“The Colour Out of Space” may be the purest example of cosmicism in Lovecraft’s body of work. His literary friends coined it after Lovecraft’s death. It describes the universal worldview that Lovecraft expressed in a great deal of his fiction. He rejected the assumption accepted by most religions that the universe was created for the benefit of humankind. He held that the universe is both infinite and indifferent; there is no benevolent God and no purpose to human life other than what the individual gives it.

Lovecraft’s cosmicism has been a pervasive influence on the evolution of science fiction and horror. His own circle of literary acquaintances, with his encouragement, often picked up and expanded on themes and details from Lovecraft’s work (and vice versa). His influence persists into the 21st century and, if anything, has grown, contributing to scores of movies, the game Dungeons and Dragons, and to the inspiration of innumerable writers, including Stephen King, Brian Lumley, and Guillermo Del Toro.

Although Lovecraft often peopled his fictional universes with entities called “gods,” these entities weren’t supernatural. They are extraterrestrial or extradimensional creatures whose existence is governed by natural laws so alien to humans that they seem like magic. In some of his stories, such as “The Mountains of Madness” or “The Call of Cthulhu,” Lovecraft created aliens of flesh and bone and ichor.