Greetings Everyone!

It is the first week of December and I hope all of you will check out my three books! They make great Christmas gifts!  

For indeed, if you think about it, what will put you in the holiday mood more quickly than to read about the Great Old Ones, human insignificance and the bondage of space-time?!

Lovecraft's extra-terrestrial, terrestrial and transdimensional entities share much in common with the alien entities of other great science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov and William Gibson: they are malevolent and thoroughly incommensurable. 

Lovecraft’s aliens, also, have had a profound influence on contemporary magical practitioners and have become a legitimate basis for working magical systems, particularly the black magical systems. 

Additionally, the power of these entities is fueled by Lovecraft's racism: a violently, vitriolic racism, in fact, which argues that western civilization is in decline and slavery is justifiable among "superior" civilizations such as the Elder Things and the Great Race. 

If that doesn't say "Merry Christmas," then I don't know what does! 

 JLS

https://www.amazon.com/Horror-Racism-H-Lovecraft-Fragility/dp/B0C5CPHCR2

https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Reality-Science-Fiction-Lovecraft/dp/178904510X

https://www.amazon.com/Lovecraft-Black-Magickal-Tradition-Influence/dp/157863587X

 

November 4, 2025

 Greetings Everyone! 

Halloween is over!

Now, it is November, the last of the autumn months.  And we can hear the winter calling to us—the frosty months of December, January and February—inviting us to embrace the dark days and the dark nights and to celebrate the coming of a new year and new light into our lives.  The dark and the light—it is all the same.

It is time, also, to read the great writers of autumn and winter: H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.

Hervey Allen, author of Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe, describes Poe’s “Ulalume” in the following terms: 

“Poe, the poet, personified the constellations, reading into them an allegory of his soul’s predicament....There was a white, frosty starlight caught in these lines; a terror of the great caverns of space haunted by the beasts of the zodiac; an element of irresponsible cosmic will in the fatal hour marked by the star-dials; a titanic alley of cypress for a mystic adventure with his own soul in a demon landscape lit by the star-glimmering, miraculous crescent of the goddess of passion.”

This magnificent description applies not just to “Ulalume,” but to all of the works of Lovecraft and Poe, for in the prose and poetry of both visionary writers, there is a fear and a terror of cosmic will, there is the same demon landscape, and there is the same predicament of the soul.

JLS

October 31, 2025

 Happy Halloween, Everyone!

 

JLS

October 28, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

It is the last week of October and in this, my final October posting, let us sum up what we have learned during the past month.

* Ray Bradbury talks about the autumn people and warns us against them, claiming that they are soulless, evil things that seek to ensnare humans.  But there are also autumn people who have souls and are not evil; they love autumn and celebrate the death of the year and the renewal that always follows.

* Bradbury, again,  describes Halloween with images that seem to suggest death: the cold wind; the velvet grave-cerements; the smoke-like funeral plumes; images that seem to be a threat to our existence. But Halloween is not about death—it is about life. And the candles burning in jack o’ lanterns represent life and the celebration of the everlasting life to come after death.  

* H. P. Lovecraft personifies October as a “mystic pilgrim” who comes from a far land down the road to farther lands.  Lovecraft did not believe in “farther lands,” but I do—and I think that most of you do as well—farther lands of beauty and promise where we can, if we have enough love, hope and faith, make all of our dreams come true.

* Finally, Edgar Allan Poe describes a man journeying on Halloween night through a nightmarish place, encouraged to keep going by the beautiful vision of a ghost planet. But he  ends up standing before the tomb of his dead lover—the Lady Ulalume; he has been tricked by the woodland ghouls into a confrontation with Death.  

This is the ultimate Halloween trick or treat.

But it is also a blessing.  For now, he can come to terms with his sadness and his emptiness and put them to rest, just as his lover is now at rest. And then he can move on to a new life and to the future that always waits for those who keep moving forward. 

JLS

October 20, 2025

Greetings Everyone!  It is the third week of October!

Before ending my series of October postings, it is only fitting to cite Edgar Allan Poe, an autumn person to the roots of his heart and soul.  

