Monthly Archives: January 2020

1937

31 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Lovecraft as character

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Dark World Quarterly’s new post “Mark of the Monster: Jack Williamson’s Lovecraftian Lapse” takes a look at the May 1937 Weird Tales cover-story tale “The Mark of the Monster”. Reading it, one glimpses the possibility that editor Farnsworth Wright hoped he had found a somewhat more downmarket and pliable ‘Lovecraft Mk. II’.

But a few issues later the published letters from readers called the cover-story a stolidly written formula shocker, found its clunky ending unworthy of Weird Tales, and observed that the story was… “a blurred carbon copy of late HPL’s classic The Dunwich Horror”. The experiment doesn’t appear to have been repeated.

A few months later one can find Wright trying a different angle on Lovecraft. Tucked away in the back of the August 1937 issue of Weird Tales Wright ran the short and more amusing “The Terrible Parchment” by Manly Wade Wellman. This is not a ‘Lovecraft as character’ tale, though he’s certainly strongly there in the background and is named several times, and there’s a footnote indicating this is a Lovecraft-tribute story. Yet it does feature one of his key creations, The Necronomicon. As such, it would probably merit at least a footnote in a hypothetical “Lovecraft as Character” encyclopaedia.

I suspect there may be more ‘tributes’ and tangential nods like this to be found, before the war broke out and Derleth and his lawyers began firing off warning letters. It might be useful for a future Lovecraft Annual to have a complete survey and chronology of such creative reactions to Lovecraft’s death, April 1937 – summer 1939? I don’t have the collectable source material to be able to do that, but those with a large collection might consider such a thing.

January on Tentaclii

30 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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‘Tis the bleak midwinter, and the timbers of Tentaclii Towers drip and shiver in the icy blasts. The mournful wailing of anti-Brexiteers is sometimes heard, far out across the Stoke-on-Trent wastelands as they trudge toward sanctuary in Scotland. But the Towers’ robust truffle-pig herd has been out-and-about… and thus daily posting has resumed here. In January 2020 the blog offered readers a wide range of freshly-snuffled posts, though my in-depth research and reviewing is in abeyance until the early summer. The range of January posts was wide, and as such there’s little coherence for me to pick out here in the usual sort of summary survey.

My thanks again to my Patreon patrons. The monthly total remains stuck at $53 a month, but at least it hasn’t dropped further. This month my patrons have helped fund a purchase of the Lovecraft Annual for 2018 and 2019, bagged at a bargain £15 for both inc. shipping. Half-price, basically. Please encourage others to become my Patreon patrons, if you know of likely Lovecraftians. All it takes is as little as $1 a month.

My patrons have also helped contribute to the cost of my new workstation. This is a decade-old refurbished HP Z600 with 24Gb of RAM and dual Xeon 5670 processors. Originally around the $10,000 mark for a third-generation Z600 circa 2011, they can now be had for £245 including efficient delivery and a cross-over networking cable. They combine a tank-like build-quality with slimline design values (tool-less case and layout, designed by BMW) and should have a decade of life left in them yet. With the original Windows OS and its HP drivers correctly installed the machine is still a beast for those who have specific needs on a very tight budget. Such as a second offline PC as a cheap ‘render farm’ for 3D rendering from Vue 2016, Poser’s Firefly and DAZ’s iRay (contrary to popular belief, iRay can run fine on CPUs). My tests show its 12 cores and 24 render-threads tearing through Vue scenes like it was made for the software, and it does very nicely on iRay too. The Z600 is also still good for junior video-editors in need of a ‘pocket money’ starter rig; and for videogamers on a tight budget who also have a free hand-me-down graphics card for it.

I’m in the Vue/Poser creative camp, and as for videogames I’ll give theHunter and perhaps Morroblivion a try and see how visually buffed and fast they can get. [Update: they chug, because the Z600’s specialist CAD-friendly Quadro graphics-card is both old and not geared for games]. The Z600 purchase was partly enabled by a small bonus from my magazine work, and a surprise $25 from my Lovecraft ‘travel poster’ sales over at RedBubble. After producing a puny total of about $4 in income over the last year, such sales suddenly came to life again. I imagine that someone somewhere was opening a Lovecraft-themed bar for Christmas, and wanted a set of non-gory art posters on the walls. Anyway, there will be a full guide to the Z600 for Vue / Poser / DAZ iRay in the March 2020 Digital Art Live magazine, if you’re interested in such things.

So that’s about it for January 2020 at Tentaclii Towers, apart from my commanding the truffle-pig herd to deck the halls to celebrate our glorious Brexit on the 31st. Hopefully I’ll still be here in February, and won’t have been carried off by either mutinous anti-Brexiteers or the looming plague.

Weird vectors

30 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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Spotted on Archive.org…

They made ploughs in Batavia, New York.

And after a basic fix with Photoshop and some tickling with the desktop version of Vector Magic…

This is at 3k. Feel free to further fix and add to it. It probably can’t be used commercially as it’s a ’20s or ’30s logo on a 1942 catalogue cover. But you could still use it on a local event poster etc. A “weird poetry” performance night, perhaps?

History Notes: Lovecraft in western Johnston

29 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Historical context

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The Johnston Sunrise local newspaper has a strong new “History Notes” article by Mike Carroll, “H.P. Lovecraft – Footsteps in Johnston”. Good local knowledge and extended use of the letters, re: Lovecraft’s visits to “Thornton and Neutaconkanut Hill”, aka “western Johnston”.

The article should be accessible outside the USA (many U.S. local newspapers block all visits from outsiders), but if not then the article is also saved to Archive.org.

