26 Thursday Dec 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
Bargain alert on Amazon UK, for Lovecraft Annual #4, 2010. Apparently this issue had the full longer “Notes on a Nonentity” autobiographical article. I have my copy ordered, and there’s still one left at the same price. Shipped by Amazon, and can be sent to a locker.
19 Thursday Dec 2024
Posted in HPLinks, Lovecraftian arts, New discoveries, Scholarly works
HPLinks #18.
* A new Wormwoodania post, “Remembering Scott Connors”, the Clark Ashton Smith and weird fiction scholar who has recently passed away. Related is last week’s news that S.T. Joshi intends to spend 2025 writing the long-awaited Clark Ashton Smith biography, a book Connors had apparently started but was unable to bring to publication.
* The Papers of Sonia H. Davis blog surveys 2024’s accomplishments in producing valuable new data and scholarship about Lovecraft’s wife.
* New on Archive.org, a scan of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine for Winter 1992, with the lead article being the memoir “H.P. Lovecraft Meets Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser” by Fritz Leiber.
* The Fossils website has a new “scan of the article “The Phenomenon of H.P.L., a ten-page biography of H.P. Lovecraft by Helen V. Wesson originally published in The Fossil for July 1957.”
* Now free on YouTube, S.T. Joshi’s presentation “Lovecraft and the Physicists: Coming to Terms with Relativity and Indeterminacy”, given at the recent ‘Lovecraft et les sciences’ conference in France. Two hours, but the length is partly due to the lack of an AI insta-translator. Thus there are many pauses needed for manual translation.
* A third Lovecraft book of translated letters for Spanish readers, El Terror de la Razon. Cartas III (2024), new from publisher Aristas Martinez. The blurb reveals that the first section flows around the idea of… “‘The Terror of Reason’, his ideas about humanity and the cosmos that he disseminated in his most famous stories [and fashioned into] visionary thought that would later inspire a new generation of posthumanist philosophers”. Then the second part of the book focuses on the evolution of the man’s political ideas and ideals, in his own words. I’d hope there are copious footnotes enabling younger readers with no personal experience of the 20th century to (for instance) distinguish national socialism from soviet socialism, and to know what a ‘blackshirt’ was, etc. e.g. when he signs off “Yrs for the blackshirt march on Washington” — Lovecraft to Galpin, July 1934.
* New from Brazil in open-access, a Spanish-language journal article with the translated title ‘Gods, Monsters, Aliens: Lovecraft and the Post-Human’.
* The free bundle of Lovecraft tales, specially set up for deep textual analysis with a computer, is now available as lovecraftr version 1.2 (December 2024).
* Further to my July 2024 post on “that Canton madhouse”, Tentaclii reader Luke has written to say that he’s spotted a possible state institution at Canton (this being the Canton to be seen from a tall railway viaduct, when on the rail route from Providence to Boston). This was the ‘Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children’, later the ‘Massachusetts Hospital School’. Opened in 1907 and continuing to the present day, located on an 160-acre slope going down to meet the large local lake then called ‘Reservoir Pond’. Lovecraft had written “I shall plan my cousin’s escape from that Canton madhouse”. Yet this real place was not a “madhouse”, but rather an institutional residential hospital with vocational training (farm work, craft workshops etc) for ages 2 to 20. This possibility is certainly worth considering. But, so far as I can see, the location and relatively low-rise appearance (compared to the vast castle-like state madhouses of the time) suggests it may not have made much of an impression on passing rail travellers, even if it could have been seen from a train window…
Note that Luke plausibly observes that the use of “poor little cousin” indicates that the Innsmouth-tainted cousin may have been sent away when a child. He was “little” but then “I had not seen him in four years”, and then a few more years pass before the rescue plan. All of which suggests a boy of perhaps 12 or 13 at the time of the rescue. A boy who would not yet have been transferred to an adult institution. Thus, to find the key state institution for “deformed” children at the real Canton is certainly intriguing.
* A new Skull Session podcast interview with Will Murray… “Will Murray and I discuss his long and varied career writing for Marvel Comics and magazines” and the influence of Lovecraft.
