I don't think it would be a whole lot of fun to have HPL around these days.

Remember, even in his own time, at the age of 30, no less, he could be a prickly, prudish, closed-minded, extremely judgemental curmudgeon committed only to his old-fashioned and obsolete way of seeing and doing things. I mean, hell, even though he was completely devoted to his hometown of Providence, RI (and with good reason), he just loooooved my own town, Richmond, VA, because of its fervent WASPish Anglophilia, its perverse devotion to otherwise-forgotten tradition and times gone by ... and because of the fact that it was one of the last cities on the East Coast where one could still buy the removable cardboard shirt collars that people verywhere else had given up ...

While he tolerated radio, he didn't care much for movies, and he tended to be critical of other harmless pasttimes and entertainments, opting, instead, to snuggle up with dry journals of the natural sciences and classical histories in Ancient Greek and Latin. He would have despised the many boardgames, pencil-and-dice RPGs, video games, movies and TV shows that take influence from his work. Just imagining the look on his face while seeing, ah, certain scenes from the uncut version of "Reanimator" makes me chuckle ...

Anyway, the whole point about HPL is, he would't sully himself by using the Interent, let alone by having a Tribe profile and posting on it! He would take one lingering look at the Tribe home page and see the recent posts about belly dancing and Burning Man and polyamory and gay kink and fire-spinning, and he would probably feel faint and look around for a nearby wastepaper basket to vomit in. If he liked you enough, valued you enough as a friend and a confidant and a learned mind and a kindred soul, he would still write you long, elegant, charming, erudite, thoughtful correspondence ... through the mail! That was his style. If he could have had his way, technology would have come to a sudden halt sometime around 1800 and would have stayed parked there forever.

While his hipster fans might adore him for his antiquated style of dress and speech, mistaking them for eccentric and artistic statements, he probably would NOT reciprocate that love to his current fan base, especially the more radically trenchcoated, dyed, tie-dyed, painted, pierced, shaved and tattooed amongst them. He most certainly would not have been a "Goth." At best, he might have come across as some kind of retro-fashion hipster, from a distance, but a short chat with him would pretty quickly reveal him as a man with Luddite tendencies who chose to hide from the ugly, trifling mundanities of everyday modern life in the faraway, academic past.

Let's also not forget that, whatever his reasons and delusions, HPL was a fairly startling racist and a xenophobe ... Anyone who wasn't a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant was immediately suspect (you can see it in his stories, of course ... look at how many cultists, savages, conspirators and demon worshippers are African, Asian, South Sea Pacifican or "dusky-skinned Eastern Europeans") ... He would not have been very comfortable in this current milieu of multiculturalism, social liberalism, and (relative) racial harmony. He would NOT have been very happy about the protagonist in the recent film "Cthulhu" being re-written as a homosexual. I think he would have created a whole new pantheon of horrors based on the United Colors of Bennetton ads alone ...

No, raising HPL from the dead wouldn't be the best idea, I think!

Now, Robert E. Howard, he probably would have been fun to hang out with ...

people.tribe.net/bc0888b1-...4c7693647e

Seriously. Read his work.

You will be making SAN checks.

Geoff nailed that one square. Lovecraft, for all his literary talents, was something of a hermit. Even amongst friends he tended to be morose, somewhat intolerant, and prone to long black moods. Don't forget that he suffered two nervous breakdowns before he was 18, and never finished high school, which bothered him to the end of his days.

If Lovecraft were alive today, he would be involved in some sort of Luddite group, or possibly holed up with a militia group which was bent on "purifying" the country. Lovecraft had more than a few prejudices, and, regrettably, he would fit right in with intolerance organizations.

Actually, the old writer that I would like to see alive and producing in the digital age is Ambrose Bierce. I think he'd fit in just fine!