Horror writer HP Lovecraft was born on this date in 1890. His stories have been made into films, games and have influenced the lyrics to heavy metal music. Here are 10 things you might not know about him.
The HP stands for Howard Phillips, and he was the only child of a well off couple. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and for much of his childhood, lived in a large house with his mother, two aunts, grandfather and servants.
When he was three, his father was committed to a mental hospital “for doing and saying strange things”. It has been speculated that he had syphilis. He remained in the hospital until he died five years later. His mother went into the same mental hospital after World War I. In the mean time, he was emotionally smothered by his mother, while his grandfather, Whipple Phillips, told him horror stories. Lovecraft was a voracious reader as a child, including Edgar Allan Poe and Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
When his grandfather died, the family fell into poverty and Lovecraft and his mother had to move to a smaller house. Lovecraft hated it there and even considered suicide. His scientific curiosity and desire to know more about the world prevented him from taking his life.
He wanted to be a professional astronomer but never finished high school. He was never a regular attender at school due to poor health, and could only read about and dabble in astronomy and chemistry. He was a night owl who got up late and never went out until after dark. He stayed up late to study, read and write. Whether the fact that his mother often called him “grotesque” during his childhood and told him he should hide inside so people couldn’t see him was a cause or a result of this, I’m not sure.
One of his aunts got him a job as a teacher. He didn’t enjoy teaching, a job he saw as “holding in check a room full of incipient gangsters,” but he did enjoy marking and grading their homework.
During his lifetime, his stories were mostly published in pulp magazines. He used to attend amateur journalist conventions, and it was at one of these, soon after his mother died, that he met his future wife, Sonia Greene. He was 34 when he married her, and still a virgin. Sonia was a widow. Lovecraft had virtually no interest in sex, claiming he’d read a book about it once and it had put him off. So the couple only had sex when Sonia initiated it, but she did say that he performed satisfactorily as a lover. Marriage was good for him in that he gained weight thanks to her home cooking, but lost it after they separated. They theoretically divorced, but Lovecraft never signed the divorce papers.
The demonic night gaunts he wrote about may have been inspired by his aunts wearing mourning dress after the death of his grandmother when Lovecraft was five. His best known monster, Cthulhu (pronounced ‘khlul-loo’), which resembles a giant octopus, may have come about because he hated seafood.
He once wrote a story inspired by Harry Houdini’s claim that he’d once been kidnapped and trapped underground near the Great Pyramid of Giza. Lovecraft thought Houdini had made the whole thing up, but still thought it would make a great story. He researched ancient Egypt and wrote Imprisoned With the Pharaohs, for which the magazine Weird Tales paid $100. Houdini must have liked it, as he expressed a desire to collaborate with the author on more tales, but Houdini died before it could happen.
The film Alien counts Lovecraft among its inspiration, in particular a novella called At the Mountains of Madness, about an ill-fated Antarctica expedition. Not only did the alien bear a passing resemblance to Cthulhu, but Swiss artist H.R. Giger, who designed the facehuggers and chestbursters went on to publish a surreal art book entitled Necronomicon, named after the spellbook which often appear in Lovecraft’s work.
Lovecraft died of cancer aged just 46. Only two people attended his funeral at which he was buried in the family plot. It was only after his death that critics began to realise the merit of his work, and collections of his stories began to appear in print. This led to a cult following. In 1977, a group of fans funded and installed a separate headstone for him. Perhaps more in keeping with his genre, in 1997, a fan attempted to exhume his body, but gave up after finding nothing after digging down for three feet.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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