Spanish newspaper El Pais has the article “H.P. Lovecraft’s thirst for scientific darkness”. The Spanish-language article muses on the new book in titled El Astronomicon Y Otros Textes En Defense De La Ciencia (‘The Astronomicon and Other Texts in Defence of Science’).

This translates Lovecraft’s various writing on astronomy and the Moon and also his public tussles with a local astrologer. I’m uncertain if it also has relevant extracts from the private letters.

This volume has an introduction by its translator, Oscar Mariscal. He introduces us to a Lovecraft who has been little-known, until now. This is Lovecraft the popularizer and defender of the science of astronomy. In these texts the world first sees this introverted young man’s hunger and thirst for a world of scientific knowledge, and glimpses a tormented inner life that will in time give rise to a cosmos of viscous monsters and star headed terrors … terrors capable of reaching across the cosmos and into the depths of our unconscious souls.

This commercial book was aided by an arts grant from the Ministry of Culture, something almost impossible to imagine happening in the UK.