In his greatest poem “Ulalume”, Poe describes the October dream-scape that his narrator is journeying through on his way to a mysterious destination.  It is clear that this nightmarish experience is taking place on Halloween night.

The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they were crisped and sere—

The leaves they were withering and sere:

It was night, in the lonesome October

Of my most immemorial year:

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,

In the misty mid region of Weir:—

It was down by the dark tarn of Auber,

In the ghoul-haunted woodland  of Weir.

The narrator encounters weird visions, including the “specter” of a planet—a  ghost planet!—and ends up standing before the tomb of his beloved, the Lady Ulalume.

The narrator has been tricked by the woodland ghouls into a confrontation with Death.  And this is the ultimate Halloween trick or treat!

JLS

October 11, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

It is the second week of October.

H. P. Lovecraft, surely as much of a patron saint of autumn as Ray Bradbury, personifies October as a “mystic pilgrim” in his poem “October.”

“Mellow-faced with eyes of faery, wistful clad in tinted leaves,

See the brown October tarry by the golden rows of sheaves.

Oak and acorn in his garland, fruit and wineskin in his hands,

Mystic pilgrim from a far land down the road to farther lands.”

This is a bit ironic because Lovecraft didn’t believe in the existence of “farther lands.”  He had no love for humans, no hope that human beings could perfect themselves and no faith that higher, spiritual beings exist who care about  us. He saw only a bleak, frightening cosmos waiting in the future—a cosmos indifferent to us and filled with malevolent entities that seek to insure our destruction.

But this is Lovecraft’s belief and there is no reason why we have to accept it.  

For my part, I believe in the farther lands—the lands of beauty and promise— where we can, if we have enough love, hope and faith, make all of our dreams come true.

JLS 

October 4, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

It is the first week of October, my favorite month!

Ray Bradbury, who can be considered as the patron saint of October, describes the last day of the month in his book The Halloween Tree—a book that adults as well as children should read to get into the spirit of this timeless season. 

“It was the afternoon of Halloween. And all the houses shut against a cool wind. And the town full of cold sunlight. But suddenly, the day was gone. Night came out from under each tree and spread.....Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet.  Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades.....”

These words seem to be permeated with death.  The cold wind; the velvet cerements; the funeral plumes; all of these seem to be a threat.

But Halloween is not about death.  It is about life.

The candle burning in the jack o’ lantern is life and, perhaps, the celebration of the everlasting life to come after death. 

JLS  

 

 

September 27, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

Ray Bradbury, the well-known science fiction and horror writer, describes autumn in his book The October Country  as:

“That country where it is always turning late in the year.  That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay.  That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun.  That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts.  Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain....”

In another book, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bradbury warns us against the autumn people, whom he claims are soulless, evil things that seek to ensnare humans.  

But Bradbury is wrong about that.

For there are autumn people who have souls and are not evil; they love autumn and celebrate the death of the year and the renewal that always follows.

JLS

September 21, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

It is September, and autumn continues.

Washington Irving, American writer and author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Adventure of the German Student,” wrote a classic autumn tale, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

The main character, Icabod Crane, is riding alone at midnight through a spooky forest.  Previously, Crane had attended a party near Sleepy Hollow; he was wooing a young, beautiful heiress, but she rejected his marriage proposal. As he returns home, he is understandably dejected.  But he is also fearful that he might encounter the Headless Horseman, the ghost of a dead soldier who rides the dark roads at night.

 As Irving describes it: “It was the very witching time of night...the hour was as dismal as himself...All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection.  The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight....”

Predictably, Crane does, indeed, encounter the horseman: “In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black, and towering.  It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller.” When this shape emerges from the shadows, Crane sees that it is headless and immediately, he sets spurs to his horse and flees as fast as he can.

The Headless Horseman chases Crane, riding even faster, and finally throws its head at him, knocking him off his horse. The next day, Crane's horse is found wandering by itself and the saddle is discovered in the dusty road; nearby are the remains of a shattered pumpkin.  But there is no trace of Crane.

