More Lovecraft, Seuss-i-fied…

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.

Puffed Shoggoths, Lovecraftian artzine/book due for premiere at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival 2013.

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.

I’ve discovered a magazine that’s not unlike the Popular Science magazine of Lovecraft’s day. Discover is full of interesting factoid-pumped ideas that are oven-cooked — ready for writers to take, blend, and adapt for use in fiction. I’m not sure we get the magazine over here in the UK (I’ve not noticed it, before now), but plenty of the content gets placed online for free at their website. Lots of articles that make you think “Lovecraft was right!” 🙂 Maybe they should have a whole themed issue on that topic.

Incidentally, the magazine is making an interesting move in response to the generally falling sales of magazines (digital editions are nowhere near making up the severe revenue shortfalls caused by: recession-hit consumers stopping spending on print mags; display-ad budget shrinkage; and competition from free online sources of news) — they’re quitting New York and moving to Waukesha‎, Wisconsin. Lucky Waukesha‎.

Neat new Lovecraft-inspired comic strip, featured on the Weird Tales website…

Unlike most comic-strips featured as “an extra” to print magazines, this one looks quite fun.

H.P. Lovecat from the Literary Pets 2 cigarette cards collection…