Monthly Archives: May 2026

HPLinks #86 – Innsmouth architecture, new Derleth group, D&D revisited, and quotes on Lovecraft’s sampling of the mephitic vapours

25 Monday May 2026

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HPLinks #86.

* From Brazil, the latest May 2026 issue of the open-access journal Abusoes is a special Gothic Arts issue. The lead essay is “Dagon a a Sombra Sobre Innsmouth: Duas Pecas Da Terrivel Arquitetura De Lovecraft” (‘Dagon and The Shadow Over Innsmouth: Two Examples Of Lovecraft’s Terrifying Architecture’. Freely available online. The same issue also has essays on Poe and H.R. Giger. In Portuguese, but easily auto-translated.

* An abstract for a forthcoming article in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, “Epistemological Horror”. The author identifies three types of this horror, one of which is termed “Lovecraftian epistemological horror”.

* Wormwoodiana discovers more unknown non-pulp fantasy from the 1920s.

* A new YouTube recording of a panel of experts discussing “A Brief History of Robert E. Howard Scholarship”.

* S.T. Joshi announces the formation of The Friends of August Derleth…

“a new organization to promote the life and work of August Derleth has now been established: The Friends of August Derleth, Inc. […] We hope to begin the process of soliciting new members shortly, but we are not quite ready to do that yet. We also hope to augment the current board of directors with additional members.”

* PulpFest has a trailer blog post for the convention, which outlines this year’s themes. It will… “celebrate the centennials of Amazing Stories and Ghost Stories” pulp magazines, and the post also notes “Doc Con returns to PulpFest in 2026”, this being the Doc Savage convention. PulpFest will also… “be celebrating the sesquicentennial of writer Jack London’s birth, the centennial of the birth of artist Robert Kennedy Abbett”.

* The Colour Out of Space artist’s edition from Suntup Editions. New and finely printed, with seven woodcuts by Sally Hands. Introduction by S.T. Joshi.

* The Worlds Of Speculative Fiction podcast reaches Lecture 102: Robert Bloch’s Lovecraftian Tales.

* Methods & Madness ponders the omission of Clark Ashton Smith from Appendix N and thus early D&D…

“I have wondered many times (and even tried to investigate as best I could) why Clark Ashton Smith is not in the Appendix N. […] he would be even MORE fitting than most of the books that are actually listed there. […] Could it be that Gygax simply did not know Smith?”

* New on Archive.org, AFS Magazine No.2., in which an article by Robert J. Kuntz recalls how he infused Lovecraft and C.A. Smith into his own D&D Lake Geneva Original Campaign, 1973-1976 and its associated items, taking D&D and…

the PCs [player-characters] away from simple dungeon delving for treasure” and into… an ever-expanding story arc involving the advent of the Elder Ones in the known planes of existence [and ancient weird cities]. That beginning grew to span most of my published career

The run of six issues of Seattle’s substantial AFS (2012-2014) is now available as scans, described as… “A pulp literature and old school [RPG] gaming zine available in print only.” See also No.3 for “Adapting ‘The Uncharted Isle’ by Clark Ashton Smith to Adventure & Setting”, and No.5 for “Hyperborean Grimoires”.

* Bone and Silver ponders why D&D’s Appendix N didn’t make more of Manly Wade Wellman.

* The Second World War Lovecraftian RPG Achtung! Cthulhu is coming to an end, after a decade of gaming, and a… “vast 50-odd library of books, PDF adventures, and accessories”.

* Talking of RPGs, new at the HPLHS Store is Eternity at Sea…

Eternity at Sea is an original scenario written by the HPLHS’ Sean Branney with a fantastic set of props created by Andrew Leman. Set in 1925, the adventure makes extensive use of real history and locations from the Oregon coast to create the most authentic setting possible. Both newcomers to Call of Cthulhu and seasoned veterans will find this story an engaging mystery filled with perilous surprises.

Due in mid-July 2026 and pre-ordering now.

* Also at the HPLHS Store, I see that the The Starry Wisdom Library auction catalogue (2014) can now be had as an affordable ebook in .PDF or ePub format. The paper edition is sold out. This imagines the library of… “the disliked and unorthodox Starry Wisdom sect” in Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark”.

