The Call of Cthulhu is a science fiction short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. In it, the narrator recounts a sequence of portentous discoveries which indicate that a vast, ancient cosmic pantheon of supernatural deities with the power to erase humankind is awakening after a long slumber. Credited with inspiring the Cthulhu Mythos, a kind of literary genre unto itself that expands upon the universe set forth in The Call of Chtulhu, this 1926 short story, first published in Weird Tales Magazine, is seen as one of Lovecraft’s most important and influential works.