Category Archives: Scholarly works

Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival

30 Saturday Sep 2023

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The forthcoming book Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology (December 2023) may interest some readers…

If a literary movement arises but no one notices, is it still a movement? […] this anthology collects for the first time over fifty speculative poets. […] Alongside such established names as C.S. Lewis, Patrick Rothfuss, Edwin Morgan, Poul Anderson, Jo Walton, P.K. Page, and W.H. Auden, this anthology also includes representative texts from cultural movements such as contemporary neo-paganism and the Society for Creative Anachronism.

No mention of Tolkien, but I guess it may have been difficult or expensive to get the Tolkien Estate’s permission to reprint?

See also the 2021 article in Studies in the Fantastic, titled “Antiquarianism Underground: The Twentieth-century Alliterative Revival in American Genre Poetry” on…

a wholly neglected subset of the alliterative revival [which] involves American genre poets working in fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

Audio recordings from PulpFest 2023

28 Thursday Sep 2023

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Streaming audio recordings from PulpFest 2023, now available. The list includes, among others…

* Sword and sorcery in “The Unique Magazine” [Weird Tales]

* Weird Tales on radio

* Those weird men’s adventure magazines

* Illustrating Conan for the commercial market

* Weird Editors

* Doc Savage and his offspring

No .MP3 downloads, but anyone handy with “Inspect element” and DIV-wrangling will find the link they want.

There are also dates for your 2024 diary. PulpFest 2024 will be in Pittsburgh, USA, from the 1st – 4th August 2024.

de Camp’s other essays, more essays

26 Tuesday Sep 2023

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Spraguedecampfan has a new long review of Blond Barbarians & Noble Savages (1975) by L. Sprague de Camp. Not on Archive.org. As de Camp wrote of the item…

This group of essays is a collection of ideas that have come to me in studying the lives and works of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard

And news of a new book of essays, Beyond the Black Stranger and Others: New Essays on Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft (2023) being essays by Charles Hoffman. In Lovecraft…

* Flights to Hidden Lands: H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and James Hilton’s Lost Horizon – A Study in Contrasts

* Some Notes on Poe and Lovecraft

330 pages, currently in paperback only.

Man Myth Magic

06 Wednesday Sep 2023

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John Coulthart brings a link to “all 3,144 pages” of Man Myth Magic magazine, now on Archive.org. Actually more of a reference encyclopaedia, but issued in the once-popular (and apparently very profitable, when done right) British ‘collect the partwork’ manner. The work had a stellar contributor list which included Katharine Briggs for the folklore articles. Half way through the post we learn that the scans are of a “revised and reprinted” version, though it seems not much was changed.

The 21 volumes weigh in at just under 1Gb in a single PDF file.

Lovecrafter 11 / 12 (2023)

05 Tuesday Sep 2023

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Details of what’s in the annual German-language double-issue magazine from the German Lovecraftians. Printing soon, and it should be available to buy shortly.

Lovecrafter 11: special issue on Lovecraft’s poetry.

* Following the recent German publication of the volume of poems Fungi by Yuggoth and other poems, an article “will present and discuss the translation and book in as much detail as possible”. [Sounds like a ‘making of’ article?]

* Form fanaticism and nostalgia in Lovecraft’s poems. [Probably about his passion for old metres, poetic forms and subject matter?]

* Lovecraft’s graphology. [His penmanship, or otherwise, and presumably also trying to divine personality from the handwriting?]

* ‘Mushroom Gardens in Bloom’ – a review of H.P. Lovecraft’s Fungi of Yuggoth and Other Poems (German edition).

Lovecrafter 12: special issue on Robert E. Howard.

Parallels between “Howard’s biography and the protagonists of his stories”.

A look at “the origins and relevance of the barbaric in more detail”.

An article which “roves through the sunken temple complexes and black stone structures that leave us so unsettled in the context of cosmic horror”.

“Digital Horror Upgrade 2.0”, in which Dennis Grob examines a number of obscure and often unknown videogame titles.

And various RPG gaming material.

PulpFest 2023 presentations

04 Monday Sep 2023

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A useful round-up of the presentations at PulpFest 2023. Including, among others…

* Weird Tales on radio – old-time radio expert Karl Schadow looks at radio adaptations of stories that appeared in Weird Tales.

* Weird editors – a panel celebrating the magazine and anthology editors of the weird. There’s a recording.

* Doc Savage and his offspring – Doc Savage had “several imitators who would follow him to the newsstands”. Who knew Doc had babies? There’s a recording.

Lovecraft & Astronomy podcast

23 Wednesday Aug 2023

Posted by in Astronomy, New books, Scholarly works

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A new one-hour ‘Lovecraft & Astronomy’ podcast, Talking Weird #52. Talking with the authors of the forthcoming book on Lovecraft and Astronomy, Edward Guimont & Horace Smith. Released on Lovecraft’s Birthday.

Please note that I’ll now be taking a week’s break from the usual daily posting on Tentaclii, since there’s not much Lovecraft news at present. I plan to be back around 1st September.

Tolkien Gleanings issue 6

19 Saturday Aug 2023

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Now available, my free PDF Tolkien Gleanings, issue 6 (2023) for Tolkien scholars and academics. At just 56 pages this is not as large and magazine-like as the previous issue 5. This new issue just collects and proof-reads my Gleanings blog-posts from June to August, and also has a gallery which surveys ‘walking trees’ in Edwardian arts and literature.

To get clickable Web links, you need the PDF rather than the Archive.org flipbook preview.

Journal of Psychick Albion #2, and others

15 Tuesday Aug 2023

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A quick scatter-gun round-up of some new British journals.

Undefined Boundary: The Journal of Psychick Albion has produced a second issue. Including a Bill Nelson interview. Both issues can currently be had as a bundle.

Wow, and what’s this… yes, it’s a Detectorists fanzine: Detectorists Bundle, Issues 1 – 4 from the same folk as Psychick Albion.

There’s also Strange Attractor Journal Five (Spring 2023), returning after a seven year break. Some of the contents are mentioned in the page for the London launch event.

And finally the Bacon Review has its first issue out. Not the ‘sizzling piggy’ type of bacon. The artist Francis Bacon, painter of the ‘Screaming Pope’ painting and all that.