“The healthiest aristocracy is the most elastic — willing to beckon and receive as accessions all men of whatever antecedents who prove themselves aesthetically and intellectually fitted for membership. It gains, moreover, if its members can possess that natural nobility which is content with a recognition of its own worth, and which demonstrates its superiority in superior works and behaviour, rather than in snobbish and arrogant speech and attitude.” — H.P. Lovecraft, October 1921.

Enter… the Lovecraftorium. Beware lest you empty your mind wallet, as it provokes you to insanely jealous cultist frenzy on Amazon!

Ah yes, the kids of today: no energy, no hope, no talent, and they dress funny too… 🙂

   “… our languid youth to gloom resort,
and listless children must be taught their sport:
whose arts the stamp of waning pow’r confess,
and hide their weakness in eccentric dress;”

H.P. Lovecraft, from “Old Christmas”, written at the end of 1917.

An excellent blog, which I’m sorry to say has been a stranger to my RSS feedreader until now: The R’lyeh Tribune by Sean Eaton.

If… Houdini had hired Lovecraft as his stage designer as well as his ghost-writer…

I’ve just been looking at Hive.co.uk in the UK. Hive has many of the books that Amazon offers, sometimes cheaper(!), and with free shipping to your local independent bookshop for in-person collection. They have all the print-on-demand Hippocampus Press titles, and can accept PayPal. Sadly they don’t offer a ‘public gifting’ Wish List, though, or indeed any Wish List facility at all. But should you be fed up with useless couriers or Parcelfarce, they might be worth a look — provided you still have an independent bookshop nearby from which to collect your eldritch treasures.

Upcoming “Lovecraft Readathon” at Providence Public Library on 23rd August 2014, 7pm-10pm. Public readers can only sign up to give a five minute reading, but there will be three full story readings.

Those in Rhode Island can also celebrate H.P. Lovecraft’s 124th Birthday at the Central Congregational Church on 20th August 2014…

H.P. Lovecraft’s horrific masterpiece, “The Call of Cthulhu”, comes to life in this twisted one-man performance from storyteller David Neilsen. […] Then, take a “sitting tour” of locations in Lovecraft’s Providence. In this informative and entertaining slideshow, Lovecraft scholar Donovan K. Loucks — webmaster of The H.P. Lovecraft Archive at HPLovecraft.com — will present photos of dozens of places on Providence’s East Side related to Lovecraft’s life and works. […] This event is a joint production of Hamilton House, The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, and The Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council.

Pulpfest 2014 lands in Ohio, USA, tomorrow…

“Oregon’s monster mushroom”…

The largest living organism ever found has been discovered in an ancient American forest. The Armillaria ostoyae … has been spreading its black shoestring filaments, called rhizomorphs, through the forest for an estimated 2,400 years, killing trees as it grows. It now covers 2,200 acres of the Malheur National Forest, in eastern Oregon.

Some of the writers who go ‘public domain’ in Europe and the UK in January 2015, under the 70 year rule…

* Max Brand (Wild West stories of the Munsey era)
* Irvin S. Cobb (prolific writer of the Munsey era, some horror)
* Arthur Quiller-Couch (English adventure novelist and poet, some ghost stories)
* John Palmer (mystery writer, biographies of Ben Johnson and Kipling)
* David Wright O’Brien (fantasy & SF writer, nephew of Farnsworth Wright the editor of Weird Tales)
* J. Storer Clouston (some science-fiction novels)
* Robert Nichols (English poet and fantasy writer)
* Margery Williams (Became a conventional children’s writer, but she first wrote the 1913 novel The Thing in the Woods, apparently a “potboiler about a werewolf and its slightly more human brother on the loose in rural Pennsylvania” Lovecraft read it, so a possible influence on “The Dunwich Horror”).
* Rene Daumal (French surrealist)
* Hulbert Footner (mystery and detective writer)
* C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne (popular adventure novels, mostly pirate tales, but also the author of the novel The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis)
* Greville MacDonald (son of the pioneering fantasy writer George MacDonald. Wrote the biography, George MacDonald and his Wife. Other works include The Sanity of William Blake, fairy stories, and the apparently rather fine English fantasy How Jonas Found his Enemy: a Romance of the South Downs, The latter ridiculously expensive and rare, presumably due to his Alice in Wonderland connection.)

“BY this corner of the graveyard the red dawn discovered to Jonas a little pool of clear water, with mosses and parsley-ferns all around it, and so clear and cool-looking that he must drink. The larger part of it was still shadowed by the wall. On knees and hands, he put his lips to it and drank. The refreshment was wonderful. He rose with a sense that he should find the lost sheep yet and bring her home. He looked down once more into the clear pool. It was wider than he had thought—indeed, he had been mistaken; it was a great tarn on the mountain-side! Then he saw that wonderful things were happening on the face of and all round the water. What appeared to be little glow-worms were lying motionless in groups on the mosses in a still-shadowed region by the side of the water. From beneath a low arch in the wall, where the water was slowly flowing away in a river, there came, against stream and wave and wind, a fishing-boat. Its great red sail was spread, and its pennant shone silvery blue in the sun. It came alongside a pier of mossy stones, and cast anchor. From it leapt twelve strong young fishermen, all with bright faces. They took up the little creatures with the glowing lights, and carried them aboard; then back again to other groups, until all were gathered in. For they were all sleeping human forms, close-wrapped in grave-clothes, but with their light still living, as might be seen by anyone who had suffered. When all were safe aboard, the men cast off and the boat disappeared under the arch.” — from How Jonas Found his Enemy: a Romance of the South Downs (1916).