* There’s a table-of-contents for the new Atlas of Deep Ones anthology, planned since 2024 and available now. Not actually an Atlas, but an anthology of new tales and poems of the Deep Ones. It also has a few items that sound like they might be pseudo-scholarly in-world articles, e.g. “The Third Oath of Dagon, Part II: Towards a Scientific Treatise on Dagon and the Third Oath of Dagon”.

* Lovecraft by the Sea. In which the London Lovecraft Festival players visits the seaside at Brighton, England, on the evening of 10th July 2026. Presenting on stage…

‘The Doom That Came to Sarnath’, a silhouette puppetry performance [and] ‘The Haunter of the Dark’, an original adaptation

* Popping up on eBay, the old ‘Providence in 1810’, that I seem to recall Lovecraft saw painted on the drop-curtain of a local theatre…

* Also on eBay, a 1908 map of Rhode Island that has the Dark Swamp marked on it…

* Another eBay pick, a nicely-angled ground-level view of the Market Place in Providence, looking up College St. in the distance. Possibly the early 1900s?

* And finally, authors and publishers may be interested to know that PDF Index Generator is now at version 3.6. This adds AI divination of topic categories. The worthy one-man $70 desktop software auto-generates a back-of-the-book index for your book(s).

— End-quotes —

Tobacco smoke and smoking were very common in Lovecraft’s time.

“Philandering and Nicotinical Sir:- I’ve never smoked since donning long trousers; since the fragrant weed is to me no more than a choking nuisance. When I was small, I smoked because it was the grown-up, masculine, and forbidden thing to do; but as soon as I could present a reasonably grown-up appearance without it, I relievedly suffered it to become a none-too-cherished memory. I naturally have to tolerate clouds of mephitic vapour from most of my friends, and I flatter myself that I do it without complaint. But at least I don’t have to thicken the cloud of tear-gas by any voluntary exhalations of my own!” — Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, November 1919.

Really — what pleasure one can gain from puffing away at nauseating & stifling fumes is beyond me! I did it once— when 11 to 14 years old — for no boy in my vicinity was then considered manly unless he surreptitiously emulated the graceful smokestack either behind the stables or in the neighbouring sylvan retreats. I sampled cigars, cigarettes, pipe, & the like; & puffed like a veteran; but always detested the infernal stuff. Glad enough was I to fling away tobacco when long trousers & increased inches made my manliness an obvious fact which needed no nicotinical corroboration! Nor have I any literary need of tobacco. When I go in for drugs, I am no “tin-horn”, but buckle right down to opium — vide “Dagon”. Since it is not I, but my heroes, who indulge, I do not feel the ill effects. Incidentally — I think Alfredus [Galpin] has given up his cherished hasheesh!” — Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, February 1920.

“Anent the smoke nuisance — you may be correct in theory about the reason for my aversion for the weed, but I would lay a heavy wager that it would take years of practice for me to cultivate a taste which after all is not worth cultivating! I am a conservative soul, & am not as radically different in tastes from the 14-year-old Theobaldus as one might fancy from a mere reading of the numerals which proclaim my proximity to thirty. All I know is that smoke is smoke, & just as choking when from a pipe as when from a leaky stove! Of course, connoisseurs make fine distinctions — but I prefer to breathe pure air than to inhale malodorous fumes. To me the ultimate horror of earth is a smoking car [train carriage set aside for smokers]. As a rule, I avoid taking drugs to stimulate literary endeavour; but when I try to describe hell — if ever I do — I fancy I shall take a ride in a smoker to work up atmosphere! Of course, the quality of the tobacco doubtless means something — but I find I acquire just as severe headaches when calling on a friend of mine who smokes quarter cigars.” — Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, March 1920.

Lovecraft’s New York City poem “On the Double-R Coffee House” (1st February 1925), on the bohemian hang-out, has… “Mids’t them I sit with smoke-try’d eyes”. He also talks in one of his letters of the… “nicotined atmosphere” there. The mid-1920s Kalem Club meetings also appear to have been rather smoky at times, and what with that and the strong coffee, Lovecraft must have come away with quite a ‘buzz’.

