Had a dream last night that I was trying to teach a college class about Lovecraft's racism. One of the students raised a hand and asked why there was a class on Lovecraft's racism. It was an excellent question.

Lovecraft being racist isn't shocking. He was a white male that lived between 1890-1937 in the United States, the period considered the nadir of race relations. It was relatively normal for people of his class and upbringing to be racist.

But that's not it.

What's shocking is that Lovecraft is still read. He had achieved very little professional success during his life, and most of his acclaim was by the readers of WEIRD TALES and members of science fiction fandom. Yet here he is, decades later, still relevant in a way most of his

contemporaries are not. That's really critical; science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction - genre literature in general has been popular, but it's had to claw and fight for respectability; the ecosystem of hardcore fans and interested scholars has been relatively small...

...and for much of that time, relatively white and male. It's not that female or black or Hispanic fans didn't exist. They absolutely did. We have stories about them going back to the '30s. But most of the history has been written by and about mostly white, mostly male fans.

I don't think it is coincidental that voices have been raised about Lovecraft's racism at the same time that more women, POC, and LGBTQ+ folks have been rising to prominence in sci-fi and winning major awards. Nnedi Okorafor and the WFA statue isn't a fluke.

Keep in mind: there's very little about Lovecraft's views on race that is new. August Derleth was addressing these issues in the 40s (granted, mostly to downplay them). L. Sprague de Camp published "On the Creation of N..." in his 1975 Lovecraft biography to nail it into place.

So it isn't that people didn't know about it, or ignored it. What's changed is the audience. More folks have found a voice to talk about it, and ARE talking about it, because since 2000 Lovecraft's been exploding in popularity. The more people that read him, talk about him and

his fiction and Mythos, the more attention is drawn. And it's not the same audience as before. It's much bigger, much more diverse...and that's why you see Lovecraft getting more flak than contemporaries like Robert E. Howard & C. L. Moore, or Ernest Hemingway and Getrude Stein.

So, the reason Lovecraft's racism is important: it's not actually because he was racist. He was one racist white dude among millions. It's important because people still read his fiction and expand on the Mythos he originated. It's about influence.

It is also part of the personal conversation about how each of us deals with historical racism. Sci fi history is not made up of saints and martyrs; nor are all the most influential people in the past absolute bastards and monsters either. They were humans - flawed as any of us.

But sci fi history, especially fandom, has a tendency to hagiography. One of the main criticisms of de Camp's bio of Lovecraft wasn't inaccuracy (although it is that at points), but on being unsympathetic to the subject. Much of Lovecraft's literary afterlife is entirely based

on the shared image of "Grandpa Theobald" as an essentially positive figure, and that fans of his work shared a common identity in being on the "inside." They knew what the "Innsmouth Look" meant, who Cthulhu was, and what the Necronomicon portended. Open secrets, but that kind

of shared geekiness is fundamental to how science fiction fandom spreads. Lovecraft, or the MYTH of Lovecraft, was a part of that. It's a large part of the reason why his image, sculpted by the late great cartoonist Gahan Wilson, was initially chosen for the World Fantasy Award.

Times have changed. The context in which HPL became the face of the WFA shifted. Science fiction and fantasy are a lot less white, straight, and male than they were, and if anything that is going to continue to be the case. It's not that the folks who created the ward intended

any support for Lovecraft's racial prejudices. Yet it really took a black woman winning the award, and talking about that, to really bring the issue out into the open for discussion.

It's a discussion not everybody is willing to have. Yet it's being had anyway.

The recent issue with the RetroHugos giving the 1945 award to the Cthulhu Mythos as Best Series is an example. Whatever you think of the merits and flaws of the RetroHugos it's a demonstration of the enduring popularity of the Mythos AND the unfinished nature of the conversation.

People still love the Mythos.

There are new stories, novels, anthologies, comics, toys, games, etc. coming out every year. It's carried on by the basic momentum of "hey this is cool" and because so much of the original stuff - Lovecraft's fiction - is public domain. That's rare.

You don't see a lot of other big fantasy sandboxes for people to play in. The Tolkien estate makes you file the serial numbers off your orcs and elves; nobody is building fantasy worlds around A. Merritt's "The Moon-Pool." That's part of the charm of Lovecraft's Mythos.

It's also part of the danger. Because Lovecraft wasn't writing his fiction in isolation; some of his prejudices did filter into his stories - and not always in the obvious ways that people assume. Lovecraft's cat is not the most dangerous and insidious influence in his fiction.

Because you can filter out the cat. It's easy, it's obvious, it has the N-word in its name. People today do that without thinking. It is much more difficult to make yourself think through the implications of "Arthur Jermyn" or "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and how that affects your

story with the Deep Ones that you're writing today. And there's more to it than the rather simplistic idea that Deep Ones stand in for black people - that the whole story is an allegory for miscegenation. Yes, that is one of the elements in the mix, but it isn't the only one.

Cancelling Lovecraft isn't actually the big deal some folks make of it. Give it a hundred years and Lovecraft might be forgotten, regardless of how many folks actively choose not to buy his books now. But his influence will almost certainly be felt a hundred years from now.

That's how pervasive some of the concepts and ideas he's created have become. Folks that dither over calling it cosmic horror instead of Lovecraftian horror are basically arguing whether to call it tuna or chicken of the sea. The semantic shift has already taken place.

Which circles down to the question of "Why does it matter?"

Why does Lovecraft's racism matter? Because it matters to you.

Don't think it matters to you? Chances are, something you read in sci-fi or fantasy borrows from or connects to Lovecraft in some way.

A lot of folks aren't used to thinking of it in that way - but Lovecraft arguably did as much as Tolkien in establishing the idea of "fantasy races." That's a construct that still sees massive use in...everything...and it's rooted in very old ideas of race and culture.

In a society that still struggles with some of the same issues that Lovecraft and his contemporaries were dealing with - where science fiction and fantasy has become more than big business, but a major outlet for exploring not just what the world was or is but what it might be...

...and in a fandom which needs to both be more inclusive and to grapple with the ghosts of its past, Lovecraft was and is and will continue to be a very relevant figure. Love him or hate him, we need to learn to at least talk about his racism, separate fact from fiction.