* It’s official, there will be a “4k restoration” version of the Re-Animator movie, complete with bubbling vats of newly-brewed extras. Likely to appear in early April 2025, and to ship with a 150-page book. The much-loved 1985 comedy movie adapted Lovecraft’s Home Brew magazine shocker-serial “Herbert West: Reanimator”.
* In Denmark in August 2025, a three-day conference on ‘Otherworldly Entertainment’…
Today, videogames continue to be one of the biggest platforms for horror, magic, gothic, and occult entertainment, even outperforming cinema and television. Despite [this deep reach into] broad audiences, [the topic] remains severely understudied.
* A paying Lovecraft-related job for a “Dark and mysterious painterly illustrator” wanted for the early stages of a commercial project. Predictably it’s a ‘rush job’ and over Christmas and New Year too. But the offer looks quite serious and there should be just enough time. Sadly the application is by a “super detailed and borderline complicated form” (‘exit stage-left: half the creatives in the room, screaming…’, etc).
* Tartarus Press on the T. Lobsang Rampa books. I recall these being prominent on home bookshelves, as a young child. Not my own shelves, as I never read the Rampa books. But it’s fascinating to learn now that the supposed mystical Tibetan lama who peeped out at me from the book-cases as a child, was… “in fact the son of a plumber from Plympton in Devon [southern England] called Cyril Hoskin”. He became a sometime fitter of corsets, sometime photographer, in the dreary greyness of post-war London. After his first 1956/57 best-seller…
with each subsequent book, Rampa casually shared his knowledge of astral travel, civilisations on Venus, UFOs, etc. One of his books was even meant to have been dictated to him by his cat.
The newspaper expose didn’t matter. He just went into full character for the rest of his life, claimed ‘reincarnation’ and much else… and credulous readers still lapped it up. Tartarus is now seeking anyone who can help with the research for a new full biography of this strange and strangely popular Englishman.
* Islands magazine recommends a visit to an “Underrated Literary Gem Filled With Rare Finds In Rhode Island”. This being the John Hay Library in Providence. Along with the huge Lovecraft collection, evidently the visitor can find there what sounds like one of the world’s finest collections of miniature toy soldiers, and for the especially ghoulish… four books bound in human skin.
* And finally, at the Grolier in New York City, “Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works”. Their exhibition runs until 15th February 2024. The Necronomicon is, regrettably, represented by a rather naff plastic ‘joke’ case (supposedly holding ye dreadfull tome).
— End-quotes —
“Hope ya kin get your Black Cat file [i.e. a complete ‘reference file’ run of a past magazine]. I used to buy that reg’lar-like, and recall the swell weird stuff it had.” — Lovecraft to Morton, 23rd February 1936.
“I have been re-reading [your new story] “Marsh-Mad” — & the more I analyse it the better I like it! I shall make every effort to get this in the official organ [but, if not then it] is far too good to waste on any but a first-rate paper! Try it on the Black Cat.” — Lovecraft to Galpin, 29th August 1918.
“Once again I’ve followed a Mortonian [Morton] tip, as I did when sending “Dagon” to the Black Cat and “The Tomb” to the Black Mask and have slipped Weird Tales five of my hell-beaters” — Lovecraft to Morton, May 1923.
We know Lovecraft began to “notice” the magazine Black Cat in 1904, but I know of no scholars able to pinpoint the exact date at which he ceased to buy or read the title.
11 Wednesday Dec 2024
Posted in HPLinks, Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
HPLinks #17.
* The journal Fraternal Review, from the Southern California Research Lodge, has a new ‘H.P. Lovecraft and Freemasonry’ special edition. Contents include…
* Harry Houdini and Masonry.
* Lovecraft’s Masonic grandfather.
* Masonic influences on Lovecraft, as well as Lovecraft’s subsequent influences on the occult world.
* Real-life location of the Masonic Lodge that inspired the one taken over in Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.
A $5 digital edition is available. It’s interesting to think what might have happened had Lovecraft taken a different path… able to break into local journalism, then a local magazine editor (he would have been a cert for something like the Hospital Trust magazine The Netopian, with all its local history) and… thus been enticed to join a local Masonic Lodge. Possibly there’s a “what if” Mythos story in that?
