A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

One of the most distinctive of Lovecraft’s late associates—not so much for what he accomplished at the time as for what he did later—was Willis Conover, Jr (1921–96). In the spring of 1936, as a fifteen-year-old boy living in the small town of Cambridge, Maryland, Conover had conceived the idea of a magazine, the ScienceFantasy Correspondent. In addition to publishing the work of fans, Conover wished to lend prestige to his magazine by soliciting minor pieces from professionals. He got in touch with Lovecraft in July, and later expressed regret that the Fantasy Fan serialization of ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ had ended so abruptly. Lovecraft casually suggested that Conover continue the serialization in his own magazine from the point where it had left off (the middle of chapter eight); Conover jumped at the idea. This item could not be accommodated in the first issue of the Science-Fantasy Correspondent (November–December 1936), but by September Lovecraft had already sent Conover the same annotated copy of the Recluse (with additions written on separate sheets) that he had lent to (and received back from) Hornig.

Shortly after this time, however, Conover took over Julius Schwartz’s Fantasy Magazine, since Schwartz wished to abandon fan editing to become a full-time agent in the science fiction field. Conover then decided to reprint ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ from the beginning. The second issue of the Science-Fantasy Correspondent was dated January–February 1937, but did not contain any segment of the essay. No more issues of the magazine appeared; but some of the material was later transferred to Stickney’s Amateur Correspondent, including ‘Notes on Writing Weird Fiction’.

We know so much about the relationship between Conover and Lovecraft—which is, in all frankness, a fairly minor one in the totality of Lovecraft’s life, although clearly it was significant to Conover—not only because Lovecraft’s letters to him survive but because of the volume Conover published in 1975 entitled Lovecraft at Last. This book is not only one of the finest examples of modern book design, but a poignant, even wrenching testimonial to the friendship between a middle-aged—and dying—man and a young boy who idolized him.

Two other fan editors with whom Lovecraft exchanged a few letters were James Blish (1921–75) and William Miller, Jr (b. 1921), two youths living in East Orange, New Jersey. Blish went on to become one of the most important science fiction writers of his generation. Lovecraft’s influence on him cannot be said to be especially significant, but Blish seems to have remembered his brief association for the whole of his own sadly abbreviated life.

In addition to writers, editors, and publishers, Lovecraft also heard from weird artists. Chief among these was Virgil Finlay (1914–71), whose work in Weird Tales Lovecraft had admired for several months prior to coming in touch with him. Finlay is indeed now recognized as perhaps the greatest pictorial artist to emerge from the pulps, and his stunning pen-and-ink work is unmistakable in its precision and imaginative scope. Lovecraft first heard from him in September 1936, and their correspondence was cordial even though Lovecraft in the end wrote only five letters and one postcard to him. Willis Conover had secretly arranged for Finlay to draw the celebrated portrait of Lovecraft as an eighteenth-century gentleman to head the first instalment of ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ in the Science-Fantasy Correspondent, a portrait that, after the demise of that fanzine, appeared on the cover of Amateur Correspondent for April–May 1937.

In November 1936 Lovecraft heard from an individual whom he correctly identified as ‘a genuine find’.¹⁶ Fritz Leiber, Jr (1910–92) was the son of the celebrated Shakespearian actor Fritz Leiber, Sr, whom Lovecraft had seen around 1912 playing in Robert Mantell’s company when it came to the Providence Opera House. The son was also interested in drama, but was increasingly turning toward literature. He had been reading the weird and science fiction pulps from an early age, and later he testified that ‘The Colour out of Space’ in the September 1927 Amazing ‘gave me the gloomy creeps for weeks’.¹⁷ Then, when At the Mountains of Madness and ‘The Shadow out of Time’ appeared in Astounding, Leiber’s interest in Lovecraft was renewed and augmented—perhaps because these works probed that borderline between horror and science fiction which Leiber himself would later explore in his own work. And yet, he himself was too diffident to write to Lovecraft, so his wife Jonquil did so via Weird Tales; for a time Lovecraft was corresponding quasi-separately to both of them.