27 Wednesday Oct 2021
Posted in Housekeeping
DuckDuckGo, Bing and Yandex now have the new Tentaclii showing up in search. Google Search is still lagging at present. It usually takes them two or three weeks to pick up a ‘new’ blog.
27 Wednesday Oct 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
The 1921 British census is to be released after Christmas, a potentially useful source for researching the exact whereabouts of interesting people in British science-fiction / fantasy and amateurdom…
From 6th January 2022, anyone will be able to view the census online on Findmypast, allowing them to find out about their ancestors and discover the history of their home or local area.
It will also include the British armed forces stationed overseas.
The census is kept secret for 100 years. The 1931 census was destroyed by fire during the war, and the taking of the 1941 census was skipped because Britain was then in the darkest days of the war. All of which means that the next British census won’t be released to researchers until 2052.
27 Wednesday Oct 2021
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
Newly online, a timely and long article on “The Response to Epidemic Disease in Colonial Rhode Island”. Mostly about the early, pre-1800s history. Interesting in itself, and possibly also useful as research material / inspiration for Mythos writers.
26 Tuesday Oct 2021
Posted in Kipling, Podcasts etc.
The latest edition of Sensor Sweep sent me in search of a good audiobook of Kipling’s famous proto-steampunker long story “With The Night Mail” (1905, expanded 1909). Surprisingly difficult to find on YouTube in a good reading, and Librivox search ‘knows nurthing…’. Though Librivox does actually have it, which alerts me that their keyword search is obviously duff. Even a search for kipling night doesn’t pick it up. Librivox’s one reading turns out to be echoing and not ideal, though you might fix it up in an audio editor.
But that matters not, since trusty old Archive.org brings a good result. Patrick Stacey’s version from 2020, a one-hour reading complete with “enhanced with original music and sound effects” and which he made and uploaded himself. Super. I might even recommend it in the November edition of Digital Art Live. Though there is a bit rather awkwardly cut out at 45:20 minutes, the “Rimouski drogher” section. I can see why that was cut, but the vital description of the Mark Boat and the meteorite has also gone with it.
It was in print in the U.S. McClure’s Magazine, November 1905, the first publication — unless the British magazine that published it a month later was perhaps on the news-stands before its December cover-line. It anticipated a great many new technologies, from radio to air-traffic to medical (30 years have been added to the average lifespan). Here the story is deemed set in “June 2025” rather than 2000, and opens slightly differently. There are other small differences compared to the 1909 and 1915 book versions, and the sequel opens with a quote from the original that makes yet another small change.
26 Tuesday Oct 2021
Posted in Kittee Tuesday
Murray Ewing has a long new post on the lecture “On Fairy-Stories” by J. R. R. Tolkien, and some comparisons are drawn with Lovecraft’s approaches. There’s also the nice observation that…
Reading a poem about a cat, you might see all cats in a wholly new light; but having seen a dragon (even in your imagination), you’ll find all of reality renewed.
25 Monday Oct 2021
Posted in Odd scratchings
A copy of the famous bound-storyboard book for the Moebius / Giger / Jodorowsky Dune movie is set to be auctioned at Christie’s in Paris. The movie was famously unmade, and there’s even an excellent documentary movie about the film not being made (Jodorowsky’s Dune, 2016). There are likely to be about ten copies of the bound storyboard in existence, which is thick enough to stun a sand-worm.
Yours for half a Bitcoin, perhaps. Though it could go as high as $100k, given the rarity. I mean, no-one else is likely to be selling their copy soon, and museums/archives should be interested. The book is on the block 22nd November in Paris, but before that it…
will be on public display at Christie’s Paris galleries from Nov 18th-22nd.
Update: Sold for $3 million!
