26 Tuesday Apr 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
This faint similarity may interest some…
The vast oaks grew thicker as he pushed on beyond the village, and he looked sharply for a certain spot where they would thin somewhat, standing quite dead or dying among the unnaturally dense fungi and the rotting mould and mushy logs of their fallen brothers. There he would turn sharply aside, for at that spot a mighty slab of stone rests on the forest floor; and those who have dared approach it say that it bears an iron ring three feet wide.
20 Wednesday Apr 2022
Posted in New books, Odd scratchings, REH
On SF Crows Nest, Eamonn Murphy has a new long review of Final Reckonings: The Complete Stories Of Robert Bloch (Volume 1)…
This first volume of ‘The Complete Stories’ is widely available for about £10 or less on various sites and that’s a bargain. For some reason, the next two volumes are rarer and much more expensive.
Also, over at The Silver Key a new review of the new Robert E. Howard Changed My Life.
17 Sunday Apr 2022
Posted in Astronomy, Historical context, Odd scratchings
Part three of four, of a few notes on the new expanded edition of the Galpin letters:
* Lovecraft’s childhood barn was “razed” in 1931 (p. 272) having become rotten and fungus ridden. He puts an age-date on the period in which it formed his playhouse, age 10. Which puts the disposal of the carriage-horses at or before 1900. (p. 272).
* The 1932 eclipse of the sun is described in detail on page 274, with some comparative reference to the eclipse of 1925.
* He cogently summarises his attitude to emotions and his ‘what the heck’ approach, in paragraphs at the foot of pages 278 and 279.
* He notes the “mild winters” in 1932/32 (p. 283), 1932/33 (p. 288), at a time when he had not yet moved into 66 College Street. The move to the new house may well have saved his life, since 1933/34 was a very cold winter and was sometimes at “seventeen below” zero (p. 305). But by then he thankfully had the 24-hour steam-heat from the neighbouring Library boiler. At No. 66 he also enjoyed the “symphony of chimes” from the various nearby clock and church towers (p. 291).
* Lovecraft found a “surprisingly vast audience” attendant on a public visit to Brown by the T.S. Eliot to Providence. He notes that Eliot was newly British Royalist / Anglo-Catholic.
* At the end of March 1933 he was about to launch into the revision of an 88,000 word novel, which it appears he completed and for which he was paid $100. “This novel has not been identified” says a footnote.
* He notes various Cleveland locations in August 1922. More on those, with new pictures, in a near-future ‘Picture Postals’ post at Tentaclii.
* He tells Galpin in 1933 that he had twice been mistaken by Canadian strangers as a British man (p. 296). The non-French Canadians presumably being, at that time, more familiar with the British upper-class accent than today.
* He talks of a booklet issued by the city “school department” circa 1933, which presumably formed a guide to College Hill. Since he was pleased that the bird’s eye view on the cover showed #66 and its garden court. (p. 300) Elsewhere he talks of the magnifying glass he used to closely scrutinise such things, and also picture postcards and photographs.
* He gives a long synopsis of a never-written story of his, in a lengthy paragraph (p. 303, also footnote on p. 305 which references Commonplace Book #157). This would have been about the animated ‘Kirby krackle’ that happens behind the eyes when they are tightly scrunched shut.
“It would amuse me if some writer were to build upon my work & achieve a fabric infinitely surpassing the original!” (p. 301). Indeed.
* He did extensive research on the topography and sights of Paris in early 1933, as he had earlier done for olde London (p. 304).
* Belknap Long was a strongly doctrinaire communist by June 1934, but by October had learned to tone it down a bit when writing to Lovecraft (p. 312, p. 322).
* “Had an interesting view of Peltier’s Comet…” late in his life at Ladd. He then still had his own “small glass” [i.e. his telescope], but evidently he has not set it up on the monitor roof at No. 66. He had a fine westward view, and even a door onto the roof. But the general view of the northern sky had an “obstructed nature” as he put it (p. 336).
* Galpin’s lost novel is named, being Murder in Monparnasse (p. 336).
