HPLinks #60.
S.T. Joshi’s Blog brings news of the English translation of A Guide to Lovecraft’s Providence… “a 131-page booklet with numerous full-colour illustrations of important sites relating to Lovecraft in his native city.” The Amazon blurb reveals it to be the product of… “four tours carefully prepared on the spot, original maps and photos, quotes, biographical, historical, and topographical references to accompany you step by step on the tracks of Howard Phillips Lovecraft”. Available now as a paperback.
* Now officially free on Archive.org, Murray Ewing’s new biography I Dream With Open Eyes: The Life of David Lindsay. Author of A Voyage to Arcturus (2025). Also available for purchase in hardback.
* A forthcoming book in French will attempt to answer the question… “How could an obscure ultra-conservative writer, born one hundred and thirty years ago, become omnipresent and central in current pop culture?”, seemingly via a broad 500-page survey of the life and work. L’Oeuvre de Lovecraft: Terreur cosmique et angoisse humaine is due in early December 2025 from Third Editions.
* From Japan, a detailed abstract and outline for “Negative Jungian Psychology: The Abyss of the Unconscious and Monstrous Archetypes” (2025). Suggests that… “archetypes can manifest not only as symbolic patterns such as the Hero or the Mother, but also as monstrous and incomprehensible figures akin to the deities of the Cthulhu Mythos”
* I spotted, too late, a public talk on Lovecraft given at the Swedenborg Library in Chicago on 21st October 2025. Unusual for being from a highly experienced academic folklorist interested in Lovecraft. Some listings suggested a possible new book. However, I now think this was artifact of the event service’s broad-brush tagging of ‘Literary Events – Talks – Debates – Book Launch in Chicago, United States’, and that there is no new book. The speaker was the author of “A last defense against the dark: Folklore, horror, and the uses of tradition in the works of H.P. Lovecraft”, which appeared in the Journal of Folklore Research in 2005. He can be heard talking on the topic on a 2022 podcast “Folklore and Lovecraft with Dr. Tim Evans”, which is freely available online. And if you search for “A last defense against the dark” on Google Scholar you should be able to find it free via a Academic.edu copy (Scholar has a special relationship with them, allowing free download for non-members, so I can’t link it here).
* The latest edition of the scholarly journal Mythlore is mostly Tolkien, but there are also book reviews of Historical Dictionary of Horror Literature; Once Upon a Place: Forests, Caverns & Other Places of Transformation in Myths, Fairy Tales & Film; and Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology. Freely available online.
* PulpFest calls for contributions to The Pulpster 35, their magazine/journal for the forthcoming 2026 event.
* In Delaware, the substantial exhibition Icons of the Fantastic: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature from the Korshak Collection runs until 9th December 2025. Accompanied by a 200-image catalogue. The show includes original… “rare masterpieces that defined the visual language of beloved classics” in fantasy and science-fiction.
* The Robert E. Howard Foundation has put out a call to “Save the REH Museum” in Cross Plains, Texas.
… the hard-working folks of Project Pride in Cross Plains have restored and cared for the House since acquiring it back in the 1980s, their small volunteer army cannot address the extensive repairs that will be needed. Professional restoration is required for this 100+ year old home on the National Historical Register, and it is needed now, before the damage gets worse.
* Also in REH this week, Spraguedecampfan’s blog takes a long look at Robert E. Howard and his School Writings (now published), and on YouTube Gates of Imagination has a new fine free audiobook reading of a Solomon Kane tale, “The Hills of the Dead”.
* In the world of Lovecraft theatre, this week I read that… “The Ada Shakespeare Company will present ‘Tales from the Shadows’, an original stage adaptation of two short stories: “Cool Air” by H.P. Lovecraft and and “The Shadow on the Moor””. In Ada, Oklahoma, from October 23rd through 26th October 2025.
* And finally, in 1920s Lovecraftian gaming, this week there’s news that Asmodee Picks Up Cthulhu: Death May Die…
In a move that has sent ripples across the tabletop community, global gaming giant Asmodee has officially acquired the intellectual property (IP) and games for Cthulhu: Death May Die. This acquisition is more than just a transfer of ownership; it’s a profound inflection point for the popular miniatures game…
— End-quotes —
“Just before dawn Arcturus winks ruddily from above the cemetery on the low hillock” — Lovecraft, in the tale “Polaris”.
“… the refulgent orange-red star Arcturus. This orb is of great size, even as stars are reckoned, being about 100 times larger than our own sun. It is also distinguished for its rapid “proper motion”, it having traversed a distance in the sky equal to twice the apparent diameter of the moon since the days of classical antiquity. This fact reminds us that, although we are accustomed to call the stars “fixed”, they are actually rushing through space at incredibly rapid rates; only their enormous distance giving them that comparatively unchanging aspect which we know. Delicate instruments are able to record the changes in a star’s position during many years; and the spectroscope, whose prismatic image or “spectrum” of an object moves in one direction when the object is receding and in the other direction when it is approaching, enables us to learn that many stars apparently at rest are in reality moving in the line of sight; that is, moving exactly toward or away from us. The rates at which the stars are travelling differ greatly. All are very high, yet the distances involved are such that a period of over 3000 years is necessary for us to perceive any distinct alterations in the figures of the constellations.” — Lovecraft, “June Skies”, writing for a popular New England rural audience, June 1917.
“It does not matter what happens to the [human] race — in the cosmos the existence or non-existence or the earth and its miserable inhabitants is a thing of the most complete indifference. Arcturus would glow just as cheerfully if the whole solar system were wiped out.” — Lovecraft, “Nietzscheism and Realism”, 1921.
“All is chance, accident, and ephemeral illusion — a fly may be greater than Arcturus, and Durfee Hill may surpass Mount Everest — assuming them to be removed from the present planet and differently environed in the continuum of space-time.” — Lovecraft to Morton, May 1923. An initial musing on the new Theory of Relativity, for which a first scientific proof had only come a month earlier.
“A slight change of angle could turn [Randolph] Carter into one of those earlier entities which had dwelt in primal Hyperborea and worshipped black, plastic Tsathoggua after flying down from Kythanil, the double planet that once revolved around Arcturus; could turn a terrestrial Carter to a remotely ancestral and doubtfully shaped dweller on Kythanil itself…” — “Through The Gates of the Silver Key”, Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price, finished April 1933. Lovecraft is using ‘plastic’ in the scientific sense of ‘highly malleable and easily moulded’.
