The persistent lies and historical revisionism of The Clansman and The Birth of a Nation did not go unopposed. Fractious groups descended from or inspired by the Klan persist to this day. Within a few years, chapters would spread throughout the country membership would escalate into the millions by the 1920s, and even expand into Canada at the height of the new Klan’s power and influence. A full decade later, the play and novel were adapted into an epic film, The Birth of the Nation (1915)-and on the night of its release, a second Ku Klux Klan was founded. That same year, it was adapted into a play and premiered on the stage. In 1905, Thomas Dixon Jr.’s novel The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan was published, the second in a trilogy of novels set in the South during the period of Reconstruction. And I think there are lots of readers, consumers of Genre of all backgrounds, who with relief are like, “finally…” So when we’re fortunate enough to get the chance to flip the script, to use those same tentacles to tell stories from different perspectives, we take it. What are you to do? Give up tentacles altogether? Now you got no tentacles to like, because the guy from way back was a serious ass? Thing is, marginalized people have been ingesting problematic things in SFF, from dark elves on down, and loving it through our gritted teeth-since forever. And some of the xenophobic meanings behind unknowable horrors lurking on the edge of human civilization give you serious pause.

Then you read Lovecraft and you’re like, uhhh, this guy is pretty problematic. I think whether one reads Lovecraft or not, his influence is all over genre-from television shows like Buffy to Marvel concepts of cosmic world-devouring beings like Galactus.

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