Racism is a Greater Monster than Cthulhu Will Ever Be - A Review of Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Late last year, the World Fantasy Award, one of the more notable award-giving bodies for genre fiction, decided that it would stop using a stylised bust of H.P. Lovecraft as its trophy.This was done in response to a petition started by author Daniel José Older, which in itself was in response to a blogpost by author Nnedi Okorafor, who won the WFA in 2011 for her novel Who Fears Death. Okorafor’s post generated much discussion among SFF writers, many of whom agreed with her: perhaps it was about time the WFA put “the Howard” aside and replaced him with someone else. After all, Lovecraft is hardly representative of the spirit of openness and innovation contemporary SFF espouses: even a quick look at Wikipedia will make clear just how backward Lovecraft’s politics really were (click on the sources for more in-depth discussion).

And yet, despite Okorafor and many others’ extremely valid points, and the WFA’s graceful acceptance of the criticism and its equally graceful decision to make the change, there were some who were not happy: most notably Lovecraft biographer ST Joshi, who announced that he was returning his award to protest the WFA’s decision to change the statuette’s design. To be fair to Joshi, once one gets past the rather…histrionic strains in his protest, it is easy to see that his worry is that Lovecraft will now be pushed aside and forgotten, despite Lovecraft’s immense contribution to genre fiction. But in his letter, Joshi actually has the answer that ought to dispel all his worries: he clearly mentions Lovecraft’s “ascending celebrity”, by which he means Lovecraft’s enduring and increasing popularity in genre fiction.

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