Among the townspeople, there is a suspicion that a rival for the affections of the beautiful heiress, a man named Brom Bones, was responsible for the attack on Crane—the theory is that Bones masqueraded as the Headless Horseman and threw a pumpkin at Crane which knocked him out.  Furthermore, or so the theory goes, when Crane woke up the next morning, he was mortified by losing the heiress and by his encounter with the horseman and so, he fled from Sleepy Hollow.

The majority of the townspeople, however, do not hold this theory.   Instead, they assume that Crane encountered the actual Headless Horseman and that the latter spirited him away to hell.  Thus, Crane is dead.  This view ends up being confirmed later when  a number of people hear the voice of Crane’s ghost at twilight, singing “a melancholy psalm-tune” among the “tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.”

JLS 

September 15, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

It is September.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, American writer and author of The Scarlet Letter, wrote “Young Goodman Brown,” a weird tale that has become identified with autumn. 

At sunset, Goodman Brown leaves his pretty young wife Faith in Salem Village to attend a Witches Sabbath in the forest.  Just before midnight, Brown emerges into  a clearing, where the Sabbath is just starting to take place. Hawthorne describes what happens next.

“In the interval of silence, he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes.  At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural resemblance either to an altar or pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting.  The mass of foliage that had overgrown the summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully illuminating the whole field.  Each pendant twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze.  As the red light arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared into shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.”

The devil appears at the pulpit, welcoming Goodman Brown and the other new initiates into the satanic community.  Brown is horrified to see his wife Faith among them and he calls out for her to look up to God and resist the devil.  He doesn’t know if she has heard him or not, but suddenly, the Witches Sabbath disappears and Brown is standing alone.  The celebrants are gone.  The forest is chill and damp; there is no evidence that any of the trees or foliage had been on fire. 

The next day, at the break of dawn, Brown returns to Salem Village.  He finds Faith happily waiting for him.  Although the Sabbath seems to have been merely an illusion, Brown isn’t sure.  At the end of the tale, he has become a “stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man” and after a long life,  when he dies, the townspeople carve no hopeful biblical verse on his tombstone, for “his dying hour was gloom.” 

Goodman Brown has been traumatized by his experience into believing that evil is more powerful than good; that evil is the nature of humankind.

JLS 

September 7, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

 It is September, the first month of autumn—my favorite season!

John Keats, the great English poet, wrote a poem “To Autumn” where he celebrates the season, picturing autumn personified as a beautiful, witch-like woman with her hair lifted by the wind, drowsy with the “fume of poppies” as she watches the ripening orchards, the harvesting of corn and the operation of a cider press.

The final stanza takes us up into the skies, away from the woman and her earthly concerns:

 

Where are the songs of  Spring?  Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then, in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind  lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourne;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The movement is from the stubble-plains lit by the rosy light of sunset to the river and then to the hills and finally to the emptiness of the autumn sky.  The music of autumn speaks of death and nothingness—i.e. the “soft-dying day,” the “wailful choir,” the gnats mourning, the sinking of the  wind that “dies.”

 JLS

September 1, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will check out my three books; you can get them at Amazon and other on-line book sellers. They are also available in book stores throughout the US and across the world.  In these books, I study H. P. Lovecraft  and his works, focusing on his extra-terrestrial, terrestrial and trans-dimensional alien entities. These aliens share much in common with the alien entities of other great science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov and William Gibson: they are malevolent and thoroughly incommensurable. 

Lovecraft’s aliens have had a profound influence on  contemporary magical practitioners and have become a legitimate basis for working magical systems, particularly the black magical systems. The images, the power and the effectiveness of these alien entities, also, are fueled by Lovecraft’s racism: a violently, vitriolic racism, in fact, which argued that western civilization is in decline and slavery is justifiable among “superior” civilizations, including the Great Race, the Elder Things and the Mi-Go.    

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Reality-Science-Fiction-Lovecraft/dp/178904510X

https://www.amazon.com/Lovecraft-Black-Magickal-Tradition-Influence/dp/157863587X  

JLS    

August 19, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury!  I hope that all of you will pick up a copy!

