Robert M. Price

Robert M. Price
Full Name	Robert McNair Price
Pseudonym(s)	Henry Akeley
Connection to the Mythos	Editor Author
Birth Date	July 7, 1954
Birthplace	Jackson, Mississippi, USA
Nationality	United States
Website	http://robertmprice.mindvendor.com/

Robert McNair Price is an American theologian, writer, editor and artist. He has written extensively within the Cthulhu Mythos, and created a podcast discussing the Lovecraft Mythos which ran to more than a hundred episodes.

He is known for arguing against the existence of a historical Jesus (the Christ myth theory). He teaches philosophy and religion at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, is professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on theology and the historicity of Jesus.

Price was also a member of the Providence Pals, an informal group of H. P. Lovecraft enthusiasts and scholars active from the late 1970s through to the 1990s.

H. P. Lovecraft Scholarship

As editor of the journal Crypt of Cthulhu (published by Necronomicon Press) and of a series of Cthulhu Mythos anthologies, Price has been a major figure in H. P. Lovecraft scholarship and fandom for many years. In essays that introduce the anthologies and the individual stories, Price traces the origins of Lovecraft's entities, motifs, and literary style. The Cthulhu Cycle, for example, saw the origins of the octopoid entity in Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Kraken" and particular passages from Lord Dunsany, while The Dunwich Cycle points to the influence of Arthur Machen on Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror."

Price's religious background often informs his Mythos criticism, seeing gnostic themes in Lovecraft's fictional god Azathoth, and interpreting "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" as a kind of initiation ritual.

Most of the early Call of Cthulhu Fiction books by Chaosium were overseen by Price; his first book was The Hastur Cycle (1993), an anthology of short stories which traced the development of a single Lovecraftian element, and this was followed by Mysteries of the Worm (1993), a collection of Robert Bloch's Mythos fiction.

Publishing

Price has been involved in the publication of numerous works, including several related to H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. He has self-published under his own name, and under several others, including Miskatonic University Press and Cryptic Publications.

Selected Works

Editor

Periodicals

• Crypt of Cthulhu (1981-2022)
• Chronicles of the Cthulhu Codex (1996-1998)
• Midnight Shambler (1996-1998)

Anthologies

• Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (Fedogan & Bremer, 1992)
• The Hastur Cycle (Chaosium, 1993)
• Mysteries of the Worm (Chaosium, 1993)
• The Shub-Niggurath Cycle: Tales of the Black Goat with a Thousand Young (Chaosium, 1994)
• The Azathoth Cycle: The Blind Idiot God (Chaosium, 1995)
• The Book of Iod: Ten Tales of the Mythos (Chaosium, 1995)
• The Dunwich Cycle: Where the Old Gods Wait (Chaosium, 1995)
• The Cthulhu Cycle: Thirteen Tentacles of Terror (Chaosium, 1996)
• The Necronomicon: Selected Stories and Essays Concerning the Blasphemous Tome of the Mad Arab (Chaosium, 1996)
• The New Lovecraft Circle (Fedogan & Bremer, 1996)
• The Nyarlathotep Cycle: The God of a Thousand Forms (Chaosium, 1997)
• The Ithaqua Cycle: The Wind-Walker of the Icy Wastes (Chaosium, 1998)
• The Innsmouth Cycle: The Taint of the Deep Ones (Chaosium, 1998)
• Tales Out of Innsmouth: New Stories of the Children of Dagon (Chaosium, 1999)
• The Antarktos Cycle: Horror and Wonder at the Ends of the Earth (Chaosium, 1999)
• The Book of Eibon (Chaosium, 1999)
• Acolytes of Cthulhu (Fedogan & Bremer, 2000)
• The New Lovecraft Circle (Fedogan & Bremer, 2004)
• The Tsathoggua Cycle: Terror Tales of the Toad God (Chaosium, 2005)
• Tales Out of Dunwich (Hippocampus Press, 2005)
• The Tindalos Cycle (Hippocampus Press, 2008)
• The Yith Cycle: Lovecraftian Tales of the Great Race and Time Travel (Chaosium, 2010)
• Worlds of Cthulhu (Fedogan & Bremer, 2012)
• Beyond the Mountains of Madness (Celaeno Press, 2015)
• Lin Carter's Simrana Cycle (Celaeno Press, 2018)
• The Mighty Warriors (Ulthar Press, 2018)
• Secret Asia's Blackest Heart (Timaios Press, 2021)
• The Yig Cycle (Ramble House, 2021)

Nonfiction

• The Horror of It All: Encrusted Gems from the Crypt of Cthulhu (Starmont House, 1990)
• Black Forbidden Things (1992)

Author

Collections

• Blasphemies & Revelations (Mythos Books, 2008)

Short Fiction

• "Dope War of the Black Tong" (1976)
• "Beneath the Tombstone" (1984)
• "Saucers from Yaddith" (1984)
• "Black Eons" (1985, with Robert E. Howard)
• "Wilbur Whateley Waiting" (1987)
• "The Deprogrammer" (1989)
• "A Thousand Young" (1989)
• "Herbert West—Reanimated" (1989, round-robin)
• "The Dweller in the Pot" (1990)
• "Exham Priory" (1990)
• "The Strange Fate of Alonzo Typer" (1991)
• "Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock" (1994)
• "The Transition of Zadok Allen" (1995)
• "The Round Tower" (1995)
• "Down in Limbo" (1995)
• "The Beard of Byatis" (1995)
• "Under the Mound" (1995)
• "Young Goodwife Doten" (1995)
• "The Soul of the Devil-Bought" (1996)
• "The Burrower Beneath" (1997)
• "The Transition of Abdul Alhazred" (1997)
• "Feery's Original Notes" (1997)
• "The Green Decay" (1997)
• "Annotations for the Book of Night" (1998)
• "The Elephant God of Leng (2002)
• "Eibon Saith: The Apophthegmata of Eibon" (2002)
• "Acute Spiritual Fear" (2003)
• "The Horror in the Genizah" (2008)
• "Aquadingen" (2008)
• "The Thing from the Trenches" (2008) [with James Ambuehl]
• "The Grey Rite of Azathoth" (2014)
• "The Sea Nymph's Son" (2014)
• The Doom That Came to Providence (2015) [round-robin, contributor]
• "The Seven Thunders" (2015)
• "In Search of Lake Monsters" (2017)
• "The Shining Trapezohedron" (2018)
• "A Photograph From Life" (2018)

Nonfiction

• H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos (1990)
• Lin Carter: A Look Behind His Imaginary Worlds (1991)
• "HPL and HPB: Lovecraft's Use of Theosophy" in Crypt of Cthulhu (1982) (archive)

See Also

• Images by Robert M. Price

External Links

• Robert M. Price at Wikipedia
• Robert M. Price at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Robert M. Price at Goodreads