* Deep Cuts looks into Her Letters To August Derleth: Muriel E. Eddy, and there are also a few firmer biographical memories found in the article “Mrs. Hinckley’s Providence”. The latter having an item of data on Lovecraft’s youth that I don’t think I’d seen before…
Dorothy Walter, a member of our Short Story Club, said Mr. Lovecraft used to call on her when she was young. About 20 years ago [circa 1946-47] a stranger came from Baltimore and asked Miss Walter and me [Mrs Hinckley] many questions. I only remember that my father knew Mr. Lovecraft and always spoke to him. When we came from Wickford to go to school, Mr. Lovecraft was usually sitting in the Providence railway station, probably because it was nice and warm there.
Presumably the father was taking the girls to the train for school each day, or meeting them off the train, and thus he said ‘hello’ to the boy Lovecraft. This seems quite plausible, though due to Lovecraft’s avid early interest in trains and railroad-men rather than for the warmth (his adult aversion to cold was later known, which probably coloured memories). Deep Cuts puts this at a time when Lovecraft was perhaps 10-12 year old. So maybe 1901-02? I also note that the article also recalls that at that time, at the back of the railway station there was a “beautiful backwater cove”. Tidal and sweet-smelling as she recalled it, but which was later filled in. This huge water feature can be seen on panorama views of the early city. It’s interesting to hear that it may have been known to Lovecraft as a boy. I seem to recall he was to be found, late in life, doing a bit of ‘urban exploring’ in the same location.
* Deep Cuts also has Three Letters to the Editor, 1909, found via the digital archive of the Providence Journal. The topic of Lovecraft’s letters was Robert E. Lee and the South in the Civil War. Also letters from the young Lovecraft on the stage play The Clansman, something which was also debated among amateur journalists some years later — and as such his opinions on it are already well known.
* I see the (new?) Providence Journal Archives search is free, but then any items found are paywalled via individual pricing or a monthly subscription. I’m uncertain if they can take payments from outside the U.S., since payment is via credit card only. $29.95 gets you a one-month ‘unlimited downloads’ pass. Sadly passes cannot be gifted to researchers, since only the cardholder is allowed to use them.
The search-box supports phrases in quote marks e.g. “Ladd Observatory”. As with many old newspapers, however, the OCR of tiny print leaves much to be desired and there are many false-positives and oversights. For instance a search for “Winslow Upton” of the Ladd, will not find some articles that have his name and can be found with “Ladd Observatory”. Still, there are fascinating free snippets available, and even these may give mythos writers a historical hook on which to hang a story…
Found in a few minutes: Winslow Upton of the Ladd Observatory discussed “life on other worlds” in public in 1907. Whipple graves were opened ‘en masse’, 1910. Lovecraft’s beloved River Seekonk was being totally poisoned by sewage outflows, 1923.
* Newly announced, the dates for the Robert E. Howard Days in June 2025.
* The German Lovecraftians have released dates for their annual get-together, 17th to 20th July 2025. In scholarly activity, note that a Literature Team Leader is now required to take forward their ongoing work… “on a volume of essays from German-speaking countries and a translation project for Lovecraft’s letters and essays”.
* In France, a two-day conference at the University of Poitiers on ‘Lovecraft and the Sciences’. 5th-6th December 2024, so sadly it’s been and gone. But here’s the programme in PDF, and I guess there may be recordings on YouTube and/or a book in due course.
* Skulls in the Stars reviews The Opener of the Way by Robert Bloch. Being a “quality edition” of 22 early Bloch stories, published by Valincourt. Has plot spoilers.
* New and free at FantasyBabble (spin-off from HorrorBabble), “A Stroll through the Dreamlands: 13 stories by H.P. Lovecraft”. The reading runs 2 hours 47 minutes, and it has all the Dreamlands stories in audio (except the Randolph Carter tales).
