Another scholarly fantasy journal found. The Catholic St. Austin Review (StAR) has a range of themed issues, with the current one returning to “Tolkien”. Sadly not open access, though one essay per issue is free.

Also several others on C.S. Lewis and his circle.

Another item for the Open Lovecraft page, found while searching for interesting new Tolkien items. Mallorn has a rolling paywall, and the locks on the 2018 issue have only just popped.

D. Nelson, “The Lovecraft Circle and the Inklings: The “Mythopoeic Gift” of H.P. Lovecraft”, Mallorn, 2018.

The Inklings were the circle around Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

I see that it was Christmas 2020 when I last posted here, re: my Open Lovecraft page. The page has since had about 16 additions, and its 2021 section is filling up nicely. Some recent public and free scholarly items in English include:

* Anglo-Saxons: Stoddard and Lovecraft & Counter-Revolution.

* Fear of the Known: Evoking Narrative Elements in Lovecraftian Futurist Sound Composition.

* Searchers After Horror: Understanding H.P. Lovecraft and His Fiction.

* Just like Henry James (Except with Cannibalism): The International Weird in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls”.

* Ghostly presences in H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cool Air” and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Neal Monks has a new and long review of Robert H. Waugh’s collection A Monster Of Voices: Speaking for H.P. Lovecraft.

Initially, he argues, there’s something to be said for Lovecraft as a surrealist, but Waugh observes that his writing style is closer to that of Tolkien. In particular, where [C.S.] Lewis [Narnia books] was very precise in his language, favouring short, clear sentences and convincing arguments, Lovecraft, like Tolkien, always has more to say.

Yes, there is a similarity. Tolkien uses a lapidary method that I call “Tolkien’s tantalizing teasing” where he carefully inlays a sub-story across a half-dozen tantalising slivers (e.g. the story/journey of Boromir from Osgiliath to Rivendell) often made up of asides, offhand remarks, small fragments of fact. The same is done to gradually build up character back-story without actually giving an info-dump (e.g. Sam and his family). The reader must, if he is a good attentive reader, join the slivers together in memory and then add his own imagination. It’s a potent method, for the right kind of reader. Lovecraft has a similarly tantalising approach to revealing back-story, which also assumes a closely attentive reader who is not skimming the text or barely able to comprehend what is going on (e.g.: the baffled letter-writers to Weird Tales or Astounding). While attentive close readers could once be counted on to exist in reasonable numbers, they have today become a relatively rare sub-species when compared to the vast size of the thundering herd.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a word of The Shadow‘s 339 pulp novels, but many Tentaclii readers may be interested to learn of Steve Donoso’s Kickstarter for the pulp fanzine The Shadowed Circle: The Foremost Fanzine about The Shadow. The campaign is live now, with a month to go, and already rising nicely. It will be “non-fiction” with art. And not just a one-man venture, being run by…

three Shadow fans with backgrounds in writing, editing, art, and graphic design

The first issue is due in July 2021, and there’s what appears to be a very rough front-cover mock-up on the Kickstarter page.

Mapping the Impossible: Journal for Fantasy Research, a new student journal from the University of Glasgow here in the UK. A first issue is set for October 2021, with papers from Glasgow’s just-gone conference “Beyond the Anglocentric Fantastic”. Added to JURN, in anticipation of the first issue.