In a previous posting, I have described Lovecraft’s first racist narrative: the miscegenation narrative.  In his later fiction, Lovecraft develops a second racist narrative—the slave master/slave narrative, which is drawn from Lovecraft’s knowledge of the Atlantic slave trade in colonial times. 

Lovecraft  uses this narrative to  promote the practice of slavery.  He holds up the alien astronaut civilizations, the Mi-Go, the Elder Things and the Great Race, all of whom enslaved weaker races, as ideal civilizations — the highest, most advanced civilizations in the cosmos, in fact.  Since these civilizations kept slaves, or so the argument goes, the Anglo Saxon race should feel no compunctions about doing likewise.  

Check out my book for analysis of how Lovecraft uses his slave master/slave narrative in his great, science fiction masterpieces: “The Whisperer in Darkness,” “The Shadow Out of Time,” and  At the Mountains of Madness!

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS

August 10, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

Check out my second  book: Aliens, Robots & Virtual Reality Idols in the Science Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov and William Gibson.   You can get it in book stores, and on Amazon and other online sites throughout the US and the world.  I hope all of you will pick up a copy!

David Simmons, Lovecraft scholar, writes: “Steadman’s comprehensive guide wrestles with the concept of the ‘alien’, applying cutting edge theoretical and philosophical ideas to the work of some of the greats of Science Fiction to arrive at the set of exciting, new discoveries about what the genre says it means to be ‘human’.  Reading Aliens, Robots and Virtual Reality Idols guarantees that you will never look at the writing of Lovecraft, Asimov or Gibson in the same way again.”

Perhaps, you will look at the works of these writers differently after reading my book! 

https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Reality-Science-Fiction-Lovecraft/dp/178904510X

John L. Steadman

August 2, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

It’s Lammas now and the nights are getting longer and there is a feel of autumn in the air.  I looked up at the moon tonight; it was a Halloween moon, tinted orange.

Leo Spitzer, Edgar Allan Poe scholar, makes an interesting observation about Poe: "He is necessarily driven towards pure abstractions...And death represents the ultimate abstraction, the zero degree of concrete reality”

What do you make of that?

August 1, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

Check out my first book: H. P. Lovecraft & the Black Magickal Tradition! You can get it in book stores, and at various online sites throughout the US and the world, including Amazon and Red Wheel /Weiser LLC.  I hope all of you will pick up a copy!

Richard Lupoff, renowned sf author, writes: “Was Lovecraft merely a writer of horror stories or was there something more to his works?... In H.P. Lovecraft and the Black Magickal Tradition, John L. Steadman addresses this question head-on...Steadman’s scholarship is impressive and the revelations in his book may well be as shocking to skeptics (including me!) as they are reassuring to believers.  I recommend this book unreservedly to any admirer of Lovecraft, whichever camp the reader may belong to.”

Perhaps, you may find some revelations of your own when you read it! 

https://www.amazon.com/Lovecraft-Black-Magickal-Tradition-Influence/dp/157863587X

John L. Steadman 

July 14, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my most recent book: Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales! You can get  it online from Bloomsbury and of course, from Amazon and other booksellers in the US and around the world. 

H. P. Lovecraft, in his hybrid, degenerative monster tales, makes use of  the miscegenation narrative, which holds that sexual liaisons or intimate, non-sexual associations between members of different races, or species, pose a threat for Anglo Saxon whites.  

In Lovecraft’s view, miscegenation always debases the white partner — male or female — and it can lead to the production of mixed race children, which are, in effect, not only an abomination against natural law, but also a threat to the longevity of the white race and to the survival of western civilization in general.

As a further elaboration of the miscegenation narrative, there are two types of miscegenation narratives in Lovecraft’s fiction.  First, there is miscegenation by blood; in these cases, the relationship between the two parties is always sexual, and hybrids are produced.  Second, there is miscegenation by association; in these cases, no sexual contact occurs; the danger, thus, arises merely from the contact between the partners.

Check out my book for analysis of how Lovecraft uses his miscegenation narrative  in some of his most popular tales: “Herbert West—Reanimator,” “The Lurking Fear,” “The Rats in the Walls” and one of  his greatest tales: “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”!