* In early 2025 France’s prestigious comics mega-fest Angouleme will feature a Masterclass with Gou Tanabe, the acclaimed manga adapter of Lovecraft. The event is one of several that will run alongside his large one-man exhibition ‘Gou Tanabe x H.P. Lovecraft’…
The great architect of a mythology which has infused all the world’s popular culture, H.P. Lovecraft has now built a bridge between 20th century New England and 21st century Japan, transcending borders and time, enabling pulp and manga to meet and join hands. This show is an opportunity to verify, once again, how great stories are universal.
* News of another Lovecraft all-night lakeside camp-out near Mexico City. Noctambulante 2025 is a Lovecraft-themed ‘camping and cinema’ event, and this time the organisers also promise that… “Cthulhu will emerge from the depths of Lake Xochimiclo”. Campers are expected to dress in a Lovecraftian manner. Starting on the evening of 29th March 2025, and booking now.
* The well-loved vintage videogame The Thing: Remastered, apparently forthcoming in a new release with… “updated character models, textures, and animations, with the implementation of advanced 3D rendering for updated lighting and atmospheric effects.”
* Also being mooted for a polish, a 40th anniversary Re-Animator edition of the celebrated 1985 comedy-adaptation movie of Lovecraft’s Home Brew shocker “Herbert West: Reanimator”.
* Visualizing Camelot was a 350-item university gallery exhibition surveying the uses of King Arthur in popular culture. The show was developed by subject-expert curators who were able to draw on specialist American and British collections of such material. It’s been and gone but a substantial website remains online.
* And finally, the new online H.P. Lovecraft Translator…
— End-quote —
“I was arrested mainly by the great temple of the Scottish Rite Masons, whose striking architecture lifts it out of the commonplace and mundane into the realm of the cosmick and mystical. Gazing upon it, I could well believe all the vague legends connected with the Masonick order; for here surely dwelt arcana whose sources are not of this earth. I saw it first at night, when only the twin cryptick braziers beside the great bronze door lit up the grim guardian sphinxes and the huge windowless facade. Mystery dwelt there — and I departed full of vague thoughts hinging upon the obscurest of dream-memories.” — Lovecraft on his visit to Washington in 1928.
“The hall retains its pristine impressiveness; its lofty rooms forming the present home of Ionick Lodge, the Masonick branch founded by my grandfather, and of which he was the first Grand Master. It did me good to see his picture there, enshrin’d in proper state.” — Lovecraft visits his grandfather’s Masonic Lodge in 1926.
08 Sunday Dec 2024
Posted in AI
A few more free add-ons, for use with the free Stable Diffusion AI image generator.
1900s Drama Movie. Note also the Lovecraft-friendly Colonial style porches and doors.
10s Retro Future Movie trained on visions of the future, as found in 1910s movies.
Silent Movie v1.0 LORA makes small frame-sequences which can then be compiled into wobbly movie clips.
40s Western Movie. More R.E. Howard than Lovecraft (“Sweet Ermengarde” and “Juan Romero” aside), but possibly of interest to those who need to emulate pulp western images, in combination with an art-style LORA.
Stygia v1.1 LORA for Conan backdrops. An update from version 1.0.
05 Thursday Dec 2024
Posted in Astronomy, HPLinks, Lovecraft as character, Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
Welcome to HPLinks #16.
* S.T. Joshi’s latest blog post brings news of a new Ken Faig Jr. book, The Skull of Roger Williams: Lovecraft Imagined. In Joshi’s words, this offers…
powerful and poignant stories (and even a play or two) featuring Lovecraft as a character, along with some of his close family members; Clark Ashton Smith and R. H. Barlow appear in one of the pieces. If you’re looking for over-the-top horror tales with liberal doses of gruesomeness, you should go elsewhere; but if you’re interested in deeply moving portrayals of Lovecraft and his family as they actually lived their lives from the 1890s to the 1930s, written by one of the most learned and sensitive of Lovecraft’s biographers, this is a volume you will not want to miss.
Sounds good. Available now, as a 440-page paperback or as a budget ebook.
* In Italian in this week’s edition of the newspaper Domani, a long feature-article on “L’inferno artificiale di Lovecraft: come costrui il suo Northumberland senza esserci stato” (‘Lovecraft’s artificial hell: how he built his Northumberland without having been there’). Related, and linked to by the article, is an essay on “Lovecraft Archaeology”.
