Category Archives: Lovecraftian arts

Move Under Ground, Lovecraftian novel for free

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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A Lovecraftian novel Move Under Ground (2009) has been released for free in PDF and HTML. It’s also on Amazon as a hardcover or a trade paperback or for the Kindle ereader. No audio book, sadly. Reviews were rather positive, although its 60,000 words and 210 pages were damned as “short”, by the sort of annoying reviewer who thinks a key measure of the worth of a modern novel is its thickness in inches.

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Move Under Ground is reportedly a successful pastiche of Kerouac’s trademark gyrating stream-of-consciousness style, melded with Lovecraft’s approach to extended riffs on the monstrous-in-landscape. The famous Beat writer Jack Kerouac tells the story (spoilers) of the rising of R’lyeh off the coast of California, and of the road trip Jack takes as he flees from California to Manhattan to tackle the murderous Cthulhu cult. Cassady, Ginsburg, and Burroughs all have bit parts, it seems. I’ve had a 10% free sample sent to my Kindle.

More Open Lovecraft

07 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works

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* Nicholas Mazzuca (2009), The Dreamer Deepe: A Two-Act Play in the Lovecraft Horror Mythos (Stage play submitted in place of a formal Masters disseration, Clemson University)

* Kurt Fawver (2013) The Terror of Possibility: A Re-evaluation and Reconception of the Sublime Aesthetic (PhD thesis, University of South Florida. Appears to touch on Lovecraft from time to time, throughout)

* Ryan P. Kennedy (2012), Evolution of Effect: The Numinous in Gothic and Post-Gothic Ghost Experience Literature. (Undergraduate dissertation, a short section discusses the theme in H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories)

* Xavier Gamboa (2012), Baroque Worlds of the 21st Century (PhD thesis, “an analysis of the unfolding twenty-first century neobaroque phenomenon”. Not on Lovecraft per se, but seems to have been inspired by Patric MacCormack’s 2007 essay “Baroque Intensity: Lovecraft, Le Fanu, and the Fold” and other writing on the neobaroque)

Lovecraftian Ashton Smith stories in audio

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.

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New audio discussion and partial readings of pulpy Clark Ashton Smith stories, now on The Double Shadow podcast, with more promised…

“Hunters from Beyond” (Strange Tales, October 1932). Smith is said to have admitted this story was inspired by “Pickman’s Model”, see: An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia p.247. Story full-text.

“Seedling of Mars” (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Fall 1931 as “The Planet-Entity”, illustrated by Frank R. Paul). Story full-text.

E.M. Johnston had a credit because Smith was basing his tale on a short prize-winning synopsis submitted by Johnston.

“Seedlings of Mars” seems to be set to be followed in the coming weeks by the other Mars stories, in sequence: “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” (commonly said to be Smith’s most Lovecraftian story); “Dweller in the Gulf (in the Martian Depths)” (said to be rather Lovecraftian in terms of copious amounts of slime and decay); and “Vulthoom”.

Towards the Visionary Antipodes

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

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Towards the Visionary Antipodes of the Human Psyche is a short essay series examining the claims for Lovecraft and his circle as heralds of the 1960s psychedelic experience:

Part 1: Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft Anticipate the Psychedelic Experience.

Part 2: H.P. Lovecraft and the Door in the Wall, on H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction as a precursor to the psychedelic experience.

Part 3: H.P. Lovecraft, Psychedelia, Ancient Astronauts, and Occult Theories of Creativity.

The Shadow over the Invisible Lovecraft Pinball Table

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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Nope, sadly it doesn’t exist, seemingly being just a concept mock-up for a total makeover of a classic old Ghost Busters solid-state pinball table from the 1980s. It seems the guy went with a straight refurbishment rather than a Lovecraft mod.

It’s rather amazing to realise there’s no digital pinball table for the PC for any Lovecraft story. There was a very obscure, but well-reviewed, Sega Saturn game made by Japanese, Digital Pinball: Necronomicon. Today it looks more than a little basic, compared to the latest Marvel Doctor Strange pinball table…

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So there seems a whole lot of room for a Kickstarter here, to develop a nice three-table Lovecraft pinball game. One of the tables might even be based on Lovecraft the man, maybe with a “get back home to Providence from the hell of New York” theme: subways, trains, towers, libraries, night-walks, lack of money, all providing natural game elements.