Monthly Archives: July 2026

HPLinks #94 – Nonentity graphic novel, REH items, Zothique issues, skyscrapers, and more…

23 Thursday Jul 2026

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HPLinks #94.

* The graphic novel Some Notes on a Nonentity: The Life of H.P. Lovecraft is back in print, as an affordable paperback.

* The Comics Journal reviews the recent graphic novel The Last Day of H.P. Lovecraft. Freely available online.

* From France, the book Lovecraft par lui-meme: ou Lovecraft maitre de vie (‘Lovecraft himself: or Lovecraft a master of life’)…

This work, composed from translations of unpublished or little-known texts in French and Lovecraft’s private correspondence, draws a portrait of character as rich as those found in the great novels, and of a man even greater than his work.

* A repository open-access preprint from the forthcoming British Fantasy Society Journal 28, “Under the Spell of Fantasy: The Sword and Sorcery Production Cycle in British Popular Cinema of the Early 1980s”. Freely available online under Creative Commons.

* On now and running until November 2026, “Here Be Dragons: Anglo-Saxon Influence on Fantasy” is an exhibition at Jarrow Hall (‘Anglo-Saxon Farm and Village and Bede Museum’) in Northumbria, England.

* Black Gate considers David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard (Howard’s pirates, Bran Mak Morn) and Part Two (Red Sonja). Part Three is still to come.

* Southwest Historical Quarterly reviews Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author ($ paywall, but a substantial chunk of the review is free).

* RevERBerate, the Edgar Rice Burroughs journal, has now reached issue 4.

* Undefined Boundary: The Journal of Psychick Albion (Volume 4, Issue 1) has a Mark Valentine essay on “The Other Country: Numinous Landscape in English Supernatural Fiction”.

* A call for papers for an online one-day conference from the Ukraine’s Centre for Fantasy Literature Studies, themed around the “Mysteries of Night in Fantasy Worlds”. Deadline: 31st October 2026.

* From Italy in Italian, the journal-zines Zothique 22 and Zothique 23.

* S.T. Joshi’s weird poetry annual Spectral Realms No. 25 (Summer 2026) is now available. The poems are accompanied by…

Steven Withrow’s interview with Ann K. Schwader — part of a volume of interviews of contemporary weird poets that Withrow has now completed.

* Taskerland’s blog considers Lovecraft’s “The Thing On The Doorstep”.

* Benjamin Cain’s Substack blog considers “Lovecraft and monotheism”…

… to the extent that Lovecraft’s weird tales satirically targeted monotheism, it’s no accident that any of the three Abrahamic religions might seem Lovecraftian when interpreted from [the] updated, naturalistic standpoint [arising from scientific knowledge].

* A fragment of evidence for the 1900s-1930s history of Providence bookshops and libraries. On eBay, a 1934 matchbook for “The Book Shop” at 5 Grosvenor Building, Providence. With a mini-map showing its new home in relation to its old one across the Market Square. Sadly it’s very blurred, but can just about be comprehended.

Not as quaint and olde worlde a book shop as the image suggests, perhaps. At least in its new location. It was up in a 10 story modern building at 10 Weybosset Street, which Mythos writers might like to note Lovecraft said had buried an old lane with the evocative name of Dunwell’s Gangway. This skyscraper had also housed Lovecraft’s neer-do-well uncle and his refrigeration company at one time, and in an even more distant time housed the office of Lovecraft’s grandfather. Lovecraft wrote…

One of our principal skyscrapers — where my grandfather had his office the last two years of his life — was named the ‘Banigan Building’ — though Providence pride has led to its recent renaming as the ‘Grosvenor Building’

* New on Archive.org, Imagen: Revista Latinoamericana de Cultura, No. 7 (2015). With a one-page review of a translated anthology whose title translates as ‘The Trail of Lovecraft’. The reviewer notes that it also had a scholarly introduction…

An important element of the book is the compiler’s prologue, which briefly examines the phenomenon of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and his influence in Venezuela.

* Of possible interest to scholars of the younger end of Lovecraft’s circle, and their intersections with emerging fandoms and genre publishing, a call for papers from the Journal of Juvenilia Studies for a special-issue on Youth Writers and Their Worlds. “Youth” here = “under the age of 21”. Deadline: 15th December 2026.

* Tentaclii’s Terrific Technical Tips (1): Amazon are no longer delivering ebooks to older Kindle ereader devices. Boo. In this situation it’s useful that some indie authors kindly allow manual download of an .ePUB version of the ebook. However, this comes to buyers as a .ZIP file. Easy to convert when you know how: simply rename the .ZIP to .ePUB, and then use the free Calibre to convert the .ePUB book to the .AWZ3 format suitable for the early e-ink Kindles.

