Monthly Archives: January 2023

Inklings and ALPH

10 Tuesday Jan 2023

Posted by in Scholarly works

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New to me, the annual paid journal Inklings: Jahrbuch fur Literatur und Asthetik…

The German Inklings-Gesellschaft, founded in 1983, is dedicated to […] the fantastic in literature, film and the arts in general. The proceedings of the annual Inklings conferences are published in yearbooks.

Not focused on the British Inklings group (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis etc), though it shares the name. Also note, from the same publisher and also paid, ALPH: Approaches to Literary Phantasy. The latter has a special on Ancient Egypt in early fantasy and the fantastic.

Now on the Kindle, latest Arthur C. Clarke biography

08 Sunday Jan 2023

Posted by in New books, Odd scratchings

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I’m pleased to see that Neil McAleer’s biography Arthur C. Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary biography has finally reached the Kindle, after years of waiting, as a May 2022 affordable ebook. This is the latest and possibly final version of a major biography that’s been through many iterations and revisions.

Also now in affordable Kindle ebook is Arthur C. Clarke (Modern Masters of Science Fiction). An up-to-date and very well-reviewed survey of Clarke’s entire output, by fellow writer Gary Westfahl. I’m not yet sure if he notes any Lovecraft influence, in passing, or not.

This 2018 Westfahl book also includes a chapter surveying the fiction and non-fiction concerned with sea exploration and future aquaculture, an abiding interest and sub-theme in Clarke’ work. Now what’s needed are good audiobooks of his real-life underwater adventure / travel-writing trilogy Coast of the Coral; The Reefs of Taprobane; and Treasure of the Great Reef. Plus the exploration history / futurology book The Challenge of the Sea. His boys’ novel of sci-fi/ocean adventure Dolphin Island and his aquaculture sci-fi for adults The Deep Range (novel length version) already have good audiobook readings.

Starblazer Special Edition in Kindle

07 Saturday Jan 2023

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings

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The Starblazer Special Edition published in 2019, became newly available as a Kindle download on Amazon from 28th December 2022. It reprinted two classics from the early 1980s, to test the waters for interest in a Starblazer title re-start alongside the long-running Commando title. You’ll recall that Starblazer was the 1980s science-fiction sister title of the successful and enjoyable British Commando war-stories comic.

The Special Edition also had a history of the Starblazer series, which like Commando published self-contained 68-page comics in a digest format. Kind of like the French BDs in page-count, which is unusual for the British market, but in a pocket-size format and with ‘pocket-money priced’ pulpy paper and printing.

If collectors want paper then the title is also on Amazon UK in print as “Starblazer: Space Fiction Adventures in Pictures”. The return of a regular Starblazer, alongside Commando, is something all SF pulp readers should be supporting.

Commando also had the occasional soldiers + sci-fi story. Or I should say has, as the title is still going strong today with four issues a month. The new Commando Presents: The Sci-Fi Files Volume 1 collects four of the best and gives you a quality sampler of those. Also released 28th December 2022, as a Kindle ebook.

Also in comics, the new Lovecraft: Unknown Kadath comic-book series has a conclusion date. Four are now available, and three are still to come in early 2023. The seventh and final comic installment will be released 29th March 2023. Presumably to be followed by collected completed-story as a trade paperback, though there’s no sign of that yet in the listings. It seems we should be getting the tale in around 220 pages in total.

Old Houses, Clinton Street

06 Friday Jan 2023

Posted by in Picture postals

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Photo of 101-103 Clinton Street, New York City, 1908. Straw hats, ice-cream, cigars. Roadworks ongoing.

And a sketch of “Old Houses, Clinton Street”, New York City. Again looking very typical of parts of the street on which Lovecraft lived, when in the city, and also the shops around the corner. Although here the date is 20 years earlier in 1906. With thanks to the Met Museum.

Some 20 years later, the street had gone downhill when Lovecraft was at 169 Clinton St…

The sounds in the hall! The faces glimpsed on the stairs! The mice in the partitions! The fleeting touches of intangible horror from spheres and cycles outside time. … And what scraps of old papers with Arabic lettering did one find about the house! Sometimes, going out at sunset, I would vow to myself that gold minarets glistened against the flaming skyline where the church-towers were! … It was a queer enough setting, and one which no person of my acquaintance can yet parallel … The key­note of the whole setting — house, neighbourhood, and shop, was that of loathsome and insidious decay; masked just enough by the reliques of former splendour and beauty to add terror and mystery and the fascination of crawling motion to a deadness and dinginess otherwise static and prosaic. I conceived the idea that the great brownstone house was a malignly sentient thing — a dead, vampire creature which sucked something out of those within it and implanted in them the seeds of some horrible and immaterial psychic growth.” — Lovecraft to Dwyer, 26th March 1927.

“Canada is certainly a retarding influence” (Lovecraft)

03 Tuesday Jan 2023

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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It looks like Derleth and Eddy may have slipped back into copyright in Canada. The Canadian Press reports that new items for the “public domain in Canada” are now suspended until 2043. Apparently because the Canadian government slipped through “a change to copyright laws” at the very end of 2022.

Canada used to follow the 50-year rule (i.e. in 2022, author died in 1971). In 2022 this should have unlocked, due to death-dates…

* C.M. Eddy, Lovecraft’s Providence friend and collaborator.
* August Derleth.
* Virgil Finlay, the key early Lovecraft illustrator.

But now presumably they’re back under lock-and-key again as we slip into 2023. Though perhaps Canadians readers can clarify. I’m only assuming these creators go back into copyright again, but just possibly there’s also some “once unlocked, always unlocked” assumption in the new law in Canada?

Update: Ah, this is interesting. Derleth’s Lovecraft ‘collaborations’ are still fair game in Canada…

It is not retroactive, but applies to any author, composer or screenwriter whose works would have been added to the public domain between now [30th Dec 2022] and 2043, meaning for 20 years nothing new will be added to the public domain in Canada.

“Not retroactive”. But that’s just from a journalistic report. Digging further finds a more reliable law firm briefing stating…

Bill C-19 is clear that the copyright term extension is not retroactive and therefore will not affect works that are already in the public domain before the amendments come into force.

So it appears that Canadians can freely rewrite and de-cringe the Derleth ‘Lovecraft’ works.

Taking of blockages, I also find that Hippocampus Press once again fails to load from the UK. The problem now appears to be due to having your Web browser use the default Cloudflare DNS server. Switch this to the Google DNS server and the problem vanishes.