The (not really) Official Endgame Summon Thread!

[thejeff]

Lovecraft also wrote (or at least published) earlier than JRRT. Some of his work is old enough to not fall under the various retroactive copyright extensions. It's not clear whether others are covered due to lack of renewal.

More importantly he encouraged other writers to refer to his mythos and there have been many Cthuloid stories written since his death. Many by hacks, but some quite good. Without that it's likely he would be all but forgotten.

[llamabeast]

Interesting. Kind of the novelist's version of an open source approach, I guess.

[thejeff]

It was a different world back in the twenties. He sold to the pulp magazine market, got paid by the word and had little chance of getting royalties or anything like that.

A lot of it was just references to the same fictional occult tomes (like the Necronomicon). And that helped both parties by making them seem more real.