22 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
Wormwoodania this week draws attention to a book of prose-poems by Arthur Machen. I see that the book, Ornaments in Jade (1924), has since arrived on Archive.org as a good scan. I blogged about it back in 2021, when I also weighed up the chances of Lovecraft having read it before writing Dream Quest.
21 Sunday Jul 2024
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
I’ve at last been able to see the U.S. movie Ah, Wilderness!, 1935’s gentle celebration of the small-town world of America as it was in 1906. Lovecraft saw it late in life (circa Christmas 1935/36) and revelled in its lavish layers of thirty-years-ago nostalgia. Similar to a movie of today being nostalgic for 1994, or one of the 2010s being nostalgic for 1980.
saw “Ah, Wilderness”, which made me home-sick for the vanish’d world of 1906!
“… revelled in it. Yuggoth, but it made me homesick for 1906! [it] gives all sorts of typical 1906 glimpses, including an old street-car, a primitive steam automobile, &c. It was photographed in Grafton, Mass. […] where the passing years have left little visible toll.
“At times I could well believe that the past had come back, & that the last 3 decades were a bad dream. [the world it depicted] having many a value which might well have been preserved had social evolution been less violently accelerated by the war.”
I recall that Lovecraft also remarked that the family sitting room was almost a double for the one he had known as a boy. Also the hallway.
He also seems to imply that the rural newspaper office which published his astronomy articles, was in appearance similar to the office briefly seen in the movie (the young hero’s father owns the town newspaper).
the articles landed, & I also landed others with a rural weekly …. (this was the Ah, Wilderness year of ’06)
Ah, Wilderness! is very well-made and acted, with lavish costumes and scenes. Worth seeing simply for the very satisfying scene of a steam-car ‘scaring the horses’. But (unless I’m missing something, being British) it is perhaps not the all-time classic that some had claimed. Though, as the 1933 play, it does appear to have become a staple of American repertory theatre.
The film usefully gives one a better feel for Lovecraft’s formative environment and sensibilities. Many of us have been subtly trained by agitprop to casually think of the Victorian and Edwardian periods in bleak b&w Dickensian terms, all grimy urchins, grim school-masters, and grinding urban poverty. The movie is a useful corrective. As with the 1930s, the view of which has been similarly be-grimed for political purposes, most people were actually ‘getting on with getting on’, and rather enjoying the novelty of becoming middle-class.
The cynical young hero is somewhat Lovecraft-like, at least in the early scenes. The concerns of creeping socialism and chronic alcoholism, though treated lightly, are the same ones which permeated young Lovecraft’s world. The hero (Eric Linden), at first a ‘going to Yale’ stiff of a teenager, is perhaps the weakest part of the film and perhaps a little too ‘1930s movie star’ in appearance — this makes it harder for the viewer to suspend disbelief. His youngest brother is the firecracker Mickey Rooney. But the young Rooney’s usual gurning and capering is thankfully kept on a very tight leash, in what must be one of his first film appearances.
Even having seen Ah, Wilderness!, I’m still as a loss as to why the strange title was chosen. No-one gets to look at a sweeping vista and proclaim the words, unless I missed something. I would have called it “Bang goes the Fourth!”, since it’s set on the 4th July.
For another Hollywood view of 1906, this time from the post-war 1940s, I’ve found Ah, Wilderness! also inspired the glossy musical adaptation Summer Holiday (1948).
20 Saturday Jul 2024
Posted in Astronomy, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
Lovecraft the astronomer and Moon-gazer would no doubt be pleased to learn that “Brown University Researchers Develop More Accurate Moon Maps”. A new…
technique is used to create detailed models of lunar terrain, outlining craters, ridges, slopes and other surface hazards. By analyzing the way light hits different surfaces of the Moon, it allows researchers to estimate the three-dimensional shape of an object or surface from composites of two-dimensional images. … advanced computer algorithms can be used to automate much of the process and significantly heighten the resolution of the models.
18 Thursday Jul 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
Some final notes on Letters to Wilfred B. Talman, and Helen V. and Genevieve Sully.
Three small typos toward the end of the book, or at least that is what they appear to be: p. 484, begin = begun; p. 482, how = now; p. 478, had = hard.