“While I am peculiarly repelled by unpleasant odours, I have no vast hankering after perfumes, & always urge barbers not to smell up my old bean [his head] with patent citified lotions. I like the fresh scent of springtide on the hills, & the August aura of new-mown hay, but I’d never go to the trouble of building an organ of olfactory notes — with perfume-phials for pipes — as did des Esseintes in the tenth chapter of A Rebours!” — Lovecraft to Fritz Leiber, December 1936.

HPLinks #85 – Innsmouth sells, lost fantasists, tall ships, sinister coastlines, new movies and more…

16 Saturday May 2026

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HPLinks #85.

* Antiques & Arts reports that the lacklustre and error-riddled amateur Innsmouth book produced in Lovecraft’s lifetime has fetched $11,875 at auction. I’d guess, from the price, that it’s probably not the same as the signed Heritage Auctions copy I featured last week in HPLinks. The Antiques & Arts report also gives the prices for other Lovecraft books sold at the same PBA Galleries auction.

* Wormwoodiana discovers a trove of unknown fantasy books from Lovecraft’s era, in “Reading Fantasy in 1928-29: Part One”. They appear to have been well outside the orbit of Weird Tales.

* DMR surveys Weird Architecture Part I: Our World and Time and Weird Architecture Part II: Other Worlds and Times.

* Taskerland this week has considered remarks On “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”.

* In Spanish from Chile, the survey article La Antartica en la Literatura Fantastica (2017) (‘The Antarctic in Fantastic Literature’). Freely, and seemingly newly, available online.

* Deep Cuts this week considers and reprints the short 1936 local memoir “Robert E. Howard as a Boy”.

* Useful for Mythos writers and others, a new Howard / Conan Comics / Lovecraft / CAS mega-combo in-world timeline as a free spreadsheet, Titan/Heroic Signatures Howardverse Timeline V1.

* Possibly also of use as reference for Mythos writers, The Online Review of Rhode Island History has faithfully transcribed the local guide A Survey of Rhode Island in 1789 as a HTML page.

* The worthy local Windows freeware Everything is so useful for scholars and picture archivists that it has to be mentioned here. Now in a new 1.5 beta (May 2026). The beta adds drag-and-drop from search-results to other software, tagging, Boolean search, and more. It’s also incredibly fast. Very useful for local search on your PC, in combination with the free AnyTXT Searcher. To enable Boolean: Top menu | Tools | Options | Search | ‘Allow Literal Operators’. NOT is then a search operator, as well as AND, OR.

* New and sinister Lovecraftian goings on along England’s sedate Somerset coastline…

“The Apocalypse Players’ […] latest full adventure, As The Waters Cover The Sea, begins with a walking trip in the Quantock Hills and soon spirals into a strange and terrifying tale involving cricket, crustaceans, cults and Alfoxton House. […] the county and its people somehow feel more authentically in touch with the past than other parts of England […] feels like a place where ghosts could walk, cults gather, and fae creatures dance by moonlight”.

Their performance of As The Waters Cover The Sea has 23(!) podcast parts and has just concluded. All the parts are now on YouTube.

* Ages of Madness is a forthcoming ‘Lovecraft animated’ anthology of animated shorts. According to the trade journal Animation Magazine the European project is a serious venture now attracting big names in auteur animation, and it will… “serve as a prelude to the feature-film Ages of Madness: The Howling of the Jinn”. Which, at a guess from the title and also the prelude anthology’s format, may weave a episodic tale around the history of The Necronomicon?

* A big-screen indie reboot of Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Reanimator is apparently moving ahead. Starburst magazine has Malcolm McDowell (Clockwork Orange) signing on to appear, with… “cameras expected to begin rolling next month [June 2026] in the river town of Alton.” Not Bolton.

* And finally, newly on Archive.org is the short 2:30 minutes film The Life of H.P. Lovecraft which showcases the current (horrific to some) state-of-the-art of AI video generation. Sadly not under Creative Commons, or else stills from it might be re-styled/re-drawn to make a comic-book version.

— End-quotes —

New on eBay, I found a 1907 low view of the industrial side of the Providence river-front, with a working tug. A card made by someone who knew the tug’s pilot, seen at the wheelhouse. Plus my Photoshopped Nano Banana makeover, giving the picture a slightly more Lovecraftian feel. Note the old sailing-ship masts on the far-right, which Lovecraft knew and which he would have glimpsed while coming down the lanes onto the other river-front.

