Category Archives: New books

A new edition of Brumal and a new Brazilian book

16 Wednesday Jan 2019

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The new issue of the open access journal Brumal has appeared. Vol 6, No 2 (2018) is ‘Horror and the Fantastic’. English abstracts, then Spanish, Portugese or French texts. On a first pass, the specifically Lovecraft items are:

* “Towards a classification of space in fantastic horror texts”. In which… “we outline three sorts of spatial categories: the natural, the supernatural, and the preternatural spaces, and take incomparable English-speaking authors as a starting point, such as H. P. Lovecraft” before moving on to consider Spanish writers.

* And a review in Portuguese of the book O Fantastico: Procedimentos de Construcao Narrativa em H.P. Lovecraft (2017). [trans: The Fantastic: H.P. Lovecraft’s Procedures of Narrative Construction]

The book can be obtained from Brazil and I see it was also reviewed recently in Revista Abusoes. It appears to be a two-volume Masters dissertation from 1979, which gathered dust for nearly 40 years before being rediscovered, hailed as something special, and published.

New Book: Barbarian Life: A Literary Biography of Conan

14 Monday Jan 2019

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Marvel comics veteran Roy Thomas has an auto-biography of his life in Conan comics, and his wider fascination with the Conan character. DMR Books has a good review of the 296-page Volume One, which quietly scaled the walls of the Elephant God of Amazon just before Christmas…

Barbarian Life: A Literary Biography of Conan the Barbarian (Volume One), by Roy Thomas. In this book, Roy shares not only his memories of writing the first 53 issues of the comic book (Volume Two will cover the rest of his more than 100 issue run), but his own obsession with Conan and his creator.

I expect this book might be usefully paired with Barry Windsor-Smith’s The Freebooters, for an insight into the role of the artist in sword-and-sorcery comic-book making. Despite the publisher pitching this as simply a trade paperback collecting the Freebooter stories from the BWS: Storyteller magazine, it’s far more.

The IGN review explains…

This collection is unlike anything I have ever read. Part comic, part behind-the-scenes article, Barry Windsor-Smith’s The Freebooters is definitely unique. […] Most trades* these days give a slight glimpse into the creative process, but not like this. Readers will see unfinished pages, progressive pieces showing rough sketches to final, colored pieces. We also get a narrative that guides us through the thoughts and decisions that BWS made.

* = a trade paperback book collecting a series of comic books or strips, usually formerly issued in episodic pamphlet comic form to comics shops and collectors. Also abbreviated to ‘tpb’.

New from McFarland

13 Sunday Jan 2019

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Forthcoming books from McFarland, picked from their new Spring 2019 catalogue:

* Weird Tales of Modernity: The Ephemerality of the Ordinary in the Stories of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft. (July?)

* Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature. (Seems relevant to an understanding of the wider context of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and others) (Already published)

* The Detective and the Artist: Painters, Poets and Writers in Crime Fiction, 1840s-1970s. (First sections likely to be relevant to an understanding of the context of “The Call of Cthulhu” and others) (February)

* The Horror Comic Never Dies: a Grisly History. A short history of 150 pages, seemingly fannish but deeply informed. (February)

Sargasso #2 and #3

11 Friday Jan 2019

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I see that Sargasso #2 and Sargasso #3 have appeared since I noted #1 in summer 2013. Sargasso: journal of William Hope Hodgson Studies, is the quality scholarly journal devoted to Hodgson.

A scholarly article in #2 may be of tangential interest to Lovecraft scholars. A full review of #2 usefully summarises…

Scott Conner’s ‘Dust and Atoms: The Influence of William Hope Hodgson on Clark Ashton Smith’. The long-held belief that ‘The Night Land’ [1912] was a major influence on Smith’s Zothique stories is more or less conclusively disproved by the evidence that he hadn’t read any Hodgson books until two years after the first Zothique tale [1932] was published. On the other hand, Scott Conner provides very convincing evidence that ‘The House on the Borderland’ [1908] was definitely a great influence on the writing of Smith’s story, ‘The Treader in the Dust’ [1935].

Lovecraft himself only made… “the discovery, in the summer of 1934, of the forgotten work of William Hope Hodgson.” (I Am Providence, S.T. Joshi) and felt the work was rather conventional in terms of the philosophy it worked in. Lovecraft considered that…

He is trying to illustrate human nature through symbols & turns of idea which possess significance for those taking a traditional or orthodox view of man’s cosmic bearings. There is no true attempt to express the indefinable feelings experienced by man in confronting the unknown. … To get a full-sized kick from this stuff one must take seriously the orthodox view of cosmic organisation — which is rather impossible today.