Page 459. “The ancient brick building at the foot of the hill [is to go, in RISD modernisation, yet]… it will be some consolation to have the old familiar gable still in place, when one starts upwards from Market Square.” This indicates that, at least in 1936, Lovecraft’s route home from the commercial district was straight up College Hill. That would make sense if he was carrying heavy shopping and library books uphill in bags, since it was the shortest route home.
Page 460. He had been inside the cave system under “Lookout Mountain in Tennessee”. In 2020 I had a ‘picture postals’ post on the visit.
Page 460. Years ago, as a boy, he was fascinated by descriptions of Mount Rainier in the “juvenile books of Kirk Munroe”. The tale in question was serialised in Harper’s Round Table, a juvenile magazine, in summer 1896. Thus it’s not certain that Lovecraft read it in book form as Rick Dale, A Story of the Northwest Coast (1896), though he does recall “books”. Which also suggests he read more than one by the author.
Immediately after the Mount Rainier chapter in Harper’s Round Table is a long article for boys about small sail-boats, and we know the young Lovecraft was later a keen sailor on the Seekonk in such boats. I assume ‘keen’, because the Seekonk was a dangerous river and one would have to be keen to sail it alone and also land on its Twin Islands.
Later in his life his good friend Everett McNeil wrote books in much the same vein as Kirk Munroe.
Page 471. 1934. “Trips […] to certain historic of scenic spots […] leave a permanent imaginative residue which crops out again and again in dreams, waking thoughts, and literary attempts.”
Page 478. “… the giant oak with its brooding overtones of Druidic mystery. I have repeatedly dreamed of vast, night-black forests of gnarled, great-boled oaks, such as one sees in pictures of old England”.
Page 478. Lovecraft on swans. He associates the Northern lore of water ‘nixies’ with them.
Page 484. “I welcome any process which permits of duplicate or multiple creation [in works of art and sculpture].”
Page 486, 485. “Back to 1910″ […] I was a Shakespearean enthusiast and more of a theatregoer than I am now”.
16 Tuesday Jul 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
Should you be visiting southern England or Normandy, appreciators of science-fiction cover-art might like to hop over to one of the Channel Islands. Throughout the rest of the summer, on the island of Guernsey, “Chris Foss: A Sci-Fi Journey Exhibition”.
15 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
New on Archive.org, a collection of the strongly Lovecraft-influenced ‘Hyperborea’ tales by Clark Ashton Smith. This has the same cover as the early 1970s 95-cent U.S. Ballantine paperback, but this new upload is probably to be avoided. Because I immediately randomly spotted a typo at the start of a story: the German “die” for “the”.
Better, then, to look for these Lovecraft-influenced cycle of tales among the free texts kindly placed online by Will Murray and made from good corrected texts. These are freely available as HTML pages. Although one has to already know the list of Hyperborean titles and then hunt for them among what is an A-Z list.
So, to save people some time, here is my quick linked contents-list. The links lead to the HTML-format stories which make up the Murray-edited The Book of Hyperborea (Necronomicon Press, 1996). The listing below is in the same order as the book’s contents…
Introduction to ‘The Book of Hyperborea’, by Will Murray *
The Muse of Hyperborea [Fragment, not linked in the A-Z, but it is online] *
The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan
The House of Haon-Dor (Fragment) *
Lament for Vixeela [Poem, not linked in the A-Z, but it is online] *
The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles
[The Coming of the White Worm (Abridged)] *
Altogether, a relatively short collection by modern triple-decker doorstop standards, at around 70,000 words in total including introduction and postscript.
Audiobook? Yes. The tales above can now be found as a free HorrorBabble audiobook playlist The Hyperborean Cycle on YouTube. Around seven hours. This playlist lacks only the above-starred (*) fragments, poem, and introduction / postscript.
Note that the early 1970s Ballantine book (mentioned at the start of this post) also had…
* Hyperborea (simple map).
* About Hyperborea and Clark Ashton Smith: Behind the North Wind (essay by Lin Carter).
[the core stories, then to finish]
* The Abominations of Yondo (story)
* The Desolation of Soom (fragment)
* The Passing of Aphrodite (fragment)
* The Memnons of the Night (fragment)
Of these additional four however, Carter was unsure if they belonged… “I have the feeling that the short tales which follow are the surviving fragments of yet another such cycle: one which was abandoned, or left undeveloped, for some reason we can only conjecture. I may be wrong in this assumption.”