* Tentaclii’s Terrific Technical Tips (2): Do you get sea-sick from a wobbly camera on YouTube videos? It’s possible to convert a downloaded video into a slideshow. Download a video from YouTube, install ffmpeg, tell Windows where ffmpeg is (a one-time setup), and then…

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "select=not(mod(n\,375))" output.mp4

The command inserts every 375th frame x 375 times in the resulting video, converting the wobbly video to a slideshow of static frames. At the YouTube frame-rate, this command gives you static frames at a suitable pace. Audio is unchanged, and still in sync.

* And finally, a reminder that Lovecraft’s birthday is approaching. 20th August 2026. If you need a theme or a ‘hook’ for making a bithday present, then note that 2026 is the 100th anniversary of, among others: Lovecraft’s return home to Providence from the ‘Pest Zone’; the writing of “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, his ghostwriting work for Harry Houdini, the writing of Dream-Quest; and the first publication of “The Outsider”.

— End-quotes —

Lovecraft and skyscrapers / tall towers.

“I saw for the first time the Cyclopean outlines of New-York. It was a mystical sight in the gold sun of late afternoon; a dream-thing of faint grey, outlined against a sky of faint grey smoke. City and sky were so alike that one could hardly be sure that there was a city — that the fancied towers and pinnacles were not the merest illusions.” — Lovecraft to Moe, May 1922.

“Lovecraft and I sometimes would walk across the Manhattan Bridge [in New York City], the view of the skyscrapers from various parts of the footwalk being part of artistic efforts in the letters I had written him. To me, these views were scenes in a drama which only awaited the right author to find proper appreciation. To Lovecraft, what he beheld here had secret links with a number of dreams of mysterious horror…” — “Some Lovecraft Memories”, Rheinhart Kleiner.

“… in those seconds I saw a vista which will ever afterward torment me in dreams. I saw the heavens verminous with strange flying things, and beneath them a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon, and devil-lights burning from unnumbered windows.” — Lovecraft, from “He”, a nightmare vision of the towers of a future New York City.

“The skyscraper is not essentially novel; tall buildings having been common in mediaeval Italy, while Gothic towers approximate the same atmosphere. Modernism is manifested in certain proportionings based on the new structural materials (steel frame & concrete) employed for the practical purpose of the edifices concerned. A skyscraper (following Gothic lines or employing classical ornament) can be traditional […] I don’t especially like the Empire State Bldg. — but it’s the design & not the height which alienates me. I like its tall & fantastic neighbour ten blocks north — the needle-pointed Chrysler. When buildings reach this level of height their minor differences in altitude are not striking to the eye near the ground. I can’t say that either Chrysler or Empire State looks any taller to me than the old Woolworth. I intend to go up in the Empire State this year.” — Lovecraft to Miss Toldridge, February 1932. The Woolworth building had previously been the highest in NYC.

“… at this writing I am looking out the window [from his desk at 66 College St.] into a sunset as mystically glamourous as any which could have inspired [a poem … ] some of the lights of the lower town are winking on …. [Then, later… ] The rose & green gave place to crimson & orange — one vast sea welling up from the violet horizon. And the evening star blazed over the city’s tallest tower.” — Lovecraft to Miss Toldridge, February 1935.

“From some of the hidden interior meadows — remote from every sign of nearby human life — I secured truly marvellous glimpses of the remote urban skyline [of Providence] — a dream of enchanted pinnacles & domes half-floating in air, & with an obscure aura of mystery around them. The upper windows of some of the taller towers held the fire of the sun after I had lost it, affording a spectacle of cryptic & curious glamour.” — Lovecraft to Derleth, November 1936. Lovecraft on exploring “the region west of the Neutaconkanut Hill”, which he had never penetrated before… “Just before sunset I ascended the hill by a precipitous cart-path bordering an ancient wood”.

HPLinks #93 – Argentina, cosmic humour, Gaslight reviewed, Sanz illustrates “Colour”, Hypnos filmed, and more…

15 Wednesday Jul 2026

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HPLinks #93.

* Deep Cuts digs deep and brings up the complete never-reprinted “Something from Beyond” (1941) by Paul Dennis LaVond.

‘Something from Beyond’ is pure Lovecraftian pastiche, albeit in an uncommon space opera setting, which gives it the feel of a very stripped-down prototype of Event Horizon.

