03 Sunday Aug 2014
Posted in Unnamable
Send ur kitteh to th Moon. But haz to be dead furst…
“…cryptical realms which are known only to cats and which villagers say are on the moon’s dark side, whither the cats leap from tall housetops” (Lovecraft, “Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath”)
03 Sunday Aug 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
“Surrealism and Magic” is a new exhibition at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University (100 miles NW of New York City, ‘as the crow flies’). The show opens August 30th, and runs until 21st December 2014.
explores the surrealists’ interest in magic, the occult, and indigenous spirituality … Inspired by the magic-themed library of Kurt Seligmann (1900–1962), acquired by Cornell upon his death … A range of paintings and works on paper by Seligmann and his fellow surrealists will be presented, along with rare books from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, correspondence, ephemera, music, and film.
Kurt Seligmann, “Carnival” (1950).
01 Friday Aug 2014
Posted in Historical context, REH
On the Two-Gun Raconteur blog today Keith Taylor surveys some scientific history to try to illuminate why Lovecraft and R.E. Howard might have been spurred to discuss the idea that ‘a white race or tribe had once lived in Africa’. This was a commonly accepted theory by the mid 1920s, apparently bolstered by archaeological and survey evidence and then given an added dimension by sparse Boskop archaeological skull finds from 1913 onwards — the latter being the focus of Taylor’s blog musings.
One can see this then-common idea in action in a Lovecraft letter, written after hearing a vivid and extensive first-hand account of visiting the Zimbabwe ruins in Africa. Lovecraft had had this account directly from his friend Edward Lloyd Sechrist …
This essay has been replaced by the essay in my new book of revised, expanded, and footnoted versions of my recent Tentaclii essays, Lovecraft in Historical Context: fifth collection.
01 Friday Aug 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
The second issue of the open access journal Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction is now online. Includes “Good Practices for Archivists Working with Fan Materials and Communities”.
