W. H. Pugmire


Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, was a writer of weird fiction and horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His works typically were published as W. H. Pugmire and his fiction often paid homage to the lore of Lovecraftian horror. Lovecraft scholar and biographer S. T. Joshi has described Pugmire as "the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have," and "perhaps the leading Lovecraftian author writing today."
Pugmire's stories have been published in anthologies and magazines such as The Year's Best Horror Stories, Weird Tales, Year's Best Weird Fiction, and many more. The Tangled Muse and An Ecstasy of Fear, major retrospectives of his work, were published in 2010 and 2019, respectively.

Life

Born May 3, 1951, to a father active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a Jewish mother, Pugmire grew up in Seattle. Following one year in college, he served as a Mormon missionary in Omagh, Northern Ireland for eighteen months, where he corresponded with Robert Bloch and first began writing fiction. After returning from his Mormon mission in 1973, Pugmire came out as gay to the church, was given psychiatric treatment, and requested excommunication, which lasted for about 25 years. Pugmire's lover of many years, Todd, died in his arms from a heroin overdose in March 1995. In the early 2000s, he reconnected with the church and was rebaptized, telling the church's leadership that he would be a "totally queer Mormon, but celibate." He described himself as an eccentric recluse, "the Queen of Eldritch Horror," and a "punk rock queen and street transvestite".
When a student at Franklin High School and into the 1970s he played vampire 'Count Pugsly' at Jones' Fantastic Museum in Seattle, a character based on the look of Lon Chaney's vampire in London After Midnight. Issue #69 of Forrest J Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland featured a dedication to Pugmire in his 'Count Pugsly' guise. In the documentary film The AckerMonster Chronicles!, Pugmire described how he was influenced by Ackerman's magazine and showed the audience the issue in which his photo appeared.
After treatment in a cardiac unit, Pugmire died at home in Seattle on March 26, 2019, prompting numerous eulogies and career retrospectives.

Writing

Pugmire first began writing fiction during his Mormon mission in Northern Ireland, but grew discouraged with his work and stopped until the mid-80s. Returning to Seattle, he became a figure in the local punk rock scene and launched a zine, Punk Lust, in April 1981. Pugmire's time in Ireland led him to discover the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and eventually Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and Lovecraft would become his strongest literary influences. Many of Pugmire's stories directly reference "Lovecraftian" elements. A self-described "obsessed writer of Lovecraft horror", his stated goal was to "dwell forevermore within Lovecraft's titan shadow", claiming that "being Lovecraftian is my identity as an artist". Pugmire was quoted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as saying that his writing was "a form of personal exorcism".
Pugmire set many of his stories in the Sesqua Valley, a fictional location in the Pacific Northwest of the United States which for him served the same purpose as the fictional Arkham / Dunwich / Innsmouth nexus did for Lovecraft, or the Severn Valley for Ramsey Campbell.

Critical Response

Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, in their review of Sesqua Valley and Other Haunts, stated that "Pugmire’s devotion to his sources transcends mere pastiche, and his style is neither overwrought nor too sparse." Publishers Weekly, reviewing Uncommon Places: A Collection of Exquisites, said that readers "with an appetite for the weird and the decadent will find Pugmire's work a rich confection." The site's review of Monstrous Aftermath: Stories in the Lovecraft Tradition, stated that "horror fans fond of baroque prose" should enjoy the collection, noting "a knack for injecting gallows humor", but adding that those "looking for memorable plots and vivid characterizations... will have to look elsewhere." The New York Review of Science Fiction's review of The Tangled Muse stated that Pugmire's writing revealed "a mastery of language and vocabulary that brings to mind the work of Clark Ashton Smith", noting a "distinct homoerotic theme or undercurrent that is neither gratuitous nor inconsistent but rather genuine and often central to characterization and storytelling."
Editor and scholar Scott Connors has written that, stylistically, Pugmire "owes as much to Oscar Wilde and Henry James as to HPL and Poe, creating a truly unholy fusion that defies academic boundaries between 'mainstream' and 'genre' fiction." Writing for Weird Fiction Review, Bobby Derie stated that Pugmire "wrote Lovecraftian fiction without the formulaic trappings of the mythos, wrapped in a sensuous prose and characters with easy, fluid sexuality". Issue 28 of The Lovecraft eZine was devoted to Pugmire—"one of our greatest Lovecraftian writers"—with tributes from S. T. Joshi, Joseph S. Pulver Sr., and others; in it, Lovecraftian author and editor Robert M. Price described Pugmire as "the Oscar Wilde of our time... the most revered and beloved figure in the Lovecraftian movement today." Author Laird Barron listed him as one of "the best contemporary horror/weird fiction" small-press authors, and a writer who "puts forth a new baroque masterpiece every other year". S. T. Joshi described Pugmire's writing style as "richly evocative", writing in his scholarly analysis of Cthulhu Mythos fiction, The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos, that "Pugmire's volumes... contain some of the richest veins of neo-Lovecraftian horror seen in recent years." However, Joshi has been more critical of Pugmire's nonfiction writing, proclaiming "no one takes him seriously as a critic."

Works by Pugmire

Publications

Originally published mainly in fanzines and small press magazines, Pugmire produced a steady stream of book collections beginning in 1997. Centipede Press published two major retrospectives of his work: The Tangled Muse in October 2010, and An Ecstasy of Fear in June 2019. Earlier stories were often rewritten substantially by Pugmire if republished.
The following are short story/novelette collections unless otherwise noted.