* Notes on the Commoriom Myth-Cycle (essay by Lin Carter) — I. The Genesis of the Cycle, II. The Sequence of the Hyperborean Stories, III. The Geography of the Cycle.
For further tales by others see A Hyperborean Glossary by Laurence J. Cornford, which is an A-Z and its front page lists the additional sources — tales ‘finished’ later by Lin Carter but apparently based on work or notes by CAS (?), plus various Hyperborea related/set tales by others. Many of these appear to be collected in Robert M. Price’s Book of Eibon along with what looks like an expanded map.
More recently there was also a substantial 2013 anthology, containing the work of some notable modern writers, titled Deepest, Darkest Eden, The New Tales of Hyperborea. I see this now has an affordable Kindle ebook on Amazon.
12 Friday Jul 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings, Picture postals
More notes on the Sully letters, letters from Lovecraft which are to be found in Letters to Wilfred B. Talman, and Helen V. and Genevieve Sully.
The notes open in November 1933.
Page 327. “… decadence is manifest in one form or another over nearly all the Western World [… yet] It is not too late to hope that revivals of spirit may yet take place here and there — each in accordance with the particular national temper of the group concerned. I have my eye on Sir Oswald Mosley & the element of British fascists.”
Page 330. “… remember that to 1908’s crop of intellectuals softness is the supreme vice”.
Pages 331-32. A long and important explication of Lovecraft’s idea of time, and of his techniques of “time-defying” mental time-travel.
Page 330. [In New York City of 1933] “I feel like an explorer among a queer [primitive tribe …] Some of Loveman’s group — persons interested in the theatre & the dance — impress me more in this way than do even Wandrei’s literary-artistic coterie.”
Page 341. Lovecraft had noticed a… “whole cycle of comment having grown up around the alleged denizen of Loch Ness” in Scotland.
Page 343. April 1934. “New England has been through the worst winter within the memory of living man […] which shattered all records since the establishment of the weather bureau.” Page 403. “… the wasting of the greater part of the year [living] in bleak barrenness & shivers seems doubly criminal as one grows old”.
Page 367. “The real raison d’être of [“weird art”] is to give one a temporary illusion of emancipation from the galling & intolerable tyranny of time, space, change, & natural law. If we can give ourselves even for a brief moment the illusory sensation that some law of the ruthless cosmos has been — or could be — suspended or defeated, we acquire a certain flush of triumphant emancipation comparable in its comforting power to the opiate dreams of religion. Indeed, religion itself is merely a pompous formalisation of fantastic art. Its disadvantage is that it demands an intellectual belief in the impossible, which fantastic art does not.”
Page 377. At the newly opened Poe house [1842-44] in Philadelphia… “I saw copies of nearly all the magazines containing the first publication of various tales and poems” by E.A. Poe.
Page 379. Mentions that his young friend Barlow has a new 5″ x 7″ camera, and with it had made portraits of Lovecraft in Florida. Barlow also anticipated becoming an expert on trick photography, multi-exposure pictures etc, to “create weird synthetic monsters & landscapes”.
Page 384. A note says that Barlow’s Caneviniana was cut in stencil [duplicator] form but not printed, and was later circulated “through FAPA in the early 1940s”. So, do copies thus exist somewhere today? But possibly (my guess) the FAPA release was not the planned edition of Whitehead’s letters of the same name, but rather just Barlow’s Whitehead bibliography and some biographical notes?
Page 385. When in Nantucket, Lovecraft stayed at The Overlook, which was ‘Veranda House’ until 1930.
The view from the Overlook.
Page 393. “We must save all that we can, lest we find ourselves adrift in an alien world with no memories or guideposts or points of reference […] Hence the natural function and social value of the antiquarian & cherisher of elder things. To them we owe much of our sense of comfortable continuity & appropriate placement.”