Ave atque Vale

07 Monday Jan 2019

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A full contents listing for the forthcoming Ave atque Vale: Reminiscences of H. P. Lovecraft. Being effectively the equivalent of a new edition of Lovecraft Remembered, with new annotations by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz of the texts. A collectable used copy of Remembered will currently set you back £140 for a “Good” hardback copy on Amazon UK. Maybe I should list my hardback copy, only slightly stained by the butter-drips from crumpets…

Update: Thanks to Martin A., who points out that copies of Lovecraft Remembered can still be had direct from Arkham Press at a much more affordable price.

New book: L’antre de l’horreur

05 Saturday Jan 2019

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I see that Richard Corben’s recent Poe and Lovecraft horror adaptations are set to be collected in French translation as L’antre de l’horreur, with a “large format” print book due for publication by Panini on 9th January 2019. According to one blurb this edition…

Contains the U.S. comics Haunt of Horror: Edgar Allan Poe #1-3 and Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft #1-3, previously published in a Marvel collection [Haunt of Horror, 2008] and three unreleased comics.

An Amazon review usefully explains that his Lovecraft strips were only very loose and basic adaptations…

Contains a [comics] story loosely ‘inspired by’ Poe or Lovecraft in the comic medium followed by the original text [of Poe or Lovecraft].

Useful to know, as it’s the Lovecraft art that many will probably be buying this for rather than for the potted stories, which they’ll already know well. In that case you might be looking at the 112 pages stated for the 2008 book by Amazon, and expecting to get 112 pages of Corben art. But it sounds like you might get a lot less art.

I see that Amazon currently has Marvel’s collected Lovecraft English-language volume of 2008 as a $10 used print hardcover, or individually as $2 Kindle ebook downloads: #1, #2 and #3.

‘We’re gonna need a bigger letter-box!’

03 Thursday Jan 2019

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S.T. Joshi has a new blog post that announces he has finished work on…

“His Own Most Fantastic Creation, an original anthology of stories using Lovecraft (or a Lovecraft-like figure) as a fictional character.”

And the post has the contents list for this. It’s PS Publishing, so I expect it will probably be an expensive paper edition to start with. It’s set for “later this year” according to Joshi.

Hippocampus books of Lovecraft letters, said to be expected for early in 2019, are also noted by Joshi…

“the compilation of the letters between Smith and August Derleth; Lovecraft’s Letters to Family and Family Friends (a 1200-page book!); Letters to Wilfred B. Talman and Helen V. Sully; Letters to Donald Wandrei and Others”

The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich

03 Thursday Jan 2019

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New to me, The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich by Fritz Leiber. It’s of interest for being an early strongly Lovecraft-influenced tale of substantial length, and for being left out of the book Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark. Apparently the setting is the California of the small desert towns. It was drafted by a young raw Fritz Leiber in 1936, under the influence of Lovecraft.

There’s no mention of it in Joshi’s survey book Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos, and Joshi remarks elsewhere that it “it is not to be considered a ‘Lovecraftian’ story” even though it does include Lovecraft’s “style and trademark concepts” — which makes it sound even more interesting than a simple Mythos monster romper-stomper. Early attempts by major writers at Lovecraft’s style and themes are always of interest here at Tentaclii and I’m pleased to find a substantial non-Derleth one that I was previously unaware of. There’s more… the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature also terms it “a Wellsian romance”, and Supernatural Fiction Writers calls it “clearly influenced by H. G. Wells” — which again appeals due to my interest in Wells’s The Time Machine. Definitely one for my reading pile, and it’s short enough to pick up when in the mood and to get through fairly quickly.

Presumably Lovecraft was sent a carbon of the draft of Dealings of Daniel Kesserich? Joshi writes of… “Fritz Leiber, who had shown some of his first attempts at sword-and-sorcery to his correspondent H. P. Lovecraft” so it might be fairly safe to assume he could have also sent the draft of “Daniel Kesserich”.

Later the tale was revised and pitched at the pulp magazine Unknown Worlds. Presumably it was then rejected or held, or sent back for revision, since it was filed and lost for around 50 years.

There’s no audiobook or ebook. A free “to borrow” copy is available on Archive.org, and I see that the slim hardback edition is currently available at a fairly modest price on Amazon.

