Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner
Pseudonym(s)	Edward J. Bellin Paul Edmonds Noel Gardner Will Garth James Hall Keith Hammond Hudson Hastings Peter Horn Kelvin Kent Robert O. Kenyon C. H. Liddell Hugh Maepenn Scott Morgan Lawrence O'Donnell Lewis Padgett Woodrow Wilson Smith Charles Stoddard
Birth Date	April 17, 1915
Birthplace	Los Angeles, California, USA
Death Date	February 3, 1958
Deathplace	Los Angeles, California, USA
Nationality	American
Genre	Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror
Spouse	C. L. Moore (1911 - 1987)

𝓦𝐓 Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was a prolific American author of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. A friend of H. P. Lovecraft's as well as of Clark Ashton Smith, Kuttner contributed several stories to the Cthulhu Mythos genre invented by those authors (among others).

Kuttner's first published story, "The Graveyard Rats," which appeared in the March 1936 issue of Weird Tales, caught H. P. Lovecraft's eye, evoking as it did "moribund, inhuman life that was said to exist in forgotten burrows in the earth...where forgotten pagan rites were still celebrated in defiance of law and sanity." The two became correspondents, with Lovecraft encouraging him to incorporate Mythos elements into his work, which Kuttner did, in pieces like "The Salem Horror" (1937) and "Hydra" (1939). "The Salem Horror" would be included in the seminal anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Arkham House, 1969).

Lovecraft also encouraged Kuttner to write to another correspondent of his, C. L. Moore; though Kuttner's first letter to the pulp writer Catherine Lucille Moore was addressed to "Mr. Moore," the two soon became romantic partners as well as literary collaborators, and were married in 1940. Their relationship produced a large body of co-written work, largely science fiction published under joint pseudonyms like Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell.

Kuttner's contributions to the Mythos include the entities Iod ("The Secret of Kralitz"), Vorvadoss ("The Eater of Souls"), Nyogtha ("The Salem Horror"), and Zuchequon ("The Bells of Horror"). "Hydra" introduced the treacherous Mythos tome On the Sending Out of the Soul, and "The Bells of Horror" the Book of Iod.

The latter work provided the title to a collection of Kuttner's Lovecraftian work, The Book of Iod: Ten Tales of the Mythos. Editor Robert M. Price suggest in his introduction that "Henry Kuttner's own private corner of the Cthulhu Mythos was...apparently derived in about equal measure from Lovecraft, Bloch, Zoroastrianism, and Theosophy."

Kuttner died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, the city of his birth, on February 3, 1958. He was just 42 years old.

Bibliography

Collections

• The Book of Iod: Ten Tales of the Mythos (1995)

Selected Short Fiction

• "The Graveyard Rats" (1936)
• "The Secret of Kralitz" (1936)
• "The Eater of Souls" (1937)
• "The Salem Horror" (1937)
• "The Jest of Droom-Avesta (1937)
• "Spawn of Dagon" (1938)
• "The Invaders" (1939)
• "Hydra" (1939)
• "The Frog" (1939)
• "The Bells of Horror" (1939)
• "The Hunt" (1939)