Another dull British January is done with and over. Not much is happening generally, but I’ve managed to make a full recovery from Omicron and have managed to keep up the daily posting schedule here at Tentaclii.
My blog has a new ‘Astronomy’ tag for posts, and I went back and retrospectively tagged relevant posts. Hopefully this will be useful for those writing the forthcoming book on Lovecraft and astronomy and the emerging astro-science of his time.
I took deep dives into learning more about Lovecraft’s almanac collection, and his interest in the moon in the context of the science of the time (the ‘volcanic moon’ theory etc). While researching the latter I identified some additional roots for his cosmic imagination re: what types of life might be able to exist in space. I also noted that the non-fiction articles in Munsey’s Magazine have obviously not yet been fully explored by Lovecraftians as a source of influence during Lovecraft’s formative years.
In other discoveries, I was finally able to find the press-clipping that showed a photo of Lovecraft’s favorite Providence bookseller, ‘Uncle Eddy’. This clipping was ‘hiding in plain sight’ at the Brown repository. I also spotted more evidence that Lovecraft’s friend McNeil was a fine photographer. I even made a short foray into Lovecraft’s use of the ant as a metaphor for himself and for humanity in his letters. Also a glance at Joel Dorman Steele’s A Fourteen Weeks Course series, as Lovecraft owned and recommended them.
This month Lovecraft was proven right by modern science, again, re: the news about the number of ‘dark’ sunless planets in the galaxy.
I’m currently reading through the very rewarding book of Lovecraft’s letters to Rimel and others, and for that thanks again to my Patreon patrons for helping me to pick it up when it was spotted very cheap on Amazon as a ‘Warehouse bargain’. As for buying more books myself, cash is the problem there. I’ve managed to survive the winter without once turning on the heater and I also now only heat a tank of water when needed. Which means that the savings gained should help compensate for the hefty rises in electricity and mortgage costs. I’ve also cut down on food bills. Once finances have stabilised in the springtime… then I may be able to risk buying a few more bargain books. I had hoped that my new Tolkien in Cornwall ebook would sell, and bring in some money that way. But so far… only three copies sold.
In new Lovecraft books the big event of a quiet month was the new $20 paperback edition for David E. Schultz’s Fungi from Yuggoth by H.P. Lovecraft: An Annotated Edition. On his blog, S.T. Joshi also confirmed the Letters volumes that should see release in 2022, and he noted a forthcoming book on “Lovecraft’s cosmicism and how it was adapted or amended” by later science-fiction writers.
The French are welcoming the first volume of their sumptuous and painstaking new Lovecraft translation. I noted the first review of Vol. 1 in Diacritik and translated a bit of it. In another post I noted the release of the fine cover-art for this new multi-volume edition.
Several new additions were added to my Open Lovecraft page (which links scholarly work shared in public open-access). The Litteraria Copernicana academic journal has a new Lovecraft special-issued titled “Lovecraftiana”, under Creative Commons, which was not all about adaptation. The Gothic Studies journal Studies in Gothic Fiction also issued a Lovecraft special-issue, albeit very much focused on adaptation. In academic work somewhat relevant to Lovecraft, I noted the new book chapter “Cats and Creativity in Eighteenth-Century Britain”. I’d like to see that adapted as a short graphic novel. I was also pleased to see that the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1926 three-volume supplement had slipped into the public domain. This is now public and online, and thus useful as a reliably snapshot and summary of the state of things in the 1910s and early 20s as Lovecraft emerged from his hermitage.
Various newly-liberated old zines with Lovecraft-relevant material were spotted arriving on Archive.org, such as The Diversifier #21 (July 1977); Toadstool Wine (1975), and an article in the Book Collectors’ Society of Australia newsletter Bibliophile (1948).
‘Tis the time of year for convention announcements, and there were firm dates and details from the likes of Eldritch-con 2022: A Horror and Fantasy Game Writers’ Convention; the new Chaosium Con; the German Lovecraft convention; and NecronomiCon 2022. Pulpfest also has dates and a call for material for the annual convention journal The Pulpster. The organisers of the Howard Days in Cross Plains have already announced their dates, back in December.
For those interested in some TV sci-horror fun in a dull January/February, I also made a “Skip or Watch” guide to the Tom Baker years of the British TV series Doctor Who, and am currently working through them and updating the guide accordingly. I’ve worked through three seasons so far and have finished season 14.
A forthcoming issue of Digital Art Live magazine will be a Carl Sagan tribute issue, so if anyone has anything that can be used for that (i.e. unpublished or otherwise re-printable interview transcript, etc) please get in touch. Also any stills/concept-art from the animations made of his ideas about alien ecologies on other planets.
So that’s it for January. I hope to continue posting daily in February, but the news is very slow and hard to glean at present. As always, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Even $1 a month, or an increase of $1 in your current patronage, is an encouragement.
