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 the 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 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.