Page 395-96. “… the architectural modernists who so painfully ‘strive to express our current machine civilisation’ by means of absently ugly concoctions of rootless steel and glass construction. These fellows think they are representing the present […] but if they would stop to think they would realise that Ictinus [co-designer of the Parthenon] and Wren [1632-1723, London] achieved their effects not by grimly resolving to ‘express their periods’, but merely by creating such forms as appealed to them, without any thought of time or place. Moreover, Ictinus and Wren did not exclude elements from the past. Instead they built upon and modified the main streams of art which they inherited. Hence to my mind all these anti-traditional radicals are up a blind alley. Their products are not art, because they come from theory instead of from feeling. And they do not represent this age, because they do not embody those attributes of the European main stream which this age has inherited.”
Page 405. “My own opinion is that an obviously sterile age like the present ought not to try to create anything new. Conditions are not favourable for the expression of the momentary environment — the environment has nothing crystallised enough or certain enough to be expressible.”
Page 407. Lovecraft took the night train to Quebec, both there and back, and thus was not able to appreciate the scenery from the train windows.
Page 419. In Newport in summer 1935 he visited the home of the philosopher Berkeley, then open to the public. And he also went… “down the 40 steps [and] while down on the rocks there I slipped up & got rather soaked in looking for a sea-cave”. Lovecraft seeking a sea-cave below Newport’s cliffs… a point on which Mythos writers may wish to hang a plot or RPG adventure?
Page 429. August 1935. “Every aptitude which I wish I had, I lack. Everything which I wish I could to formulate and express, I have failed to formulate and express. Everything which I value, I have either lost or am likely to lose. Within a decade, unless I can find some job paying at least $10 per week, I shall have to take the cyanide route through inability to keep around me the books, pictures, furniture, and other familiar objects which constitute my only remaining reason for keeping alive. And so far as solitude is concerned, I probably capture all medals. […] even among my correspondents there are fewer and fewer who coincide with me. […] The newer generation has grown away from me […] in everything — philosophy, politics, aesthetics, and interpretation of the sciences — [and] I find myself more and more alone on an island, with an atmosphere almost of hostility gathering around me. With youth and all the possibilities of glamour and adventurous expectancy, departed — leaving me stranded, with nothing to look forward to.”
Page 439. September 1935. On visiting Wilbraham (“Dunwich Horror” and Mrs Miniter country) one last time to scatter the ashes of Miniter’s mother… “The mountain scenery — with endless outspread miles of purple hills beyond hills, and glimpses of distant villages with white steeples piercing the autumn-touched greenery, is ineffably fascinating and imagination stirring.” New England and Mass. in the 1920s and 30s were far less forest-blanketed than today, and the views would likely have been more open.
Wilbraham’s hills, possibly the 1960s or 70s?
Page 441. December 1935. “The autumn in New England has been phenomenally warm” this year. In October he visited Yale and among others sights he enjoyed the Marsh and Farnam botanic gardens. These are not however vast steampunk Victorian ironwork and steam-heat glass-houses, but rather two low and ordinary greenhouses set in outdoor landscaped botanical gardens.
Page 453. Lovecraft outlines his plans to hoax his friend and geologist Morton, then curator at the Paterson Museum. He hopes to send a “millennially palaeogaean” rock sculpture by Clark Ashton Smith, in the hope of causing some “perplexed head-scratching” about its possible origin in a “pre-human school” of art.
Page 453. He recalls ‘Monk’, a boyhood compatriot and schoolyard mucker… “a huge youth from a distant and seedy region who boasted 17 years as opposed to our 11 or 12, & whose voice had changed. […] I can still see ‘Monk’ McCurdy as he lorded it over his chronological inferiors (but scholastic equals) & over-awed them with his gorilla-like physiognomy.” A little later on page 454 he recalls that the ‘Monk’ swore “resounding oaths”. Sounds like a distant model for Wilbur Whateley in “The Dunwich Horror”?
08 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in AI, Odd scratchings
An interesting finding, with thanks to the experts at Reddit. Wooden pseudo-mediaeval dialogue, of the type sometimes found in 1870s-1920s historical and fantasy literature, can easily be translated into modern English via large-language model AIs.
By pseudo-mediaeval I mean all those interminable over-uses of thee and thou, plus wherefore goest ye, what meaneth it, we twain, thou wert before me, unto yonder hillock, therewith he laughed, and so on.
William Morris, and many other users of clotted pseudo-mediaeval Victoriana, made readable… with AI assistance. Potentially, it would be possible to build a dedicated translator for entire novels. Which would also aid the production of human-read audiobooks, as these books would no longer be so daunting to either readers or listeners.
