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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780345350800
ISBN number: 0345350804
Label: Del Rey
Manufacturer: Del Rey
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 432
Printing Date: May 12, 1987
Publishing house: Del Rey
Release Date: May 12, 1987
Sale Popularity Level: 7395
Studio: Del Rey
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Product Description:
This is the collection that true fans of horror fiction have been waiting for: sixteen of H.P. Lovecraft's most horrifying visions, including Lovecraft's masterpiece, THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME--the shocking revelation of the mysterious forces that hold all mankind in their fearsome grip.
'I think it is beyond doubt that H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.'
Stephen King
Amazon.com Review:
Lovecraft is 'the American writer of the twentieth century most frequently compared with Poe, in the quality of his art ... [and] its thematic preoccupations (the obsessive depiction of psychic disintegration in the face of cosmic horror),' writes Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Review of Books. Del Rey has reprinted Lovecraft's stories in three handsome paperbacks. This very first volume collects 16 classic tales, including 'The Rats in the Walls,' 'The Call of Cthulhu,' 'The Dunwich Horror,' and 'The Colour Out of Space.' Introduction by Robert Bloch. Wraparound cover art by Michael Whelan.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Great collection of Lovecraft stories. I would love to have seen "The Cats of Ulthar" in this collection too, but I guess you can't have everything. I know there are some legal copyright disputes on some of H.P.'s works.
Lovecraft is truly a master who has influenced many modern writers and horror filmmakers, noteably Stephen King. Definitely check out this volume. Lovecraft's vocabulary is impressive and can be a little difficult, but any person who reads regularly should have no problem.
I'd also recommend Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems, Cold Streak, It (Signet Books), H.P. Lovecraft: A Life.
Rated by buyers 
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... quote from my favourite Lovecraft story "The Whisperer in Darkness" showing that, although this lengthy story abounds with obscure Cthulhu mythology name-dropping, learned hints at forbidden folklore and similar highly academic stuff the atmospheric horror created by visions of darkened Vermont hillsides and rumours of shapes of unspeakable origin operating about them is in my opinion the most effective Lovecraft has done - when in fact, the only tangible elements of horror are a few, more or less fresh, clawprints in the neighbourhood, a phonograph record of voices in the fibre praising a certain "Black Goat" a grey stone and a steel container used for transmitting human brains into outer space - but these, indeed, are awful enough. Curiously, no screams are emitted, neither in the darkened woods of frightful conference nor near the end when the steel container begins to speak by itself - such shrieks would attract the attention of the Things anyway ... all in reverent tribute to English-Welsh author Arthur Machen, master of horror settings whether out in the wild or in the city, whose influence is especially apparent also in "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Thing on the Doorstep".
Rated by buyers -
The title says it all. The best of his stories and if you're a fan of Lovecraft, this must be a part of your collection.
Rated by buyers -
This is a great Lovecraft compilation. I love the florid late Victorian prose, but more than anything this man seems so far ahead of his time for someone writing in the 1920-30 era. His visionary dreams are evocative of the psychedelic visions and writings of the bohemians of the 1950s and later. His stories, through the rejection of the ghost story, instead were firmly grounded in speculative science and science that was cutting edge at the time - the theories of Einstein, early ideas about parallel universes and higher dimensions, the spiritual higher dimensional topology of P.D. Ouspensky.
The most amazing ideas in this collection are, I believe, in the short story "The Silver Key." That story, with its confessional tone, seems to prevision post-modernism and a weariness with the rational scientific worldview that seems to have overtaken much of the rest of popular culture only decades later.
There is so much in Lovecraft's work that is echoed by the work of modern ayahuasceros and other psychedelic visionaries - his worlds seem very similar to those reported by students of DMT and psychedelic mushrooms. Perhaps if he had been born a few decades later, he would have found more wonder and awe in his internal experiences, and less of a sense of horror at his glimpses into the arcane realms.
Rated by buyers 
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I have been a fan of horror movies and video games for quite some time, but reading was not typically my thing, however, I decided to check out a horror story or two and Lovecraft was recommended. This was my very first and last Lovecraft purchase and I will explain why.
I have read 11 of the 16 stories and at the end of most of them I was fairly irritated that I had spent the time reading such a story. Some of the plot lines are ridiculously laughable: an invisible monster, an unseen force that is afraid of the light, fish people, a "rat-like being" named Brown Jenkin (weird name for a lame creature), and many many more. I was never scared while reading these stories and whenever I thought something horrifying would happen there was only sheer disappointment.
"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" was my favorite of the stories, however, it fell flat on its face in the last pages. There were some creepy happenings like when the hotel door was being tried with a key and the like, but the climax, the immortal terror of the deep that was so incredibly horrifying was....FISH PEOPLE. You read it right, how can anyone be afraid of fish people? It's absurd. Finally, just when you think things would get interesting, the main character faints in the middle of the night, thereby cutting the story short as if Lovecraft simply got too tired of writing it. This brings me to my subsequent point.
Lovecraft is creative, yet uncreative at the same time. To be sure some of his descriptions are very intricate, but there are times when it is SO detailed that I cannot comprehend what he is trying to describe ("dreams in the witch house" for example, the starfish headed things, I couldn't put it together). On the other hand, sometimes he leaves out so much detail that the subject cannot possibly be found scary, a strong example of this is "Pickman's Model". The creatures said to make the main character scream are only described as being hunched over, canine like, and having half-hoven feet. A lot of the descriptions he uses constantly are that creatures of settings are made up of geometry not of this world, or they would not possibly be comprehended, or some other adjective that makes it utterly impossible to recreate the story in your head. This is irritating because how can you be scarred of something that you can't even picture like a gas (Colour from outer space), and invisible monster (Dunwich Horror), or so many of the others. The plots also have lapses in logical thought, for example, in the "Dream in the Witch House" the main character kicks Brown Jenkin down a cliff, yet in the subsequent page the creature is right behind him, and on the NEXT page it is down at the bottom of the cliff again, it doesn't add up. Most of Lovecraft's stories spend most of the time building up to a climax, however, said climax is only a sentence or two long and you are left feeling cheated. A strong example of this is in "Call of Cthulu" where the sailors discover the tomb of the elder god and awaken it. Cthulu is obviously an important Lovecraft "character" so you would expect it would be a large part of this story, but you would be wrong. Cthulu kills around 4 sailors in one sentence with flabby claws and it is unexplained how it does so. I waited the entire story to read about how it ate them or ripped them apart or something, but when it really counted Lovecraft was devoid of description. Finally the creature chases the remaining two sailors on their ship and, get this, gets sealed back in the tomb because they run into its head with the boat. The one story where Cthulu actually appears and it is only for half a page, how ridiculous.
Please heed this warning and look past the majority of 5 star rating, Lovecraftian fanatics.
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