Robert M. Price

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Robert M. Price was the editor of the magazines Crypt of Cthulhu, Cthulhu Codex, and Midnight Shambler.

Robert M. Price (born July 7, 1954) was born in Mississippi, lived in New Jersey for most of his life, and has recently resettled in North Carolina.

Robert Price discovered the works of H. P. Lovecraft in 1967. In 1978, he read the Necronomicon Press journal Lovecraft Studies and decided to submit an article, “Higher Criticism and the Necronomicon", which editor S.T. Joshi accepted.

In 1981, he attended the regional weekend horror convention at Roger Williams College in Rhode Island, called NeCon, and met the "Providence Pals", the gang who put together Necronomicon Press publications, including S.T. Joshi, publisher Marc Michaud, illustrator Jason Eckhardt, writers Don and Mollie Burleson, Peter Cannon, and fan editor and collector Ken Neilly. They told him about the Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association and suggested he join. All it required was putting together a few pages of HPL-related material for the mailing list every three months. This was the inception of Crypt of Cthulhu. Price's mother, Mable Price, a retired typist and executive secretary, once a high school yearbook editor, joined him in his hobby. The zine was a bizarre miscegenation; half Lovecraft Studies rip-off, half humor magazine, a “pulp thriller and theological journal.”

Price decided to send out free copies to some big names in the field of Lovecraft scholarship and latter-day Lovecraftian fiction. Before long, the letters pages became the equivalent of a modern computer message board where unknown fans could trade barbs with their favorite authors. Price was able to persuade a number of those authors to contribute fiction and articles to the mag. He soon began writing his own horror stories, most of them Mythos pastiches.

Crypt of Cthulhu functioned very much like the old fanzines contemporary with Lovecraft and his generation, like The Acolyte, Fantasy Magazine, and The Phantagraph. Lin Carter (Spaceteer) took an active interest in Crypt, and before long a bunch of New Jersey and New York fans had begun meeting every other Saturday at his Manhattan apartment for the New Kalem Club. Sometimes the ancient Frank Belknap Long would make his way across the city for the meetings.

Price went on to edit Lovecraftian fiction anthologies, such as Tales of the Lovecraftian Mythos, in 1990, followed many years later by The New Lovecraft Circle and Acolytes of Cthulhu. In the mid 1990s he began publishing the revived Midnight Shambler, and released eleven issues.

He branched out to other publishers, including Arkham House, for whom he put together Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies, a collection of rare early Robert Bloch pulp tales. Price is now working with new publishers including Mythos Books, Die, Monster, Die! Books, Lindesfarne Press, and Hippocampus Press.

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