I first heard from Richard L. Tierney many years ago when he wrote me, having read my article “The Old Ones’ Promise of Eternal Life” in Harry Morris’s great periodical Nyctalops. In that bit of pretend-scholarship I argued that the “unexplainable couplet” was to be interpreted in terms of Gnosticism. Dick, of course, was quite interested in ancient Gnosticism, as witness his wonderful tales of Simon of Gitta, i.e., Simon Magus. We went on to correspond thereafter for several years. Eventually I published a collection of his early short stories as a special issue of Crypt of Cthulhu. Later I edited a Chaosium collection of his Simon stories, The Scroll of Thoth: Simon Magus and the Great Old Ones. Later still, I wrote the introduction to his terrific novel The Drums of Chaos, and after that an intro to his collaboration with Glenn Rahman, The Gardens of Lucullus. Sadly, half of that intro got cut before publication. I thought of supplying it here, but I couldn’t find it.

I had the privilege of collaborating with Dick on one Simon story, “The Throne of Achamoth” (which dealt with Gnosticism’s cosmic dualism). The story was heretical even by Gnostic standards, since we combined Achamoth, the Fallen Sophia, with her misbegotten son, the Demiurge (who is highly reminiscent of Lovecraft’s Azathoth, both blind idiot Creators). When Dick retired from writing, I asked him for permission to continue Simon’s adventures, which I have done, the results being “The Secret of Nephren-Ka,” “The Emerald Tablet,” and “The Cult of the Castrators.” The conspicuous flaw in these stories is that they’re not by Tierney!

Qarol and I were delighted to have Dick as our houseguest many years ago, during our ‘80s sojourn in Mount Olive, North Carolina. It was great fun! He spent one day looking for long-unseen relatives in the town of Dismal Swamp. Another day he and I explored an abandoned church in nearby Goldsboro. (Once Chuck Hoffman, during a visit with us, commented that Mount Olive was like Hooterville and Goldsboro was like Pixley—or was it the other way around?) I have often reflected on something Dick said to me as we returned from a walking tour of our local cemetery. Dick said he did not much relish the growing trend of Lovecraftian conventions, because, before such things existed, he had cherished Lovecraft Mythos fiction as a private possession. To celebrate it amid a sea of fellow devotees seemed to him somehow to profane something sacred. I understood him then, but it was only years later that I began to feel the same way. Dick Tierney has always been a mentor to me, even when neither of us realized it.

As editor of the journal Crypt of Cthulhu and of a series of Cthulhu Mythos anthologies, Robert M. Price has been a major figure in H. P. Lovecraft scholarship and fandom for decades. In 2015 Price received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to Lovecraft scholarship. At the same event he was pretty much excommunicated from the Lovecraftian movement. A life-long fan and author of sword-and-sorcery, RMP edited the S&S anthology, The Mighty Warriors, which was published in 2018. His most recent publication is in the Simon of Gitta collection, Sorcery Against Caesar, alongside Richard L. Tierney and Glenn Rahman.