Trends in imaginative genre fiction

05 Saturday Jan 2019

From the ebook coal-face, “Through a Glass Darkly: The Trends of 2018 and 2019” among commercial fantasy and science-fiction writers. Trends that interest me…

* “publishing a million words and more a year … is becoming standard practice [for fiction] … some will publish a fantasy pentalogy on a weekly basis.”

So… presumably they’ve got some kind of flash-card system that runs off a coded script that semi-randomises a canned-plot formula, and then the author does an improvised speech-to-text riff to each flash card?

* indie “audiobooks are now the fastest growing segment of the book market” and moving toward “full cast recording”, music etc.

Great! The gold-standard for that is free, Phil Dragash’s magnificent full-cast unabridged reading of LOTR, with FX and the movie music expertly woven in.

* illustrated episodic “Web novels”.

Cool, I’ve not seen any… but apparently they’re huge in China and I’ll keep a look out for English ones. Although anything episodic (other than podcasts) is a huge turn off these days. Give me a complete finished story.

* apparently there’s a growing “American market for giant robot battlefields and taut political manoeuvrings”.

Good old fashioned knights-in-armour, as mecha-tech, by the sound of it. Not my thing, and del Toro got to the ‘giant mechas vs. Lovecraftian-looking monsters’ thing several years ago, and possibly there’s something similar going on in current Mythos fiction that I don’t know about. But… interesting for being yet another way to twist the stock medieval warfare adventure into a future-tech setting. Presumably there must be public domain novels from the 1920s, where the plots and descriptions can be re-purposed to become that type of science-fiction?

New for my patrons

05 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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Now available to my Patreon patrons, a picture of Marblehead at sunset, in my cleaned and adjusted b&w version. It should be printable at large size, such as a 12-inch wide print. The technical details are: 3,700 pixels at 300dpi, as a .JPG, saved at 100% with no compression.

Lovecraft was of course greatly enamoured of Marblehead at sunset, and while there are some postcards this is perhaps the best artistic picture of such and dates from Lovecraft’s time. The seagulls even resemble night-gaunts! Patrons also get the colour original public domain version (partially cleaned by me), which they can tweak and sharpen to their own tastes. Artists may even want to have a go at replacing the sail boat with a newly-risen Tentacled One. There’s a white dot in the sky on the left which I’ve left uncleaned, as I think it’s a star emerging from the sky.

New book: L’antre de l’horreur

05 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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I see that Richard Corben’s recent Poe and Lovecraft horror adaptations are set to be collected in French translation as L’antre de l’horreur, with a “large format” print book due for publication by Panini on 9th January 2019. According to one blurb this edition…

Contains the U.S. comics Haunt of Horror: Edgar Allan Poe #1-3 and Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft #1-3, previously published in a Marvel collection [Haunt of Horror, 2008] and three unreleased comics.

An Amazon review usefully explains that his Lovecraft strips were only very loose and basic adaptations…

Contains a [comics] story loosely ‘inspired by’ Poe or Lovecraft in the comic medium followed by the original text [of Poe or Lovecraft].

Useful to know, as it’s the Lovecraft art that many will probably be buying this for rather than for the potted stories, which they’ll already know well. In that case you might be looking at the 112 pages stated for the 2008 book by Amazon, and expecting to get 112 pages of Corben art. But it sounds like you might get a lot less art.

I see that Amazon currently has Marvel’s collected Lovecraft English-language volume of 2008 as a $10 used print hardcover, or individually as $2 Kindle ebook downloads: #1, #2 and #3.

Friday ‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Departures and Arrivals

04 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, Picture postals

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The interior concourse or ‘Promenade’ of the main train station in Providence.

This opened when Lovecraft was about age 8, in 1898. Then the station was expanded for platform-length in 1910. Since Lovecraft preferred to travel to places such as Boston and New York by rail, rather than the ocean-going steam ships, the station concourse and platforms were a familiar place to him. He would also have met friends there, when they arrived.

