H.P. Lovecraft: Tales (Library of America #155)

A 20th-century successor to Edgar Allan Poe as the master of “weird fiction,” Howard Phillips Lovecraft once wrote, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” In the novellas and stories that he published in such pulp magazines as Weird Tales and Astounding Stories—and in the work that remained unpublished until after his death, including some of his best writing—Lovecraft adapted the conventions of horror stories and science fiction to express an intensely personal vision, cosmic in its ramifications and fearsome in its pessimistic view of human destiny.

This volume brings together 22 tales, the very best of his fiction. Early stories such as “The Outsider,” “The Music of Erich Zann,” “Herbert West—Reanimator,” and “The Lurking Fear” demonstrate Lovecraft’s uncanny ability to blur the distinction between reality and nightmare, sanity and madness, the human and the non-human. “The Horror at Red Hook” and “He” reveal the fascination and revulsion Lovecraft felt for New York City; “Pickman’s Model” uncovers the frightening secret behind an artist’s work; “The Rats in the Walls” is a terrifying descent into atavistic horror; and “The Colour Out of Space” explores the eerie impact of a meteorite on a remote Massachusetts valley.

In such later works as “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Whisperer in Darkness,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and “The Shadow Out of Time,” Lovecraft developed his own nightmarish mythology in which encounters with ancient, pitiless extraterrestrial intelligences wreak havoc on hapless humans who only gradually begin to glimpse “terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein.” Moving from old New England towns haunted by occult pasts to Antarctic wastes that disclose appalling secrets, Lovecraft’s tales continue to exert a dread fascination.

Peter Straub, editor, is a novelist and short story writer. His works include Ghost Story, Floating Dragon, Houses Without Doors, The Throat, Lost Boy Lost Girl, and In the Night Room, as well as two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House.

SUMMARY

- The Statement of Randolph Carter
- The Outsider
- The Music of Erich Zann
- Herbert West—Reanimator
- The Lurking Fear
- The Rats in the Walls
- The Shunned House
- The Horror at Red Hook
- He
- Cool Air
- The Call of Cthulhu
- Pickman’s Model
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
- The Colour Out of Space
- The Dunwich Horror
- The Whisperer in Darkness
- At the Mountains of Madness
- The Shadow Over Innsmouth
- The Dreams in the Witch House
- The Thing on the Doorstep
- The Shadow Out of Time
- The Haunter of the Dark
- Chronology
- Note on the Texts
- Notes

Fantasia / Ficção / Horror / Literatura Estrangeira / Suspense e Mistério / Terror