19 Thursday Mar 2020
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts
A new one-hour Plot Points podcast asks…
How did H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour Out of Space’ influence gaming? Academic Scott Bruner, Chaosium stalwart Jim Lowder, and host Ben Riggs (Encounter Theory) gather to discuss!
17 Tuesday Mar 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
John Coulthart has posted a full scan of his cover-art for His Own Most Fantastic Creation, in the post “Double weird”.
15 Sunday Mar 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
That strange scurrying noise? It’s a horde of Lovecraftians burrowing into a HPLHS dropdown-menu, to get at the free .MP3 of the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Rats in the Walls radio drama…
On moving into 66 College St. Lovecraft had discovered a… “narrow and hideously nighted space in the attic under the eaves — reached from the attic proper by low doors, and having no windows whatever. … I am wholly alone in the house now, with my aunt at the hospital and the downstairs neighbour on the high seas bound for Germany — but what was that creaking above me last night? Part of that black space [in the attic] is directly over my desk. Perhaps it was only the rats…” — H.P. Lovecraft, to CAS, June 1933.
10 Tuesday Mar 2020
New on Archive.org, August Derleth’s Arkham Sampler #4 (Autumn 1948). The journal ran for eight issues. This issue’s highlight, today, is a ‘poem for voices’ by Derleth. Inspired by reading Lovecraft’s letters he imagines the shades of Lovecraft and Poe meeting at last, one night in Providence.
And here’s a picture to set the mood for a reading. It’s not been seen here before at Tentaclii, and is from my late summer 2019 haul of such pictures showing Lovecraft’s 66 College St and its surroundings. The two men are at the Van Wickle Gates at the top of College Street, only a moment’s walk from 66 College Street. In fact, given the timing in the 1940s, one wonders if the picture wasn’t inspired by Derleth’s 1948 poem.
I don’t know who holds Derleth’s copyrights these days, but if they’re sensible descendents then there may be potential here for a musical album. Of soundscape / found-sounds / low-key ‘night music’, combined into tracks evoking Providence at night in the 1930s/40s leading into a dramatised vocal performance of this poem with FX. Perhaps earlier in the album one might also have some of Poe’s more ‘cosmic’ lyrics and then Lovecraft’s churchyard letters/poem, both mentioned in the above poem, done in the same way.
10 Tuesday Mar 2020
I don’t usually cover anthology slabs here at Tentaclii, but I’ll make an exception for a fun one that features Lovecraft as a character, edited by the venerable S.T. Joshi. His Own Most Fantastic Creation is a £25 (about $40) hardcover from PS Publishing, and is pre-ordering now for shipping in April 2020.
The blurb is usefully descriptive…
Darrell Schweitzer focuses on Lovecraft’s childhood, when he was plagued with dreams of “night-gaunts” and was left bereft by the early death of his father. John Shirley depicts Lovecraft as a gawky teenager evolving his notions of “cosmicism”, while Scott Wiley emphasises Lovecraft’s devotion to cats. Stephen Woodworth and Donald R. Burleson ring changes on the Lovecraftian theme of personality exchange. Lovecraft famously collaborated with Harry Houdini on a story. Donald Tyson and Jonathan Thomas write very different stories on the association of these two figures. Mark Samuels focuses on Lovecraft’s creation of imaginary tomes of forbidden lore, while the stories by Richard Gavin, David Hambling, Jason V. Brock, and S. T. Joshi supply broader ruminations on the origins of Lovecraft’s revolutionary motifs. While eschewing Lovecraft himself as a character, the tales by W. H. Pugmire and Simon Strantzas exhibit figures who reveal strikingly Lovecraftian elements while probing the psyche of the man from Providence.
Super. It’s perhaps a pity that there’s not also an essay comprehensively surveying the uses of Lovecraft-as-character and Lovecraft-alikes in fiction, comics and poetry up to about 1969. Perhaps also appending the 1970-2020 titles in a simple checklist form. But I guess that might belong in a companion volume collecting such early stories and poems. However, Joshi does mention just a few of them in his short introduction…
Lovecraft the man has served as an inspiration for fiction writers as early as Edith Miniter (“Falco Ossifracus’ 1921), Frank Belknap Long (“The Space-Eaters’ 1928), and Robert Bloch (“The Shambler from the Stars:’ 1935) in his own day”.
