H.P. Lovecraft and materialism
• Skeptics & Atheists
Long ago I remember reading several volumes of H.P. Lovecraft's correspondence. I think he'd be shocked to find himself called a socialist. But no writer of horror fiction was more skeptical and materialistic.
Central to Lovecraft's effectiveness was his personal philosophy, and this is what separated him from Poe and the others who came before him. He was a thoroughgoing materialist--a socialist in his politics and an atheist in his beliefs. "Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large," he wrote upon successfully resubmitting the original Cthulhu story. "One must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all."