Critics of horror fiction have labeled Lovecraft’s brand of storytelling “cosmic” horror to differentiate it from the regular legions of werewolves and murderers that filled the Pulps at the time that Lovecraft wrote. This “cosmic” label seems appropriate, for HPL’s stories are filled with intergalactic beings and interdimensional creatures, but, more importantly, the frisson of fear derived from his prose is that of the unknown terror of cosmic vastness. To read Lovecraft’s best works is to see our world as a tiny speck in an infinite sea of stars and cool, indifferent star-beings.
It should come as no surprise that HPL wrote of astronomical terrors, for he was an amateur astronomer from his youth. This knowledge shows in his descriptions of constellations and gibbeous moons. But it was not this alone that inspired Lovecraft’s “cosmic” horror. HPL did borrow much from the masters before him. We can see this quite clearly in his lengthy survey of horror, “The Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927). He often refers to the works of past masters as “cosmic” in nature, from Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer to Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft’s use of the word seems to mean any horror tale that makes us see dark vistas beyond the ordinary.
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