Unsuccessful, junk, garbage ideas of the past are an excellent fertilizer for successful and popular ideas of the present. They just need to be transferred to a neighboring field.
Those who called Lovecraft's work "pulp fiction" a hundred years ago would be astonished with the fact that his work has inspired the creators of the modern advanced philosophical systems, real rock'n'roll in #philosophy: Speculative realism, Object-Oriented Ontology (Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Levi Bryant), Transcendental Materialism & Transcendental Nihilism ( Iain Hamilton Grant), Alien Phenomenology (Ian Bogost), Cannibal Metaphysics (Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro), Dark Ecology & Dark Vitalism ( Timothy Morton, Ben Woodard)