Ask Lovecraft on top form, on the topics of Writing Letters and Modern Readers.
Ask Lovecraft
13 Sunday Oct 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc., Unnamable
Monthly Archives: October 2019
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13 Sunday Oct 2019
Posted in Censorship, Odd scratchings
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Foundation Trilogy as a TV series
12 Saturday Oct 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings, Podcasts etc.
I’m glad to hear that Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy is finally being filmed as ten-episode series. Although sadly it’s not being made for the cinema by the Independence Day director, as was mooted about a decade ago. It’s being made for TV in Ireland by Skydance for Apple Studios, by the director of the recent Ghost In The Shell. Filming reportedly starts next month, for a wrap-up in June 2020 and a screening in perhaps Fall 2020 or early in 2021.
I assume it’s the original trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation). Not the non-Asimov prequels now also available, or Asimov’s own sequel novels.
If you can’t wait, there’s a pre-PC 1973 Foundation Trilogy radio adaptation by BBC Radio on Archive.org, which runs eight hours. Sound design by the famous Radiophonic Workshop. There’s also another copy here.
The freeware AIMP Player and its “Headphones” preset is what you want to listen to this. Presumably it emulates more closely radio speakers, as in the original audio broadcast, dampening the sharp electronic music enough to make it listenable.
Savage Sword of Conan – properly reprinted
12 Saturday Oct 2019
I’m pleased to see that Marvel are producing beautiful crisp reprint print-books of their black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan magazines and its precursors. The first 1000-page volume is out now, with Vol. 2 due in mid November, and Vol. 3 in January 2020. According to the reviews Marvel have done an excellent job here, apparently marred only by some copyright trolls who are preventing the reprinting of stories featuring certain of R.E. Howard’s supporting characters. Vol. 3 has a bit of a naff front cover, which I’m thinking may be a ‘holding cover’.
These are the old magazines with black-and-white art by the likes of John Buscema, Gil Kane and Barry Windsor-Smith. The art hasn’t been given the usual gaudy re-colour, thankfully, though possibly the paper may feel a bit too bright n’ white. Scripts by Roy Thomas match the quality of the art, and being magazines aimed at an older market in the 1970s and 80s they were not subject to Comics Code censorship. Which means art that can get a lot closer to the Lovecraft-influenced bits that Howard employed in his Conan stories.
The PorPor Books Blog has pictures of interior pages in his review.
The reviews also usefully point out the poor quality of the previous attempt to reprint Savage Sword as collected volumes, and the superiority of the new Marvel books.
While one could tweak up a good .CBZ reader app’s contrast and saturation settings, on scans of old yellowed originals, these new 1000-page slabs seem the ideal — if rather costly — way to view the art in the crispest manner possible. Just make sure to also order a pair of the Conan™ Steel Wrist-bands, so you can heft and hold these slabs.
Friday ‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: the park bandstand
11 Friday Oct 2019
Posted in Night in Providence, Picture postals
Lovecraft once recalled his youth thus… “I had just as good a time as I ever used to have in youth listening to the concerts of Reeves’ American Band at Roger Williams Park with my grandfather. Old days …. old days……”
“Reeves’ American Band from Providence”, 1902.
Lovecraft was still occasionally attending similar concerts in the early 1930s…
“The amiable if not excessively profound Thomas S. Evans [Lovecraft’s Providence acquaintance, 145 Medway St.] – he of the dramatick & playwriting predilections – called me up & urged me to accompany him to a concert of the newly organised Providence Concert Band in historick Infantry Hall (now re-modedelled on the interior, tho’ still possesst of that nauseous Victorian belfry), & having no striking objection, I acquiesced. Not a bad series of sound-wave patterns – I rather like a good brass band, anyway, since I have not the musical taste to appreciate the Galpinian subtleties of highbrow orchestral symphonies.” — Lovecraft in a letter to Moe, March 1931.
The stand seen from across the lake at night…
Later Reeves fell apart due to personality clashes and was replaced by the Banda Napoli for a few years, and then more permanently by Fairman’s Band.
“… he thereafter heard sounds as of a mighty cataclysm, although the city around him was quiescent”
10 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
Call for Applicants: Funded PhD in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University. To… “produce, analyze, and perform original works that may include the use of electronic music, acoustic composition and sound in combination with video, performance, installation and text. … full funding for 5 years … There will be two Open House events for prospective students this year, one on 18th October 18th and one on 22nd November”.
Lovecraftian Proceedings in Kindle ebook
10 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
I see that the third issue of Lovecraftian Proceedings slipped out as an ebook when I was out in the sunshine, at the start of August 2019. The Proceedings contains the papers presented at the symposium element of NecronomiCon. Issue No. 3 contains the 2017 papers plus abstracts.
I’m pleased to learn they’re all now available to a UK buyer, for just £1 each in Kindle ebook.
“Herbert West” as a BD
09 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
A French BD* adaptation of Lovecraft’s Home Brew shocker “Herbert West” by David Peeters. The book appears to have been released spring 2019 after a successful Kickstarter, and is now listed as sold out. Here’s a look at the black-and-white edition.
* BD = French shorthand term for a long comic-book, usually with a complete story, in their A4 ‘album’ format of at least 64 pages (sometimes 72 inc. cover).
Kittee Tuesday: The Office Cat at the Brown Daily Herald
08 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
The Office Cat at the Brown Daily Herald, the student newspaper of Brown University, Providence. Daily since 1891.
Such newspaper and office cats not only protected the back-files and picture-libraries from destructive mice, but also had other uses… “The office of the famous New York Sun (a great newspaper, now defunct) always had a complement of working cats … ‘the office cat’ made readers laugh when it was blamed for mistakes in the paper.” Also, if the editors did not wish to report a tendentious item or vapid bit of puffery, then “the office cat ate it”.
Thus when Lovecraft ‘borrowed’ cats for his study, he was adding an element that would be common to the editorial experience of the time.
Diseases of the Head
07 Monday Oct 2019
Posted in New books
Advance notice of a volume coming in “Winter 2020”, containing essays on “the intersection of speculative philosophy and speculative horror” drawn from the Harman-ised wing of contemporary philosophy.
Diseases of the Head is set to include:
* David Peak / “Horror of the Real: H.P. Lovecraft’s Old Ones and Contemporary Speculative Philosophy”.
* Chloe Germaine Buckley / “Encountering Weird Objects: Lovecraft, LARP, and Speculative Philosophy”.
* Eric Wilson / “When the Monstrous Object Becomes a Tremendous Non-Event: Rudolf Otto’s Monster-Gods, H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, and Graham Harman’s Theory of Everything”.
The Dunwich Orchestra
07 Monday Oct 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
In Germany…
Comic strip artist and illustrator Andreas Hartung from Berlin and The Dunwich Orchestra are adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s classic weird-fiction story “The Color from Space” as a dark, episodic multimedia picture show with an atmospheric live soundtrack and a matching stage show.
The “Lovecraft as a multimedia picture show” article runs through Google Translate fine, and the foot of the article has links to two YouTube videos of part of the show.
Spreading the word to mystery buffs, 1966
06 Sunday Oct 2019
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts
It wasn’t just wall-to-wall hippies, back in 1966. Here we see evidence for the spreading of the word about Lovecraft to mystery buffs, via the Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine (March 1966). One assumes that “The Festival” was provided for free by Derleth, in exchange for the intro blurb which strongly puffs the three Arkham House volumes of Lovecraft.
