The Loved Dead

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

Speak of the necrophiliac, guess what just came in for me at the library?




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It's Horror in the Museum. My hold from July finally went through. I figured it was missing since it'd been listed as "available" that whole time.

[Bob Lovecraft]

You know, Ruth, you had me all ready to make a snappy come-back, and then you just up and gave me an anticlimactic ending. I'm so distraught. I think I will have to have a lie down now. With any luck, I can pull in a moldy old corpse to keep me happy while I sleep.

Bob

[Chris Lackey]

Hey, guys. We got a cease and desist on people actually quoting 'The Loved Dead.'  Though I'm pretty sure that quotes are totally legal, we're not willing to deal with a lawsuit.

Sorry to be a downer Debbie.

Chris

[Bob Lovecraft]

Hey, guys. We got a cease and desist on people actually quoting 'The Loved Dead.'

Wow, that's just pathetic. Who the hell would bother doing something like that, especially when casting it would only serve to get a bit more publicity? Oh well, thanks anyway, Chris.

Bob

[old book]

Hey, guys. We got a cease and desist on people actually quoting 'The Loved Dead.'  Though I'm pretty sure that quotes are totally legal, we're not willing to deal with a lawsuit.

Sorry to be a downer Debbie.

Chris

LOL sorry. I guess they're actively patrolling still.

[osyrisdiamond]

Hey, guys. We got a cease and desist on people actually quoting 'The Loved Dead.'  Though I'm pretty sure that quotes are totally legal, we're not willing to deal with a lawsuit.

Sorry to be a downer Debbie.

Chris

LOL sorry. I guess they're actively patrolling still.

What I do not get is why they are. Sure, if you do not actively protect copyright, there is no point having it. For older works, I believe failure to be active makes passing into the public domain all the easier and faster. Still, the only reason to keep it thus is to make money from the works; yet I cannot see this story (or the entire collection of the joint author) being so valuable as to warrant this. They, however, seem to disagree. Methinks an author like Lovecraft warrants such efforts had similar efforts been mounted in due time. Still, it is what it is. Personally, I think they are shooting themselves in the foot because with how the internet works, this makes it harder to discover the author and appreciate his works.

[old book]

Just imagine, there's an army of active Loved Dead bots patrolling the internets, seeking out and destroying every line of text they discover. I wonder if the issue cease-and-desists automatically yet? In a sense, these search bots are actually publishing the entire text by searching for bits of it. No matter, there is some poetic justice at work, and I almost think Lovecraft might have preferred to have the story destroyed for posterity.

[old book]

Well, this seems to be all the information that's allowed on the internet:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.horror.cthulhu/browse_thread/thread/22b9c192e8efcced/acff3c799e03c034?lnk=st&q=#acff3c799e03c034

TSOU -- The Loved Dead              
HARMSDM
Apr 26 1996, 8:00 am


                        The Shadow over Usenet
                          "The Loved Dead"

Source:  _The Horror in the Museum_, Arkham.

Synopsis:  A man finds that he is invigorated by death and its trappings.
He starts to work in a morgue, then becomes a killer, but his cravings
remain unsatisfied.  Eventually the police track him down, and he kills
himself.

Comments:  This story is of middling quality, though it shows more of
Lovecraft than the other Eddy selections.  Lovecraft does do a good job
of allowing your imagination to fill in as many details as possible,
instead of going for buckets of gore and corpses as other writers might
have done.

This story, according to legend, saved Weird Tales from bankruptcy.
The magazine was heavily in debt at the time this story came out.  When
people saw "The Loved Dead", many of them pulled the magazine from
retailers, starting a minor sensation and restoring WT to financial
health.  At least, that's how the story goes.  I've heard it said that
this isn't true, but I'm not sure who exactly said it.  Maybe someone
can help me out here.

I'm tired, so that's all for now.

Daniel

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http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/ld.asp

Publication History

The following entries include the first publication of this work and any publications currently in print.

Weird Tales, 4, No. 2 (May–June–July 1924), 54–57.

The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions. Ed. S.T. Joshi. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1989, 348–57.

The Loved Dead and Other Revisions. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1997, 149–5

[osyrisdiamond]

Just imagine, there's an army of active Loved Dead bots patrolling the internets, seeking out and destroying every line of text they discover. I wonder if the issue cease-and-desists automatically yet? In a sense, these search bots are actually publishing the entire text by searching for bits of it. No matter, there is some poetic justice at work, and I almost think Lovecraft might have preferred to have the story destroyed for posterity.

True, though he might say that of a lot, if not most, of his works.