[Lovecraft returns home to Providence after a long trip…] “A fresh salt wind came up from the harbour, over the roofs of the centuried warehouses and the Old Market House of 1773; and down the narrow, curving line of the old town street by the shoar I glimpsed the chimneys and gambrel roofs of mouldering houses known to ancient captains and tarry West Indian seamen. I was home again — in the old New-England seaport that is not quite like any other New-England seaport; in the old maritime New-England that is so different in its soul from [the inland towns …] green-leaved, hill-crowning Providence — Providence, of the old brick sidewalks and the Georgian spires and the curving lanes of the hill, and the salt winds from over mouldering wharves where strange-cargoed ships of eld have swung at anchor.” — Lovecraft in Observations on Several Parts of America (1928).

“Southward you will glimpse the harbour, once a forest of masts, & even now a port of prominence. In September 1815, Market Square was temporarily transformed to a raging sea — the terrible gale of that month driving large full-rigged ships high over the bridge. A good-sized brig was left stranded on Westminster Street when the mad waters subsided.” — Lovecraft to Kleiner, June 1918.

“Into this bay used to come the shipping of all the world, and about a century ago it was a veritable forest of masts.” — Lovecraft to Galpin, September 1919.

“I can see clearly that the French have a profounder culture than we have — that their intellectual perspective is infinitely clearer than ours, & that their tastes are infinitely farther removed from animal simplicity. [Yet still] I shout at every French prize [captured ship] that Capt. Abraham Whipple (my collateral ancestor) brings to Providence harbour & delivers to His Majesty’s prize court of Admiralty at Newport” — Lovecraft to Woodburn Harris, November 1929.

[Lovecraft explores the industrial side of the Providence river-front in 1928, finding behind it…] “a squalid colonial labyrinth in which I moved as an utter stranger, each moment wondering whether I were indeed in my native town or in some leprous, distorted witch-Salem […] there was a fog, & out of it & into it again mov’d dark monstrous diseas’d shapes […] narrow exotick streets and alleys […] grotesque lines of gambrel roofs with drunken eaves and idiotick tottering chimneys […] and toward the southeast, a stark silhouette of hoary, unhallowed black chimneys and bleak ridgepoles against a mist that is white and blank and saline — the venerable, the immemorial sea”. — Lovecraft to Morton, December 1923.

“The effect of night, of any flowing water, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it.” — R.L. Stevenson, noted by Lovecraft as entry No. 222 in his Commonplace Book of story ideas. He had found it quoted in John Buchan’s The Runagates Club (1928). It was to be his last entry in his Commonplace Book.

HPLinks #84 – HPL’s Innsmouth, Cosmic Humour, Lovecraft’s guns, and more…

10 Sunday May 2026

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HPLinks #84.

* Up for auction in three days, what might be Lovecraft’s copy of the ill-fated Innsmouth book, or at least one of the copies he was shipped and then sent around to friends…

* S.T. Joshi’s latest blog post lists the anthology Lovers of Darkness: New Stories Inspired by Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book as one of his new books… “likely to appear this year”.

* Japan Cthulhu is a 780-page table-trembler, filled with Japanese tales in Italian translation. This May 2026 book… “collects three novels and seven short stories [as a bumper anthology] that explores the golden age of the Japanese Lovecraftian tale”. A quick search suggests it’s not also available in English. Though I guess the novels and stories may be found separately in English.

* There’s a chapter that touches on Lovecraft in the new Concerning Dust and Ashes: Affects of Horror in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press, 2026), “The Wonder and the Terror of the Divine” …

The chapter argues for the sublime as a temporary point of hesitation, which must resolve itself into either wonder or terror. […] This experience of terror as a result of an encounter with the divine is termed ‘transcendent terror’, a category which shares many characteristics with Lovecraftian cosmic horror. […] While Lovecraft’s idea of cosmic horror is situated within an atheistic worldview, transcendent terror can serve as a theistically framed model of a similar type.

