September opens without the usual thunder-god downpours, and instead a dank greyness envelops Tentaclii Towers. Strange fungi emerge in the dewy meadows. Small birds begin to shiver and glance wistfully southward, while unusually large and never-before-seen black ravens strut around the moat. The summer, such as it was here, is obviously over and likely to stay that way.
Not many new books this month, as you might expect for August. But The Dark Man brought news and a review of Robert Weinberg’s The Weird Tales Story: Expanded and Enhanced (2021). I also linked to a useful review of the new journal Pulpster #30, which proved to be another must-have for anyone catching up with the growing amount of scholarly work of the history of Weird Tales magazine. A firm release-date was found for the eagerly awaited Vol. 2 of Francois Baranger’s oversized artbook for Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.
As for scholarly work, I released a free index for the book The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft (second revised edition). I also offered a few notes arising from the indexing work, and was able to identify the source of some very memorable Doctor Who Tennant-era monsters (and their library setting) in Lovecraft’s weird poem “The Wood”. I made a major “Dunwich” source discovery in my Patreon patrons-only post “Picture Postals from Lovecraft: Dunwich in Providence”. A number of new items were added to my Open Lovecraft page.
The table-of-contents was released for the forthcoming Lovecraft Annual 2021, and it looks very promising. On Archive.org, Lovecraft Studies #8 (Spring 1984) unexpectedly popped up, and had not previously been available as a scan. I spotted the Arthur C. Clarke letters, released in free digital form by the Smithsonian. These have some material of interest to Dunsanians and perhaps even (for those willing to dig) to Lovecraftians. Because Clarke was undoubtedly influenced by Lovecraft. I found and linked the University of Iowa video tour for their exhibition “Spirit Duplicators: Early 20th Century Copier Art, Fanzines, and the Mimeograph Revolution”, which tangentially relates to Lovecraft due to his pivotal position as the switch-man on the tracks that led from amateur journalism to early fandom.
In auctions I spotted a run of the Providence picture-magazine Netopian, 1921-27. Also the manuscript for Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model”, due for auction soon.
It was a month for slightly unusual Lovecraftian arts, at least until the birthday presents arrived on the 20th. The Lone Animator had a ‘making of’ for his recent stop-motion/live-action short based on Derleth’s “The Dweller In the Hills”, and has a ‘making of’ for a much bigger Lovecraft production due soon. Pulp Flakes found a curious pop-up book inspired by 1920s readers of Weird Tales magazine. I was pleased to discover, via John Coulthart, an unusual old high-quality eight-page bio-comic centred on Barlow and Lovecraft.
In film S.T. Joshi brought news that a new two-hour Lovecraft documentary Exegesis: Lovecraft is expected to premiere in early October, lockdown permitting. There was also a surprise in-the-flesh return of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival to Providence, and I enlarged and colourised a vintage picture of the venue to celebrate.
Also newly found and colourised were three pictures from the Montague Street branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, which Lovecraft knew during his New York years. Then I finally got around to taking another look for Lovecraft’s “John’s” cafe in 1920s Brooklyn, but found I still need someone with U.S. database access to lookup the exact address for “Bristol’s Dining Room”. The new Letters to Family having revealed that Bristol’s was next-door to John’s.
I’ve finished reading Letters to Family, and now have to type up my final set of notes. Expect them in September.
In music this month Lovecraftians enjoyed a “A Symphony of Galpin”, Reber Clark’s new orchestration of Galpin’s “Lament for HPL”. No audio stories were linked this month, other than R.E. Howard’s “The Dwellers Under the Tomb”… which proved rather a disappointment. Sort of Lovecraftian, yes, but it was also a bit of an off-the-cuff pulp clunker from REH.
In publishing tools, I was pleased to find the venerable old DTP software QuarkXPress has been taking the rejuvenation tablets since 2015. It is now the sleek and gleaming QuarkXPress 2021. A great all-in alternative to the subscription InDesign, and for a one-time price. I brought Tentaclii readers the news that it could be had for just £181, half-price, during August. In other ‘blasts from the past’, elsewhere I was pleased to at last rescue the much-loved Windows abandonware Pointix Scroll++ 2.02, and I also found a near 1:1 replacement for the graphics abandonware Topaz Clean 3.1. Elsewhere I even wrote a “HeXen Quickstart in 2021 on Windows”, for installing HeXen: Beyond Heretic — this being the fantasy-horror DOOM videogame which I had played long forgotten aeons ago. Not as easy as it looks, and that’s just the install.
Right, well… that’s it for August. Please consider becoming my Patreon patron, or upping your Patreon amount a bit, or just dropping me a PayPal donation. It will really help me out.