02 Tuesday Jul 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
I found an early South American evaluation of Lovecraft, in Chile’s newspaper La Nacion (‘The Nation’) for 8th July 1956, titled ‘Science-Fiction — a new form of literature’.
[Introduction, a little history, the early H.G. Wells, noting of Ray Bradbury’s then-recent work].
It is difficult to set limits between the literature of anticipation [of the future] or ‘scientific fiction’, and the traditional fantasy. For instance we cannot consider Lovecraft to be simply ‘science-fiction’ or fantasy literature. His central explanation of a universe of ‘n’ dimensions is of a scientific order, yet he has at the same time created a mythological universe, within which there can be human talk of demonology and teratology. A powerful visionary, Lovecraft moves in horror with astonishing force and is the creator of monsters, a great many monsters, that take us back to the era of primitive magic. He also gives us the keys to many other enchantments. Therefore, we do not have to resort to the arbitrariness of estimating and assigning [literary critical] values because his work is in ‘this’ or ‘that’ genre — he is without borders.
We must all stop to appreciate, apart from those with a strict literary mind, this new literature which allows us to penetrate more deeply into the inner universe of man, where realities and myths, logical ideas and eccentric ideas coexist and attack each other. Where we encounter ancestral fears, dreams and traumas, passions and illusions, the angel and the beast. It seems there is everything in this new ‘science-fiction’.
In November 1957, the same newspaper published a translation of “The Terrible Old Man”. Possibly there are more to be found in the late 1950s, but Archive.org has just ingested a run of La Nacion and no others suggest themselves after a keyword search.
01 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Podcasts etc.
I was sorry to hear that Gordon Gould, the excellent ‘Books for the Blind’ narrator of Lovecraft’s tales, has passed away at age 93, in February 2023. I discovered this via a short alt.obituaries newsgroup post…
Gordon Gould was also noted for recording an astonishing 600+ books over several decades for American Foundation for the Blind’s (AFB) Talking Book Studios under the auspices of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) division of the Library of Congress.
Possibly more than that, as I see a LoC search has 1,133 titles for him, as narrator, in the online AFB catalogue. It might be useful if someone could go through them all and winnow out a links-list of all the fantastic fiction readings. I also see other interesting items there, such as Lovecraft’s Selected Letters I as an Arkham House audiobook (though not read by Gould).
His ‘Books for the Blind’ reading of the Lovecraft collection Dagon and Other Macabre Tales can be found on Archive.org and despite the title it includes many Dreamlands tales. This appears to be the only Lovecraft he recorded, and he never read Dream Quest. What a treat that would have been.
On searching, I find The Putney Post had an obituary and small photo…
Gordon Gould Jr. passed away peacefully in his Manhattan apartment on February 26, 2023. He was 92 years old. He will be remembered not only as a talented professional, but also as a loving family man and friend.
Gordon joined the Chicago Tribune as a feature writer in June 1956. Gordon was awarded the 1961 Edward Scott Beck Award for Excellence in Foreign News Reporting for his story of an adventure-packed, four and one-half month trip in which he and 11 others were the first to drive passenger cars — three bright red Corvairs — from Chicago to the Panama Canal along the Inter-American Highway. At the time, the route included a then-unfinished link through the virtually unmapped Darién jungle.
Growing up before the advent of television, Gordon yearned to be a radio actor. But by the time he was old enough to be one, radio dramas had largely disappeared. When he moved to New York, he was overjoyed to discover the CBS Radio Mystery Theater and to be invited to join its pool of actors. Gordon eventually played in 60 episodes of Mystery Theater from 1974 to 1982, and was the last American actor to portray Sherlock Holmes on a nationally syndicated radio show. Gordon played villain General Veers in the radio adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, alongside Mark Hamill (as Luke Skywalker), Billy Dee Williams (as Lando Calrissian) and John Lithgow (as Yoda). The program first aired on NPR in the United States in 1983.
Gordon was the voice of countless radio and TV commercials. And, over 34 years, Gordon brought books to life for the visually impaired, recording more than 600 Talking Books for the Blind for the Library of Congress. Gordon was also a regular on-stage presence.
