14 Friday Apr 2023
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
A silver toad made by the Gorham Manufacturing Company, Providence, Rhode Island. In 1890, the year of Lovecraft’s birth. You’ll recall that Lovecraft’s father was, quite possibly, connected with the silverware firm in its heyday as a buyer or salesman.
Via the Smithsonian Open Access portal.
14 Friday Apr 2023
Posted in Odd scratchings
I see that the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences 2023 Winter Fundraiser is nearly at their $20k crowdfunder goal…
13 Thursday Apr 2023
Posted in Scholarly works
Gary Romeo usefully takes a comparative look at The Weird Tales Story in its three editions, including the “expanded and enhanced” third edition of 2021. This is then reviewed, and the new additions and omissions noted.
It seems the third edition is still only available in paperback, at present. No ebook, at least not on Amazon UK.
The Dark Man journal also has an online review of the latest edition.
12 Wednesday Apr 2023
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Newly released on Bandcamp, Music from the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast – Volume Three (2023)…
Music used in episodes of The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast (hppodcraft.com), including material from the feature audio production The Colossus. Recorded in Santa Monica, CA.
Volumes One (2009) and Two (2011) are also available.
12 Wednesday Apr 2023
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Norwegian black metal has a major exhibition at the National Library of Norway…
Once feared and frowned upon, Norwegian black metal has finally come in from the cold. Norwegian black metal bands are enjoying considerable success with good record sales, sold-out tours and mainstream awards. The exhibition tells the story of this journey in the form of media coverage of 30 years of Norwegian black metal.
Runs until the 16th September 2023, at the National Museum in the capital Oslo. Free entry.
11 Tuesday Apr 2023
Posted in Podcasts etc.
New on Librivox, Ben Tucker’s 70-minute public-domain audio reading of “The Call from Beyond” by Clifford D. Simak.
Back in 2016 Michael May appreciated “The Call from Beyond” for its Lovecraft derived ideas and links…
The May 1950 issue of Super Science Stories has a Simak story called “The Call From Beyond.” The very title rings of Lovecraft’s “From Beyond” and “The Call of Cthulhu.” […] He obviously had a lot of fun with the Lovecraftian elements, though they made the story unsellable to John W. Campbell at Astounding. Thus [it appeared in] Super Science Stories, a crappy low-pay mag.
Although be warned of May’s huge plot-spoilers. He recounts the entire plot including the finale.
Despite its super illustrations, the story is not one of Simak’s best. But it was written in the late 1940s and at that point he was only a few years into writing some good and enduring SF tales. It’s thus interesting to see him leaning on Lovecraft to keep his writing moving forward.
10 Monday Apr 2023
Posted in AI, Lovecraftian arts
A more painterly output from Dream by Wombo, compared to the previous post. The hair probably needs to be fixed. It’s too dark, ‘shoe-polish’ black. But imagine it’s 1922 and Lovecraft is “waiting for Loveman” at a rooftop cafe in Cleveland…
“Waiting for Loveman”
10 Monday Apr 2023
Posted in AI, Astronomy, Lovecraftian arts
What might have been… a well-fed and hairpiece-augmented Lovecraft imagined at age 65, at the end of a career as the venerable and respected astronomer who discovered the planet Pluto.
In this alt. history picture one might imagine that it’s 1956 and his retirement portrait is to adorn the newly-built hallways of NASA. As a writer, in his youth he published a few classic Dunsanian fantasy tales, but then fell silent in fiction. Yet he has just published a slim volume expounding a curious new ‘cosmic’ philosophy, a work said to be exciting some keen interest among European intellectuals.
The picture is more ‘Nick Cage plays Lovecraft’ than Lovecraft, perhaps, but that’s one of the tendencies that Wombo veers towards. The other is Buster Keaton. An AI isn’t making visual distinctions, it just knows a certain set of facial images are associated with the keywords 1920s (Keaton) and with Lovecraft (Cage). There are three ways I know of to control that. One is luck and a good text prompt. The other is a knockout word presented as $Buster$ and the other is to upload a ‘seed’ image of the real Lovecraft.
Thanks to the Dream by Wombo AI and Photoshop. I know I said I’d keep AI generated images off Tentaclii, but it’s getting so good now…
09 Sunday Apr 2023
Posted in Scholarly works
My Tolkien Gleanings issue 3 is now available. A free 48-page ‘zine for Tolkien scholars, collectors, and others.
Collecting my January-April 2023 ‘Tolkien Gleanings’ blog posts into one handy PDF. The clickable Web links are retained in the PDF. Also articles, reviews, and a gallery of vintage material.
Also available via Gumroad, if you care to make a donation for it.
Happy Easter.
09 Sunday Apr 2023
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Hurrah, I see that Ken Faig’s Lovecraftian People and Places (April 2022) now has a Kindle ebook edition, published before Christmas 2022. The table-of-contents is available at Hippocampus. There you’ll also find details of his print books Lovecraftian Voyages (effectively his biography of Lovecraft), his other book of essays The Unknown Lovecraft, and three books presenting the life and work of Lovecraft’s friend Edith Miniter.
08 Saturday Apr 2023
Posted in Scholarly works
The latest issue of the UK’s open-access Rosetta Journal (Summer 2022) leads with the article “Ancient Astronauts and Sumerian Aliens: The Fourth Kind as a Pseudo-Archaeological Narrative”. Later in the same issue there’s a review of the new Oxford University Press book The Werewolf in the Ancient World.
07 Friday Apr 2023
Posted in Historical context, Picture postals
This week for my regular ‘Picture Postals from Lovecraft’ post, a look at the place where (in the eyes of the New England doctors) Lovecraft’s character of Dexter Ward veered into the occult and went mad…
… he had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School, which lies very near his home […] The beginning of Ward’s madness is a matter of dispute among alienists [i.e. psychiatrists]. Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy’s last year at the Moses Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult, and refused to qualify for college [i.e. university] on the ground that he had individual researches of much greater importance to make.
It’s not stated in the novel that Dexter Ward frequented the school’s Art Studio, seen here in both a rare exterior and an interior view. But it seems likely there were at least lessons there, and also that his initial burst of “zest in the military training of the period” only lasted a few months at the school. The burst being in August 1918 — and quite understandable in the context of what we now know to have been the final three months of the First World War and the possibility of a lad shipping out to France and seeing some action. This of course reflects Lovecraft’s own short-lived zeal for such.
