Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who did not publish a single book during his lifetime, became a beacon and landmark of an entire genre, an idol of both the general readership and refined intellectuals, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for filmmakers, and his very name became a household name. Borges himself admired his stories, in which man's place is on the distant periphery of the universal scheme of things, and supra-peaceful forces instill sacred horror in the souls of the careless.