Astrowright muses today on what Lovecraft got right from the perspective on xenoarchaeology (the scientific imagining of the archaeological discovery of physical remains of alien civilisations).

Above: Jack Kirby depicting archaeologists discovering evidence of ancient space travelers, The Eternals #1.

An interesting divination of the aether by a savvy publisher’s editor…

“Catherine Burke, the editorial director of Sphere, said there was a “surge of interest from readers” in ghost stories, and agents were receiving more submissions in the genre. With high-profile releases expected to be popular this year, she predicts we will see even more ghost stories in 2013.”

It doesn’t necessarily have to be nostalgic “men in frock-coats chasing white sheets in English country churchyards”, although we may get some of that from TV producers.

Perhaps fiction has already done this (^*) but one of the interesting things about recent Doctor Who is how the writers and monster concept artists have pointed out how to very effectively ‘re-invent the ghost’ (e.g. The Silence, numerous SF-y ‘haunted’ houses with haunted rooms) while keeping it roughly within a sort-of scientific framework. It’s an interesting and popular hybridity between horror and SF, of the sort that Lovecraft might have appreciated.

(Incidentally, it’s such a pity that the most recent Doctor Who series made such a dog’s dinner of the central ‘Silence’ plotline. Someone really needs to make a four-hour fan-edit of that series that just focuses on the central/core storyline).

(*) I’m really not well-read in modern horror, preferring SF, although I’m slowly noting the anthologies that need to be read…

A London bookseller appears to have a set of first edition Selected Letters available, complete with the expanded second edition of the Index, for £300.

“Of course, it’s in January that I really dig down into the nethermost recesses of my burrow,” — H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters: Volume 2.

Graceless : a journal of the radical gothic. It’s a 116-page goth subculture journal, but it looks a serious endevour. No fiction, but rather a mix of interviews, photography and articles on aspects of the gothic subculture scene, plus occasional more serious-sounding articles such as “Jeepers Creepers!: The Dark Side of Victorian Childrens’ Literature”. May interest photographers and Lovecraftian goths.

A deliciously Lovecraftian news item today. ‘Russian quasicrystal rock came from space‘…

A mysterious Russian rock made of a type of crystal never before seen outside a laboratory is most likely a meteorite from the early days of the solar system, geologists say. The first naturally occurring quasicrystals on Earth have been found among rock samples gathered from the remote Koryak Mountains in the far-east of Siberia. Researcher Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University describes such a bizarre arrangement as “a disharmony in space. Any symmetry thought to be forbidden is possible for quasicrystals,” he told Space.com.

Alt.Fiction has 2012 dates for the sixth year of the UK’s convention for readers and writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror, with the emphasis on the literature (rather than movies, action-figures, cosplay, etc). Organised by Writing East Midlands. 14th & 15th of April 2012. Phoenix Digital Arts Centre, Leicester. Currently just 56 tickets left.

Illustrator Sidney Sime died in 1941, so according to the ridiculously elongated “70 year rule” on copyrights, his classic horror and Dunsany fantasy illustrations should be in the public domain on 1st January 2012?

Hugh Walpole’s gothic horror novels are also entering the public domain in 2012.

Interesting short opinion article on the likely political impact of ‘generation remix’…

“Everyone over age 12 when YouTube launched in 2005 is now able to vote. What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office?”

I love the fact that Lovecraft was a pioneer of shared fictional world-making, and later became the ground-zero of remix culture because his works were allowed to fall into the public domain.

Lovecraft’s Brooklyn is thriving again.