10 Saturday Dec 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
From Archive.org, their Public Domain Day 2023 Remix Contest… create and upload a short film of 2–3 minutes” using the newly-released public domain “Internet Archive collections from 1927”. Deadline: 6th January 2023.
Quite a bit of scope there for a 1920s-flavoured Lovecraft short, I’d say. Especially one accompanied by the… “snappy musical composition ‘You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream'”. Which is set to slip deliciously into the public domain.
09 Friday Dec 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre’s “The Black Stone” has its cover artwork, and gives every impression that it’s available for download (if not quite yet a shipping CD). Including two 8th December reviews.
Presented with their usual 1930s-style radio drama approach and panache, it’s Howard’s loving-crafted 1931 homage to Lovecraft.
05 Monday Dec 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
More Lovecrafty 3D pose-able figures for free, suitable for 1930s-40s RPGs and more. I featured one back in July. Now comes a new set from the same creator, Agent Civil 1940-50, low poly II, with accessories, skins and more. You need a copy of Poser 11 ($52) plus the old Michael 3 base figure aka “M3”. You’ll also want some extra head character morphs (many are free), to get Michael 3 away from the default “showroom dummy head” look.
“Low-poly” mean they don’t put much demand in your PC, and so you can have many of theme in one crowd or office scene. They’re intended for background use in a large scene, not close-ups.
Once installed, found in the Poser Library under: Figures | !DieselPunkUniverse | Character Male | Agent. There are zillions of M3 poses available, once you go looking. M3 will also take standard .BVH motion-capture files. Poser also has b&w line-art and Sketch capabilities, so you’re not stuck with normal 3D rendering. Poser now incorporates the same renderer as Blender, so if you want photoreal then you’re also not stuck with the “1990s videogame look” seen here.
03 Saturday Dec 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
At the New York Philharmonic premiere of Connesson’s “Les cites de Lovecraft”… Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson impresses in his New York Philharmonic debut…
Connesson is one of the most widely performed French composers today. His ‘Les cites de Lovecraft’ was a co-commission of the Orchestre National de Lyon and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, which premiered it in 2017. The work was inspired by the writings of American author H.P. Lovecraft … Deneve led the NY Philharmonic in a performance of this scintillating music that was stunning for its textural clarity and brilliance. Wave after wave of sound, ranging from brass fanfares to shimmering cascades from the harp and celesta, swept over the audience. It is music that is obviously close to Deneve’s heart, as he cradled the score in his arm and patted it when acknowledging the audience’s applause.
Lovecraft would no doubt have been rather amused to learn that symphonic paeans to his work would one day be rolling through a major New York concert hall.
29 Tuesday Nov 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New discoveries
A Lovecraft letter to Duane W. Rimel, now for sale from L.W. Currey.
10 pages on both sides of 5 sheets, closely written and incorporating 7 pen and ink drawings of old Providence architecture, dated 29th March 1934, signed “Yours most sincerely — H.P. Lovecraft.
The description makes no mention of Letters to F. Lee Baldwin et al. There the text of the letter appears to be published complete, and it matches the Currey description. But the “7 pen and ink drawings” are not shown with the letter in the book. Nor are the drawings found with the letter as partially published in Selected Letters IV.
Three of the pictures can be seen in the above Currey listing picture.
24 Thursday Nov 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Another day, another image-gen AI. MyHeritage’s existing Deep Nostalgia (subtly animates your vintage faces) has been joined by a new AI at MyHeritage. Reportedly based on a blend of Stable Diffusion & Google’s as yet unreleased DreamBooth.
AI Time Machine appears to be available now, and can blend your ancestor picture (or even you) into a historical figure. Thus taking your ‘family snapshots’ even further back in time, albeit with the risk of polluting existing memories.
I’m not a MyHeritage subscriber so can’t try it. But there’s a video demo here. No doubt we’ll soon be seeing Lovecraft as a Roman senator, Nordic warrior or an 18th century London coffee-house patron.
10 Thursday Nov 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
Gou Tanabe’s 2020 “Innsmouth” graphic novel is now available in Italian translation, in a two-volume set. In terms of size it’s a real graphic-novel, being presented as two slabs totalling 480 pages…
Despite the size it’s rather amazingly listed at only 15 euros for the box-set, by the Italian blurbs. I’m not sure how they can produce it at that price, unless perhaps the Italians have a different sort of euro. Perhaps there’s a huge market for such things in Italy and/or it’s very cheaply manga-style printed in Japan and then shipped to Italy on a very slow tramp freighter? Or perhaps the market has over-corrected, and the fabled paper shortage has now turned into a glut?
Anyway, no sign of it in English. Dark Horse have the English translation rights, and I had guessed at a Halloween 2022 release date for that. But no sign of it yet on the Dark Horse site.
