Category Archives: Lovecraftian arts

Campus Miskatonic 2024 / Métal Hurlant

30 Thursday May 2024

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works

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In France, Campus Miskatonic 2024…

This year again, we organise our HPL convention dedicated to HP Lovecraft in Verdun, France. We’ll deal with Lovecraft and the Great War.

Happening in Verdun, France, 8th-9th November 2024. ‘The Great War’ being the original way of referring to the First World War, prior to the Second World War.

They’ll be aided in this by new French editions of the letters, and new French translations of war tales such as “The Temple”.

Also in France, coming in August 2024, a chunky new Lovecraft special for the famous Métal Hurlant (‘Heavy Metal’) comics-magazine…

Echoing the 1978 Lovecraft Special, which remains one of the best-selling issues ever of Métal Hurlant, we invited a new wave of authors to delve into the complex and fascinating universe of the Master of Providence. The results go far beyond our expectations, demonstrating once again the deep resonance and timeless relevance of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s imagination. Every page of this issue will be proof of the continuing influence that Lovecraft has on new generations of authors.

272 pages, so it’s not just a news-stand floppy. Let’s hope for an English translation. Although Euro-comics are notoriously slow to produce translations (if at all), despite the fairly low-cost of translation and fix-up of the pages, easy digital distribution (Amazon Kindle ebook etc), and an obvious market. It’s curious that, as an industry, they don’t seem to want to sell their wares abroad.

Dreamy cats

28 Tuesday May 2024

Posted by in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts, New books

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Spanish readers have a new 256-page volume of translated letters, Diario de suenos: cartas de H.P. Lovecraft, Vol. II., with this “Vol II” focussing on Lovecraft’s dreams and cat letters…

all the dreams in the author’s surviving correspondence are collected [and these have] until now been unpublished in Spanish”. And as a bonus, “the final section ‘The Fabulous Adventures of the Kappa Alpha Tau Fraternity’, dedicated to Lovecraft’s letters about his feline friends.

Poems from Providence

22 Wednesday May 2024

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An eBay listing sent me in search of a 1980s poetry chapbook, being sold there…

I found something better and far larger. The author’s Poems from Providence (20th Anniversary Edition). Under Creative Commons, free on Archive.org, and seemingly posted there by the author himself.

a huge compendium of all the poems American poet Brett Rutherford created during his first years in Providence, Rhode Island (1985-88)

These poems near the end appear to be the most Lovecraft -focused, judging by the titles…

Shakespeare vs. Cthulhu

19 Sunday May 2024

Posted by in AI, Lovecraftian arts

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Now crowd-funded and in development, Shakespeare vs. Cthulhu, a solo RPG based based on the well-reviewed 2016 book of stories. This new adaptation will offer an…

“interactive, branching narrative, solo-RPG gamebook”

And the author has created such choose-your-own-adventure / RPG books before, including for Dracula, Beowulf, and Alice. The new Shakespeare vs. Cthulhu sounds fun, and will also presumably work well.

Of course this sort of thing is going to be susceptible to AI in the near future — in terms of real-time generated AI voices / character-depth/back-story, on-the-fly music and ambience FX, and AI control of branching storylines. We’re likely to see these possibilities spawning new low-cost interactive AI audio-adventures, at least for an audience which can bring their own visual imagination to the party and doesn’t need to be spoon-fed with expensive visuals.

Until then, Shakespeare vs. Cthulhu is old-school paper and dice. Due in April 2025.

Key of Dreams review

18 Saturday May 2024

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Key of Dreams reviewed, in “Fantastical 24-hour immersive experience like no other”…

Taking place in a beautiful 17th century manor house deep in the Welsh countryside […] Inspired by the works of weird fiction authors like H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James, guests took on the role of Friends of The Miskatonic University, heading to the manor house to investigate the strange goings on. Arriving in time for lunch, my companion and I were greeted by a mysterious man dressed in Victorian clothing known simply as The Collector.

A long participant-review in The Express. A UK tabloid newspaper notorious for its over-claiming piffle ‘news’, but here quite reasonable.

The Great Race

17 Friday May 2024

Posted by in AI, Lovecraftian arts, Picture postals

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This week on my regular ‘Picture Postals’, a change from the usual (though, in a way, following on from the recent ‘comic-strip’ themed post). I’ve used Photoshop to isolate Lovecraft’s own sketch drawing of The Great Race (“The Shadow out of Time”) from its surrounding notes and also from the blue lined paper on which it was drawn.

Original

Extracted and cleaned, as a 2196-pixel .PNG file. Still a bit mucky down at the base, but I reckon a mollusc is ‘gonna get gloopy’ down there.

Feel free to try to use this as a Controlnet guide input for an AI image generation. Though, good luck in writing the prompt description.