* Also apparently touching on Lovecraft, a new Bloomsbury book coming in June 2026, titled Cosmic Humour and Philosophical Pessimism in Contemporary Culture. It looks at a specific form of humour that articulates a ‘cosmic’ pessimistic outlook. The author traces it from Britain in 1969, then a nation undergoing a rapid loss of faith in established religious and political institutions amidst an unprecedented wave of de-censorship (and also, incidentally discovering Lovecraft). From there the book progresses through later examples of such humour. The gloomy Marvin the Paranoid Android, in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is apparently one such example.

* Somewhat of a shelf-companion to Cosmic Humour perhaps, is Weird Mysticism: Philosophical Horror And The Mystical Text (2020) from Lehigh University Press. An old one, but it’s the first time I’ve noticed it here. One of the three areas of focus is on…

philosophical pessimism [via the] pessimal paradise of E.M. Cioran. [What] emerges is a quiet friendly imperative to laugh in the face of the void…” (review)

* It looks like I missed noting Lovecraftian Proceedings No. 5 here. This was the 2024 issue, collecting the 2022 conference papers. Among others, it has the definitive article on “Firearms in the Life and Work of H.P. Lovecraft”, co-written by two deep researchers of the topic. I see that one co-author also has a Investigator Weapons handbook for the Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG, though I couldn’t get past the DriveThruRPG captcha to see it.

* Curtis Weyant seeks a connection between De Casseres and Lovecraft.

* The Silver Key has a new Arcane Arts: Dispatches from the Silver Key newsletter. 12 issues so far. The email newsletter is free and “covers things the blog doesn’t” such as heavy metal music.

* GhostvilleHero has a brief review of In the Mad Mountains: Stories Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft (2024).

* MPorcius is reading through the first issues of Weird Tales, from 1923, summarizing the tales and commenting.

* Super Stuff in the Bronze Age has a lengthy Windy City Pulp and Paper Con 2026 report…

the annual convention book issued by Moon Dog press, was this year focused on Argosy magazine […] Incredibly there was a copy of Weird Tales #2 (April 1923) for sale [at the dealer tables], unslabbed. That is the rarest issue, rarer than Weird Tales #1. I’m told it is unthinkable for something like that to be for sale at a UK event. I understand that another copy of Weird Tales #2 (graded by CGC at 8.0) is shortly to go up for auction at Heritage [Auctions].

* Super Stuff also tips me off to the fact that there is… “an Overstreet price-guide equivalent for pulps called Bookery’s Guide To Pulps, with the latest 4th edition just published”. The 3rd edition, in 410 pages, is here and this seems the official site.

* A complete 1936-1971 run of the pulp Astounding, up for auction in Australia in seven days.

* A free online article from The Pulpster’s 2021 issue, “A million words a year for 10 straight years”. In which Walter B. Gibson recalls how he wrote The Shadow…

Complete certainty of the plot, before beginning, allows spontaneous writing. Therefore, I write an elaborate synopsis, which covers definitely, even in acute detail, each point that promises real difficulty during the writing of the story.

* New on Archive.org, scans of a run of 19 issues of the Rohmer Review, a fanzine dedicated to Sax Rohmer (Fu Manchu) and his macabre tales. Lovecraft knew Rohmer via his publication in Weird Tales in the 1920s, had read his novel Brood of the Witch Queen, and read his popular history of sorcery The Romance of Sorcery (1924).

* I don’t track the weekly tidal wave of ‘Lovecraftian’ videogames, but a dating-sim sounds unusual enough to worth noting. Sucker for Love is…. “comedic in tone, but nevertheless remaining reverential to the themes and sensibilities of Lovecraft.” Newsweek magazine is sufficiently smitten to interview the guy who made it (freely available online, seemingly no region-block or paywall).

* And finally, it appears that the UK’s Free Speech Union can now accept PayPal, at long last. Members get options for experienced legal help, if they are attacked for exercising their legal right to free speech in the UK. The Union has won many free speech cases.

— End-quotes —

“I, too, was a detective in youth — being a member of the Providence Detective Agency at an age as late as 13! Our force [of local boys] had very rigid regulations and carried in its pockets a standard working equipment consisting of police whistle, magnifying-glass, electric flashlight, handcuffs, (sometimes plain twine, but ‘handcuffs’ for all that!), tin badge, (I have mine still!!), tape measure, (for footprints), revolver, (mine was the real thing, but Inspector Munro (age 12) had a water squirt-pistol while Inspector Upham (age 10) worried along with a cap-pistol). […] We shadowed many desperate-looking customers, and diligently compared their physiognomies with the “mugs” in The Detective [magazine], yet never made a full-fledged arrest. Ah, me — the good old days!” — Lovecraft to Derleth, February 1933.