07 Monday Nov 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
New to me, Strange Aeons – A Psychedelic Tribute To H.P. Lovecraft, from the UK’s Rainfall Records. Discovered via nice, if small, cover scans on eBay…
A 2 x CD set which appears to have been first issued in 2001. Readings and voices, presumably surfing amidst 2000-era psychedelic rock music.
Art by Steve Lines, who has a large and pleasingly old-school b&w gallery online at Rainfall Records.
06 Sunday Nov 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
Assistants are wanted for the German magazine The Lovecrafter. This is produced by and for the German Lovecraft Society, and their annual double-issue has just appeared. They are now gearing up for 2023. Obviously, good German would be required…
The Lovecrafter has been the official club magazine of the German Lovecraft Society since 2016. It provides the club members with information on the topics of weird fiction, cosmic horror, fantastic literature with a cthulhoid focus and other literary Yog-Sothothery. A double edition is currently published once a year. In addition, the Lovecrafter regularly publishes scenarios and NPC profiles for the role-playing game FHTAGN, and keeps an eye on any developments and releases that might interest RPG gamers. We are looking for backup!
No pay, but there are “expense allowances” available. Especially wanted are…
committed authors, proofreaders and editors … In addition, we are looking for layout artists, and people in general who are or would like to be familiar with the craft of journalism (including testing for readability, print and paper quality, etc).
It also looks like now would be about the right time to offer a German-language item as a contributor for the 2023 issue. The magazine’s 2023 double-issue themes are “Lovecraft as a poet” and “Robert E. Howard”.
02 Wednesday Nov 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
I’m pleased to discover the website and online gallery of Pietro Rotelli, the Italian illustrator who had the cover for the latest Italian Studi Lovecraftiani edition. You may recall the artwork…
His site made me aware of another Italian Lovecraft publication, Voci da R’lyeh (Voices of R’leyh), which appears to be his own…
He makes his own comics / graphic novels, which can be had in Italian on Amazon including in ebook format.
He’s also a comics letterer for hire, and it appears he can do a very nice line in ‘Moebius emulation’ in lettering.
29 Saturday Oct 2022
Posted in Lovecraft as character, Lovecraftian arts, New books
A new novel about Lovecraft’s friend Robert Barlow, El Asesinato de Robert Barlow (The Assassination of Robert Barlow, 2022), by Veronica Evers and available now in Spanish. It appears to be a murder-mystery police-procedural novel, set in the 1950s or perhaps into the early 60s in Mexico. A Lovecraftian homage, apparently. My translation and digest of the blurb…
Some years after Robert Barlow’s death, the historian Galo finds an unknown manuscript. It is a prequel to “The Call of Cthulhu”. This, he thinks, contains hidden keys relating to Cthulhu. Simultaneously, there is another and related mysterious death. Detective Acosta will not leave the cases unsolved, and he uncovers a whirlwind of old stories and unknown parts of Barlow’s life. He even has talks with William Burroughs and other beatniks, and discovers that his crumbling old Mexico City harbours some very dark places…
I can’t find out much more about it, and the dates are a little uncertain (Burroughs was in Mexico City in the early 1950s for five years, I recall, and so the tale may stretch into the early 1960s if the detective is pursuing the trail some years later?). There’s a YouTube recording of the author at a literary festival, though that may just be a reading rather than a Q&A. YouTube can offer no transcript to translate.
Apparently the “old Mexico City” was very different from the “new Mexico City”, and the author tries to evoke the latter. So I assume a lot of vintage local colour is involved, and I’d guess the author is also a knowledgeable citizen of the city. Level of gay content, and the angle it take on that… unknown. But it’s not being tagged as a gay novel.
No sign that Lovecraft appears in the book as a character, though if I was writing such a novel I’d at least have a cameo. Perhaps via a letter between Barlow and Burroughs that recalled the Lovecraft he had known.
25 Tuesday Oct 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
The Hollywood Reporter finds the new and just-released Netflix anthology series uneven, further finding…
[Lovecraft’s] “Pickman’s Model” overlong and over-obvious [while] “Dreams in the Witch House” is the “story of a man (Rupert Grint, not bad at all) trying to reconnect with his long-deceased sister, [and] is the only episode that actually looks cheap.
The only other review I can find is an early one from Pfangirl, who enjoyed “Witch House” as…
over-the-top supernatural fun, though it sadly strips out Lovecraft’s cosmic terror in favour of fairy tale elements
So it sounds like it’s only a ‘very loosely based on’ Lovecraft’ adaptation, despite the name. Still… the lush, “long” and period-costume “Pickman’s Model” might be worth a look, at least judging by a couple of screenshots…
