By Kenneth Hite

Back Cover Text

“Kenneth Hite’s Tour de Lovecraft is indispensable. Thorough, insightful, and compellingly readable, it’s a perfect introduction for newcomers to Lovecraft and an endlessly fascinating review for long-time Lovecraft addicts. This is the companion-book to Lovecraft’s fiction—I read it entirely in one sitting, and I know I’m going to read it again many times over the coming years.” — Tim Powers, author of Declare and Last Call

A wide-ranging and friendly journey through H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of cosmic terror and wonder, the Tour de Lovecraft is the ideal companion to the work of the twentieth century’s greatest American horrorist.

Kenneth Hite has spent decades reading and re-reading Lovecraft and his heirs, slipping through their forests of verbiage to discover the solid literary ground beneath. With his game designer’s eye for structure and connection, in this book he reveals the threads and themes that run throughout Lovecraft’s masterpieces. The Tour de Lovecraft alternately ambles and careens through all fifty-one of the Master’s horror tales in chronological order from “The Tomb” to “The Haunter of the Dark,” offering cheerful opinion, incisive literary criticism, playful speculation, and the occasional unhinged rant. It’s a response to Lovecraft, and to his occasionally humorless critics, that offers you Edmund Burke’s Gothic perspective on Cthulhu side-by-side with “The Haunter of the Dark” considered as Grail quest.

“Simply put, Ken Hite knows his stuff. If you have any interest in Lovecraft beyond Cthulhu kitsch, you owe it to yourself to read this.” — Richard Dansky, author of Firefly Rain

“Tour de Lovecraft is an insightful and witty romp through the fiction of the twentieth century’s master of horror.” — Daniel Harms, author of The Necronomicon Files and The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

“Lovecraft can be terrifying for all the wrong reasons. Kenneth Hite’s charming and accessible Tour makes it much, much simpler. This is a sharp, engaging survey of Lovecraft’s most important stories, sure to bring inspiration to new fans and fresh epiphanies to longtime devotees. And I’d recommend it to any teacher looking for an introductory critical companion to the fiction itself.” — Stephen H. Segal, editorial director, Weird Tales magazine

“The prospect of Ken turning his strange illumination upon Lovecraft’s corpus was too delightful to resist. My attention was rewarded, as will be yours, with his many insights, associations, and criticisms of these familiar tales.” — John Scott Tynes, creator of Delta Green, from his Foreword

Contents

• Foreword by John Scott Tynes
• Introduction
• A Brief Survey of Lovecraftian Criticism
• The Stories
• The Tomb
• Dagon
• Polaris
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep
• The White Ship
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath
• The Statement of Randolph Carter
• The Terrible Old Man
• The Tree
• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
• The Cats of Ulthar
• The Temple
• Celephaïs
• Nyarlathotep
• From Beyond
• The Picture in the House
• The Nameless City
• The Quest of Iranon
• The Moon-Bog
• The Outsider
• The Other Gods
• Herbert West—Reanimator
• The Music of Erich Zann
• Hypnos
• The Hound
• The Lurking Fear
• The Rats in the Walls
• The Unnamable
• The Festival
• Under the Pyramids
• The Shunned House
• The Horror at Red Hook
• He
• In the Vault
• Cool Air
• The Call of Cthulhu
• Pickman’s Model
• The Strange High House in the Mist
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
• The Silver Key
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• The Colour Out of Space
• The Dunwich Horror
• The Whisperer in Darkness
• At the Mountains of Madness
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth
• The Dreams in the Witch House
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key
• The Thing on the Doorstep
• The Shadow Out of Time
• The Haunter of the Dark
• Conclusion
• Sources and Resources
• Index of Lovecraft Tales
• About the Author

Bibliographic Information

Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales. By Kenneth Hite. Alexandria, VA: Atomic Overmind Press; August 2008; ISBN 0-9816792-0-X/978-0-9816792-0-4; softcover; 128 pages.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in softcover from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or directly from the publisher, Atomic Overmind Press.