* New to me, the Spanish-language book Lovecraft en Argentina (‘Lovecraft in Argentina’) (2015) by Carlos Abraham…

an exhaustive tour of the history of Lovecraftian letters in our country [i.e. the translators, editors and publishers, and also touches on the influence on the nation’s writers]. In an appendix, he also takes the opportunity to review the [Spanish] first editions of Robert Howard’s works. It is an interesting work, essential for the collector who intends to complete his library, but at times the book becomes difficult to read due to small type or the technical nature of the contents.

   Contents:

  – Introduction.
  – Dark beginnings (1939-1956).
  – The dissemination of a secret author (1957-1990).
  – Lovecraft as a classic (1991-2015).
  – Conclusion.
  – Appendix: The first Spanish editions of Robert E. Howard.

* Four years after a devastating Russian cyber-attack, the British Library’s EThOS (E-Theses Online Service) is finally restored and back online. The latest relevant “Lovecraft” British PhD thesis is from Manchester in 2022, ‘Live. Laugh. Loathe.’: cosmic humour and contemporary pessimism in literature and on screen (1969-2019). Currently posted online in May 2026 but under a repository embargo with one year to go before release to the public. The same author published a new book with Bloomsbury in June 2026, titled Cosmic Humour and Philosophical Pessimism in Contemporary Culture, which I assume is the PhD text… but revised and polished for publication?

* New in the latest History Today magazine, the short article “Fringe beliefs” (2026, Volume 76, Issue 7, page 6). Possibly this is a regular column(?), and in this instance its indexing-service abstract says the article discusses Lovecraft’s posthumous influence on the 1960s-70s ‘ancient astronauts’ theories.

* The Obelisk reviews Michael Shea’s 1984 novel The Color Out of Time, in “Watchers on the Threshold vs. Vampiric Jelly”…

The Color Out of Time is a mess of a book. It is ‘Lovecraftian pulp’ rather than cosmic horror. Plus, Shea’s attempt to mirror the Master’s purple prose comes across as stiff, and it does little to help the simultaneously simple yet hard-to-follow plot. […] As a homage, it is nice enough. Shea writes like someone who actually enjoys Lovecraft and his works [which is refreshing today …]

* RPG Review reviews the late-Victorian London “Cthulhu by Gaslight” role-playing adventure book from Chaosium.

* The English translation of Gou Tanabe’s “The Dunwich Horror” is still on track for release as a deluxe hardcover at the end of September 2026, and now has cover. Also due around the same time, an 80-page illustrated German translation of “The Colour Out of Space”. A hardback “with four-color, full-page illustrations by Salvador Sanz”, an experienced Argentinian comic-book artist, animator and comics teacher. Looks promising, even in German.

* At the Annecy International animation festival, the U.S. Cartoon Network announced development on a Conan animated series, helmed by Genndy Tartakovsky (Primal). Reported to be an adult Conan animation series, and a project he’s been trying to get off the ground since 2008. Possibly set for 2029, judging by what’s said in animation trade journal reports?

* Lovecraft’s undervalued story “Hypnos” is being filmed, as part of a feature-length indie anthology currently on Kickstarter. No further details.

* And finally, plucked from eBay… I found an amusing one-page 1978 underground comix strip which riffs on street names in Lovecraft’s Providence. Was it a one-pager, or were there more pages? The one page is all that’s being sold on eBay.

— End-quotes —

Lovecraft on street-names.

“In 1912 my first bit of published verse appeared in The Evening Bulletin. It is a 62-line satire in the usual heroic couplet, ridiculing a popular movement on the part of the Italians of the Federal Hill slums to change the name of their main street from “Atwells’ Avenue” to “Columbus Avenue”. I pictured Providence in 2000 A.D., with all the English names changed to foreign appellations.” — Lovecraft to Kleiner, November 1916. The poem is “Providence in 2000 A.D.”

“Street names are notably picturesque [in Paris], including such specimens as Rue Git-le-Coeur (Street Where the Heart Lies), Rue Chat-qui-Peche (Street of the Fishing Cat — probably named from a bygone shop sign), Rue de l’Arbre Sec (Street of the Dry Trees), and so on. This quaint nomenclature is typically French, and is paralleled in other towns of France, and in Quebec on our own continent. Many streets are likewise named for the illustrious dead — not only statesmen and warriors, but men distinguished in the arts — a practice also common in Germany, but in America followed only in Boston.” — Lovecraft on Paris street-names, in “European Glimpses”.

“Amongst the [Boston] streets named for illustrious men I was pleas’d to note a Belknap-Street, commemorating the Revd. Jeremy Belknap, minister of a church in Federal-Street, and founder of the Boston Historical Society. The name of this street hath since been chang’d to Joy-Street, and I am sure that no reader of my small Belknap’s phantasies can deny that Belknaps invariably afford joy!” — Lovecraft to Galpin & Long, February 1923. Lovecraft’s story “Pickman’s Model” faithfully used Boston North End street-names in the tale.

