The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe that originated in the works of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary of Lovecraft. It includes a collection of characters, settings, and themes found in the works of Lovecraft and other horror fiction writers who have added to the unofficial canon of Lovecrafts work. The development of the Cthulhu Mythos can be separated into several chronological stages, with the first stage characterized by Lovecraft himself when he was alive and writing. The Cthulhu Mythos is named after the god Cthulhu, a cosmic entity that resembles a green octopus, dragon, and a human caricature, hundreds of meters tall, with webbed, human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back. The Cthulhu Mythos is considered to have been highly influential for the speculative fiction genre. The Cthulhu Mythos includes a number of fictional cults, many of which serve the Outer God Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, a protean creature that appears in myriad guises. Other cults are dedicated to the cause of the Great Old Ones, a group of powerful alien beings currently imprisoned or otherwise resting in a deathlike sleep. The Cthulhu Mythos is a backdrop to other stories and provides a setting that is ominous, malevolent, and utterly unconcerned with the feelings of a pitifully insignificant human species.