Alan Dean Foster is an American sci-fi and fantasy author whose works include the Pip & Flinx series and the Icerigger trilogy, both set in his Humanx Commonwealth universe. He also wrote the novelizations of famous films such as Star Wars (1976) and Alien (1979). Some of his stories are set in the Cthulhu Mythos.
Foster's first professional sale was the Mythos pastiche "Some Notes Concerning a Green Box," which appeared in the Summer 1971 issue of The Arkham Collector. In his introduction to that story in the collection With Friends Like These..., Foster recounts that he didn't have publication in mind when he wrote it, but sent the story to August Derleth anyway, hoping that the latter would find it amusing. He was surprised when Derleth actually offered to buy it.
In his introduction to another Mythos story, "A Fatal Exception Has Occurred at...", in his collection Exceptions to Reality, Foster reveals that he once taught a seminar about H. P. Lovecraft's works at the University of California.
Selected works[]
- "Some Notes Concerning a Green Box" (1971)
- "The Horror on the Beach" (1978)
- "A Fatal Exception Has Occurred at..." (2002)
- "The Door Beneath" (2015)