Category Archives: Scholarly works

Journal of Ursula K. Le Guin Studies

05 Monday Jun 2023

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The University of Northern Iowa is planning a new journal, UKL: The Journal of Ursula K. Le Guin Studies, and currently has a call for papers for the first issue.

You’ll recall that le Guin (real name Ursula Kroeber) was one of the best fantasy writers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with her ‘Earthsea’ fantasy series (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore). And she was equally highly regarded in science-fiction circles for her two classic novels of the same period, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven.

Forthcoming: ‘Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition’

05 Monday Jun 2023

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Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition (2024)…

A new edition of this extensive visual analysis of horror […] in the built environment. Spanning the realms of art, design, literature, and film, this newly revised and expanded edition compiles examples from all areas of popular culture

The publisher’s page has it as being in dead tree and “2023” at present, and with an ebook due in February 2024. But Amazon UK says February 2024 for both.

The 2013 edition only mentioned Lovecraft three times, very much in passing and among other names. The most substantial mention is when the idea of “putrefaction” is said to be exemplified by “the cursed De La Poer family of Lovecraft’s The Drowned”. One hopes that more will be said about Lovecraft in the 2024 edition, and that such errors will be corrected.

The Great Monster Magazines

03 Saturday Jun 2023

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New on Archive.org to borrow, The Great Monster Magazines: a critical study of the black and white publications of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (2008, McFarland). This has very variable Amazon reviews, with some enjoying it and others saying it’s yet another of McFarland’s many duff and over-priced titles. One even called it “Just a shill for Marvel Comics”… which is not necessarily a bad thing in my view. Though monster-mag collectors may disagree.

On the topic of marketing, it’s sad that today a magazine is very often just regarded as a vehicle for “marketing”. Something to be produced in a cliched dumbed-down, ‘template and boilerplate’ form by a dull marketing department. A good well-curated and dynamic magazine can be so much more than that.

Understanding H.P. Lovecraft’s Anxiety

01 Thursday Jun 2023

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There’s now another recent attempt to fathom Lovecraft’s possible and actual medical conditions, in the new dissertation “Understanding H.P. Lovecraft’s Anxiety Narratives through the Medical Humanities” (2023)…

“I argue that deciphering these writings as anxiety narratives will be giving a new insight about the author, as well as mental illness in general.”

For a Spanish university, in English. Free online, and under Creative Commons.

Interestingly, and somewhat in relation to this, I recently heard that the years 1908-11 are now deemed to have been the coldest years on record in the USA, a run which broke in the “notably fine summer of 1911” before the nation was plunged into the well-documented and bitter winter of the ‘1911–12 United States cold wave’. 1908 coincides quite well with the start of Lovecraft’s hermitage / mystery years of 1908-1916, and this makes me think that new attempts at diagnosis would necessarily have to closely consider the weather and temperatures of New England and also New York City.

The essay on the influence of the fluctuating seasonal temperatures on Lovecraft has yet to be written, I think. Or perhaps a timeline + graph might be a better format. Whatever the format, first one would have to track down the reliable non-‘adjusted’ data, ideally drawn from and referenced to primary data such as local newspapers of the period. I see there are now books on the history of New England weather, but they focus on the front-page headline events and have titles such as Mighty Storms of New England. I find that Lovecraft’s own favoured source, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, can only provide North Providence data back to 1945. Perhaps a Tentaclii reader knows where a good reliable and succinct week-by-week graph for pre-1938 North Providence might be had?

Call: New England Moot, October 2023

29 Monday May 2023

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The worthy Signum University plans a New England Moot, to be themed as “Perilous Realms & Haunted Spaces”. Set for 21st October 2023 and a little place called Derry, which the map shows translates as “25 miles north of Boston” or about “45 miles north of Providence”.

