A new Masters dissertation, “The “pastoral of fear” in French-Canadian tales of the 19th century” (May 2024, in French, no English abstract). Freely available online.
French-Canadian fear tales
13 Monday May 2024
Posted Scholarly works
in13 Monday May 2024
Posted Scholarly works
inA new Masters dissertation, “The “pastoral of fear” in French-Canadian tales of the 19th century” (May 2024, in French, no English abstract). Freely available online.
13 Monday May 2024
Posted Odd scratchings
inCurrently for sale via honest Abe, a copy of Amazing Stories for September 1927 in ‘Fine’ condition. This issue carried Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out Of Space”, and I don’t recall ever seeing it come up for sale before now. It’s usually the first appearance of “Mountains” that’s for sale.
Read the scan at Archive.org.
12 Sunday May 2024
Posted Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
inThe Music of Erich Zann : a musical adaptation (Feb 2024)… “a full blown musical work with lots of lyrics! The words are an abridged version of the story and detail the salient points, rather than providing a blow by blow account”.
12 Sunday May 2024
Posted Podcasts etc.
inHorrorBabble tackles “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” in a new three-hour marathon audiobook. It was recorded before, back in 2016, but this is a new reading for 2024. Ian Gordon writes…
HorrorBabble was in its infancy when we first tackled Innsmouth — I hope this new recording demonstrates some maturity. Of course, the 2016 recording will remain live on the channel. PS — If you listen closely to the new version, you might just catch the characteristic chuckle of 2016 Zadok…!
Free on YouTube.
11 Saturday May 2024
Posted Lovecraftian arts
inThere are some rather pleasing new embroidered patches from the HPLHS, as a set of three patches, for £11.21 UK.
Large, at 2.5 to 3 inches across. With “iron-on backings” though light sewing is recommended. Should be ready to ship by 1st June 2024.
10 Friday May 2024
Posted Maps, Picture postals, Scholarly works
inThis week on ‘Picture Postals’, my hand-tinted version of a nautical map of Providence Harbour and the lower Seekonk in 1896. In the Seekonk (here the ‘Pawtucket River’) we see the ‘Twin Islands’ on which the youthful Lovecraft used to land in his rowing-boat. High-res at 4600px and 300dpi.
Brown University at the top, Starvegoat Island at the bottom. This map seems to have some RPG potential, as at that time a lot of infilling had not yet occurred. Lots of coves and marshes and eel-grass meadows in which Things Might Lurk.
And here’s a more poetic surface view, though also work-a-day since there were still tall-masted ships working the harbour in Lovecraft’s early youth…
09 Thursday May 2024
More picks of recent Lovecraft related and (now also) R.E. Howard related LORAs, these being free plugin for models based off the free Stable Diffusion 1.5 AI image generator.
* Stygia, explicitly modelled on Conan’s world and darker than usual ‘mediaeval desert, with pyramids and crypts’ settings.
* Conan trained on old comics plus oil paintings and film-stills. Doesn’t look great, the faces being too anime. But might be worth a try with a different model more oriented to western comics? Beware of commercial use, for a lookalike barbarian named ‘Conan’. Since there are still active Conan trademark-trolls in the USA. Apparently they are underlings of the megacorp Tencent, and can claim a trademark in the name until 2028. So you might call him some adjacent name instead, like Xolan or Kohlan.
* Style of Andreas Achenbach, possibly of interest for sword & sorcery, fantasy-historical.
* UFO Alchemy, which looks like it could be de-UFO’d and made into more of a Lovecraftian ‘cosmic map’.
* Style of Norman Ackroyd, moody British 1970s aquatint, possibly useful for Innsmouth-type scenes to which you’d add text to make a ‘widescreen’ storybook. Apparently Norman Ackroyd was one of the core artists in the SD 1.5 initial training. His ‘look’ was…
* 1900 style photographs, likely to be useful for RPG pictures and the like.
* There was also a new LORA that attempted to emulate Weird Tales covers, but the samples looked so bad that I’m not linking it.
08 Wednesday May 2024
Posted Lovecraftian arts
in08 Wednesday May 2024
Posted Scholarly works
inSignum University’s New England Moot event, set for 19th October 2024. The Lovecraft-friendly theme is “Wicked Wisdom and Forbidden Knowledge”, though the focus will be tilted toward Tolkien.
You are invited to submit your proposal based on “Wicked Wisdom and Forbidden Knowledge”. Our Call for Proposals will close on 19th September.
07 Tuesday May 2024
Posted Lovecraftian arts
inTheatre Review: Into The Dreamlands. A fine long review, and very encouraging to anyone thinking of visiting the London Lovecraft Festival in 2025.
And what appears to be a new Radio France podcast in French, on “The Mountains of Madness”, with heavyweight guests David Camus and Christophe Thill.
06 Monday May 2024
Posted New books, Scholarly works
inTwo new items listed at the Hippocampus website.
Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue in its expanded 2024 fifth edition. Which will be a treat, if I can get the idiot-bot that semi-organises Amazon to send me the correct newest edition.
I find I only have the second edition from 2002 on my shelves. Which means 148 new additions, for me at least. Due in May 2024.
We also have MORE Lovecraftian People and Places by Ken Faig Jr. Another weighty table-trembling paperback, collecting more articles by the master researcher of Lovecraft’s life and the people around him. Set for June 2024.
05 Sunday May 2024
Posted Kipling
inMore on Kipling’s “A.B.C.” world, from his “With The Night Mail”, which I’ve mused on before at Tentaclii.
Stories in John Brunner’s collection of Kipling’s SF, here listed in the book’s order and linked to the stories at the Kipling Society…
“A Matter of Fact”.
“The Ship That Found Herself”.
“.007”.
“Wireless”.
“With the Night Mail”.
“As Easy as A.B.C.” (partial sequel to “Night Mail”).
“In the Same Boat”.
The SF Encyclopedia also talks of the Kipling collections The Day’s Work and Many Inventions. Going through the Kipling Society summaries I find that the first of these books had two ship / sea stories adjacent to the technical steampunk ‘air power / A.B.C.’ world depicted in the seminal “Night Mail”, “The Devil and the Deep Sea” and “Bread upon the Waters”. In the second there are another two in this vein, “Judson and the Empire” and “The Disturber of Traffic”. Not SF, but they might be tweaked into being A.B.C. tales?
Others with more SF tinges, suggested by the SF Encyclopedia and passing the test of my checking against the Kipling Society summaries, are “The Finest Story in the World” (past lives), “The Army of a Dream” (part one) and “The Army of a Dream” (part two) (imagines a highly militarised society, akin to an Edwardian Starship Troopers), and the late tale from 1930 “Unprofessional” (cyclical cosmic waves affect organisms on earth). Again, all with potential to be tweaked into being A.B.C. tales.