“I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.”

H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Dagon (1917) introduces several elements of the “Cthulu Mythos”, which was to become a significant feature of his writing and was widely influential among other authors of science-fiction, fantasy and horror. It tells the story of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who relates an incident that occurred during his service as an officer during World War I. After his cargo ship is attacked by a German raider, the narrator escapes in a lifeboat, drifting for days until he wakes to find himself stranded on a strange, sun-scorched island covered in putrid, decaying fish and strange scupltures and monoliths—and stranger, nightmarish creatures…

Though virtually unknown and financially unsuccessful during his lifetime, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is now regarded as one of the most influential 20th-century writers of supernatural horror fiction. Widely credited with inventing the “cosmic horror” genre—fiction that explores humanity’s insignificance in the face of vast, unknowable cosmic forces—he also created the “Cthulhu Mythos”, a shared universe of ancient alien beings and forbidden knowledge that has influenced generations of horror and science fiction writers.