HPLinks #31.
* For sale, “Three autograph letters from Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 1929”. Newly at Honest Abe’s pulp and paper impoundment, but they could be liberated for a mere third-of-a-bitcoin. In one of these Lovecraft observes that…
Today neither Poe nor Baudelaire could expect the slightest hearing in a standard magazine.
* New on YouTube, a reading of “The People of the Pit” (1918) by A. Merritt, Since the tale was a precursor to the famous Lovecraft-fave The Moon Pool of the same year, it seems highly likely that Lovecraft encountered this story at some point. It’s here read, across 46 minutes, by the very able Josh Greenwood.
* On YouTube, a recording of “When The Stars Are Right: H.P. Lovecraft and Astronomy, a one-hour talk by Edward Guimont at the Seagrave Observatory, 5th October 2024. Starts at 2.00 minutes in, when the audio improves greatly.
* New and free in open-access, the academic book Fear of Aging: Old Age in Horror Fiction and Film (2025). Includes the chapter “‘With Strange Aeons Even Death May Die’: Aging in the World of Cthulhu”. Meaning in Lovecraft’s Mythos, not the wider mythos, games, movies etc.
* New from the University of North Texas Press, the chunky new hardcover book Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author. Released 15th March 2025, apparently. It’s on Amazon UK already but is oddly listed in the “Paranormal” category, and it seems only Amazon US is able to ship it to the UK.
* The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press report that they are now shipping new “Ultimate Editions” of the letters.
* And there’s a further rich haul of R.E. Howard, in the latest LibriVox Ghost and Horror Collection #78. Public-domain readings of four REH tales including “The Skull in the Stars”. Also one by August Derleth.
* New on Archive.org, Mad Dreams And Monsters: The Art Of Phil Tippett and Tippett Studio.
* Some New York City readers may be interested in Syd Mead: Future Pastime, a large retrospective exhibition of the paintings by the science-fiction master. Being staged at a venue near Madison Square Gardens, New York City, and open from 27th March – 21st May 2025.
* An open-access / Creative Commons Attribution book review in Spanish, of El Gabinete Magico: Libro de las bibliotecas imaginarias (2023) (‘The Magic Cabinet: A Book of Imaginary Libraries’). The review is in HTML, and thus easy enough to auto-translate. The book is the…
product of almost thirty years of reading” and writing, distilled into “seventy-five entries”, a book in which “a tremendous amount of work is crystallized, tracing sources and organizing data”… “As an additional tool, the work’s name index, arranged in double columns and with a smaller font size, contains fifty-four tight pages that include the names of the writers and literary works, characters, films, articles, stories, and poems cited, not excluding the implicitly alluded references, identified in parentheses, and the authors or works where the aforementioned characters are located, preceded by an arrow. In this way, the interested reader can independently track down a specific writer or character in imaginary libraries, among other information.
Given this amount of effort, it seems curious Lovecraft is never mentioned in the book (I have access to a copy that can be searched). One would have thought that “The Shadow Out of Time”, at the least, would have merited a passing mention.
* I spotted another eBay scan of a postcard that may be of use to Lovecraftian RPG gamers, as a ‘vintage’ game prop…
U.S. Navy Hospital Corps training lab, Newport, Rhode Island.
* Here in the UK, “Filming set to begin on new horror film”. Billed as… “a respectful and faithful adaptation” of “From Beyond” by H.P. Lovecraft and with some substantial acting names attached to the project. But also…
stretching the boundaries of the genre with modern, scientific concepts” and modernising the tale… “a physics researcher tracks down her disturbed mentor to stop an experiment that could rip open a portal to a dimension of unimaginable horrors.
* Veteran Lovecraftian band The Great Old Ones release their new Lovecraftian album Lands Of Azathoth on 27th March 2025.
* Did you think the Fanac Fan History project had come to an abrupt halt? Nope, it’s just that the Site Update History has moved to a new URL. Today’s additions, one sees, include the [ERB] Burroughs Bulletin #23 (New Series). Lots more scans of ye olde skool fanzines to discover, and all free. Dig in.
* The Cancer of Superstition has supposedly been “found” and was due to be published as a new book on 24th March 2025. Paper only, and I guess it should be arriving in the mail about now for the pre-order buyers. Probably best to wait to see what the reaction to the actual book is on the Houdini forums, before ordering, I’d suggest.
* And finally, an excellent new March 2025 reading of Lovecraft’s “Cool Air” from The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. The very listenable voice of Josh Greenwood reminds me a little of the great Gordon Gould, but with more rumble and bounce. There’s an advert and intro, then the story. The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast is definitely one worth following.
— End-quotes —
“Most of my nearly 43 years in New-England I have spent in semi-numbness & shivering from the rarely-interrupted cold […] as you can well appreciate from remembering [how] the poor old man shiver’d in Cleveland back in [19]’22, when the 5 o’clock lake breeze began to rattle the library windows!” — Lovecraft to Galpin, June 1933, delighting that he at last has reliable steam-heat in his rooms (he had moved to 66 College Street, and a house supplied with abundant heat by the adjacent boiler-room of the John Hay Library).
“At about 12:30 a.m. I was seated at my table writing when a curious & persistent popping or crackling outdoors arrested my attention. Lifting the dark curtain & peering out, I beheld a red world as light as day, with the falling snowflakes glittering weirdly. Seeking the source of the uncanny glare, I repaired to a north window. There, in full view, was the most impressive sight my eyes have ever beheld. Where that evening had stood the unoccupied Chapman house, recently sold & undergoing repairs, was now a titanic pillar of roaring, living flame amidst the deserted night — reaching into the illimitable heavens & lighting the country for miles around. The heat was intense — even here in the house — & the glare was stupendous. […] A high east wind was blowing, & the sparks flew freely, but ice-coated roofs saved the neighbourhood.” — Lovecraft to Kleiner, February 1920.
“And it is recorded that in the Elder Times, Om Oris, mightiest of the wizards, laid crafty snare for the demon Avaloth, and pitted dark magic against him; for Avaloth plagued the earth with a strange growth of ice and snow that crept as if alive, ever southward, and swallowed up the forests and the mountains. And the outcome of the contest with the demon is not known; but wizards of that day maintained that Avaloth, who was not easily discernible, could not be destroyed save by a great heat, the means whereof was not then known, although certain of the wizards foresaw that one day it should be. Yet, at this time the ice fields began to shrink and dwindle and finally vanished; and the earth bloomed forth afresh.” — Lovecraft to C.A. Smith, 1935.
“I literally don’t know what it is to be too hot. The hotter it gets, the more energy I seem to have — mental and physical alike. I perspire freely, but am comfortable for all that I can relish temperatures of 97° and 98°, and never want it cooler than 80°. Of course, I don’t know how I’d be in those inland regions [of the USA] where the summer temperature gets up around 120° — but judging from the available evidence I could stand it better than most.” — Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, October 1935.