Monthly Archives: September 2012

Tremulus

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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I don’t normally cover table-top RPGs here. But something interesting has been funded with $25k on Kickstarter: Tremulus…

“Tremulus is a storytelling RPG where you and your friends get together and create a haunting story in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft’s works.”

Ok, so it’s about real storytelling. I’m liking it.

“easy to learn” … “there is nothing to memorize” … “the story isn’t written beforehand” … “You only need a pair of regular old six-sided dice, like you find in most family board games”.

I’m definitely liking it. Sounds like my kind of game. Although I’ve never seen the attraction of table-top RPGs, when there are videogames like Morrowind to be played. But if it’s as easy as the makers claim then Tremulus might even have potential for jump-starting stalled writers, by giving them some parts of a basic plot structure. Since it’s claimed that Tremulus…

“plays exceedingly well, with just one player. This complements weird literature perfectly, as there is often only a central, solitary protagonist.”

And since they now have $25k to play with, there’s a chance it could be a fairly sophisticated and Lovecraft-faithful project. Here’s hoping.

Slime Dynamics

06 Thursday Sep 2012

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Ben Woodard’s Slime Dynamics is now listed as shipping in print format, from Amazon USA (although not yet the UK)…

“Arguing that slime is a viable physical and metaphysical object necessary to produce a realist bio-philosophy void of anthrocentricity, this text explores naturephilosophie, speculative realism, and contemporary science; hyperbolic representations of slime found in the weird texts of HP Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti; as well as survival horror films, videogames, and graphic novels, in order to present the dynamics of slime not only as the trace of life but as the darkly vitalistic substance of life.”

Preternature

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Added to the “Lovecraft on the Web” directory:

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies in the Preternatural, an academic journal from Penn State University Press…

“a rigorously peer-reviewed interdisciplinary forum for original research that touches on the appearance of magic, prophecy, demonology, monstrophy, the occult, and related topics that stand in the liminal space between the natural world and the preternatural.”

The first issue has been published, and the Fall 2012 issue is apparently set to be themed: “Anomalous Ethnographies: Wild Wonders, Diminutive People and Reticent Races”.

Preternature replaces the old Journal for the Academic Study of Magic (2003-2009).

Pulp!

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Added to the magazines section of the “Lovecraft on the Web” directory:

Twit Publishing’s Pulp! magazine. The editor harks back to the days when kids chugged hardboiled detective mysteries, westerns, horror, action/adventure, proto-superheroes, science fiction, and weird fantasy — completing the homage with terrible cover artwork.

Sadly, it’s a USA-only project and so they reject submissions by British writers. Twits.

Extra-dimensional summonings

03 Monday Sep 2012

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Some final extra-dimensional summonings for the Open Lovecraft page…

* Luciana Martinez (2009), “En busca del lenguaje del horror: H.P. Lovecraft segun Alberto Breccia”, Extravio: revista electronica de literatura comparada, 4, 2009. (In Spanish, English abstract: “analyzes Alberto Breccia’s transpositions of the H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos in the 1970s”).

* Keira McKenzie (2009), “Triggering Time’s Trapdoor”, online at inter-disciplinary.net. (On the nature of Lovecraft’s monsters).

* Ben Woodard (2011), “A Nature to Pulp the Stoutest Philosopher: towards a Lovecraftian philosophy of nature”, Incognitum Hactenus: art, philosophy, horror, Vol.1, No.1, 2011.

On Lovecraft’s shadow

02 Sunday Sep 2012

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Jeff VanderMeer has a lengthy new post arguing against the shadow that Lovecraft’s towering presence casts across contemporary weird fiction. There are a few good points made, especially on how interest in Lovecraft can help rekindle interest in neglected weird writers.

But it seems to me that VanderMeer’s article is a little stuck in the ‘scarcity mindset’ of the old print culture, and also the 20th century vanguardist idea of ‘forward progress’ in taste and techniques. In the age of the abundant Web, the Kindle/POD ecosystem, and our new hybridizing remix cultures, I’d say there’s ample space to develop audiences and vehicles for all sorts of varieties of ‘the weird’ in fiction — and beyond. If one’s favorite magazine no longer appears to cater for one’s precise political or aesthetic tastes, then start another that does.

Personally I’m looking forward to the liberation of short stories from their old prisons in magazines and forest-devouring mega-anthologies, via an Instapaper or Spotify -like re-bundling and delivery service. Perhaps that will come via a service that offers a free quality ‘audio book reading’ to authors and rights holders, on condition that the resulting audio story is distributed via the new service.

Three more for Open Lovecraft

02 Sunday Sep 2012

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Three more for the Open Lovecraft listings page…

* Jose Carlos Gil (2010), “Poe and Lovecraft: interior and cosmic terror”, Revista Anglo-Saxonica, Vol.3, No.1, 2010. (Portugese journal, but article is in English. This is a special Poe issue of Revista Anglo-Saxonica.)

* Roberto Garcia Alvarez (2010), “La masoneria en la obra de H.P. Lovecraft”, Masoneria y Literatura, Vol.1, No.4, July 2010. (On freemasonry in the work of H.P. Lovecraft. In Spanish).

* Jose Carlos Gil (2009), “H.P. Lovecraft: im icone da cultura ocidental contemporanea”, BANG! revista de literatura e fantasyico, No.6. February 2009. (In Portugese, explores the importance of Lovecraft for western culture, and specifically for Portugese culture. Continues in BANG! 7 and BANG! 9).

Even more Open Lovecraft

01 Saturday Sep 2012

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Additions to the Open Lovecraft page…

* Thomas B. Whitbread (2005), “Samuel Loveman: poet of Eros and Thanatos”, The Fossil, Vol.101, No.4, July 2005.

* Kwzia L’Engle de Figueiredo Heye (2003), “Weird fiction and the unholy glee of H.P. Lovecraft”. (Masters disseration for the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, online from July 2012. In English. Asks if the concept of weird fiction can be classified simply as a sub-genre of horror, or if it constitutes a genre of its own).

* Bobbi Sinha-Morey (2007), “Fungi: the Poetry of H.P. Lovecraft”, Calenture, Vol.2, No.2, January 2007. (The H.P. Lovecraft special issue).

* Phillip A. Ellis (2007), “The Construction of Race in the Early Poetry of H.P. Lovecraft”, Calenture, Vol.2, No.2, January 2007. (The H.P. Lovecraft special issue).

* Anon. (2008), “The Fungi from Yuggoth: a Concordance”, Calenture, Vol.3, No.3, May 2008.

* Frank Coffmann (2006), “H.P. Lovecraft and the Fungi from Yuggoth Sonnets (part one)”, Calenture, Vol.2, No.1, September 2006.

* Pino Lasone (2007), “Asenath and Leucothea: female figures from the sea of literary fiction”, Calenture, Vol.2, No.3, May 2007.

* Af Simon Hesselager Johansen (2011), “Tilstedevaeren ved Vanviddets Bjerge: Martin Heidegger, H.P. Lovecraft og mellemkrigstidens elitære konservatisme”, Tanken: studieblad for filosfi, No.4, 2011 (Short article in Danish, title translates as something like “On the Folly of Climbing Mountains: Martin Heidegger, H.P. Lovecraft and interwar elitist conservatism).

* James L. Aevermann (2009), “The Destruction of the Hero: an examination of the hero’s purpose in Lovecraft’s works”, IN: Huppert (Ed.), Where Fear Lurks: Perspectives on Fear, Horror and Terror, Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009.