These are the 1990 Del Rey editions of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, the sixteenth printings of what used to be the Ballantine Books versions (there’s no connection to the 1947 Avon collection called The Lurking Fear, despite the shared title). These books collect the bulk of Lovecraft’s work, with the exception of some of the best stories, which were collected in a larger book called The Best of H.P. Lovecraft that I no longer own.

These are the editions I read as a kid, the ones that flopped around my school bag for years. The love I had for them is evident in their condition.

It is worth noting that these stories were licensed off the original Arkham House collections (licensing reprints was one of the primary ways Arkham made money). That means the text doesn’t reflect the corrections S. T. Joshi made in 1986, which are now considered the definitive versions of Lovecraft’s stories.

Anyway, it is hard to understate the influence of Lovecraft in tabletop RPGs, to the point that it is likely self-evident – aside of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, Appendix N and large swaths of early D&D bear Lovecraft’s mark and that has resulted in most RPGs having at least a hint of the cosmic somewhere in their pages.

But let’s talk about Michael Whelan’s iconic cover art, probably one of the most famous examples of Lovecraftian illustration. The full painting is called Lovecraft’s Nightmare, which was commissioned by Del Rey for their covers and have since turned up elsewhere (the cover of Centipede Press’ massive Lovecraft Retrospective art book, Obituary’s album Cause of Death and, weirdly, inside Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell II). There are tons of enigmatic details crammed in there and gods, I love it. This painting fueled my interest in Lovecraft nearly as much as the stories themselves.