Category Archives: Lovecraftian arts

Tremulus

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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I don’t normally cover table-top RPGs here. But something interesting has been funded with $25k on Kickstarter: Tremulus…

“Tremulus is a storytelling RPG where you and your friends get together and create a haunting story in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft’s works.”

Ok, so it’s about real storytelling. I’m liking it.

“easy to learn” … “there is nothing to memorize” … “the story isn’t written beforehand” … “You only need a pair of regular old six-sided dice, like you find in most family board games”.

I’m definitely liking it. Sounds like my kind of game. Although I’ve never seen the attraction of table-top RPGs, when there are videogames like Morrowind to be played. But if it’s as easy as the makers claim then Tremulus might even have potential for jump-starting stalled writers, by giving them some parts of a basic plot structure. Since it’s claimed that Tremulus…

“plays exceedingly well, with just one player. This complements weird literature perfectly, as there is often only a central, solitary protagonist.”

And since they now have $25k to play with, there’s a chance it could be a fairly sophisticated and Lovecraft-faithful project. Here’s hoping.

Pulp!

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Added to the magazines section of the “Lovecraft on the Web” directory:

Twit Publishing’s Pulp! magazine. The editor harks back to the days when kids chugged hardboiled detective mysteries, westerns, horror, action/adventure, proto-superheroes, science fiction, and weird fantasy — completing the homage with terrible cover artwork.

Sadly, it’s a USA-only project and so they reject submissions by British writers. Twits.

On Lovecraft’s shadow

02 Sunday Sep 2012

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Jeff VanderMeer has a lengthy new post arguing against the shadow that Lovecraft’s towering presence casts across contemporary weird fiction. There are a few good points made, especially on how interest in Lovecraft can help rekindle interest in neglected weird writers.

But it seems to me that VanderMeer’s article is a little stuck in the ‘scarcity mindset’ of the old print culture, and also the 20th century vanguardist idea of ‘forward progress’ in taste and techniques. In the age of the abundant Web, the Kindle/POD ecosystem, and our new hybridizing remix cultures, I’d say there’s ample space to develop audiences and vehicles for all sorts of varieties of ‘the weird’ in fiction — and beyond. If one’s favorite magazine no longer appears to cater for one’s precise political or aesthetic tastes, then start another that does.

Personally I’m looking forward to the liberation of short stories from their old prisons in magazines and forest-devouring mega-anthologies, via an Instapaper or Spotify -like re-bundling and delivery service. Perhaps that will come via a service that offers a free quality ‘audio book reading’ to authors and rights holders, on condition that the resulting audio story is distributed via the new service.

Clockwork Empires (PC game)

28 Tuesday Aug 2012

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I have fond memories of a few of the best of the isometric-view strategy videogames, and once greatly enjoyed Sid Meier’s Civilisation II and later his Railroads and others. Also Titan Quest [review], although that was more Diablo-like. So the new PC Gamer magazine’s pre-release coverage of the moddable PC game Clockwork Empires sounds very interesting. Especially as it’s apparently a…

“Lovecraft-laden steampunk city-builder” [in which the player is a Civilisation-style] colony-builder amid the grand idealism of Victorian discovery [but] with horrors, madness, wild species, and volatile science.”

Sounds awesome, but sadly it’s all very much “under development”. It looks like we’ll have to wait until around Sept/Oct 2013 before we can play it.

Further Lovecraftian places that really exist

25 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Lovecraftian places

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Further Lovecraftian places that really exist:


Eye of Africa (the Richat Structure), Mauritania.


‘Sentinels of the Arctic’ (wind/snow formations, Finnish Lapland) — picture by Niccola Bonfadini.


Entrance to the Borgund Stave Church, Norway — picture by Lightbender.


Catholic convent catacombs, Lima in Peru.


Basalt cave entrance, Akun Island — picture by Steve Hillebrand, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


Stephen Whitney crypt entrance, Greenwood Cemetery (Lovecraft visited this cemetery while in New York).