So far as I know he never took a steam-ship to New York from Providence, at least not as an adult. But he did go down to the ocean-going ship jetties at Fox Point (at the foot of the East Side) to ‘see off’ visiting friends such as Morton who were going home to New York by ship. Presumably he also went there to meet occasional arrivals from New York and other points, such as when Samuel Loveman travelled to Providence by sea in the mid 1930s. There was apparently also a service from Fox Point to Great Britain, so the Anglophile Lovecraft may have wistfully perused the timetables board for British departures while there…

He was not averse to smaller-scale sea-travel when the rates were low…

I myself have taken advantage of phenomenally cheap boat rates (50¢ round trip) & have visited ancient Newport repeatedly this summer…

This was presumably the Providence to Newport boat trip which Long mentions in his memoir of Lovecraft. It was taken, at least once, along with Long and Morton.

Since he was not averse to sea travel, I assume that it was the cost of a regular passenger fare ticket from Providence to New York which deterred him. This is rather suggested by a letter of 1922 in which he whimsically considers stowing away on the New York boat, presumably due to being unable to afford the fare, in order to be with Samuel Loveman…

… a possible Lovemanic [Loveman] move to N.Y. [New York] … then Grandpa’d get there if he had to be a stowaway on the New-York Boat!

Here we see the circa 1919 prices…

Update: Fox Point is not to be confused with the central dockside in Providence, from which smaller ships departed. Here is the north end of the city’s central docks circa the end of the 1900s.

Clifford Ball

04 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings, REH

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Having yesterday found “The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich” as an early example of an early strongly Lovecraft-influenced tale of substantial length, today I also found something similar for R.E. Howard.

The first writer to closely follow Robert E. Howard into sword and sorcery was apparently one Clifford Ball. Having been an avid young reader of Weird Tales magazine since 1925 he produced six stories for Weird Tales from 1937-1941. Wikipedia has it that…

The setting of the first three is vaguely like Howard’s Hyborian Age of warring kingdoms, and features the barbarian adventurers Duar, an amnesiac king protected by a guardian sprite, and Rald the thief and mercenary.

Interesting, but is he worth a look today? Well, he was good enough to be published in Weird Tales in the 1930s… and I see from Archive.org search snippets that the sentiment from readers of Weird Tales was that he was a “neat craftsman” for “Duar” and that “Thief” was “the best story” of the issue.

All three Howard-alike stories are available to read as scans on Archive.org. In order of publication:

“Duar the Accursed”.

“The Thief of Forthe”.

“The Goddess Awakes”.

I can’t immediately find anyone stating that he added much to the roots of sword and sorcery other than the hero’s “guardian sprite”, and his other later stories are said to be fairly conventional fantasies. But he obviously did his bit to help preserve for a few more years the sword and sorcery approach Howard had developed with Conan, and showed other writers that there was demand and payment for it. He dropped from sight circa 1938.

‘We’re gonna need a bigger letter-box!’

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books

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S.T. Joshi has a new blog post that announces he has finished work on…

“His Own Most Fantastic Creation, an original anthology of stories using Lovecraft (or a Lovecraft-like figure) as a fictional character.”

And the post has the contents list for this. It’s PS Publishing, so I expect it will probably be an expensive paper edition to start with. It’s set for “later this year” according to Joshi.

Hippocampus books of Lovecraft letters, said to be expected for early in 2019, are also noted by Joshi…

“the compilation of the letters between Smith and August Derleth; Lovecraft’s Letters to Family and Family Friends (a 1200-page book!); Letters to Wilfred B. Talman and Helen V. Sully; Letters to Donald Wandrei and Others”

Lecture series in Paris

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

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January is Lovecraft public-lecture series month on the banks of the Seine.

On Abe this week

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

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New on AbeBooks this week…

* The Vagrant Nov 1919. With the first appearance of “Dagon” by H.P. Lovecraft.

* Selected Letters: Volumes I-V 1911-1937 as a set, in Fine with Near Fine dust-jackets. From Dark Hollow Books.