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS 

June 18, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury; I hope that all of you will pick up a copy!

Lovecraft makes extensive use of racist images in both his early and later works.   These images are drawn from Lovecraft’s observations of members of the non-white race that he most despised and abhorred,  African Americans,  especially as he observed them in the slums of his hometown Providence, Rhode Island and at close quarters during his brief residence in the Red Hook district of New York.

Lovecraft focuses on the simian and ape-like characteristics that he insisted on seeing in the faces and forms of  the locals and then simply projects these onto his monsters.  He does this in a very conscious and deliberate manner in order to enhance the horror and the repugnance that these creatures inspire in the minds of his readers (or at least, so Lovecraft presumed).

Check out my book for analysis of how Lovecraft uses these images creatively in some of his most popular tales: “Arthur Jermyn,” “Herbert West—Reanimator,” and “The Rats in the Walls”!

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS

May 23, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury! I hope that all of you will pick up a copy!

Lovecraft scholar Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, in his essay “Tekeli-li: Poe, Lovecraft, and the Suspicion of Sameness” (2017) poses these questions: “If the affective power of a text is derived from retrograde sociopolitical points of view, to what extent is the reader who enjoys the works implicated in approving of and disseminating those opinions?  How, in short, should we read—and teach—racist texts?” 

After reading Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft, the reader should be in a better position to answer these questions, and though a few readers might find the answers easy, the majority, I think, will find them even more difficult.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

JLS

May 10, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury!  I hope that all of you will pick up a copy!

Paul Rolland, Lovecraft scholar and author, writes: “The deficiencies of the man do not....debase the quality of his best work.  If anything, they invest it with a twisted passion that is missing from his more fantastic fiction.”

"Twisted passion” is the perfect phrase to describe Lovecraft’s work, especially the racist works.  One could argue, in fact, that this twisted  passion enhanced Lovecraft's fiction, especially the hybrid, degenerative monster tales, making them much more frightening and  investing them with raging, nearly psychotic emotion.

You may agree with this, or not.  But my book is, at the very least, an attempt to study and understand exactly how passionate and twisted Lovecraft really was.

So, please check it out!

JLS

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

 

April 23, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

My book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury!  I hope all of you will pick up a copy!

Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft is the first, book-length study that addresses the topic of Lovecraft’s racism and white privilege.  The book will show for the first time the full extent of Lovecraft’s racism, which ranges from the early works—the hybrid, degenerative monsters tales, as I refer to them, to the later, mature works—the great tales, as they are sometimes called, where Lovecraft’s extra-terrestrial alien races—all of them cosmic slave masters—square off against their own manufactured slave races and, in certain cases, human slaves as well.

The book, in particular, studies how Lovecraft uses his racial hatred creatively by developing racist images and narratives to advocate for his xenophobic, political beliefs: western civilization is in decline due to unrestrained immigration, miscegenation and hybridism; and, slavery is not only endemic, but justifiable among superior civilizations, especially the white, Anglo-Saxon civilizations.

There is no writer in the English language, and certainly, no writer of comparable magnitude to Lovecraft, who even attempts to do such a thing.  It is, quite literally, an unprecedented phenomenon.

So, please check it out!

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

John L. Steadman 

April 5, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book! You can get it at Amazon, Bloomsbury and other on-line book sellers.

In my previous series of postings, we have studied H. P. Lovecraft’s theory of devolution—Lovecraft believed that pure-blooded white, Anglo-Saxons who have intimate contact, especially sexual contact, with blacks or non-whites risk devolving, i.e. moving from a higher evolutionary stage to a lower stage. That is, their blood is tainted by contact with those who don’t have pure blood and they become more like animals than humans.  These whites also risk producing hybrid children who literally are monsters. 

Lovecraft’s theory was influenced by two great vampire novels: Bram Stoker’s  Dracula and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla.  Both the title characters are undead, devolved creatures that are  more animal than human.  Thus, being “undead” is equivalent to being a Lovecraftian hybrid.