D’Arkham a Malpertuis: Jean Ray & Lovecraft

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

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I’m still picking up on news of items I missed during the summer 2015 – summer 2018 hiatus. One such is a 2016 paperback, D’Arkham a Malpertuis: Jean Ray & Lovecraft, Patrice Allart makes the case that Lovecraft’s influence can be found throughout the works of the Belgian writer Jean Ray. The author also surveys other writers of France and Belgium who were also subject to influence from Lovecraft. I’m uncertain if this includes the wealth of comics writers and artists to be found in France and Belgium, but Ray was also a comics writer (a far more culturally-valued role in France and Belgium, note) and the book’s blurb suggests the survey is very comprehensive…

“No one can doubt it now: the Great Old Ones haunt the writings of the author of Malpertuis. And that’s not all: Patrice Allart takes the opportunity to draw up a list of the French-speaking heirs of the two Masters of Fantasy. Some names are sure to surprise. The extensive bibliographies that complete this essay will be the source of many discoveries, even for the experienced reader.”

That latter part might be something that a Francophile Lovecraftian could consider using to write a comprehensive survey of the pre-1985 material in French, perhaps for The Lovecraft Annual?

Who was Jean Ray? I can’t say he’s a name on the tip of my tongue, and it appears he’s a writer who is little known in the Anglosphere. The basics are…

Jean Ray (1887-1964), pseudonym of Jean Raymond Marie De Kremer, Belgian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Known for his prolific output of pre-war crime fiction, and his later more considered narratives of horror and the fantastic in both French and Flemish. He also published comics under the pseudonym John Flanders. His Malpertuis (1943) was filmed with Orson Welles in the leading role.

Cool French Comics called him… “The most famous author of Belgian fantastique”. Other informed comment suggests he occupies “a literary meeting ground between H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Dickens” and was “a cross between Lovecraft and Seabury Quinn, with a touch of Robert Bloch”. He’s still highly regarded in France, if this 2017 issue of Bifrost is anything to go by…

Also, alongside Jean Ray & Lovecraft in the same book series, ‘La Bibliotheque d’Abdul Alhazred’ [The Library of Alhazred], I note L’enigme du livre qui rend fou: Histoire d’Abdul al-Hazred & du Necronomicon [The enigma of the forbidden book of madness: the story of Abdul al-Hazred and The Necronomicon].

New books from Modiphius

31 Monday Dec 2018

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A new 120-page book claims to catalogue all the monsters of Robert E. Howard. Conan: Horrors of the Hyborean Age appears to be one of those PDF books for gamers that that give them the monster ‘stats’, but which are also rather useful for the reference shelves of writers.

Not sure about the cover, though. I recently re-read the Howard Conan stories in audiobook and I don’t quite remember Wonder Woman fighting a T. Rex, as per this book’s cover. Nor the distinctly LOTR orc who flanks Conan.

As a gamebook it needs to be interflipped with the Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed core rule-book. There appear to be other catalogue-like guide books to Conan’s world in the same series, one on Ancient Ruins & Cursed Cities and a guide to Nameless Cults, Cosmology and Gods. Apparently they all have inspiring art inside, and I’d guess also some maps.

New book – The Cracks of Doom: Untold Tales in Middle-earth

31 Monday Dec 2018

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New book! The Cracks of Doom: Untold Tales in Middle-earth. This new book is available now in paper. It is a side-project from my larger scholarly Tolkien book, and should be of interest to RPG makers as well as to fan-writers of Tolkien stories set in Middle-earth.

The Cracks of Doom is a comprehensive, fully annotated and indexed list of ‘Untold Tales’ in Middle-earth, pointing out the ‘cracks’ where new fan-works or role-playing might be developed. There are 125 entries and these usually lightly suggest ideas for story development and connections that might not otherwise be considered. This book is intended as a handy and inspiring reference work for writers, game makers, role-players, performers and daydreamers. It will also be useful for scholars seeking to understand what Tolkien “left out” and why, or those interested in ‘transformative works’ and fandom.

1. Introduction: “On Untold Tales in Middle-earth”.

2. Writing guidance: “Faith, Duty and Fun: plan and style in Middle-earth fiction”.

3. The list: ‘Openings, Gaps and Cracks’. 125 entries. Note that this is only for LOTR, inc. the Appendices. It also draws on Unfinished Tales, books in the History series, and for one item I also reference the Letters. It does not, of course, delve into the vast amount of material in The Silmarillion.

Sample:

PDF sample with the Index. The full book has 64 pages, about 22,000-words, with place and character Index. The book is wholly unofficial, and very respectful of Tolkien’s vision.