 Derleth prefaced the collection with "The Cthulhu Mythos", an outline of his (sometimes controversial) views on the development and content of the Mythos.In this introduction, Derleth prematurely declared the genre to be dead--"for certainly the Mythos as an inspiration for new fiction is hardly likely to afford readers with enough that is new and sufficiently different in execution to create a continuing and growing demand".Lin Carter later wrote that "Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos" "marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Mythos for many reasons, and one of the most important was that it introduced a number of new writers in the Mythos."