Lovecraft and the 21st Century

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu

Arkham’s Masters of HorrorDespite Derleth’s fears, however, horror fiction became popular in the seventies with the success of novels like William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971) and Stephen King’s Carrie (1974). Derleth’s estate fell into the hands of his children, April and Walden Derleth. Though the details of the dispute have never been made public, Derleth’s estate appointed a fan named James Turner (who had no editorial experience), as editor-in-chief of Arkham House following Derleth’s death. Donald Wandrei, who had been involved in Arkham House since his return from World War II as its managing editor, left the company after Turner’s appointment.

Under Turner, Arkham House’s focus shifted from weird fiction and fantasy to science fiction. In 1974 and 1975, Turner introduced science fiction authors Michael Bishop, Greg Bear, and James Tiptree, Jr. The Wind From a Burning Woman became Arkham’s fastest selling anthology, but success came at the cost of alienating Arkham’s traditional readers.

The eighties invited Lovecraft biographer S.I. Joshi to collaborate with Turner on adjusting Arkham’s continuing mission. While Turner felt that part of Arkham’s mission was to keep publishing important authors on the house’s backlist, Joshi urged the editor to look for new acquisitions. In the eighties and nineties, Arkham House published the compilation Arkham’s Masters of Horror and John D. Harvey’s bestselling horror novel, The Cleansing. Alexander Jablokov’s 1994 The Breath of Suspension, which merged the supernatural horror of weird fiction with more traditional science fiction, was also a success. The Derleth estate, however, felt that Turner had allowed Arkham to veer too far from its roots, and in 1995, April Derleth fired Turner. He immediately set to starting up Gryphon Press, whose first title was published in 1997, but he suffered an untimely death in 1999.

April Derleth became president of Arkham House in 2002, having appointed Robert Ruber as her consulting editor. The house’s new mission is to return to classic weird fiction. In 2005, Arkham House was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Small Press Achievements—the trophy was a bust of H.P. Lovecraft.

Cthulhu for President, by Randy AndrewsFor over more than sixty-five years, Arkham House has published two-hundred titles, surviving both the rise of the mega-publishers and the evolution of a genre that has mainly subsisted on the legacy of H.P. Lovecraft. From the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Arkham has kept alive Lovecraft’s otherworldly nightmares and influenced authors like Stephen King and Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy); artists like H.R. Giger (Alien movies), Clive Barker (Hellraiser), Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, The Watchmen and From Hell), Mike Mignola (Hellboy) and Neil Gaiman (The Sandman series); and directors such as John Carpenter (In the Mouth of Madness), Stuart Gordon, and Robert Wise. Adored by old-school Dungeons and Dragons role-playing gamers, the iconic Great Old One Cthulhu and its mythology were incorporated into the game by the late Gary Gygax; Chaosium Games and Wizards of the Coast followed suit with the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. And in 2008, no comic convention in the country is without bumper stickers advocating “Cthulhu for President.”