HPLinks #40.
* New on Archive.org, a good scan of the Lovecraft fanzine The Acolyte #4 from 1943, with a number of Lovecraft articles.
* Also new there, scans of the early fanzines Dream Quest #1, along with #2 and #5. These being from the late 1940s. General, but with an obvious continuing interest in Lovecraft.
* Talking of the 1940s and 50s, I spotted this in the catalogue description of an archive of personal papers that is now seemingly up for sale from Mark Funke Books…
… fanzines publishing anything at all by Lovecraft carry clearance from us.” [seller’s quote from a 18th March 1957 letter from John Stanton at Arkham House, sent to Boyd Raeburn].
* Translated from a Spanish review in Contrastes Vol. XXX, No. 1 (2025), in which the reviewer compares Jung’s mad delvings to those depicted by Lovecraft…
JUNG, CARL GUSTAV. The Black Books: Notebooks of Transformation in 7 volumes. Buenos Aires: El Hilo de Ariadna, 2024. The publication of The Black Books represents a fundamental event for understanding the thought of Carl Gustav Jung. […] the English edition of these previously unpublished notebooks appeared in 2021 under the direction of Sonu Shamdasani […]. This [new Spanish version] is a colossal, private, and numinous work, in which Jung, on several occasions, seems to lose control of his own psychic experience. Published in facsimile format, it allows consultation of the original manuscript, which adds an additional layer of depth to the reading.
At first glance, The Black Books can be compared to the work of Jung’s contemporary, H.P. Lovecraft. Jung’s descriptions of the “primordial” beast striking similarities to the stories of the writer of Providence. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu is not very different from Jung’s archetypal visions, such as Atmavictu or Abraxas, that emerge in these texts. However, the distance between the two authors is significant: while Lovecraft cleaves to a materialistic and pessimistic vision of the cosmos, Jung opens up to the numinous dimension as a source of psychic and spiritual transformation.
* Be aware that Amazon shows the cover for the limited-edition ‘early Bird’ edition of the Druillet-Lovecraft book, which came with a slip-pocket and an additional set of prints as cards. What they actually ship is just the standard Druillet-Lovecraft book (Nov 2024) without such extras. At present the standard book is also currently still available direct from publisher Galerie Barbier in France, though I can’t help thinking that won’t last forever and it will probably sell out in due course. The sumptuous 288-page book has Demons et Merveilles (1976) reprinted in full, all the Necronomicon pages, the covers Druillet designed for Lovecraft’s books, plus additional “rare or unpublished paintings and sketches”.
Standard edition
* Nyarlathotep and Other Tales of Cosmic Dread (June 2025), a new album by David Thrussell & Flint Glass. No idea about the music, but the physical version has a pleasing look. Artwork possibly generative, but also possibly by ‘stefan alt’ who is credited with the design…
* Encountered at honest Abe’s used book emporium, a glimpse of what Lovecraft looked like in French in 1975…
* Last noticed here in September 2024, Meeplesmith’s “Lovecraft’s Monsters” appears since then to have added new lines in its paintable miniatures. Including what is effectively a shoggoth…
* The big headline-grabbing videogame Doom: The Dark Ages is now available, and it appears to be a critical and sales hit even before its first patch.
Many are noting the very strong Lovecraft influences in the new game. A small sampling…
– “like Lovecraft was on the writing team”
– “really good during the Lovecraft part of the game”
– “adds a Lovecraftian style to Doom, mixing green hues, water, and tentacles to the usual mix”
– “appears to be heavily influenced by the Cthulhu mythos”
Apparently there are also many spoilers to be had in the game’s early reviews and YouTube videos, so it’s perhaps best not to delve too deeply there before playing.
If it’s moddable, there may be some interesting ‘even more Lovecraftian’ fan-mods in due course.
* Adventures Fantastic has a review of the new Robert E. Howard biography. And I see there’s another new free and excellent audiobook reading of an REH ‘El Borak’ tale, this time “Son of the White Wolf”. Download as an .MP3 file, to avoid the ads.
* A useful guide to REH adaptations, a new (nearly) Complete Chronology of The Savage Sword of Conan. This publication being Marvel’s Conan magazine which offered around 50 pages of b&w story per issue, in an oversized magazine with quality artwork and (mostly) complete-in-this-issue storytelling. In this new list and guide, the magazine’s issues are carefully and newly sorted by Conan’s age (or apparent age) in each tale. (Note that Marvel’s Savage Sword is not to be confused with their equally long-running monthly Conan the Barbarian title, which was sold on the spinner-racks among the superhero and funnies comics. These monthlies were recently bundled by Darkhorse into over thirty reprint volumes, titled The Chronicles of Conan).
* One for ticket-baggers to watch, 30th Anniversary H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland in October. Can’t be long now…
details will be revealed in summer 2025, and the first deluxe and VIP tickets will go on sale in our annual Kickstarter fundraiser (tentatively planned for June/July)
* And finally, in Providence… the local newspaper reports Lovecraft’s real “Shunned House” sells for $1.8M (Archive.is link, to let readers outside America bypass the EU-triggered censorship).
— End-quotes —
* “Vermont did not form the end of my visiting; since W. Paul Cook, on his second trip up, repeated the process of kidnapping a helpless old gentleman and bore me away for a week’s visit to Athol, where I had the honour of seeing him send to press, with his own hands, the sheets of my story The Shunned House, which when published will form my first cloth-bound book, (albeit only a thin affair of sixty pages, with a brief preface by my Belknap-grandchild).” — Lovecraft to Zelia Bishop, July 1928. (The project fell through, and the sheets passed through various hands).
* From “The House” (Lovecraft’s poem on the real Shunned House, July 1919).
The rank grasses are waving
On terrace and lawn,
Dim memories sav’ring
Of things that have gone;
The stones of the walks
Are encrusted and wet,
And a strange spirit stalks
When the red sun has set
* Lovecraft’s own rough sketches of the real Shunned House in Providence…
