My unofficial round-up of NecronomiCon Providence 2013 news and links…
* Important PDF downloads now available from the official NecronomiCon Providence website. The official maps, and the final at-a-glance schedule.
* I guess most attendees have harnessed the night-gaunts, and are in flight now. Follow the Blue Moon, guys! According to Space.com the night of August 20th is not only a full moon in Providence — but also officially a Blue Moon. This “once in a blue moon” moon will be in its prime fullness in the USA in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Should also look nearly-full over the weekend, for added spectral ambiance.
* NecronomiCon 2013 story in The Japan Times, but it’s merely publishing the Associated Press story.
* To be seen on Google Street View, just a few steps across the small Park that’s opposite the Biltmore Hotel, is the main entrance of the old Union Station. Once almost burned down, Union Station is now the smart HQ of the Rhode Island Foundation and apparently also houses the city’s public radio station. But in Lovecraft’s time it was… “the main terminal of the Providence train station, a role it fulfilled for 88 years, from 1898 to 1986″…
So this site was where Lovecraft fatefully mislaid the story “Under the Pyramids” when setting off for his honeymoon: “MANUSCRIPT — Lost, title of story, ‘Under the Pyramids,’ Sunday afternoon, in or about Union Station. Finder please send to H.P. Lovecraft …”. It was also the site of his triumphant return home from the Pest Zone in 1926: “HOME—UNION STATION—PROVIDENCE!” (Selected Letters II: pp.46-47). In Lovecraft’s time it had a covered extension (seen in the photograph above).
* Providence Journal architecture critic David Brussat writes that he has a forthcoming…
“column on Thursday, which deals with the intersection of Lovecraft and Providence”
* Photo from the street window of the Providence Art Club, by early-bird attendee Philip Eil…
Union Station was a magnificent train station and I mourn it’s loss as such to this day. When I first visited Providence in 1982, my train pulled into the same station that Lovecraft had used and I stood in the same building he’d known. It was impossible not to feel the same rush of excitement that HPL felt when he returned to Providence in 1926. In fact, at that time, it was possible to follow his directions in that famous letter as the train drew closer and closer to Providence. A rebuilt version stands there today but it will never be the same.