Gordon and his beloved wife of 51 years, Mary, were avid patrons of the arts, particularly opera. They regularly traveled across the United States and Europe to attend operas and music concerts. Their Manhattan apartment was a modern-day Parisian salon with friends gathering regularly to listen to music (including a recital of all of Chopin’s piano études) and exchange ideas. They frequently discussed the arts, travels, and global affairs. Gordon’s career and mind were impressive, but no more so than his gentle, loving nature. He was predeceased by his wife, Mary, and his dear son John Kinzie Gould. Gordon is survived by his beloved daughter and grandsons, Nell Gould, and Cooper and Griffin Gould.
CBS Radio Mystery Theater website has a listing of his programmes, and another small picture in uniform (perhaps made in the early 1950s).
Not to be confused with his namesake, who invented the laser.
25 Tuesday Jun 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
An update on the genuine Windows freeware VoiceMacro 1.4, which I found as a replacement for Cortana voice control (removed from Windows 10 by Microsoft, who want to force people to use Windows 11 and AI). VoiceMacro has now been tested. The freeware enables ‘speak a simple word to turn a page’ on a Microsoft Surface tablet.
On testing I find that ‘nine’ and ‘he’ are trigger words that, even when softly spoken, are always recognised via the built-in pinhead microphone. These have been set to trigger ‘previous page’ / ‘next page’ in the target ebook reader(s), and work perfectly. Hands-free page turning of ebooks! This was probably ‘a thing’ a decade ago, for many, but it’s new to me.
However, it means I’ll be sounding like a cackling German scholar who’s just read Ludwig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis… “Nine, he he he he, Nine!” etc. (Nein is German for ‘no!’).
Update: I found the recognition problem. The Windows 10 app-style for-dummies controls give you no control over adjusting mic levels, which are set too low (by default seemingly). You need to go into the proper Windows Control Panel and then | Sound | Recording | Microphone Array | Properties | Levels – set these to 65 | Advanced – uncheck both ‘Exclusive mode’ boxes | Apply | OK | Exit. Word recognition accuracy via the built-in mic and VoiceMacro then goes to 95-98%. You of course also need to have your microphone set to ‘Array’ in the for-dummies control settings. At a setting of 65 you would also need a fairly quiet environment.
25 Tuesday Jun 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
New ebook findings re: my new Microsoft Surface Pro 3 12″ as an entertainment touchscreen tablet. Which may interest some readers.
I settled on Cover as the free reader for .CBR etc comics. Free, superb, and lovely design/usability. Set a landscape-orientation screen on the Surface, ‘fit width’, tap to scroll down a third of the comic page. Assuming a traditional page-layout, it’s then almost better than guided panel-by-panel view, as at the high screen-resolution you’re effectively on a huge BD-sized page — which means you can focus on a panel but also see parts of the panels around it. Cover is one of the best comics readers I’ve seen, and I tried quite a few on the Kindle (Android OS). Cover is now also my default .PDF reader on the Surface, as it’s lovely for that and can do double-page magazine spreads without a gutter-line.
Sadly, Cover has no .ePUB support other than for any images inside the file. But I need .ePub on a tablet for monthly Instapaper-like bundles of news and magazine articles I save from the Web for later armchair reading. Windows .ePub readers are nearly all deficient in some way, but I’ve found Koodoo Reader just pips the latest Thorium to the post, due to ‘swipe to turn a page’. Thorium only has fixed page-turn buttons, at the bottom of the screen (poorly placed, for a Surface held propped in hands). Possibly I’ve yet to discover some Store app that does .ePubs better, though.
The Kindle app is deliberately dire on Windows, so purchased Kindle ebooks can be read in your favoured browser at read.amazon.com/kindle-library.
The Windows donationware VoiceMacro also looks useful, though has not yet been tested. (Update: tested and useful. The words ‘nine’ and ‘he’ are trigger words that, even when softly spoken, are always recognised). The OS’s built-in Windows Speech Recognition is very flaky at transcribing my speech-words from the built-in microphone, but maybe this freeware will handle a basic utterance. Say “turn”, send a keypress = the book page turns. That’s all I want. One Android comic-book reader has a ‘turn page by any noise’ feature, but that’s the only place I’ve seen the idea implemented.
That’s it, hope this helps some Tentaclii readers with a Windows touchscreen tablet in desktop mode, and reading ebooks of various sorts.