Lest you think that all I do is lounge about watching movies all the live-long day, I also have a decent book collection. In particular, there’s a good deal of cosmic horror, specifically Lovecraft and Lovecraft-inspired works.
Lovecraft is, of course, a troubling figure. His influence is extensive and undeniable, but the man himself was a fairly rabid racist and xenophobe (it’s said that he later regretted and attempted to disavow such benighted attitudes). The fact remains that the world he created continues to be expanded, a practice that is unlikely to stop any time soon. So here’s a ranked list Cthulhu Mythos stories not by Lovecraft.
#10 Sticks (Karl Edward Wagner)
#9 Bad Sushi (Cherie Priest)
#8 A Study In Emerald (Neil Gaiman)
#7 The Big Fish (Jack Yeovil)
#6 Little Lady (J.C. Koch)
#5 Diana Of The Hundred Breasts (Robert Silverberg)
#4 Jerusalem’s Lot (Stephen King)
#3 Pickman’s Other Model (1929) (Caitlín R. Kiernan)
#2 Fat Face (Michael Shea)
#1 Flash Frame (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
I’m intrigued you went with Salem’s Lot and not his short story Crouch End, that’s a much more direct intentionally Lovecraftian story. And a pretty good one, too.
An very interesting list given how upfront Lovecraft himself was in citing his inspirations and how storied his “canon” successors were.
Blackwood’s The Willows?
du Mapassant The Horla???
Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia???
Also William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land
10? Out of the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands? So much horror is influenced by Lovecraft.
Weird horror was a “thing” long before Lovecraft. But Lovecraft was a master of weird.
He often mentioned great authors who inspired his work like Algernon Blackwood or William Hope Hodgson.
My favorite is “A colder war” by Charles Stross.
