25 Monday Nov 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
PulpFest’s annual journal The Pulpster calls for your ideas and proposals for well-researched articles. Also artwork. 2020’s event will centre around Ray Bradbury in the pulps, the Black Mask title, and the cover-art of Margaret Brundage.
You can drop editor Bill Lampkin an email at bill@pulpfest.com and the sooner he hears from you, the better. He has to plan space for articles and start collecting artwork and illustrations.
Ad space is also available.
24 Sunday Nov 2019
Posted in Historical context, New books, Scholarly works
The early years of science-fiction fandom in the USA are fairly well documented by now. Or are they? A new 124-page book usefully expands the easily-available source material for the history, and provides a new and questioning preface. Challenging Moskowitz.
“Sam Moskowitz’s The Immortal Storm is regarded by many as the definitive history of US fandom in the 1930s, but several contemporary fans either presented alternative versions of events or took issue with the book’s selectivity (New York-centrism in particular) and partisanship. Rob Hansen has compiled and introduced this collection of relevant fanwriting by Allen Glasser, Charles D. Hornig, Damon Knight, Jack Speer, Harry Warner Jr, Donald A. Wollheim and T. Bruce Yerke.”
Free in various digital formats, but donations are encouraged.
23 Saturday Nov 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
The Heart of the Hollow World, a complete 2017 graphic novel adventure in the Journey to the Centre of the Earth / Edgar Rice Burroughs / pulp adventure style, with a learned protagonist from Rhode Island. It’s free online.
Originally a showcase for Doug Lefler‘s Scrollon comics reading app for iPhones and iPad, and now also available via a Web browser in a player. It uses a gutter-less format, akin to a scroll-painting.
His new Story Attic looks like an interesting outlet for those who can tell old-school adventure stories in this new visual form. The storytelling is top-notch.
23 Saturday Nov 2019
Posted in Historical context, Odd scratchings
Currently for sale at $100 via AbeBooks, Science-Fantasy Correspondent #2 (1937). Containing Bloch’s story “A Visit with H. P. Lovecraft”.
Joshi’s bibliography lists it as “fictional reminiscence” re: its reprint in the book Lovecraft At Last, and comments elsewhere reveal it to be a “hilarious” bit of humorous writing. A little further digging reveals it to have been reprinted more recently in the appendix of H.P. Lovecraft: Letters to Robert Bloch and Others.
An earlier and fuller sales listing for the original zine has found its way to the Amazon description, and this notes…
In the story, Lovecraft is depicted as eating the writer of the story. Lovecraft comments separately “…I seldom eat people alive except for Sunday dinner. As a general thing, I prefer human flesh cooked; and I generally avoid authors as a diet, since they tend to be lean and tasteless.”
Regrettably the story/zine is not scanned and on Archive.org or in the Hevelin online collection. I imagine a crowd-funder for a comics adaptation of it might do rather well.
22 Friday Nov 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
Canadian Archaeological Association 53rd Annual Conference, 2020: “Archaeology and Popular Culture”.
This session aims to look at the relationship between archaeology and popular culture.
How has archaeology influenced popular culture (e.g. the influence of archaeologist Margaret Murray’s research on H.P. Lovecraft’s story, “The Call of Cthulhu”)?
How has popular culture influenced archaeology (e.g. the role of Indiana Jones in the origin stories of many archaeologists today)?
How does the appearance of archaeology in various mediums of popular culture influence public perception of our field (e.g. archaeology within video games like The Sims 4: Jungle, Stardew Valley, and the Tomb Raider franchise)?
How can archaeology in popular culture be used to educate the public about our field and the archaeologists within it (e.g. the documentary television show Wild Archaeology)?
And what happens when the archaeology being shared with the public is incorrect, misappropriated, and pseudo-archaeological (e.g. television shows like Ancient Aliens and America Unearthed, books like Chariots of the Gods)?
21 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted in Podcasts etc.
I haven’t listened to it yet, but World’s Deadliest Podcast popped up on ListenNotes. A new podcast, and Episode 7 is “Strange Adventures with Illustrator and Comic Book Expert Jesse White”. White appears to be a special expert on the art and working methods of John Buscema (Conan and others)…
Jesse has a new Kickstarter for a 1970s style pulp bagazine titled Strange Tales, which will feature an number of adventure stories told in the classic comic-book style. We also discuss John Buscema’s contribution to comic books, and we contrast the differences between the world views of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.
21 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
Useful advice on caring for rare hardback books, by an expert book conservator, found in the latest edition of the UK’s Country Life magazine…
Lovecraftian writers in search of correct description of the physicality of ancient library work should also look at “Fingers, Lips and Parchment: How Medieval Users Handled their Manuscripts”.
20 Wednesday Nov 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
I’m pleased to see that Starblazer has returned, if only as a best-of reprint title. Each volume is an oversized double-issue reprint…
Collating two classic issues from DC Thomson’s archives and blowing them up to full graphic novel size.
Starblazer was the science-fiction sister-title to the UK’s venerable Commando, and ran from 1979-1991.
20 Wednesday Nov 2019
Posted in New books
Now shipping from Companhia das Letras in Brazil, a new Biblioteca Lovecraft – Vol. 1, being a 448-page Portuguese translation of Lovecraft’s stories.
19 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
At La Maison d’Ailleurs, Europe’s leading museum of imaginative science-fiction, a “Cthulhu-Con” in March 2020…
To be paired with a visit to their “Mondes (im)parfaits” exhibition, which appears to be a partial retrospective of the original art of the graphic novels Les Cites obscures, albeit framed by the work of other artists.
19 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
Registration will open soon for the Deutsche Cthulhu Convention in Germany. I spotted a deadline of February 2020 for payment, presumably for a summer 2020 event.
Last noted here very briefly in 2014, the event seems to be a large German Cthulhu convention hosted by the German Lovecraft Society in a castle in Lower Saxony. Their tablet-tastic site doesn’t play nicely with Google Translate, so I can’t quite get a sense of how gamer/scholarly the event’s balance is. But they appear to have some sort of core symposium element.
Finding it made me aware of their Lovecrafter magazine. Here’s the pleasing cover of the July 2018 issue, and paper copies are available by mail-order.
Within are…
* A look at a horror and fantasy fanzine of the 1970s (presumably a German one).
* Lovecraft, the first 50 years – a survey of publishing Lovecraft in Germany, with publisher interviews.
* Fear of the Known – on the myths of Lovecraft in the digital world.
* Between protest and delusion – Cthulthu’s role in 1968.
… and some RPG game stuff.
18 Monday Nov 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
Added to my post from a few days ago on Monster trolls…
Monster manual (1994). I’d imagine this would hold up quite well in court as “prior art” on the matter of the use of the word “monster” + a green claw for things like books and comics.