“Providence thank heavens has avoided the stultifying custom of numbering [streets, as in New York City] ‐ our only numbered streets being ten obscure ones in the north end of the town.” — Lovecraft to Miss Toldridge, suggesting he knew the names of just about every street and lane in Providence.

As Providence grew into a large city… “still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west [of College Hill], spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old waterfront recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent.” — Lovecraft, Dexter Ward.

“Some years ago Long and I attempted to explore the Fulton Fish Market section of New York — which is full of quaint scenes and buildings. I don’t know where I left the lunch I had eaten an hour previously — for I was too dizzy to read the street signs! In the end I managed to stagger out of the stench without actually losing consciousness …” — Lovecraft in a letter of 1933, Selected Letters IV.

Frankly dotty…

10 Friday Jul 2026

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As a technical exercise in moiré removal on an old newspaper image, I tried Flux2 Klein 4B with a small 788px image of Frank Belknap Long. It can sort of be done, which is a miracle in itself, compared to what Photoshop tinkerers could do 10 years ago. But the moiré dots can’t be totally cleared.

He appears to be holding a small pipe.

HPLinks #92 – Clara and Lovecraft, bestiality, fandom research, the OED, film, theatre, and more…

09 Thursday Jul 2026

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HPLinks #92.

* Deep Cuts asks “Who is Clara in Lovecraft’s Letters?” and ably uncovers a new Lovecraft acquaintance in Providence. I’d add that the Westport Historical Society has a Clara Buffum page, with additional details of her summer home in Westport and her cataloguing work at the Providence Athenaeum. The Providence Athenaeum Bulletin reveals she also worked on the Delivery Desk in 1897, around the same time as the cataloguing work. Later the Providence Handicraft Club has her giving a talk on bookbinding to the Club in 1923, and her correspondence and mail-order sales address in 1926 was “42 College St., Providence, R.I.” which is that of the Club. Later the American Art Annual 1932 lists her as a member of the Club. Both the cataloguing work and the Club would tie Clara to Lovecraft’s aunts.

* New on Archive.org, a scan of the Profiles In History: Autograph Catalog 41 Winter 2006. Offers a 1930 Lovecraft letter to C.A. Smith, with transcript…

Carlsbad = the famous Carlsbad caverns. 20 years ago one could have had this letter for what today would be deemed a bargain price.

* From Indiana University, the Phd thesis The Edge of Cognition: Enchantment in Weird Fiction (2026). Freely available online.

* New in the 2026 of the French open-access annual journal Res Futurae, “Lovecraft sans Cthulhu. Epistemologie et esthetique de la bestialite dans l’oeuvre lovecraftienne” (‘Lovecraft without Cthulhu: Epistemology and the aesthetics of bestiality in Lovecraftian work’).

This article reconstructs the author’s intellectual landscape to better understand the interfaces between the pattern of bestiality and racialist zoo-anthropology. The study of the stories ‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family’, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, and ‘The Dunwich Horror’ allows us to articulate bestiality with an aestheticized evolutionary imagination.

* From the University of Marburg in Germany, a new open-access journal titled Fandom | Cultures | Research. Dedicated to fandom and fan-cultures research and research methodology. So far, four issues have been produced. Mostly English items.

* On YouTube, Archiving Horror! The S.T. Joshi Interview. A new Joshi interview.

* New on Archive.org, a scan of the Arkham House Catalog and Stock List With Addendum, 1986-1987.

* A new book Lunar Gothic: The Influence of the Moon on the Gothic Imagination (2025), which may interest some.

* Murray Ewing has a new blog post on “Lovecraftian Labatut”, musing on the curious similarities between the “strange and disturbing new insights” of the physicists and mathematicians, and the entities and cosmic vistas their workings can appear to glimpse.

* S.T. Joshi’s blog announces…

the Friends of August Derleth is a going concern, and we are actively soliciting members. As can be seen from our website at friendsofaugustderleth.org, which is still in a somewhat rudimentary stage, a membership is remarkably inexpensive, and at a later time members will be allowed special privileges (such as access to books published by the Friends) not available to non-members.

* Among other items, Joshi also notes his participation in a…

conference on Lovecraft’s philosophy put on by Steven K. Stakland and others and taking place in Japan on [29th June – 1st July. Other speakers] included papers by such veterans as Robert M. Price and Steven J. Mariconda. [The papers] will not be available online, but it appears that a book of all the papers is likely to be published by Routledge.