“[As a boy] I used to be a great hand at rigging up [in disguise] having a whole makeup kit of bushy beards, fierce moustaches, slouch hats, daggers, pistols, and other appurtenances of the desperate characters toward which my youthful fancy inclined me.” — Lovecraft to Robert Bloch, June 1933.

“[As a boy] I loved the woods and their traditional associations. The lore of hunting allured me, and the feel of a rifle was balm to my soul; but after killing a squirrel I formed a dislike for killing things which could not fight back, hence turned to [card] targets until such a time as chance might give me a war. […] Around 1906 [age 16] I was a good rifle shot, but by 1910 my skill had declined [due to eyesight].” — Lovecraft to Moe, April 1933.

* [As a youth] “I loved firearms & could scarcely count the endless succession of guns & pistols I’ve owned. I wish even now that I hadn’t given away my last Remington [rifle]. As it is, [today] I possess only an ancestral & unshootable flintlock musket.” — Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, March 1933.

HPLinks #83 – Names in Lovecraft, Lovecraft and antiquity, Russian Lovecraft, Lovecraft on the Moon, and more…

02 Saturday May 2026

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HPLinks #83.

* New to me and now open-access, “Teratonymy: the weird and monstrous names of H.P. Lovecraft”, from the academic journal Names (September 2010). Freely available online.

* A long abstract for an advanced undergraduate presentation at Oberlin, “Letters from the Abyss: Epistolary Form and the Unknowable in Lovecraft’s Cosmic Horror” (2025). A rare focus on the influence of letter-writing on the structuring of Lovecraft’s fiction…

“Nineteenth-century Gothic texts such as Dracula and Frankenstein use written correspondence to create realism, build trust, and establish clear lines of communication between narrator and reader. This study argues that Lovecraft reworks these same forms to produce the opposite effect: confusion, fragmentation, and uncertainty.”

* A recent virtual conference on Mediterranean Antiquity in the Work of H.P. Lovecraft (April 2026). This included papers, not yet available online, such as…

    — H.P. Lovecraft and the Dark Side of Antiquity.
    — Cthulhu and Polyphemus.
    — Civilization, Decline, and Hybridizations: Trajectories of ‘Decadence’ in Greco-Roman Cultures and Lovecraft’s Fiction.
    — Roman History Through the Lens of Lovecraft?

* A reminder to readers that the deadline for the Armitage Symposium is fast approaching. Submit by 24th May 2026.

* The Journal of Dracula Studies once again rises from the dead, and has a new Call for Papers.

* Deep Cuts considers the 1970s booklet Winifred Virginia Jackson — Lovecraft’s Lost Romance (1976) by R. Alain Everts & George T. Wetzel. And also Lovecraft’s Daughter (1983) by R. Alain Everts. The latter being Sonia’s teenage ‘flapper’ daughter.

* The boy Lovecraft’s attention was turned towards Greek/Roman myth by reading Hawthorne’s Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales. Now there’s a sumptuous new $100 illustrated Wonder Book Illuminated Edition, complete with essays by Guillermo del Toro and others.

* Dark Worlds Quarterly has a new post surveying The Cthulhu Mythos in the pulp magazine Strange Tales.

* From France, the audio ‘Lovecraft Integrale’ series of podcasts, which appear to be straightforward free high-quality human readings of Lovecraft in French, with music. My guess is that they’re meant to showcase the abilities of the maker’s Audio360 studio in Paris? Freely available online, no region-blocking.

* From Moscow, a Russian book whose English title might be The mythology of Lovecraft: From Cthulhu and cosmic horror to the Necronomicon and forbidden cults (2026). Appears to be a mix of biography, criticism and mythos-systematizing, with dashes of philosophy? The reviewer states… “it seems that this is the first time his mythology has been analysed in such detail in Russian”

* SpraguedeCampFan reviews Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, 1923-2023 (2023).

