Category Archives: Scholarly works

El sonador de Providence: El legado literario de H. P. Lovecraft y su presencia en los videojuegos (2018)

21 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works

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I find I had overlooked a work from 2018, the Spanish book El sonador de Providence: El legado literario de H. P. Lovecraft y su presencia en los videojuegos (‘The Dreamer of Providence: on the literary legacy of H.P. Lovecraft and his influence on videogames’). Published from Seville by Heroes de Papel.

Said when it appeared to be “a detailed review of videogames inspired by Lovecraft’s work, that have appeared since the 1970s.” However the book runs to 320 pages, and seems to be about more than the publisher’s initial “it’s-for-gamers” marketeering might have suggested. The blurb, in approximate translation, gives a fuller picture…

For many the author H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) represents the definitive point of connection between the gothic terror tale that culminated in Edgar Allan Poe, and the new weird literature and modern science fiction. We all know his creations such as Cthulhu that have now seeped deep into the culture, thanks in part to their powerful impact on fans. But he also raised important points about the place of mankind in the cosmos, the fear of the possible existence of creatures older than Earth, and the discovery of the absence of gods and protective spirits. Aesthetics also meet philosophy in his work and, when woven into innovative narratives, this admixture allures readers with its dreamlike glitter. The Dreamer of Providence is a detailed study drawing on the latest works on Lovecraft, and also a journey through the works of his own masters and his many correspondents. The aim is to build a new and fuller picture of the author for Spanish readers. The book also analyses the influence his creations have had on the language and mechanics used in videogames, and also board or role-playing games. The book especially considers some of the most important videogames, ones that draw most deeply on his philosophy and aesthetic vision.

A Spanish gamer’s recent review indicates that the videogames take a back seat in the first half, and he comments on the clarity of the writing and the clear conveying of a wealth of new-to-the-Spanish information about Lovecraft and his circle. This half also touches on Lovecraft’s distorted Derleth-ian afterlife. It’s in the second half that the games are considered. Apparently Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a Lovecraftian videogame? Well… maybe. It seemed more like a distillation of about 20 old 1970s British sci-fi TV series, to me, with a dash of evangelical Christianity. Some Spanish games are also said to be considered, ones that are rarely if ever considered in the Anglosphere.

Cross purposes

20 Saturday Mar 2021

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Are you interested in the depictions of traditional religious knowledge and experience in horror? Here in the UK, the University of Chester has a major new project and a survey for those who encounter religion in horror. Are the religious trappings just lazy go-to “aesthetic set-dressing”, on the part of cliche-ridden writers and producers? Or are deeper currents sometimes at work, either good (e.g. horror as a Biblical good-vs-evil spectacle) or bad (e.g. resembling a slyly re-worked anti-semitism)? After the survey the project researchers will…

move on to in-depth focus groups, allowing for a more detailed examination of these interactions, before finishing with some detailed interviews with participants.

CuCo

17 Wednesday Mar 2021

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I’m pleased to find another academic journal on popular culture. This time a comics journal, albeit published in Spanish. Cuadernos de Comic (CuCo) has issues online from 2013-2020 in public open-access. (“public” = I distinguish between ‘genuinely public, free and open download’ and ‘fudgy’ services which claim to be sort-of open access).

Also here.

Old-time New England, 1910-25

14 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by in Historical context, Scholarly works

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Old-time New England, the journal of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Hathi has scans of 1910-25 in public flipbook form with varying quality. Archive.org, has four from Lovecraft’s time, a couple being after 1925 and one of which has the article “Symbolic Cemetery Gates of New England”…

Surely Lovecraft must have eagerly perused each quarterly copy at the public library. Though, surprisingly, he was not a member of the Society and never contributed an article to their journal. Despite it being the natural outlet for local and regional antiquarian writing. I wonder why?

The Pulpster calls…

13 Saturday Mar 2021

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The Pulpster is now calling for ads and articles about historical pulp magazines and their writers. Ad space can now also be booked…

If you have a proposal for an article, please contact editor William Lampkin and let him know what you have in mind. Articles and artwork must be submitted by early May 2021. You can reach Bill via email at bill@thepulpster.com.

If you’d like to advertise in THE PULPSTER, please write to the magazine’s publisher, Mike Chomko, at mike@pulpfest.com. He can provide pricing and print specifications.

New book: Progression of the Weird Tale

09 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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S.T. Joshi’s new essay collection The Progression of the Weird Tale is now available in an affordable £2.60 Kindle ebook. The second half is substantially Lovecraft and Barlow, plus a critical assessment of two novels by Frank Belknap Long and memoirs of several fellow Lovecraftians. Also many short encyclopaedia entries, but judging by the one on Arnold Bennett they only cover supernatural novels not short-stories.