* The de Castro letters are at the end of the book of Galpin letters. Spurred by de Castro’s wayward pursuit of various New Testament figures via ancient Gaul, Lovecraft engages in discussion about the historicity of Christ and the value of Christianity in the modern world (pp. 366-367).
* He recalls he read a biography of Baudelaire circa 1922. The book’s notes suggest there were then two good choices for such (p. 375).
* His phone number at No. 66 was Providence 2044. Which is the title of a future Lovecraftian sci-fi graphic novel, if ever I heard one (p. 375).
* Despite Lovecraft’s reputation for being supposedly unreadable, a Galpin review hails his style in “Arthur Jermyn” story and the Dreamlands tales… “He certainly excels Lord Dunsany in the directness of narration” and has a “beauty of style” (p. 426).
16 Saturday Apr 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
A big collection of British sci-fi convention programme-books and accompanying advance progress-report booklets, now being uploaded to Archive.org. 134 freely available, so far and the uploading is obviously in progress. Some covers, such as the one for the notorious Novacon 13, have some truly hideous early 80s Rotring line-art. Which spotty young oik could possibly have perpetrated such ‘art’ in this case? Hem, hem… 🙂
14 Thursday Apr 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
The March report from the main German Lovecraftian group states… “320 active members in the association”. Compared to the few dozen who met in the early days. They have an annual meeting coming up on 24th April, and a residential ‘Miskatonic University’ in mid August 2022 in Duderstadt. Their open FHTAGN RPG continued to develop and “work on the English translation is also ongoing”. Their CthulhuWiki Writing Season saw a major revision of their Arthur Machen article in German, among others. They’re also making a Dreamlands film, with location filming due… “at the end of May in the Black Forest and near Nuremberg”.
Meanwhile, over in nearby Hungary, the new Aether #12 podcast from the Hungarian Lovecraftians. They’re reading Horkheimer (good luck) but also the Lovecraft Annual #2 (“Knowledge in the Void: Anomaly, Observation, and the Incomplete Paradigm Shift in H. P. Lovecraft’s Fiction”); and S.T. Joshi’s A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft.
05 Tuesday Apr 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
Call: Sci-fi Exhibition Community Callout, from the Petersfield Museum. Located ten miles from Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, they want artwork that relates to and tells the story of three local science fiction icons: H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, War of the Worlds), John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids), and Alec Guinness (Star Wars trilogy). Deadline: 28th April 2022.
04 Monday Apr 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
Possibly of interest to readers is my new flip-stick with seat, which is collapsible and almost self-assembling. You take it out, give it a shake, and the stick-sections lock together. Then you flip the handle over to make it a seat and it auto-locks. You then balance on it, as if a tripod, with legs slightly out, and the stick behind at a 75 degree angle. Possibly these are common in the USA, but they’re new to me.
I now have one via a kind Amazon Gift Voucher gift, and it works fine and is quite comfy for a ten minute breather. Such a thing may be just what you need for exploring places without many seats, such as large museums or parks… or any place which seeks to force visitors into their over-priced tea-rooms in order to sit down. Possibly also useful for stand-up gallery launches and many situations at conventions. Fancier countryman-type seat-sticks in leather and wood are also available, but after some research this was found to be the the best in everyday urban situations. Easily packed away, and being wholly black doesn’t show grubbiness from frequent use. In the UK, Amazon thinks it’s the best too and is now selling them direct and thus can send to an Amazon locker.
I also had another brilliant suggestion from someone, re: a way to enable one to jot down the gist of those ‘eureka!’ ideas that can come when in the bath. And which are so easily forgotten once out of the bath. I discovered that toddlers now have the luxury of “bath crayons” that can write with relative ease on damp or even wet ceramic tiles. Apparently they don’t stain. They’ve very cheap and quite common, and bathing writers and scholars may find that they’re worth a try.
03 Sunday Apr 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
My thanks again to my Patreon and other patrons. Your continuing support in these difficult times is much appreciated.