New England Moot is excited to spirit you away to Perilous Realms & Haunted Spaces. Whether threshold-realms are real or imagined, Faerian or horrifying, deadly or whimsical, mysterious or lucid, they are the playgrounds for imaginative exploration of what is possible. Discovery, danger, failure, and transformation occur in such interstitial spaces.

Whether you are inspired by the Bifrost, the Bermuda Triangle, Wonderland, or an ordinary-looking Wardrobe, we welcome you to question how to define Perilous Realms & Haunted Spaces. How do you know when you’ve entered one? How does the experience of the unknown inform artistic creation? Join us as we traverse the blurry edge of boundaries and venture into the wildlands beyond. You may not be the same when you leave as you were when you arrived…

The Team are currently looking for proposals for “creative presentations, academic papers, or discussion panels”. The Studio Lab physical venue is said to have a 5,376 × 1,344-pixel video-wall. The Moot will also be a hybrid physical/online event.

The deadline for submissions is 7th October, and I’m assuming that’s 2023.

Certain cert’s

22 Monday May 2023

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I see that hplovecraft.com has recently…

Created a series of pages showcasing several Lovecraft-Related Documents including his birth, marriage, and death certificates.

And talking of old documents, Brown University Library (i.e. the John Hay Library) is open again to students and visitors, with masks optional…

Spring 2023: Welcome back to your Brown University Library!

This is pinned on their blog, so I assume the Library has been closed until recently due to Covid? Presumably this re-opening means the 2023 S.T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship in H.P. Lovecraft fellow will now be able to lovingly sniff Lovecraft’s letters in person. Currently…

Applications for the next cycle of fellowships will open in Spring 2024.

Released: Tolkien Gleanings No. 4

20 Saturday May 2023

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My latest Tolkien Gleanings ‘zine is now available. This is the fourth issue, a free 64-page PDF magazine for scholars of the life and works of Tolkien. May also be of interest to collectors, artists, and in this instance to historians of Edwardian Birmingham.

It has articles, artwork, a book review, vintage pictures, and extensive notes on new Tolkien items of interest which I found from April to May 2023. Basically, it does for Tolkien what I also do for Lovecraft, and as such I also make a number of new discoveries. Not least on the name “Anduin”, in this issue.

Designed for easy reading on a larger digital tablet, such as the Kindle Fire 10″.

Available on Gumroad (no sign-up needed, donations welcome) or on Archive.org.

Contributions, especially reviews of less-known non-fiction books, are welcomed for future issues.

Erik Davis on Lovecraft

17 Wednesday May 2023

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Erik Davis on Lovecraft, nice. “A Lecture on Dreaming, Writing, PKD, and Lovecraft” by Erik Davis (author of the excellent Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information). Delivered at the 2010 Philip K. Dick Festival, Colorado. As a 150Mb .ZIP file with .MP3 files. The link is still working.

Somewhat related, Poland’s major PhilosophyCon 6 passed me by and seems to have been substantially about Lovecraft, with S.T. Joshi as guest of honour. 14th-16th May 2021. PDF programme and YouTube, though the latter has no full recordings from 2021.

Lovecraft and God

15 Monday May 2023

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An unusual and refreshingly fresh Catholic take on Lovecraft, in the new article on “H.P. Lovecraft and a Godless Universe”. Making a point I don’t recall hearing put so bluntly, before now…

Lovecraft undermines the notion that atheism and the rejection of religion would lead to the elevation of mankind. […] It isn’t [human] triumph and unrestrained glory and progress; it is madness and idiocy and filth [… This] is a strange combination, one that is not found often; Lovecraft rejected God, but he had no hopes for a world without Him.

Lovecraft himself made the point eloquently enough in the letters, though at more length. To the effect that the quainter Christian trappings were something he valued for their connection to the rooted life of the past and the ways of his forefathers. And that more broadly religion was useful in maintaining a time-worn social coherence among the general populace — at a time (c. 1919-1936) when forces of both the right and left were elsewhere seeking to establish (often by force) their own ‘new world built on new foundations’.