Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who never published a single book in his lifetime, became a beacon and reference point for an entire genre, an idol for both the general reader and refined intellectuals, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for filmmakers, and his very name became a household word. Borges himself admired his stories, in which man's place is on the far periphery of the cosmic scheme of things, and supernatural forces instill sacred terror in the souls of the unwary.