Lovecraft’s literary vision was also amplified by the vivid, often nightmarish, and intensely detailed dreams he experienced throughout his life. His weird tales were imaginative diversions from this nihilism, but their horror reflected it as well. This lifelong philosophical stance led Lovecraft to embrace the disillusioning powers of science, but also to pessimistically anticipate science’s ultimate evisceration of human cultural norms and comforts. In contrast to the implicit supernaturalism of ghost stories or the gothic tale, the metaphysical background of Lovecraft’s stories is a “cosmic indifferentism” rooted in the nihilistic and atheist materialism that Lovecraft professed at great length in his fascinating letters. Lovecraft’s weird fiction is characterized by a fascination with occult grimoires and forbidden knowledge a pantheon of bizarre extraterrestrial pseudo-gods who are essentially inimical to human life a nostalgic attachment to the history and landscape of New England and a heavily racialized concern with human degeneration and atavistic cults. In his tales, Lovecraft blended elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction into a strikingly original, infectious, and highly influential narrative universe. Lovecraft was an American writer principally known for his weird fiction, a British and American sub-genre of speculative narrative that he helped both characterize and, as a critic, define.
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