In the fall of 1921 he and his aunt Annie headed west from College Hill toward “that remarkable eminence known as Neutaconhaut Hill” (the spelling is H.P.’s). From there he … took note of an observatory built in the Gothic manner that crowned the hill but was in a state of disrepair. This would have been the King Observation Tower built around 1900 by Abbie King [Abbie A. King] as a memorial to her family which was one of the oldest in that section of town. The tower was used by sight-seers before vandals severely defaced the structure. Eventually it burned down. Perhaps it was the same “incipient gangsters” that had handed Lovecraft their math papers [at school].

Neutaconhaut is the spelling in the Letters for what it today called Neutaconkanut, on which the Rhode Island Collections noted… “for Neutaconkanut, Dr Douglas-Lithgow gives sixty spellings”.

The tower is interesting. The Providence Journal called the Neutaconkanut tower an “enduring structure”, and in 1915 said it had been completed “several years ago” by Abbie A. King. But I can find no picture of it in public material. It might suggest an alternative topographical inspiration for the ‘Tower’ fragment, had Lovecraft later revisited it in the 1930s to find it partly blocked up and vandalised. Lovecraft’s removal of it from a hill to the depths of a ravine is no obstacle, since Lovecraft and his circle were adept at that sort of simple inversion for the purposes of storytelling…

“The Round Tower” (extended story-idea fragment by H.P. Lovecraft, unknown date):

“S. of Arkham is cylindrical tower of stone with conical roof — perhaps 12 feet across & 20 ft. high. There has been a great arched opening ( up?), but it is sealed with masonry. The thing rises from the bottom of a densely wooded ravine once the bed of an extinct tributary of the Miskatonic. Whole region feared & shunned by rustics. Tales of fate of persons climbing into tower before opening was sealed. Indian legends speak of it as existing as long as they could remember — supposed to be older than mankind. Legend that it was built by Old Ones (shapeless & gigantic amphibia) & that it was once under the water. Dressed stone masonry shews odd & unknown technique. Geometrical designs on large stone above sealed opening utterly baffling. Supposed to house a treasure or something which Old Ones value highly. Possibly nothing of interest to human beings. Rumours that it connects with hidden caverns where water still exists. Perhaps old ones still alive. Base seems to extend indefinitely downward — ground level having somewhat risen. Has not been seen for ages, since everyone shuns the ravine.”

Zeitschrift fur Fantastikforschung – now Open Access

26 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by in Scholarly works

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Zeitschrift fur Fantastikforschung is a twice-yearly German journal on the fantastic and science-fiction, from the German Association for Research in the Fantastic.

They have just taken the journal open access and Creative Commons, although this doesn’t seem to cover the many volumes of back-issues which are available to purchase in paper. The first open access issue is now online.

They have a standing call for submissions, and appear willing to review published books in English. They’re also open to transcribed and translated interviews with major figures, such as one with Tad Williams.

Houdini in Providence

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Picture postals

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Sold on eBay last week, a ‘Houdini in Providence’ photo-postcard. He is seen here in Exchange Place hanging in a straightjacket from the Evening News building, before a vast crowd. He is identified by the faint red circle on the card. An unreadable date, March 7th 19??, but Houdini scholars who read this blog may be able to supply the year.

In one 1920s letter to his aunts Lovecraft remarks that he never saw a “whole” show by Houdini, so perhaps this outdoor show was what he had seen at this point? Or perhaps he refers to the time of the “Pyramids” story, when he might have been talking with Houdini in his dressing-room while the warm-up acts of the show were happening on stage? Than he would presumably have gone out front into the audience to see the finale?

Update: Thanks to The Joey Zone for supplying the date. 1917, H.P. Lovecraft being then about age 26.

Update: Got a better, larger version, October 2021.

Cryptobotany Books

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in New books, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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Three anthologies of tales of strange plants and fearsome fungi, which appear to have been mostly culled from the public domain. Available in paperback as Flora Curiosa, Botanica Deleria and Arboris Mysterius. There appears to be no ebook or audiobook editions.

Amazon also reveals the anthologist to be the editor of a journal titled Biofortean Notes. Volume 4 (2015) of this had a survey of “Cryptofiction: A Renaissance”. Only eight pages, but it may interest fiction writers who want to learn what’s been done up to circa 2014, and those seeking adaptable work. “Crypto” here meaning cryptozoology rather than Bitcoin.

But before you go cashing in your $8k Bitcoin to buy copies of the journal at Amazon’s often rather silly prices, note that BioFortean Notes is currently free in PDF, and there are free issues up to 2018.

Perhaps S.T. Joshi would also welcome a survey of cryptobotany in fiction and graphic novels, from 2000-2020, for his new journal Penumbra?

Loosely connected to the theme is this curious twisted pear, in Lovecraft’s time located at the old Dyer residence near Providence. Lovecraft had the Dyer name in his family tree, so may well have visited and seen it. One thinks of Lovecraft stories such as “The Tree”.

Memoirs of pulpster

23 Thursday Jan 2020

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New on Archive.org, “A Penny A Word”, being the detailed and lively memoir of an anonymous pulp writer who entered the field circa 1924-26 and spent a decade in it. The memoir appeared in The American Mercury, March 1936.

Who knew Submarine Stories was ever a real title? It appeared early 1929, but six months later ran into the teeth of the Great Depression and is said to have folded after 13 shaky issues. As such, it can’t have appealed to H.P. Lovecraft as a market, even though he had tried his hand at submarine tales in “The Temple”.