HPLinks #74.
* The open-access book Tierwerden und Pflanzendenken in der Literatur: Okologische Entgrenzungen von Franz Kafka und H.P. Lovecraft bis heute (September 2025). Being a comparative study exploring the ecological thinking of Franz Kafka and H.P. Lovecraft. In German, but under CC-BY and in .PDF, so auto-translation should be relatively straightforward.
Key chapter titles in translation…
– The Question of Comparability: Kafka and Lovecraft in their times and in relation to each other.
– “The Metamorphosis” and “The Rats in the Walls”: Visions of becoming animal.
– “A Report for an Academy” and “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn”: Becoming animal as becoming human.
– “The Burrow” and “Shadow over Innsmouth”: Rhizomatics and Hybrid Beings.
– “Investigations of a Dog” and “At the Mountains of Madness”.
– Varieties of Ecological Thinking in Kafka and Lovecraft.
* Deep Cuts looks at the letters sent to Weird Tales by Hazel Heald after Lovecraft’s death… “Lovecraft was a gift to the world who can never be replaced — Humanity’s Friend.” (Heald).
* From France, Lovecraft 1924: Love Before Cthulhu is a slick 24 minute film on Lovecraft’s pivotal year. It blends archival footage of NYC, Ken Burns-style slow zooms/pans on photographs, and occasional colorised images. YouTube auto-dubs it to English, for me.
* For sale on eBay, two issues of Barlow’s The Dragon-fly.
* The Grognardia blog considers “H.P. Lovecraft and the Literature of Longing”. (Part I) and (Part II).
* In Spanish, Krill magazine examines “La clonazione vocale: Iperrealismo sintetico tra utopia e fragilita del reale” (‘Voice cloning: Synthetic hyperrealism between utopia and the fragility of reality’), through the lens of Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness”. Freely available online.
* The Italians have just published a book whose title translates as ‘The Horror at Miskatonic University’. Turns out to be a 48-page comic-book. Not quite long enough to be a BD, but experimentally put into hardback and aimed at Italian bookshops and collectors rather than the flagging news-stands. It appears to offer a self-contained story set at Miskatonic University, but perhaps set in the 1970s or 80s (it opens with a Dr. Nimoy – ‘Spock’ – giving a lecture there), and the review finds that it’s neither an “intellectualistic rereading of Lovecraft […] nor a faithful, masterful adaptation” of Lovecraft. Just a fun romp by the sound of it, and with rather nice b&w artwork…
The story is by Giulio A. Gualtieri, with collaboration from Marco Nucci, two well-known names in Italian comics of the last few decades, with art by Matteo Buzzetti.
* British gamer Boring Dad Gaming has a six-part in-depth play-through review of The Dark Rites of Arkham, a point-and-click detective videogame set in Arkham in 1933. Part one and you can find the rest linked at his YouTube channel. Made in old-school Pixelvision…
The respected Rock Paper Shotgun calls it… “a well-made ode to Lovecraft’s Mythos which will appeal to anyone who loves Call of Cthulhu and ’90s adventure games.” It’s a $15 indie, available now on Steam and Itch.io.
* A new book which may interest British readers, Ghost Signals: The Shadowlands Of British Analogue Television 1968-1995. Published a few days ago, it explores the nooks and crannies of weird and supernatural British TV in its glory-years.
* Marzaat reviews both volumes of A Means to Freedom, the letters of R.E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.
* And finally, the HPLHS Raffle Ticket 2026. Prizes include, among others, both volumes of A Means to Freedom. The raffle prize-pick is on 15th March 2026.
— End-quotes —
“The original Arabic [of The Necronomicon] was lost before Olaus’ time, & the last known Greek copy perished in Salem in 1692. The work was printed in the I5th, 16th, & 17th centuries, but few copies are extant. Wherever existing, it is carefully guarded for the sake of the world’s welfare & sanity. Once a man read through the copy in the library of the Miskatonic University at Arkham — read it through & fled wild-eyed into the hills…” — Lovecraft to C.A. Smith, November 1927.
“… Mulder’s infamous Ghorl Nigral. I even saw a copy of this once — though I never opened or glanced within it. It was many years ago in Arkham — at the library of the Miskatonic University. I was in a shadowy corner of the great reading-room, and noticed a huge volume in somebody’s hands across the table from me. The reader’s head was completely hidden by the massive tome, but on the book itself I could descry the words “Ghorl Nigral” in an archaic Gothic lettering. What I knew of it made me shudder — and I felt vaguely alarmed when others began glancing at the silent reader and quietly edging out of the room one by one. When I saw that I was wholly alone but for the unspeaking page-turner, my feeling of disquiet became almost overpowering — and I too edged toward the door …. keeping my eyes resolutely away from the reader for some unknown reason or other. Then I saw that the room was growing very dark, though the afternoon was by no means spent. I stumbled over a chair, and gave vent to a wholly involuntary cry — but heard no answering sound. At this point came a horrible glare of lightning and a deafening stroke of thunder, though those outside the building observed no sign of a storm. Attendants came running in, and someone brought a candle after the lights were found out of commission. The man who had been reading was dead, and his face was not pleasant to contemplate. He had a queerly foreign look, and his hair and beard seemed to adhere in unhealthy patches. The book, from which all eyes were sedulously averted, was tightly clasped in the brown, bony hands — and the attendants seemed slow in trying to dislodge it. When at length they did so, they encountered something very singular. For the hands, instead of releasing the book, came irregularly off at the wrists amid a cloud of red dust — whilst the body, pulled forward by the attempt, collapsed suddenly to a powder, leaving only a heap of greenishly mouldering clothes in the chair. Those clothes were later identified as belonging to a man buried 30 years before — whose tomb in Christchurch Cemetery was found to be empty. Never since that day has the Ghorl Nigral been taken from its locked vault in the library basement.” — Lovecraft to Willis Conover, August 1936.
“Candlemas is only five days off, and I am carefully rehearsing the formulae in the Book of Eibon — having borrowed the mediaeval Latin version of Philippus Faber from the library of Miskatonic University. A look of doubtful expectancy seems to have subtly gathered on the stony muzzle of the Eidolon [a carving sent to Lovecraft by Smith], and I am reminded hideously of an elliptical allusion in the original Dusseldorf edition of the Black Book. Everything, of course, depends upon the precise identity of It. Let us hope that the problem will not be solved in too hideous a way!” — Lovecraft to C.A. Smith, January 1932.
“The aspect of the Eidolon [Smith’s carving] as the mystic Solstice approaches is such as to breed a vague disquiet. There is too much of a suggestion of unaccountable anticipation and satisfaction lurking about Its muzzle, and one cannot be quite sure as to a half-opened eye. I am even now collating the ritual texts in Dee’s Neconomicon and in the Latin copy at Miskatonic University, in order to be safeguarded to the utmost on the Night.” — Lovecraft to C.A. Smith, October 1932.
