Lovecraft fandom rather than fandom in general. I Am Providence reads like a more literary version of that book, honing in on H.P. I'd be amazed if Mamatas is not familiar with BOTDS.
Bimbos of the Death Sun is full of geeky SF&F stereotypes and thinly-veiled jabs at real people, and it would be pretty painful to recognize oneself in one of McCrumb's characters. It did not go over well with a lot of sci-fi fans because of its sharp - some might say, unaffectionate - satire of fandom tropes and convention culture. Sharyn McCrumb's award-winning murder mystery takes place at a science fiction convention, where an abrasive, unpopular author is murdered.
I Am Providence reminded me quite a lot of an old, infamous classic from the 80s, Bimbos of the Death Sun. And he takes the same attitude towards Lovecraft's fandom, though with perhaps not quite as much affection. Nick Mamatas, if you've read his blog posts and other social media commentary, seems to have a love/hate relationship with Lovecraft and Lovecraft fandom (and fandom in general) an affectionate regard for the old WASPy racist's squamous prose and cyclopean imagination (yes, I know I'm misusing those words) while being fully, critically aware of his faults. A darkness where Panossian is waiting, spending a lot of time thinking about Colleen, narrating a new Lovecraftian tale that could very well spell her doom. So she delves deep into the darkness, where occult truths have been lurking since the beginning of time. Everyone at the convention is a possible suspect, but only Colleen seems to show any interest in solving the murder. The Summer Tentacular continues uninterrupted, except by a few bumbling police. What's more unsettling is that, in the aftermath of the murder, there is little concern among the convention goers. Colleen's trip spirals into a nightmare when her roommate for the weekend, an obnoxious novelist known as Panossian, turns up dead, his face neatly removed. Horror writer Colleen Danzig doesn't know what to expect when she arrives, but is unsettled to find that among the hob-knobbing between scholars and literary critics are a group of real freaks: book collectors looking for volumes bound in human skin, and true believers claiming the power to summon the Elder God Cthulhu, one of their idol's most horrific fictional creations, before the weekend is out.
Lovecraft, there is nothing bigger than the annual Providence-based convention called the Summer Tentacular.
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