HPLinks #96.

* Lovecraftian Proceedings No. 6 is now listing on Amazon UK, with a shipping date of 20th August 2026. The paperback contains the 2024 proceedings of the Armitage Symposium at the NecronomiCon. The website hplovecraft.com has the full contents-list. There are three biographical articles: on the early poem “Providence in 2000 A.D.” (1912) in the context of 1912; on Lovecraft’s fateful trip to Cleveland in 1922; and an account of the history of Butler Hospital in Providence.

* The website hplovecraft.com now has the full contents-list for the Lovecraft Annual 2026. Too much goodness for me to select just a few items here, so take a look at the full contents-list.

* The latest Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (Vol. 37, No. 1) has a review of the book Adventurous Liberation: H.P. Lovecraft in Florida (2025). In print only, it seems. The book is also reviewed in the new Lovecraft Annual 2026.

* Ars Necronomica, the NecronomiCon 2026 art-show, now has a poster and artist-list.

* Eventbrite still has NecronomiCon Providence 2026 Tickets, at the time of writing.

* S.T. Joshi has usefully re-published the long out-of-print H.P. Lovecraft Cat Book (2019), under the new title Little Sam Perkins: Writings about Cats (2026). The book can now be had as a budget Kindle ebook… “This book contains Lovecraft’s complete writings on cats, including generous extracts from his letters in which he attests to his devotion to felines.” hplovecraft.com has the book’s original cover and table-of-contents. It’s not a complete survey of cats in the letters, but rather a “generous sampling” with a focus on cats in New York City. I’ll add a Kleiner memory of Lovecraft in New York City…

[Lovecraft] and I were sitting in George Kirk’s Chelsea Book Shop one night, after hours, and we were discussing the word parallelopipedon. Lovecraft, as usual, was primed with information, [and] it suddenly occurred to me that parallelopipedon would be quite a name for a cat, a pleasing supposition which I mentioned to him. Then, beholding the usual kitten playing around his chair, I stooped, and soothingly murmuring, “Here, my little parallelopipedon,” began to pet it. Looking up at Lovecraft, I beheld him in a state of helpless mirth. His face was contorted and he shook all over. He was so completely convulsed that it took him some time to return to normal” — Rheinhart Kleiner, “Some Lovecraft Memories”.

* A new long text interview with S.T. Joshi, “A Recognised Tradition of Weird Writing”, for the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction.

* In Caen, France, Symposium Lovecraft, set for 14th November 2026. The event appears to be broadly about Lovecraft as an outsider who struggled to find a place in ‘reality’, and will seek…

to understand what his work reveals about our own relationship with ‘the real world’. Through readings, short dramatic sketches, lectures, and audiovisual presentations, this symposium seeks to experiment with a form of “disappropriation” — accepting that reality is not intended for us, that it transcends our conceptual frameworks, and that not everything with a face is necessarily human.

* As the AI wars rage among writers, Cambridge University Press and Villanova University have usefully published the results of a ‘bot or not’ test for AI vs human fiction. It was an online self-reporting test of “adults in the United States between the ages of 18 and 81”, who were each paid $4 to do the test. And it offered participants only “realistic fiction”. Not ideal then, but the results still seem interesting. Even given the current fledgling state of creative writing LLMs, they are found to be currently… “capable of generating short stories that cannot be distinguished from human-written stories and that tend to be perceived as higher quality and more absorbing.” “Participants were no better than chance at differentiating between the human-written and AI-generated stories.” And that’s without human plot devising, or later human polishing and trimming. The paper and data are open-access.

* A new short film, “The Call of C’thulu”, on YouTube.

* SpragueDeCampFan considers “Robert E. Howard in Modern American Poetry”.

* From 1974-1980 “Gregg Press Turned Paperback-only Science Fiction Into Quality Hardcovers, Then Vanished”.

* John Coulthart recalls one of the classic comic-art portfolio sets of the 1970s, in “BWS & REH”.

* A new book from prolific British publisher Bloomsbury, The Devil’s Garden: The World’s Most Sinister Plants and Fungi (May 2026).

* In the UK, Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Wall” has been adapted for the stage. It will be performed in Yorkshire in October 2026. Booking now.

* I’ve found a stupendous business map of Lovecraft’s city in 1946. Showing in microscopic detail the names and positions of the shops, cafes, offices and streets of Providence. A useful aid to researchers, even though it was published 20 years later than one might prefer.

* And finally, it’s nice to see that a new ‘grandpa’ bench is now sited at the entrance to the wooded bluff above York Pond, Providence, one of Lovecraft’s favourite summer writing spots. Looking shiny and new in summer 2025, the bench can be seen on Google Earth.

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— End-quotes —

Some bench-pressing with Lovecraft…

“Visitors at the Slater Avenue Primary and Grammar School in Providence, examining the desks and walls of the building, or the fence and the long bench in the boys’ yard, may today discern among the multitude of names unlawfully carved by generations of youthful irrepressibles frequent repetitions of the initials ‘C.P.M. & H.P.L.’, which the vicissitudes of sixteen years have failed completely to efface.” — Lovecraft recalls schoolboy days, in The Conservative for April 1915.

“Getting too dark to write now. This [Roger Williams] park is one of the finest in the country, though formal as compared with my old river-bank. I’ve been using it lately because the hospital (which I visit daily) lies in its direction. The squirrels here are extremely friendly — one little rascal is now on the other end of the bench on which I’m sitting.” — Lovecraft to Derleth, June 1933.

“As I write these lines I am in very congenial K.A.T. company myself — for small tiger Alfred A. Knopf is ensconced in the curve of my left arm as I sit on a bench in the landscape garden …. occasionally chewing the edge of your letter, and occasionally reaching forth a sportive paw to pat the moving Parker [pen] which indites this document.” — Lovecraft to E. Hoffmann Price, August 1935.

“You may smilingly doubt the genuineness of Old Theobald’s retirement from the world — but look sharp! [… amid the hustle of Brooklyn, New York City, a certain] old gentleman … arose [in the early morning] to tuck his books under his arm and start for a solitary open-air day in nearby Fort Greene Park. There, on a bench against a secluded verdant slope, I read continuously all day; stopping only at twilight, when I wended my homeward way, pausing at John’s Spaghetti place for my usual Sunday dinner of meat balls and spaghetti, vanilla ice cream, and coffee.” — Lovecraft to Aunt Lillian, May 1925.

“I first became conscious of him [R.E. Howard] as a coming leader just a decade ago — when (on a bench in Prospect Park, Brooklyn) I read Wolfshead.” — Lovecraft to E. Hoffmann Price, July 1936.

“Finally I assented & seated myself upon a marble bench close by the open grave [and its newly-revealed “black passageway with a flight of stone steps”], telephone in hand. He produced an electric lantern, prepared the telephone wire for unreeling, & disappeared down the damp stone steps, the insulated wire rustling as it uncoiled. […] I sat on a marble bench in that very ancient unknown cemetery with the crumbling stones and tombs and long grass and dampness and the owl and the waning crescent moon.” — Lovecraft to Galpin, December 1919. Telling the dream of Loveman that later became the story “The Statement of Randolph Carter”.