This month in ‘Picture Postals’, the Providence farmers’ market at the foot of College Hill, a post which became a discovery and colorising of two new pictures of the Old Brick Row that was so beloved of Lovecraft; a tour of Lovecraft’s Public Library again with newly colorised pictures; I finally got around to looking at the Shepley Library in Providence, and found a good photo of Mr. Shepley along the way. For one of my Patreon patrons’ I looked again at the Brooklyn Museum and Lovecraft. My April Fools Day ‘Picture Postal’ sadly appears to have fallen completely flat, but can now be seen as a screenshot on the 1st April post.
Also found in the new-found cache of pictures from Boston Public Library, a new vintage picture looking up College Street, and two good pictures of Blackstone Park though not Lovecraft’s favourite York Pond section. I still have one more, but can’t re-find the letter to go with it — at the end of his life Lovecraft boards and tours a super-deluxe new modern train. If anyone can point me to the location of this I’d be grateful please.
I managed to recover a picture of Lovecraft’s Hope Street High School, which I thought I had lost. Also coming due course, a photo on the interior of the Opera House (a “second home” for the young Lovecraft, and from whose boards he once slung great slabs of Shakespeare at the audience). And an excellent vintage photo of the foot of College Street which I’ve never seen before.
I started on the new and enlarged book of Lovecraft-Galpin letters and, though I had perused it many years ago in early form, found much new data and useful snippets of information. In my ‘Ripped and torn’ post I moved a little closer to solving the mystery of the ‘torn off pulp covers’ in Lovecraft’s magazine collection.
The TOCs appeared for the third book in The Robert H. Waugh Library of Lovecraftian Criticism along with a review; S.T. Joshi’s Miscellaneous Writings and his 1980s Journals have been published. Several useful reviews appeared online in March, not least for Fungi From Yuggoth — An Annotated Edition. A review of the latest book in the Robert H. Waugh Library led me to take a look at Lovecraft and Ulysses (the modernist novel) which raises the interesting possibility that Dream-quest was partly inspired by occult ideas.
In journals I noted the Italian journals Studi Lovecraftiani #20, and Zothique #9 and #10, and discovered something about what’s in them. Lovecraftian Proceedings #4 was published, and there were also TOCs online for that. An essay of my own was accepted for the forthcoming Lovecraft Annual, and another for Joshi’s Penumbra.
In comics and illustration, I noted a Blue Fox comics adaptation of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and got samples of the art. In France, the Lovecraft paperbacks edition from Points had pleasing new BD-style Moebius-alike covers. Eerie Magazine scans arrived, or at least were collected as a collection, on Archive.org. The HPLHS released a massive prop set for RPG gamers, including much printed material.
In podcasts I spotted a new podcast interview with John L. Steadman (H.P. Lovecraft & the Black Magickal Tradition: the master of horror’s influence on modern occultism); and of course noted the latest Voluminous reading of a letter from Lovecraft. SSFAudio’s podcast pampered “The Cats Of Ulthar”. Librivox had a bumper Lovecraft month and threw in tales from his friends Whitehead and Eddy for good measure.
31 Thursday Mar 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
I now know the name of the cover artist for the new set of Lovecraft editions from Points in France. Thanks to two kind people who posted comments on my earlier post. He’s Borja Gonzalez of Spain. He has a graphic novel in French titled Nuit Couleur Larme, which he seems to have both written and illustrated. This ‘teen witch, teen friendships’ book was published in English in 2021 by Hoopla Digital as Night Cry (144-page ebook) and seems to have been well-reviewed.
30 Wednesday Mar 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
S. T. Joshi’s blog has updated, and he has a number of choice books for sale including…
Frank Belknap Long’s A Man from Genoa (Recluse Press, 1926) [signed by the author]
24 Thursday Mar 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
Dave Langford reports that…
In my copious free time I am also assembling the collected genre essays and reviews of SF Encylopedia founder Peter Nicholls, using his title for a planned (in the 1970s) but never completed history of SF: Infinity, Eternity, and the Pulp Magazines.
08 Tuesday Mar 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
Eerie Magazine, a new collection on Archive.org. 138 issues. Fine 1970s-type mostly-b&w comic art, very dynamic page-layouts, and it often had barbarian / sci-fi crossovers. But the stories often leave something to be desired.
