shade Books ( Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei et al ..), Necronomicon Press ( Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett et al.

* Other significant Lovecraft-related works are An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia by Joshi and David S. Schulz ; Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue ( a meticulous listing of many of the books in Lovecraft's now scattered library ), by Joshi ; Lovecraft at Last, an account by Willis Conover of his teenage correspondence with Lovecraft ; Joshi's A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft.

* An Epicure in the Terrible ( Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991 ), edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi is an anthology of 13 essays on Lovecraft ( excluding Joshi's lengthy introduction ) on the centennial of Lovecraft's birth.