Category Archives: Scholarly works

Musical affect and fear

17 Thursday Jan 2019

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New and public from the School of Music at Ohio State, “Musical Affect and Embodiment: Fear, Threat, and Danger in the Music of The Lord of the Rings“…

recent research in music perception, speech prosody, and animal ethology was reviewed to create a list of musical techniques that might communicate fear and threat. […] Musical analyses of the soundtrack accompanying the Nazgul demonstrate abundant use of these and other factors […] in the context of the soundtrack to The Fellowship of the Ring.

Those who are unfamiliar with Tolkien, or who are unable to get past Bombadil or The Council of Elrond in the first part, may not readily associate him with horror. But he has many such elements and does them very effectively. In The Lord of the Rings there are The Black Riders, the Barrow Wight, the flying Nazgul, the tentacular Lurker in the Lake, the Balrog, Moria, the Dead Marshes, the Way of the Dead, Shelob, Sam in the high pass above Mordor, and Mordor itself. There are also horror elements in Merry’s account of the Ent attack on Isengard, the attack on Crickhollow, the battle of Helm’s Deep, and several encounters with wargs. Forests also have their eerie elements.

The essay looks specifically at the early scenes on Weathertop, and includes a handy table of the conclusions of previous research on the matter…

A new edition of Brumal and a new Brazilian book

16 Wednesday Jan 2019

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The new issue of the open access journal Brumal has appeared. Vol 6, No 2 (2018) is ‘Horror and the Fantastic’. English abstracts, then Spanish, Portugese or French texts. On a first pass, the specifically Lovecraft items are:

* “Towards a classification of space in fantastic horror texts”. In which… “we outline three sorts of spatial categories: the natural, the supernatural, and the preternatural spaces, and take incomparable English-speaking authors as a starting point, such as H. P. Lovecraft” before moving on to consider Spanish writers.

* And a review in Portuguese of the book O Fantastico: Procedimentos de Construcao Narrativa em H.P. Lovecraft (2017). [trans: The Fantastic: H.P. Lovecraft’s Procedures of Narrative Construction]

The book can be obtained from Brazil and I see it was also reviewed recently in Revista Abusoes. It appears to be a two-volume Masters dissertation from 1979, which gathered dust for nearly 40 years before being rediscovered, hailed as something special, and published.

Lovecraft Was Right, part 358

14 Monday Jan 2019

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A new paper “The sounds of plants”. The researchers…

demonstrate, to our knowledge for the first time, that plants emit sounds that can be recorded from a distance. We recorded ~65 dBSPL ultrasonic sounds …

Since certain fungi also attract night-insects, it would be interesting to know if some of those also produce sound.

H.P. Lovecraft on the sounds emitted by the Mi-Go fungus race in the woods of Vermont, in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1931)…

It is more than two years now since I last ran off that blasphemous waxen cylinder [sound recording]; but at this moment, and at all other moments, I can still hear that feeble, fiendish buzzing as it reached me for the first time.

New from McFarland

13 Sunday Jan 2019

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Forthcoming books from McFarland, picked from their new Spring 2019 catalogue:

* Weird Tales of Modernity: The Ephemerality of the Ordinary in the Stories of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft. (July?)

* Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature. (Seems relevant to an understanding of the wider context of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and others) (Already published)

* The Detective and the Artist: Painters, Poets and Writers in Crime Fiction, 1840s-1970s. (First sections likely to be relevant to an understanding of the context of “The Call of Cthulhu” and others) (February)

* The Horror Comic Never Dies: a Grisly History. A short history of 150 pages, seemingly fannish but deeply informed. (February)

Sargasso #2 and #3

11 Friday Jan 2019

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I see that Sargasso #2 and Sargasso #3 have appeared since I noted #1 in summer 2013. Sargasso: journal of William Hope Hodgson Studies, is the quality scholarly journal devoted to Hodgson.

A scholarly article in #2 may be of tangential interest to Lovecraft scholars. A full review of #2 usefully summarises…

Scott Conner’s ‘Dust and Atoms: The Influence of William Hope Hodgson on Clark Ashton Smith’. The long-held belief that ‘The Night Land’ [1912] was a major influence on Smith’s Zothique stories is more or less conclusively disproved by the evidence that he hadn’t read any Hodgson books until two years after the first Zothique tale [1932] was published. On the other hand, Scott Conner provides very convincing evidence that ‘The House on the Borderland’ [1908] was definitely a great influence on the writing of Smith’s story, ‘The Treader in the Dust’ [1935].

Lovecraft himself only made… “the discovery, in the summer of 1934, of the forgotten work of William Hope Hodgson.” (I Am Providence, S.T. Joshi) and felt the work was rather conventional in terms of the philosophy it worked in. Lovecraft considered that…

He is trying to illustrate human nature through symbols & turns of idea which possess significance for those taking a traditional or orthodox view of man’s cosmic bearings. There is no true attempt to express the indefinable feelings experienced by man in confronting the unknown. … To get a full-sized kick from this stuff one must take seriously the orthodox view of cosmic organisation — which is rather impossible today.