I see that this table-trembling 500-page hardback can now be had as a rather more lightweight Kindle ebook. Speaking of which, I read that Amazon is ceasing all re-install support and book-sales to its previous Kindle ereader devices… so watch out for that.

* A horrid front-cover that doesn’t inspire confidence, but I see there’s a new short book on Amazon titled Lovecraft on Civilization: Selected Writings.

It might be something quickly copy-pasted from the Selected Letters and banged together with some online essays? Or perhaps it’s something more considered and curated, and only marred by that cover? Who knows, as there’s no Kindle ebook free sample. Buyer beware.

* Seemingly from Germany (it’s in German, anyway) on the ARTE channel and online, the short 14 minute on-location documentary Providence, die dunkle Stadt von H.P. Lovecraft. The ARTE video plays for me, with no region-blocking, captchas or sign-in.

* An unusual new book, Lovecraft in India. A little digging reveals it to be a graphic novel, rather than a scholarly look at the publication history, reception and local adaptations. Available now from Gosh comics in London.

* Regard Critique reviews the new Metal Hurlant (the French edition of ‘Heavy Metal’) Lovecraft special-issue. The reviewer finds that Druillet has his…

extracts from his delirious illustrated Necronomicon [reprinted from the old Lovecraft special, but this time] accompanied by a complete analytical text on the links between the graphic designer and the author of Providence by Alex Nikolavitch.” And there is also… “a fascinating interview with the mangaka Gou Tanabe”.

* In Japan, the famous horror-manga creator Gou Tanabe has launched his long-form graphic novel adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The first instalment has now appeared in Japanese.

* Talking of comics, in case you hadn’t noticed, a vast and seemingly completist collection of vintage ‘fanzines and magazines about comics’ are flooding onto Archive.org as good scans.

* On DeviantArt, Peru’s GeniusXX is having fun depicting the Great Race and other Lovecraft monsters. He appears to be taking requests.

* A small fact about Lovecraft’s environs that I had not previously fully appreciated. It was male Brown University students who would have thronged up and down College Street (confined to the south sidewalk, the northerly one being traditionally reserved for residents) during term-time. Brown was then segregated by gender, it appears. Here is Lovecraft on the point…

I fear your colleague’s Providentian geography is all wet. Cushing St. is a full quarter-mile north of here; & instead of going up the great hill, slopes gradually downward from near its summit over the eastward plateau on top. (Like Barnes St. — which is not far away). It is around this street that Pembroke College, the female department of Brown University, clusters — whereas College St. (commonly called ‘College Hill’) tops the main & exclusively masculine part of the institution.” — Lovecraft to Galpin, November 1933.

* And finally, talking of hearty young lads, new at the HPLHS Store is the RPG book Campfire Tales: Scouts Against Cthulhu.

— End-quotes —

Slightly late (the astronauts are back and being received at the White House), but this week here are some quotes from Lovecraft on travel to the Moon. Lovecraft was aware, as early as 1920, of a plan to send a rocket-ship to the Moon…

“Speaking of astronomical things — is either of youse guys interested in (a) the supposed new trans-Neptunian planet [Pluto], (b) the talk of telegraphic communication with Venus or Mars, and (c) the Goddard plan for sending a rocket to the moon? If so, just speak up! Grandpa has heaps to say about all these things!” — Lovecraft to Galpin, April 1920.

He refers to space pioneer Robert Goddard’s paper A Method for Reaching Extreme Altitude (March 1920), which saw Goddard mercilessly mocked by the usual suspects.

“‘Space ships’ of the traditional scientifictional sort are perhaps a little beyond probability (the obstacles to their operation being really much greater than popular science indicates), but I certainly think that some rocket voyage to the moon (whose extreme nearness puts it in a separate category) will be attempted — first with an untenanted projectile, & later perhaps with a human cargo. Whether any living being could survive such a voyage & return is another matter.” — Lovecraft to Natalie H. Wooley, November 1933.

[In sending an editor] “an account of my vivid and active career I did not think it necessary to mention […] my voyage up the Oxus, nor my visit to Samarcand, […] but I did hint of certain travels through the aether in the dark of the moon, and give broad suggestions regarding certain queerly-dimensioned cities of windowless onyx towers on a planet circling about Antares …” — Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long, December 1927.