Category Archives: Scholarly works

The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien

13 Thursday Feb 2020

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The Mythopoeic Society’s scholarly Mythcon 51 is a hot ticket! No really, it’ll be hot. Hot as in… Albuquerque, New Mexico, from 31st July – 3rd August 2020. Although the place is apparently at a high altitude, which means it won’t also be humid. The 2020 theme is “The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien”, which opens it to musings on Lovecraft and his circle. Registration is now open, but no call for papers yet.

Discovering H.P. Lovecraft in review

02 Sunday Feb 2020

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Under their Black Wings has a useful overview review of Discovering H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, with a focus on “The Derleth Mythos” by Richard L. Tierney.

For those looking for a paper copy I’d add that you should know that there was a “revised and expanded” edition in 2001, so be sure not to get the earlier edition from eBay. Also that the revised edition is now in a budget £3.80 Kindle ebook.

Zeitschrift fur Fantastikforschung – now Open Access

26 Sunday Jan 2020

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Zeitschrift fur Fantastikforschung is a twice-yearly German journal on the fantastic and science-fiction, from the German Association for Research in the Fantastic.

They have just taken the journal open access and Creative Commons, although this doesn’t seem to cover the many volumes of back-issues which are available to purchase in paper. The first open access issue is now online.

They have a standing call for submissions, and appear willing to review published books in English. They’re also open to transcribed and translated interviews with major figures, such as one with Tad Williams.

Cryptobotany Books

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in New books, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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Three anthologies of tales of strange plants and fearsome fungi, which appear to have been mostly culled from the public domain. Available in paperback as Flora Curiosa, Botanica Deleria and Arboris Mysterius. There appears to be no ebook or audiobook editions.

Amazon also reveals the anthologist to be the editor of a journal titled Biofortean Notes. Volume 4 (2015) of this had a survey of “Cryptofiction: A Renaissance”. Only eight pages, but it may interest fiction writers who want to learn what’s been done up to circa 2014, and those seeking adaptable work. “Crypto” here meaning cryptozoology rather than Bitcoin.

But before you go cashing in your $8k Bitcoin to buy copies of the journal at Amazon’s often rather silly prices, note that BioFortean Notes is currently free in PDF, and there are free issues up to 2018.

Perhaps S.T. Joshi would also welcome a survey of cryptobotany in fiction and graphic novels, from 2000-2020, for his new journal Penumbra?

Loosely connected to the theme is this curious twisted pear, in Lovecraft’s time located at the old Dyer residence near Providence. Lovecraft had the Dyer name in his family tree, so may well have visited and seen it. One thinks of Lovecraft stories such as “The Tree”.

New book: Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery

21 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Historical context, New books, Scholarly works

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A new article on “Why I Wrote Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery”, by the author. The article opens with some useful signposting to previous worthy attempts at such.

I definitely don’t care for book’s front cover, with a skeleton-warrior seen sporting a curious pose. He looks likes he’s been caught by a flash-photograph at the moment of passing a chalk-turd. But Flame and Crimson is a welcome 290-page book, and it’s published today. The author states that…

Flame and Crimson is an academic study of the genre, principally on its literary antecedents and key contributors. It’s heavily referenced with a lengthy ‘works cited’. I wanted to publish something authoritative and not (solely) opinion-based, that readers could use as a springboard for further research or pleasant Saturday afternoon of Internet searches. [Yet] I didn’t want to write something dry and pedantic. One of my goals was to try and tell an exciting tale of non-fiction. Sword-and-sorcery has a story of its own to tell, of a confluence of pulp talent, a mercurial renaissance, a staggering commercial fall, and a second life in the popular culture. I wanted to write the kind of academic study that I’d want to read — informative, but also entertaining.

Currently only in paperback, and let’s hope the eventual ebook will have a front cover that’s more mighty-thewed and appealing to the masses. As for the contents, here’s the TOC…

Alton H. Blackington

19 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works

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Bret Kramer of Sentinel Hill Press has noticed that a few of a series of “Yankee Yarns” New England folklore radio-broadcasts are now on Archive.org. They’re from Boston’s Alton H. Blackington, who broadcast 1933-53 and who would drive thousands of miles and interview many people to get his tales and get them straight. He also made such trips pay by being a newspaper photographer and running a New England stock-photo company. After finishing with radio he continued as a popular stage lecturer and published the best of the Tales in print as several volumes under the titles Yankee Yarns and More Yankee Yarns…

A mine of ideas for the region’s fiction writers, as well as a repository of folk-life, I’d suggest. Perhaps even more importantly, a large chunk of his photography collection survived…

“[the core of] the collection is the dozens of images of typically eccentric New England characters and human interest stories. Most of the images were taken by Blackington on 4×5″ dry plate negatives, however many of the later images are made on flexible acetate stock and the collection includes several images by other (unidentified) photographers distributed by the Blackington News Service. … His photographic vision extended to include hermits and eccentrics, skilled craftspeople, and the living relics of old traditions, including lighthouse keepers, whalers, and the last living town crier. … Blackington [had a] narrative eye and appreciation for the eccentricities of New Englanders and the vestiges of its long past”

… which raises the possibility of using some of it to help produce a new “Lovecraft’s places and faces” book, by pairing images related to or evoking Lovecraft’s travels with his letters and public-domain maps. Or perhaps a Ken Burns-style documentary made along the same lines, “panning and scanning” across such pictures.