His latest blog post also reveals a worthy new mammoth project, A World History of Atheism, expected to take about six or seven years. Sounds great. Grab the graphic novel rights now.

New book: The Emotional Life of the Great Depression

06 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in Historical context, Scholarly works

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Possibly of interest to some, re: learning more about the historical context for Lovecraft and the Great Depression. A new book by John Marsh, The Emotional Life of the Great Depression, from Oxford University Press. Rejecting the usual approach of a ghoulish focus on ‘the despair of the 1930s’, the book…

explores the 1930s through other, equally essential emotions: righteousness, panic, fear, awe, love, and hope.

The author appears to delight in Walt Whitman, also being the author of In Walt We Trust: How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself.

Sadly I can’t find a single public review of The Emotional Life of the Great Depression, even on Amazon. I even looked on Good Reads, a site I usually disregard.

News of the book leads me to recall my elderly history teacher once impressing on his class, way back, that the 1930s in the UK were actually a time when many had a good time, got ahead, worked hard, were relieved from drudgery by labour-saving inventions, saw amazing cinema and read lively magazines, enjoyed better health and healthcare, revelled in public libraries, moved to beautiful new and affordable suburbs, were broadly optimistic about the future (they didn’t know a World War was coming) and generally unaffected by all the hand-wringing and maudlin machinations among the intellectuals. He had actually been there in 1930s Midlands Britain, albeit as a lad, and had later studied the period. He felt the need to enlighten his students because of the distorting effects of the stark and grimy black-and-white depiction of 1930s — pit-head and dust-bowl poverty, etc. — that had been relentlessly promoted in the media from about the 1960s until the 1990s.

Lovecraft was right, part 472: the Stoic Lovecraft

27 Saturday Feb 2021

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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H.P. Lovecraft… way ahead of the curve as usual. He was interested in, and read deeply into, the Ancient Roman Stoics and Epicureans. After about 1930 he came increasingly to live aspects of such a life, in a modified personal form well-adapted to shrugging off the turmoils and tribulations of the 1930s.

Now, like Lovecraft himself, these philosophies have become a small industry. The TLS this week reviews a shelf on new books on the topic (e.g. How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life) and reveals that the movement also has its share of get-rich-quick empire-builders…

… the Stoic revival extends beyond the bookstore. … The Stoa-curious can now head to dailystoic.com to have philosophical wisdom delivered to their inboxes or order a “Memento Mori medallion” from the online store. At modernstoicism.com they can sign up to “live like a Stoic for a week”. Real enthusiasts can attend an annual convention, Stoicon, held (at least before Covid) in cities across the world, to hear talks by classical scholars like Long or movement luminaries

Yet the reviewer finds the movement’s recent crop of short manuals and introductions, all from weighty university presses, to be worthy and faithful to the originals…

to a perhaps surprising degree, [these modern] Stoic treatises really are self-help manuals.

So it sounds like you could do worse, if you wanted a modern and readable introduction to this aspect of Lovecraft’s life in the 1930s. The Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft is also your go-to book on this aspect of his thought, paired with Joshi’s Decline of the West, though both will be heavy going. Ideally, at some point we need an accessible H.P. Lovecraft’s Philosophy For Beginners book presented in the style of the leftist For Beginners series. Here’s a sample page from Linguistics for Beginners to show the approach I’m thinking of…

Having a cat as a narrator would probably be a useful conceit, since the text would need to draw the parallels between these philosophies and the natural bearing and attitude of cats.

Lovecraft also advises Epicureanism to young sceptics among his correspondents…

As to any especial “creed of speculative scepticism” … I would advise Epicureanism as a base. That old geezer had the right idea, and drew from the right sources, largely my old friend Democritus. Read Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura for the best possible exposition of this unsurpassed philosophy.

Crowdfunder – Lovecraft-Long letters

21 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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There’s a new HPLHS Fundraiser to Preserve Lovecraft’s Letters to Frank Belknap Long…

A collection of original letters from Lovecraft to his friend Frank Belknap Long is being sold by a private collector. The 52 letters were written between 1920-1931 and total 509 pages, of which many have never been published. We believe these letters should be acquired and donated to the permanent collection at Brown, but the price is rather high.

So these are not the letters from “Long to Lovecraft”, as recently mentioned by S.T. Joshi on his blog. But rather unknown(?) and certainly ‘many unpublished’ letters from “Lovecraft to Long”. I imagine most of them cluster in 1920-1924 and 1927-30 (since he and Long were largely face-to-face in New York in the middle of the period).

The Italians also have their own video explainer for the campaign.

A note on upscaling, using AI Gigapixel, obviously used on the interior photo on the stamp when it’s seen a larger size. It looks fine above, but not when larger. For best results on that sort of image use the very latest version, in ‘Compressed’ mode and turn on ‘Face refinement’ (now far better than it used to be). Keep de-blur and noise-reduction very low.