HPLinks #32.

* The German Lovecraftians report that the Miskatonic Theatre in Hamburg-Harburg “was completely destroyed in a fire on 9th March 2025”. This was billed as the only dedicated “horror theatre” in the world and one which had “staged many Lovecraft works”… .

Local news reports confirm the fire, and state that “The theatre was fully ablaze” when the fire brigades arrived. Four people suffered minor injuries, and a cat was bravely rescued from the second floor. The theatre had been previously targeted for the wholesale burglary of all gear and valuables, which the players had nevertheless recovered from. But, in the theatrical spirit of ‘the show must go on’, after the fire the… “last four performances of the theatre’s current play ‘The Whisperer in Darkness'” were moved to “a centrally located alternative location in Hamburg”. A subsequent ongoing crowdfunder has so far raised over $17,000 U.S., and the players plan to continue their “Lovecraftian repertoire in radio play format”. Donations are still welcome via GoFundme.

* Helios House Press is offering a new book version of the Lovecraft/Sonia stage collaboration Alcestis: A Play. New scans of this have also recently been added to the online Brown Digital Repository, and can be perused there for free.

* The latest Cormac McCarthy Journal compares the author with Lovecraft, in the article “Hinterland Horror: Geographical Extremity as Revelation in Blood Meridian and At the Mountains of Madness“ ($ paywall).

* This week The Pulp Super-Fan likes what he finds in a selection of issues of The Lovecraft Annual scholarly journal.

* S.T. Joshi’s blog has updated. He’s recently been in Providence doing research, and in new books he notes the arrival of the second volume of Blackwood stories. I see from the Hippocampus Press website that the next two volumes are due soon, and I’d guess they’re likely to arrive on the doorstep before midsummer at the latest…

A Descent into Egypt and Others: Collected Short Fiction of Algernon Blackwood, Volume 4 — May

The Wendigo and Others: Collected Short Fiction of Algernon Blackwood, Volume 3 — May

* A new public-domain LibriVox recording of “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” by R.E. Howard.

* The latest H.P. Podcast ponders Asperger’s Syndrome & Lovecraft’s Universe.

* A sumptuous new Moebius paperback may interest Tentaclii readers. Due in April 2025 (delayed from January 2025), in an unusual format. In Arzak: Destination Tassili — Corpus Final, the words are in French but… all are removed from the artwork and placed on the facing page, thus leaving the artwork to shine alone. At the back of the 248-page book there’s also a pure wordless b&w version of the posthumous sequel (Moebius died half-way through creating it). Note that…

This is the first publication of any part of Tome 2 [i.e. the sequel, in 29 finished pages] in any form.

* The hit Lovecraftian videogame The Sinking City is being remastered in Unreal Engine 5, which is the latest version of the advanced ‘industry standard’ game-engine. For PC and also for other platforms. All owners of the original will get a free upgrade to The Sinking City Remastered when released.

* DOOM expert Nathan has kindly added four more Lovecraft DOOM II game expansion WADS (i.e. fan-created extra game-levels and makeover mods), in a comment on my “Lovecraft in DOOM II” post. He also annotates the titles with descriptions and comments.

* I don’t normally note the various new Lovecraftian anthologies here, but I’ll make an exception for Into the Cthulhu-Universe: Lovecraftian Horrors in Other Literary Realities (April 2025). This has stories from a clutch of ‘name’ Mythos authors, who take the Mythos into other well-known “literary landscapes” (Tom Sawyer, John Carter of Mars, Alice in Wonderland etc).

* New in hardback and Kindle ebook, London Uncanny: A Gothic Guide to the Capital in Weird History and Fiction (2025). Lovecraft made a very close and extended study of ‘olde London’ at one point, for his own amusement, but sadly this mental time-travel was never used in fictional form.

* And finally, Lovecraft’s travel writing began 100 years ago in April 1925…

perhaps we should look back a few years, to his whirlwind one-day visit to Washington, D.C., on 11–12 April 1925 for the true commencement of his travel writing

This from S.T. Joshi, noting that we know that… “Lovecraft prepared at least one carbon copy” of an unusual and very long close-typed letter dated 21st April, to his aunt. Presumably to circulate among other colleagues. Thus April 1925 is the date at which his circulated travel writing began.

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— End-quotes —

“I studied Old London intensively years ago, & could ramble guideless around it from Hampstead Heath to the Elephant & Castle!” — Lovecraft to Galpin, November 1933.

From Lovecraft’s early 1916 poem which imagines a decrepid bookshop in Old London, filled with the mouldering relics of the 18th century wits…

Where crumbling tomes upon the groaning shelves
Cast their lost centuries about ourselves.
Mine be the pleasure of the grimy stand
Where age-old volumes sleep on ev’ry hand.

[…]

What shades scholastic thro’ the twilight flit
Where Knapton’s sagging folios loosely sit!
The skull-capp’d dealer, crouching on his stool,
O’er the vague past can claim a wizard’s rule:
On his seam’d face the myriad wrinkles play,
And subtly link him to the yesterday.

[…]

Hail! sportive Rochester, bestir thy feet,
And mince in fancy o’er the cobbled street!
House after house appear in gabled rows,
And the dim room Old London’s spirit shews!
Upon the floor, in Sol’s enfeebled blaze,
The coal-black puss with youthful ardour plays;
Yet what more ancient symbol may we scan
Than puss, the age-long satellite of Man?
Egyptian days a feline worship knew,
And Roman consuls heard the plaintive mew:
The glossy mite can win a scholar’s glance,
Whilst sages pause to watch a kitten prance.

Outside the creaking door a nation boils,
And Progress crushes Learning in its coils.
The blessed Past in mad confusion fades,
And Commerce blasts Retirement’s quiet shades.
Unnumber’d noises, in demoniac choir,
Wake the curs’d Pit, and stir the seething fire.
A million passengers, in hast’ning heat,
Jostle their fellows, and disturb the street.

“18th century England probably averages as high as any combination of time and place for a person of my particular psychology. I would have lived as a country squire of liberal tastes, visited London occasionally, fought on the government side in 1715 and 1745, and been a Tory [conservative] in politics.” — Lovecraft speculating about his place in the society of 18th century England, had he lived in that period. To Robert E. Howard, September 1931.

“In Hyde Park [Corner in London] I beheld the nightly swarm of amateur orators whose soap-box eloquence provides so ample a safety-valve for social and governmental discontent. Around these hoarse and excited expounders of political, religious, ethical, economic, philosophic, and divers other doctrines there gathers regularly a hungry, ragged, argumentative horde such as Hogarth would have loved to draw. Each ardent prophet has his own private solution for his country’s ills and those of the world in general, and no two will commonly be found to offer anything like the same panacea. All, however, have their respective (if sometimes less than respectful) audiences, with whom they usually share a complete ignorance of the problems they discuss. No limit is placed on their radicalism of utterance, since it is a traditional British belief that free speech affords the safest possible vent for disturbed emotions and bewildered brains.” — Sonia’s London travelogue, in “European Glimpses” (December 1932), a travelogue heavily revised by Lovecraft and probably also enhanced in its opinions on English culture.

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