* DMR considers “R.E. Howard’s “The Garden of Fear”: Flowers of Evil and a Tower of Dread” and “”The Valley of the Worm”: Forging the Myth Behind the Myths”.

* On YouTube, “…when I last see him” The de Camp Interviews on Robert E. Howard…

Michael K. Vaughan discusses a rare, limited-edition book containing unedited interviews by L. Sprague de Camp regarding Robert E. Howard. These primary source transcripts offer fans and scholars a transparent look at the original accounts from those who knew the author

* Adventures Fantastic has A Brief Report from Robert E. Howard Days 2026.

* From veteran audiobook reader Horror Babble, what appears to be a new full reading of “The Shadow out of Time” (July 2026). I’ve not listened to it yet, but I assume it’s a more polished re-read of the earlier version HB released to YouTube some years ago. There’s also another fine unabridged reading free on Archive.org.

* The Obelisk has “Atom Age Lovecraft: A Review of Frank Belknap Long’s Journey Into Darkness”.

* New to me, an early item in Lovecraft scholarship Out for Blood (1984). A chunky A5 booklet, apparently aimed to “…prove that Lovecraftian analysis is not ‘worked out’ as many believe. [Gives] evidence to support my conviction that Lovecraft’s fictional concepts were developed with consistent logic and form a unified body of work”. However, the contents-list on the back suggests an essay selection with some intriguing topics.

* Comics publisher Dark Horse has announced a cover and a firm 2027 release date for the Gou Tanabe graphic novel of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark in English translation. To be paired with “Dagon”.

* “Crowdfunded $10K film ‘It Calls'”…

a psychological cosmic horror film inspired by the mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft […] Filming began in mid-May and is taking place throughout Roseburg, Bandon and other locations across Southern Oregon, with production expected to wrap on the 1st of August [2026]. Produced on a $10,000 budget raised entirely through crowdfunding, the studio said It Calls represents its most ambitious production to date.

* Germany’s Miskatonic Horror Theatre will be staging their biggest show yet, “The Call of Cthulhu” in Hamburg from 21st-23rd August 2026. Taking to the stage at the big open-air stage in Hamburg’s city park. Booking now.

* RobbieTheRobot has a current page of the choice selections he’s making from the itch.io mini-games and interactive fiction which have Lovecraft as the theme.

* A long English abstract for the Polish undergraduate final dissertation “Horror in Pixels: How Ugly Games Generate Fear” (2025).

When coupled with a cosmic or Lovecraftian narrative, even modest graphics can transform a game into a masterpiece.

* A slick new Cthulhu Mythos – H.P. Lovecraft Concordance for 14 stories, as a new website.

* And finally, the venerable Oxford English Dictionary has added the word “Lovecraftian” in their latest update, tracing the first use of the word to 1936 and Robert Bloch in a letter to Weird Tales.

— End-quotes —

“… drifting down a stagnant river betwixt high basalt cliffs, & wondering why I drifted; since the water had no motion, & there was no breath of wind in the awful SILENCE.” (Lovecraft to Kleiner, May 1920). “… conscious of drifting down some hideous stagnant river in a rotting boat, between terrible overhanging cliffs of basalt. There was no wind, and I wondered why I moved down so still a stream. The insects were of strange form, and made me shudder as their numbers increased and they began to light all over me” (Lovecraft to Galpin, April 1920). — Lovecraft recalls a dream, to two correspondents, in 1920.

“About the most daemoniac place I ever saw was a valley in New Jersey — in the foothills of the Ramapos — where the sides were covered with the outcroppings of a black crystalline basaltic formation, & the floor was strewn with curiously angular fragments. I only saw it once, but its image has lingered with me.” — Lovecraft to C.A. Smith, November 1930.

“Primal Basalt Bridge over the black & oily River Gnar. Time of the Bulbous Shape’s passage up-stream” — Lovecraft to C.A. Smith, October 1933.

“Then, just as I approached that primal basalt crypt I had so dreaded, utter madness came. For as the echoes of the avalanche died down, there became audible a repetition of that frightful, alien whistling I thought I had heard before. This time there was no doubt about it — and what was worse, it came from a point not behind but ahead of me. Probably I shrieked aloud then. I have a dim picture of myself as flying through the hellish basalt vault of the Elder Things, and hearing that damnable alien sound piping up from the open, unguarded door of limitless nether blacknesses.” — Lovecraft, “The Shadow Out of Time”, just one example of various uses of basalt at key moments in Lovecraft’s tales and poetry.