Intriguing question...

ST Joshi asks, a bit petulantly, I repeat what I’ve said before: Lovecraft will be around a lot longer than any of his current dectractors. Let’s have a show of hands, people, to see who you think will be more remembered in history: H. P. Lovecraft or…Scott Nicolay? Nick Mamatas? Jeff VanderMeer? Daniel José Older? S. J. Bagley? Edward Morris?1


Me.

*cracks knuckles*

Definitely me.

(Note he doesn't ask if one's literary output will be remembered by history.)


I should add that until this controversy reared its head, Joshi seemed to like me fine. He solicited me for several of his Lovecraftian anthologies, one of which I took him up on—my story "Dead Media" appears in Black Wings [of Cthulhu] II. (Black Wings is the original title, "of Cthulhu" was added by Titan Books.) I was also solicited for III and IV and for a gothic Lovecraft anthology, but didn't submit anything for them as I was busy with other things and Cthulhued out. But then he asked me to participate in the non-Lovecraftian Searchers After Horror anthology, which I was very pleased to do. My story "Exit Through the Gift Shop" was good enough to be reprinted in Year's Best Weird Fiction vol. 2 and was the only story of the several hundred submitted via the publisher's Submittable link to be so chosen.

When I was writing my essay on Lovecraft's racism for the limited edition hardcover of The Damned Highway, I turned to Joshi and he answered my questions quickly and comprehensively.

One disagreement though, and a partial one at that, and now I suck.









1. Also note, speaking of history, that Joshi's blog doesn't have dedicated links to specific posts, so future cyberarcheologists studying my reign of terror, the blog post in question was posted November 19 2015 and is entitled "More Crusades for the Crusaders!"