Edited by Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Foreword by Ramsey Campbell
Interview with China Miéville

Back Cover Text

“ONE OF THE FEW MASTERS OF THE TALE OF TERROR THAT REACHES FOR, AND OFTEN ATTAINS, AWE.”
—RAMSEY CAMPBELL, FROM THE FOREWORD
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the American author of “weird tales” who died in 1937 impoverished and relatively unknown, has become a twenty-first-century star. Authors, filmmakers, and shapers of popular culture like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Guillermo del Toro acknowledge his influence; his fiction is key to the work of posthuman philosophers and cultural critics such as Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker; and Lovecraft’s creations have achieved unprecedented cultural ubiquity, even showing up on the animated program South Park.
The Age of Lovecraft is the first sustained analysis of Lovecraft in relation to twenty-first-century critical theory and culture, delving into troubling aspects of his thought and writings. This wide-ranging volume brings together thinkers from an array of disciplines to consider Lovecraft’s contemporary cultural presence and its implications, addressing the question of “why Lovecraft, why now?” through a variety of approaches and angles.
Contributors: Jessica George, Brian Johnson, James Kneale, Patricia MacCormack, Jed Mayer, W. Scott Poole, David Punter, David Simmons, Isabella van Elferen.

CARL H. SEDERHOLM is associate professor of interdisciplinary humanities at Brigham Young University.

JEFFREY ANDREW WEINSTOCK is professor of English at Central Michigan University. He has edited three volumes of Lovecraft’s fiction.

RAMSEY CAMPBELL received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association and a Grand Master Award from the World Horror Convention. CHINA MIÉVILLE’s books include Perdido Street Station, The City & the City, and Kraken.

Contents

Foreword: Lovecraft Appreciated by Ramsey Campbell
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Lovecraft Rising by Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

1. “Ghoulish Dialogues”: H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Geographies by James Kneale
2. Lovecraft’s Things: Sinister Souvenirs from Other Worlds by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
3. Hyper-Cacophony: Lovecraft, Speculative Realism, and Sonic Materialism by Isabella van Elferen
4. Prehistories of Posthumanism: Cosmic Indifferentism, Alien Genesis, and Ecology from H.P. Lovecraft by Brian Johnson
5. Race, Species, and Others: H.P. Lovecraft and the Animal by Jed Mayer
6. H.P. Lovecraft’s Reluctant Sexuality: Abjection and the Monstrous Feminine in “The Dunwich Horror” by Carl H. Sederholm
7. H.P. Lovecraft and Real Person Fiction: The Pulp Author as Subcultural Avatar by David Simmons
8. A Polychrome Study: Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald” and Lovecraft’s Literary Afterlives by Jessica George
9. Lovecraft: Suspicion, Pattern Recognition, Paranoia by David Punter
10. Lovecraft’s Cosmic Ethics by Patricia MacCormack
11. Lovecraft, Witch Cults, and Philosophers by W. Scott Poole
Afterword: Interview with China Miéville by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Contributors
Index

Bibliographic Information

The Age of Lovecraft. Edited by Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Foreword by Ramsey Campbell, and Interview with China Miéville. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press; 2016; ISBN 978-0-8166-9924-7 (cloth) and 978-0-8166-9925-4 (paperback), 268 pages.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in cloth from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, in paperback from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, or directly from the publisher, University of Minnesota Press.