HPLinks #98.
* For Lovecraft’s birthday, an audio reading of his “A Descent to Avernus” (1928).
* Released to YouTube especially for Lovecraft’s birthday, the handmade puppet film Night-gaunts (2023), and there’s also The Outsider (2024) from the same puppeteer.
* Edward Carmien reports from NeconomiCon 2026, in a series of posts. I Am a Man of Providence, 404: Lovecraft Not Found, A Day in Pictures, and a Post-NecronomiCon goodies round-up.
* The House of Shadows & Ink podcast interviews the Vendor Room Organizer at NeconomiCon 2026.
* A YouTube recording from this year’s Armitage Symposium at NecronomiCon, a paper on “Gothic Echoes: Lovecraft’s ‘Rats in the Walls’ and Walpole”.
* The latest 30+ Minutes with H.P. Lovecraft podcast considers Lovecraft’s letters, in the new episode “Letters from the Editor”.
* For Lovecraft’s birthday, philosopher Nick Nielsen considers “Lovecraft and the Epistemology of Cosmic Horror”.
* Grognardia has the birthday post “Reconsiderations: H.P. Lovecraft”.
* The Journal of Southern History reviews the 2025 Robert E. Howard biography from the University of North Texas Press. Mostly free.
* SpragueDeCampFan reviews the book Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age.
* A forthcoming book, The Strange World of H.P. Lovecraft: A Guide to the Characters and Creations of the Cthulhu Mythos which is …”due out in the UK on September the 1st” according to the author.
* New and free at Archive.org, the Peter Harrington well-illustrated auction catalogue for Quo Vadis? Visions of the Future.
* To Live and Let Die gives details about a forthcoming novel which will recount the full events behind Lovecraft’s Dexter Ward. All the events and meetings and trips that are only alluded to or mentioned in passing, apparently.
* A current Humble Bundle (i.e. digital goodies sold for charity) for Lovecraft videogames. 20 days left.
* Will Vigar considers pop culture and Lovecraft at length, in “Lovecraft Out of Context”, with his coda “Lovecraft Out of Mind”.
By turning Cthulhu into a plush toy, an encyclopaedic wiki database, or a videogame boss with a quantifiable health bar, contemporary culture is merely repeating the exact failure of Lovecraft’s academic protagonists.
* The Providence city council reportedly has plans to host Providence’s first official literary festival… “in late January 2027. Planning is still underway and details will be revealed soon”. Possibly an opportunity to talk about the siting of the Lovecraft statue? A plinth on the Twin Islands would be my suggestion, which would somewhat protect it from leftist vandalism.
* And finally, Locus magazine reports a break-in at L.W. Currey, during which a book thief stole first-editions of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and “The Shunned House”, along with much else. The thief was apparently… “6’4″ tall, dressed in black and wearing pointed-toe dress shoes”. No night-black cape, which seems rather an oversight.
— End-quotes —
“… if any thief touches this outfit; why, by _____, I’ll smash his ______ for him with one fist whilst I pulverise his _____ _____ with the other, meanwhile kicking him posteriorly with both feet in their most pointed shoes and manner!” — Lovecraft to Morton, March 1926. [While living in Red Hook, Lovecraft has three suits, his overcoat, and Loveman’s radio set stolen one night by juvenile delinquents. Here he tells Morton that he has a new replacement outfit. In another letter, he comically remarked on his loss by drawing a cartoon of himself trudging the streets in a yeti-like costume composed only of his own hair.]
“… those night-daemons or personifications of darkness which appear in all Aryan mythologies as thieves or mischief-working entities more or less inimical to man. The element of thievery or mischief-making symbolises the theft of daylight by darkness.” — Lovecraft, “Some Backgrounds of Fairyland”.
[Lovecraft ligs his way into a party at the most fabulous private New Orleans mansion]. “I spend all my time in the Vieux Carre, & am constantly uncovering new street vistas, perspectives of massed chimneys, gables, & balconies, & garden-garnished inner courtyards. [… One very famous mansion is…] zealously guarded from vulgar sight by the proprietor. I hung around this place like a thief planning a large-scale cleanup, but was finally rewarded when a large party — evidently friends of the inhabitants — called & strolled about the patio & arcade with the gate open! [Lovecraft slips in on the tail, as if one of the party] — Lovecraft to Derleth, June 1932.
“I saw that Wollheim article dealing with Hugo the Rat [i.e. Gernsback] — through the kindness of a bright young member of the Science fiction League, Kenneth Sterling, who has recently moved to Providence. It was nothing new to me — for more than one friend of mine has been robbed by that thieving son-of-a-beachcomber.” — Lovecraft to William Frederick Anger, April 1935. Gernsback was notorious for not paying his pulp magazine writers. Wollheim had published an expose of his methods.