Remind me again: what writer built on Lovecraft's mythos but did it better?

August Derlith technically "built on" the Mythos stories, but most would argue he did not do them "better." He turned the Mythos into "good space aliens versus bad space aliens" instead of the cosmic horror idea that Lovecraft used which is that these creatures exist, but that mankind is nothing more to them than insects and that their ultimate goal in the universe is completely unknown.

The only other writer I am aware of to do a lot of Lovecraft related work is Brian Lumley, whose Lovecraftian stuff is not bad, but not really as good as the original stuff.

I liked some of Ramsey Campbell's stuff, especially "The Inhabitant of the Lake".

I agree, Lovecraft was nearly unreadable, but derivative writers of his ideas are completely unreadable.

Plenty of authors have worked with the themes of Lovecraft, and even the building blocks of the Mythos to good effect, like Campbell and Lumley, Michael Shea in regards to his novel "The Color Out of Time" and the story "Fat Face" and even today there've been some great anthologies released dealing in Lovecraftian fiction that may or may not directly use the Mythos.

Among these I'd recommend are "Black Wings of Cthulu" edited by S.T. Joshi, "The Book of Cthulu" and TBOC II, edited by Ross Lockhart, and "Lovecraft Unbound", edited by veteran editor Ellen Datlow.
Individual authors I'd recommend, some of whom have stories in these books include William Browning Spencer, who wrote the dark satirical novel "Resume With Monsters" which is going to be rereleased next year, and Laird Barron who has done some great work in cosmic horror throughout his various short stories, found in collections like "The Imago Sequence", and most recently "The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All" and his recent novels "The Croning" and "The Light is the Darkness".

I was talking more about the genre he helped create than the mythos.

Actually if you guys want to read good, "weird" literature in the Lovecraft vein, best thing you can do if you don't like Lovecraft himself is read the authors that directly influenced him. Some of the best stuff I have ever read comes from authors like Clarke Ashton Smith, Robert Chambers, Algernon Blackwood (whose "The Willows" Lovecraft considered to be one of the best supernatural horror short stories ever written), Lord Dunsany, William Faulkner's "weird" stories, the stand alone work of Robert E. Howard, some of Edgar Allan Poe's work...etc.

I find Lovecraft to be a real mixed bag (some of his stuff is outright awful), but I really liked what I read of Dunsany, imma have to give those other guys a shot.

Check out The Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap Long. Really great one.

mythos; unthinkable aliens visited earth centuries ago

themes; black people are savages

I mean, like, literally the epicenter, to where it's not even much of a thing. Like, some of his original letters were out in the room where I took my break today, and then on the way home I had a sandwich in a deli on the first floor of the house where his aunt lived. If I was a big Lovecraft fan I'd never stop jizzing in my shorts.

I imagine with the convention going on right now that pretty much all the parking in the entire state is being taken up?

so how is the primal horror too horrible for description, the blind idiot God at the center of infinity?

When Umberto Eco does this, it is great.

Until somebody writes an interesting book about a person reading Umberto Eco, I am going to keep thinking Umberto Eco is boring.

Eco is great if you want to spend an afternoon wrapping your head around historical references.