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