The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New books

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New to me, The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich by Fritz Leiber. It’s of interest for being an early strongly Lovecraft-influenced tale of substantial length, and for being left out of the book Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark. Apparently the setting is the California of the small desert towns. It was drafted by a young raw Fritz Leiber in 1936, under the influence of Lovecraft.

There’s no mention of it in Joshi’s survey book Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos, and Joshi remarks elsewhere that it “it is not to be considered a ‘Lovecraftian’ story” even though it does include Lovecraft’s “style and trademark concepts” — which makes it sound even more interesting than a simple Mythos monster romper-stomper. Early attempts by major writers at Lovecraft’s style and themes are always of interest here at Tentaclii and I’m pleased to find a substantial non-Derleth one that I was previously unaware of. There’s more… the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature also terms it “a Wellsian romance”, and Supernatural Fiction Writers calls it “clearly influenced by H. G. Wells” — which again appeals due to my interest in Wells’s The Time Machine. Definitely one for my reading pile, and it’s short enough to pick up when in the mood and to get through fairly quickly.

Presumably Lovecraft was sent a carbon of the draft of Dealings of Daniel Kesserich? Joshi writes of… “Fritz Leiber, who had shown some of his first attempts at sword-and-sorcery to his correspondent H. P. Lovecraft” so it might be fairly safe to assume he could have also sent the draft of “Daniel Kesserich”.

Later the tale was revised and pitched at the pulp magazine Unknown Worlds. Presumably it was then rejected or held, or sent back for revision, since it was filed and lost for around 50 years.

There’s no audiobook or ebook. A free “to borrow” copy is available on Archive.org, and I see that the slim hardback edition is currently available at a fairly modest price on Amazon.

D’Arkham a Malpertuis: Jean Ray & Lovecraft

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books

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I’m still picking up on news of items I missed during the summer 2015 – summer 2018 hiatus. One such is a 2016 paperback, D’Arkham a Malpertuis: Jean Ray & Lovecraft, Patrice Allart makes the case that Lovecraft’s influence can be found throughout the works of the Belgian writer Jean Ray. The author also surveys other writers of France and Belgium who were also subject to influence from Lovecraft. I’m uncertain if this includes the wealth of comics writers and artists to be found in France and Belgium, but Ray was also a comics writer (a far more culturally-valued role in France and Belgium, note) and the book’s blurb suggests the survey is very comprehensive…

“No one can doubt it now: the Great Old Ones haunt the writings of the author of Malpertuis. And that’s not all: Patrice Allart takes the opportunity to draw up a list of the French-speaking heirs of the two Masters of Fantasy. Some names are sure to surprise. The extensive bibliographies that complete this essay will be the source of many discoveries, even for the experienced reader.”

That latter part might be something that a Francophile Lovecraftian could consider using to write a comprehensive survey of the pre-1985 material in French, perhaps for The Lovecraft Annual?

Who was Jean Ray? I can’t say he’s a name on the tip of my tongue, and it appears he’s a writer who is little known in the Anglosphere. The basics are…

Jean Ray (1887-1964), pseudonym of Jean Raymond Marie De Kremer, Belgian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Known for his prolific output of pre-war crime fiction, and his later more considered narratives of horror and the fantastic in both French and Flemish. He also published comics under the pseudonym John Flanders. His Malpertuis (1943) was filmed with Orson Welles in the leading role.

Cool French Comics called him… “The most famous author of Belgian fantastique”. Other informed comment suggests he occupies “a literary meeting ground between H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Dickens” and was “a cross between Lovecraft and Seabury Quinn, with a touch of Robert Bloch”. He’s still highly regarded in France, if this 2017 issue of Bifrost is anything to go by…

Also, alongside Jean Ray & Lovecraft in the same book series, ‘La Bibliotheque d’Abdul Alhazred’ [The Library of Alhazred], I note L’enigme du livre qui rend fou: Histoire d’Abdul al-Hazred & du Necronomicon [The enigma of the forbidden book of madness: the story of Abdul al-Hazred and The Necronomicon].