25 Monday Oct 2021
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
Martine Chifflot-Comazzi kindly informs that her stage play, Lovecraft, my love — “created for streaming in Clermont-Ferrand (March) and in Paray-le-Monial with the public (September)” — is now available in translation. Sadly I can’t find the link to this new book at either of her Facebook pages, but she writes in a comment at Tentaclii that…
The text has been translated and is available (20 euros)
Previously available in French from Aigle Botte Editions, 2018. Amazon UK has no sign of the new translation yet.
24 Sunday Oct 2021
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
A superb new 3D H.P. Lovecraft by Khoi Nguyen, posted to ArtStation a couple of weeks ago. ZBrush / Substance Painter / some Maya hair dev and rendered in Arnold.
Outstandingly good. I was thinking of having a go at shaping a DAZ G3 into a Lovecraft head, or perhaps souping up the old Meshbox/Miyre 3D Lovecraft with Some Awesome PBR Textures. But it would not have looked as good as this. Such a pity it couldn’t have been included, possibly alongside an interview with the maker, in the now-published “Gothic” issue of Digital Art Live magazine.
24 Sunday Oct 2021
New on Archive.org, the 1943 “Fungi From Yuggoth” stencil duplicated edition. Mmmm… smell that hand-cranked duplicator fluid and fan-sweat…
Also newly arrived on Archive.org from microfilm, the Monthly Weather Review 1872-2012. Useful for U.S. researchers seeking a quick answer to “and what was the weather like when event X was happening?”. The new run of Notes and Queries 1849-2014 also looks handy.
I also spotted Jacqueline Baker’s novel The Broken Hours (2015), seemingly a creepy atmospheric haunting story set in Lovecraft’s house and late Depression-era Providence. Another one that escaped me during the blog hiatus. I guess this counts as another ‘Lovecraft as character’ work, though I’m not yet sure if he actually makes an appearance.
23 Saturday Oct 2021
Posted in Films & trailers
Stop-motion animation can take a long time. After 30 years of work, Phill Tippet’s new stop-motion feature Mad God (2021) offers…
a Miltonesque world of monsters, mad scientists, and war pigs … a darkly surreal world ….
The great movie director del Toro approves, reportedly, and has seen the movie on the film festival circuit in the USA. Tippet appears to be from the UK, and — as his round of the film festivals seems to have been completed — he’s presumably now seeking a distributor.
22 Friday Oct 2021
Posted in Historical context
New to me, the Arvon Ghost Reader from 1946. This was another way to get Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”, post-war. If you hadn’t already encountered Derleth’s Armed Services edition paperback intended for the troops in Europe.
22 Friday Oct 2021
Posted in Astronomy, Historical context, Picture postals
“One of the principal features today is the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Vestal St. (formerly Goal Lane), which adjoins the birthplace of the celebrated female astronomer (professor at Vassar) whose name it bears. The observatory is modern — a memorial to Prof. Mitchell. I had a good chance to observe Saturn through its excellent 5” telescope.” (to J. Vernon Shea, 10th February 1935)
“I had an excellent view of Saturn” (to Arthur Harris, 1st September 1934)
He had once had a fever-vision of flying to Saturn…
though I often dream of things of the most bizarre and vivid sort … the only well-defined delirium I ever had was in 1903 … [I] mumbled things about flying to Mars and Saturn.
In summer 1934 the observatory’s observers (Margaret Harwood and John Heath) were noted for their work on discovering variable asteroids, and the observatory seemingly benefited from the general oversight of the Harvard College Observatory. The 1908 (“modern”, to Lovecraft’s thinking) elevation plans for the place show that the apparently twee external ‘garden house’ appearance actually hides hidden depths…
Pictures missing
Which may interest Mythos writers, as in “how far down does it go…”? Google StreetView shows the Observatory much as it was, though with side extensions. It appears to be open to interested visitors.
The resort town also has the Loines Observatory, which allows public viewing and is often confused with the Maria Mitchell Observatory, but the first dome there was not open until 1968…
“Since its establishment in 1968 and 1998, Loines Observatory’s two domes house multiple telescopes for research and public astronomical programs”.