* Deep Cuts blog remembers Philomena Hart and her tangential connection with Lovecraft. She was the wife of Bertrand Hart, long a favourite newspaper columnist in Providence and one who tangled with Lovecraft in print.
* The work of Alfred North Whitehead, a British philosopher whose 1920s works influenced Lovecraft, is now in the public domain. Thus, new this week, we now have Whitehead’s acclaimed and seminal Science and the Modern World (1925) as a LibriVox audiobook.
* The latest Typebar Magazine has “An Unintended Critique of Manifest Destiny in H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness”. The author states he worked on it long, and it is now… “available on Patreon for magazine subscribers now, it’ll be available in a month or so for non-subscribers to read online.”
* In a South American open-access journal “La metafora del shoggoth en la inteligencia artificial” (‘The shoggoth metaphor in artificial intelligence’). The PDF has an English abstract.
* Up for auction, in France, original Druillet Lovecraft artwork from the 1970s.
* This week, John Coulthart outlines the edition history of his Yuggoth collage.
* I see that the £122 Routledge academic book Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books (2022) had a chapter on “Tanabe Gou’s Manga Adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft”.
* Wormwoodiana blog has a new post on Arthur Machen and the Sherlock Holmes stories.
* Who knew that Bram Stoker wrote a book of fairy tales, as well as the famous Dracula? Yup.
* A special ‘Haunted Midlands’ issue of the regional history journal Midland History. This being the English Midlands of the UK. Appears to be free to access, at present. Serious articles, not contemporary ‘ghost-hunter’ piffle and confabulation.
* The World Fantasy Convention 2025, set for the south coast of the UK, now has its two themes: ‘Lyrical Fantasy’ and ’50 Years of British Fantasy and Horror’.
* A call-for-papers for Youth and Horror: An International Conference.
* The new £130 Routledge academic book Entering the Multiverse (2024) has a chapter on “The Arkham Horror Multiverse”. With a focus on fan-interaction in the form of fan-guides for the game, which aim to boost the pleasures to be had from the… “endless world-building that comes from ludifying [i.e. ‘making game-like’] Lovecraft”.
* New on Archive.org, a run of Unbound fanzine, which offered a range of fan-written Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium) adventures in the 2010s. Including a set for solo players.
* A new Creative Commons open ebook on Hybrid Monsters in the Aegean Bronze Age. A bit niche, but it may appeal to writers or RPG makers seeking monster ideas from the deep past.
* Mythos writers may also be interested to know that the CQuill offline fiction-writing software is now available for Mac, albeit in an experimental but working version. A few days ago I was able to get a discounted copy of the Pro version for Windows, in the Black Friday sales. Having Pro means I’ll be able to make a Lovecraft ‘Style Assistant’ for it, when I find time sometime in 2025. I guess I may then share the Assistant via my Patreon. The standard version of CQuill is free, and only lightly crippled — it will load (but not create) an Assistant from an author’s works.
* And finally, a reminder that The S.T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship in H.P. Lovecraft application deadline is 17th January 2025. The awardee gets to swish around the Brown campus with up to $5k in their back pocket, while researching Lovecraft.
— End-quote —
“… you have no doubt read reports of the discovery of the new trans-Neptunian planet […] a thing which excites me more than any other happening of recent times. […] Asteroidal discovery does not mean much — but a major planet — a vast unknown world — is quite another matter. I have always wished I could live to see such a thing come to light — & here it is! The first real planet to be discovered since 1846, & only the third in the history of the human race! One wonders what it is like, & what dim-litten fungi may sprout coldly on its frozen surface! I think I shall suggest its being named Yuggoth!” — Lovecraft on his reaction to the discovery of the planet Pluto, in a letter to Miss Toldridge of April 1930.
A new mega-observatory in Chile is now coming online, with the largest camera ever built, and it should be able to easily find the ‘Planet X’. Recent research shows this very likely rolls in an unknown orbit far beyond Pluto, and some 80% of the likely locations have now been discounted. The current best estimate is that, when found in 2025 or 2026, the planet will be around 6.66 times the mass of the Earth. An ominous number.