Cthulhu stories

The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft's, to identify the setting and lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors. The name Cthulhu derives from a central creature in Lovecraft's literary works such as the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. The writer Richard L. Tierney later applied the term "Derleth Mythos" to distinguish between Lovecraft's works and Derleth's later stories. Authors of Lovecraftian horror in particular frequently use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos.

In his essay "H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos", Robert M. Price described two stages in the development of the Cthulhu Mythos. Price called the first stage the "Cthulhu Mythos proper." This stage was formulated during Lovecraft's lifetime and was subject to his guidance. The second stage was guided by August Derleth who, in addition to publishing Lovecraft's stories after his death, attempted to categorize and expand the Mythos.

An ongoing theme in Lovecraft's work is the complete irrelevance of mankind in the face of the cosmic horrors that apparently exist in the universe. Lovecraft made frequent references to the "Great Old Ones", a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth and have since fallen into a deathlike sleep. While these monstrous deities have been present in almost all of Lovecraft's published work (his second short story Dagon is considered the start of the mythos), the first story to really expand the pantheon of Great Old Ones and its themes is The Call of Cthulhu, which was published in 1928. Lovecraft broke with other pulp writers of the time by having his main characters' minds deteriorate when afforded a glimpse of what exists outside their perceived reality. He emphasized the point by stating in the opening sentence of the story that "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

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