09 Monday Mar 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Another survey of what’s new on DeviantArt…
Azathoth, the demon sultan by Taisteng.
Lovecraft and Barlow by Loneanimator.
Iranon by FluoriteAmphibian.
Necronomicon 5 by Libriproibiti.
“Ketched in the rain, be ye?” by SamInabinet.
The Gilman House by MaestroMorte.
The Cats From Ulthar a mini-sculpture by DeterFArt. More.
Cthulhu in digital oil by Stayinwonderland. “This is the first in a series of paintings … I’m imagining a coastal town in England where a Cthulhu cult emerged. Either prior to, or in parallel with, the Innsmouth story and set close to 1900.”
H.P. Lovecraft by AnnaHSzymborska.
08 Sunday Mar 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
La Casa de EL 143 – Lovecraft en el comic (Lovecraft in comics). A new 100 minute podcast survey in Spanish, with a focus on the obvious names.
05 Thursday Mar 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Composer Graham Plowman has a new album, The Yellow Sign…
The Yellow Sign.
The Tell-Tale Heart.
Pickman’s Model.
Edge of Darkness.
The Dreamlands.
Tsathoggua.
Also, a year ago I missed the news that he had released a Horror in Lovecraft Country – 2 Hours of Music for Lovecraftian Gaming. Low-intensity, background music. Though note it’s marked “all rights reserved”, and so presumably is not royalty-free ‘out of the box’? In which case I imagine that one has to contact him and arrange a licence, if the music is to be used in a commercial project.
02 Monday Mar 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
MB3D made with Mandelbulb 3D by nic022, available in physical form 3D-printed on Shapeways. There’s something rather Lovecraftian about this one, especially if one added jewelled eyes in the holes.
The Mandelbulb 3D software is free and here. He also made objects using the free Incendia.
27 Thursday Feb 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones) has announced he is offering The Miskatonic Scholarship… “for a promising writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror”. The winner gets an intensive six-week workshop retreat for “aspiring writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror” in New Hampshire. Entrants will need to complete a Financial Need Statement which is due to be available 1st April 2020.
Scroll down the page to also find details another fund for the same New Hampshire retreat…
Applicants from the New York Metropolitan Area (including New Jersey) who are accepted into Odyssey [the New Hampshire writing retreat) are eligible to apply for a scholarship from the Donald A. and Elsie B. Wollheim Memorial Scholarship Fund.
27 Thursday Feb 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Learning Everyday Penmanship in the 1920s. Quite a craft, it appears, requiring a 90-page how-to manual with lessons!
According to Lovecraft…
“the process of handwriting is no effort at all unless one aims for great legibility & ornamentation. The reason moderns think handwriting is hard, is that they have never practiced it enough to get used to it.” — H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters III.
23 Sunday Feb 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
News of a new spring exhibition in New York City, “Line and Frame: A Survey of European Comic Art”. It opens with a Thursday evening launch event on 27th February 2020 (6pm-8pm) at Danese/Corey (511 West 22nd Street) and then runs until 14th March 2020.
The show will feature the work of 40 comics artists “who specialize in science fiction and fantasy”, including Moebius, Bilal, Breccia, Druillet, Nicole Claveloux, Guido Crepax, Milo Manara, among others. I doubt there’s a chance of seeing Lovecraft related art, but names such as Moebius, Bilal, and Breccia certainly overlap with Lovecraft comics.
Well-timed, the show comes at a point when the continental European comics industry is making a very belated push to produce and market more English translations in the USA. The show is supported by the various national cultural agencies in France, Belgium, Spain, etc.
Sketch by Moebius, being used to promote the show.
In other quality comics news, a “new 250-page graphic-novel Monsters from British writer/ artist Barry Windsor-Smith” is apparently due sometime in 2020 from an as-yet-unknown publisher. The basic premise, originating in a rejected pitch to Marvel for a Hulk storyline, is that… “an abandoned Nazi project in genetic engineering had been covertly revived by the U.S. government”. Judging from the sparse publicity it now appears to have become a graphic-novel somewhat similar to Alan Moore’s Providence, in terms of its adult nature and ambition. Just my guess, but I wonder if there may be some back-story links into aspects of the Lovecraft mythos?
