THE UNCANNY AFTERLIFE OF H.P. LOVECRAFT.

• Author: Root, Damon

EDMUND WILSON, THEN one of America's top literary critics, took to the pages of The New Yorker in 1945 to denounce a dead horror writer named H.P. Lovecraft. "The only real horror in most of these fictions," Wilson sniffed, "is the horror of bad taste and bad art." Wilson was outraged at the thought that Love-craft, who had died, broke, in 1937, might enjoy posthumous success thanks to the recent publication of his collected writings. These stories, Wilson declared, "were hack-work contributed to such publications as Weird Tales and Amazing Stories, where, in my opinion, they ought to have been left."

Wilson was a big deal in his day, the sort of critic whose reviews could help make or break an author's career. But he was simply no match for Lovecraft, who would enjoy the last laugh from beyond the grave. Today, Wilson is largely forgotten and Lovecraft is practically everywhere, his DNA spread far and wide throughout American popular culture.

Perhaps you're familiar with Lovecraft's most enduring creation, the towering, tentacle-faced elder god Cthulhu, who lies slumbering deep in his oceanic tomb, waiting for the day when "the stars are right" so that he may rise again and wreak havoc on humanity. The modern cult of Cthulhu is a capitalist success story of epic proportions. Retailers now offer Cthulhu-themed shirts, hats, socks, costumes, toys, coffee mugs, Pez dispensers, board games, video games, role-playing games, novels, short stories, comic books, coloring books, and much else besides. The heavy metal band Metallica has written two songs in Cthulhu's honor. The Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro has found all sorts of clever ways to reference Cthulhu in his films. A popular "Cthulhu for President" bumper sticker asks, "Why vote for the lesser evil?"

Another Lovecraft signature is the obsessive researcher whose fixation on weird science unleashes an interdimensional evil that threatens to wipe out the planet. Sound familiar? In the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, shadowy government research involving children with psychic abilities rips open a portal between Hawkins, Indiana, and "the Upside Down," a spooky parallel dimension that just happens to be crawling with Lovecraftian creatures. Yes, the mad scientist trope has been around at least since Frankenstein, but the vast, eldritch terrors of the Upside Down are pure Lovecraft. So too is the tentacled monster known as "the mind flayer" who stalks our intrepid young heroes.

Academics can't seem to get enough of Lovecraft either. A database search will turn up hundreds of scholarly articles discussing the author and...