Is Joshi's Lovecraft biography really much superior to L. Sprague de Camp's Lovecraft biography? Or is it just more deferential to Lovecraft? What do you think of de Camp's Howard biography? The Wikipedia article on Lin Carter indicates that there was a falling out between Carter and de Camp towards the end of Carter's life. Can you provide any details? What do you know of Lovecraft's sexuality? I'm aware of his marriage and some of its issues. Was he generally disinterested in sex or romance? Old fashioned? Conservative? Repressed? There are very few significant female characters in his work, and they are often fearful or loathsome creatures, with the possible exception of Charles Dexter Ward's heartbroken mother, whose only desire was the safety of her child. On the flipside, many of Lovecraft's stories do focus on homosocial, male relationships. In typical pairs, one is more dominant and engaged in supernatural doings, which may bring about their grizzly demise, and one is more submissive and may or may not go insane at the end. The narrator and stand-in for Lovecraft tends to be the latter. Example stories include The Statement of Randolph Carter, Herbert West: Reanimator, and Pickman's Model. My question pertains to the ongoing theme of piping cracked flutes such as the ones surrounding Azathoth, the masked and indescribable priest in yellow silk, and the lunar frog beasts. When I first read about them I envisioned the meandering flute or oboe melodies from Arabic musicians. My partner has a different take on the flute playing, interpreting it as radio static. Did HPL ever comment on this in his letters? Discovering HPL via a joke in a Ray Bradbury story. What would you characterize as the specific traits, tropes, characteristics, etc., of the "weird fiction" genre? What makes weird fiction distinct/separate from the gothic? Or, would you say it is more accurate to classify weird fiction as a sub-genre of the gothic? Would you characterize Lovecraft as a Romantic writer? Or would it be more accurate to think of him as a really pessimistic Enlightenment thinker?. Can you discuss the place of poetry in the writing of Lovecraft (and perhaps Clark Ashton Smith)? Can you recommend other "weird fiction" and/or Lovecraftian/Chambersian poetry collections or authors, whether contemporary or "classic"? What does "Lovecraftian" Horror mean to his geekiness?