Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird fiction and horror fiction, who is known for his creation of what became the Cthulhu Mythos. Among his most celebrated tales are "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Rats in the Walls", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. His writings are the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which has inspired a large body of pastiches, games, music and other media drawing on Lovecraft's characters, setting and themes, constituting a wider subgenre known as Lovecraftian horror.