Interestingly, the recent movie Nosferatu, which has drawn mixed reviews, captures perfectly what the real vampire may have been like, at least the historical vampire.  According to records dating back as far as the 1200’s in Europe and elsewhere, vampires are almost always lower-class, peasant workers, ordinary looking if not outright ugly;  not gorgeous or handsome counts or countesses, and certainly not the teen heartthrobs  pictured in the Twilight saga or in the Interview with the Vampire film franchise.

Though Count Orlac, the vampire in Nosferatu, is, indeed, a nobleman, at least in terms of his title, he is a grotesque, hideous monster.  He is only remotely human in appearance, and though he is undead, like Dracula and Camilla, he is much more repulsive than they are.  He is basically a rotting corpse, decaying second by second, literally falling apart as he seeks out his victims.  He drinks the blood of both males and  females alike, and he does this like a large, filthy, leech, laying naked on top of them as he slurps up their blood gluttonously. 

At the end of the film, Orlac is destroyed by sunlight streaming in through the apartment window of his last victim, the wife of the film’s rather ineffectual male protagonist—the final image of Orlac’s naked, rotting body  lying on top of the heroine’s dead body, represents the epitome of graphic, unpleasant cinema. 

The moral of Nosferatu is the same as the morals of Bram Stoker’s and Le Fanu’s  novels: devolution results from tainted blood and is a stronger force than evolution!

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS

March 24, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book! You can get it at Amazon, Bloomsbury and other on-line book sellers.

In my previous series of postings, we have studied H. P. Lovecraft’s theory of devolution—Lovecraft believed that pure-blooded white, Anglo-Saxons who have intimate contact, especially sexual contact, with blacks or non-whites risk devolving, i.e. moving from a higher evolutionary stage to a lower stage.  That is, their blood becomes tainted by contact with those who don’t have pure blood and they become more like animals than humans.  Over time, these hybrids literally transform into monsters. 

Lovecraft read about fictional characters such as Mr. Hyde and Dorian Gray who reinforced his devolutionary fears.  Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was particularly inspiring.   Dracula is undead, neither alive nor dead. This state of being, according to Stoker, represents an impurity in the blood that causes a living, human being to devolve into a monster.  Dracula, thus, is similar to the kinds of hybrids that result from sex between whites and  blacks.

Lovecraft was also influenced by J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire-lesbian novel Carmilla (1872).  The title character, Carmilla, is a vampire, like Dracula.  She seduces a young woman, Laura, and drinks her blood, hoping to turn her into a creature like herself, just as Dracula does with Mina Harker.

Carmilla is beautiful on the surface, but beneath, she is a monster.  In one graphic scene, Laura sees her as a monstrous, black cat: “four or five feet long...[moving] with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage... I felt it spring lightly on the bed.  The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted...deep into my breast.”    

The moral of Le Fanu’s novel is the same as Bram Stoker’s: devolution results from tainted blood and is a stronger force than evolution!

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS

March 11, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book! You can get it on Amazon, Bloomsbury and other on-line book sellers.

In my previous postings, I argued that H. P. Lovecraft’s theory of devolution derives, in part, from  Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Lovecraft was also influenced by Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel Dracula (1897).

The title character, Dracula, is a perfect embodiment of devolution and degeneration.  He is, of course, undead, neither alive nor dead.  But the living part of him is animalistic, not  human.  When we first see him in the castle, he reminds us of an old satyr: ugly, decaying and repulsive; as hideous as Hyde or Gray.  

There is a particularly graphic description of him lying in a box in an old chapel, gorged with blood.  The narrator, Jonathan Harker, describes him as if he were a “filthy leech,” his eyes burning like coals; his flesh swollen and puffy; and with  blood trickling from his mouth.  Obviously, being undead is akin to devolving into a lower life-form.

The moral of Stoker’s novel is the same as Stevenson’s and Wilde’s novels: devolution is stronger than evolution!

The themes of degeneration and devolution are central, also, in  J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire-lesbian novel Carmilla (1872), a novel that is almost as popular as Dracula.   We shall look at this book in my next posting.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS