April 7, 2024

Greetings Everyone!

My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, has recently been released by Bloomsbury, the foremost academic publisher in the United States and in the United Kingdom!

I hope that all of you will pick up a copy; you can order it online from the publishers and, of course, from Amazon and other online booksellers around the world.  The book is also available in bookstores here in the states and overseas.

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

H. P. Lovecraft, in his early tales, makes use of his racist miscegenation narrative.  In his later fiction,  Lovecraft devises 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!

JLS