Visit R.I.

08 Tuesday Jan 2019

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Visit Rhode Island has a new page, “Sci-Fi + RI = H.P. Lovecraft” promoting Lovecraft tourism for 2019. Although it repeats the questionable local claim about the… “Providence Athenaeum, where Lovecraft frequented”. The Athenaeum claim appears to be slowly becoming one of those dubious ‘Claims That Will Not Die’ which are often to be found in a city’s marketing to unknowing tourists. He included it on the whirlwind tour of Providence he gave friends, due to the Poe connection, and late in his life he had to consult some scarce books there which gave the history of Nantucket, but so far as I know that was the extent to which he “frequented” it. I know of nothing to suggest he used it as a regular library. Why would he, when the Providence Public Library was free, huge, and one of the best in the USA?

Perhaps the wider tourism industry needs a recognisable brand-mark/stamp for tourism materials: “All Claims Vetted For Authenticity by an Independent Panel of Local Historians”? Although that would be the whole of Stratford-upon-Avon kaput, as only Mary Arden’s House (located a few miles outside Stratford) has any real claim to a provable connection to Shakespeare.

If you’re travelling to Providence and New England in 2019, perhaps for research or for NecronomiCon 2019, here are a couple of handy and authoritative guide-books you might find useful. Which it’s possible you might not be able to pick up locally, not even in the Arts & Sciences Council shop to be seen in the above Visit Rhode Island article.

* Henry Beckwith’s Lovecraft’s Providence & Adjacent Parts (second edition, revised and enlarged). Paper only, about $50 used. Unless someone has a garage full of paper copies still to shift, this could probably use a $6 ebook edition in time for NecronomiCon 2019. Anyone care to contact the copyright holder about doing that?

* Off the Ancient Track: A Lovecraftian Guide to New-England & Adjacent New-York (2013, revised and enlarged). Paper only, but a very reasonable $10 from Necronomicon Press.

You may also want my free map of Lovecraft’s Providence.

New books from Modiphius

31 Monday Dec 2018

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A new 120-page book claims to catalogue all the monsters of Robert E. Howard. Conan: Horrors of the Hyborean Age appears to be one of those PDF books for gamers that that give them the monster ‘stats’, but which are also rather useful for the reference shelves of writers.

Not sure about the cover, though. I recently re-read the Howard Conan stories in audiobook and I don’t quite remember Wonder Woman fighting a T. Rex, as per this book’s cover. Nor the distinctly LOTR orc who flanks Conan.

As a gamebook it needs to be interflipped with the Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed core rule-book. There appear to be other catalogue-like guide books to Conan’s world in the same series, one on Ancient Ruins & Cursed Cities and a guide to Nameless Cults, Cosmology and Gods. Apparently they all have inspiring art inside, and I’d guess also some maps.

New book – The Cracks of Doom: Untold Tales in Middle-earth

31 Monday Dec 2018

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New book! The Cracks of Doom: Untold Tales in Middle-earth. This new book is available now in paper. It is a side-project from my larger scholarly Tolkien book, and should be of interest to RPG makers as well as to fan-writers of Tolkien stories set in Middle-earth.

The Cracks of Doom is a comprehensive, fully annotated and indexed list of ‘Untold Tales’ in Middle-earth, pointing out the ‘cracks’ where new fan-works or role-playing might be developed. There are 125 entries and these usually lightly suggest ideas for story development and connections that might not otherwise be considered. This book is intended as a handy and inspiring reference work for writers, game makers, role-players, performers and daydreamers. It will also be useful for scholars seeking to understand what Tolkien “left out” and why, or those interested in ‘transformative works’ and fandom.

1. Introduction: “On Untold Tales in Middle-earth”.

2. Writing guidance: “Faith, Duty and Fun: plan and style in Middle-earth fiction”.

3. The list: ‘Openings, Gaps and Cracks’. 125 entries. Note that this is only for LOTR, inc. the Appendices. It also draws on Unfinished Tales, books in the History series, and for one item I also reference the Letters. It does not, of course, delve into the vast amount of material in The Silmarillion.

Sample:

PDF sample with the Index. The full book has 64 pages, about 22,000-words, with place and character Index. The book is wholly unofficial, and very respectful of Tolkien’s vision.

Vastarien

27 Thursday Dec 2018

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S. T. Joshi has a new blog post. He notes a new and apparently high-quality literary journal on the macabre, which includes essays…

Vastarien, containing my essay “Richard Gavin: The Nature of Horror” (a chapter of 21st-Century Horror). This superbly produced journal, edited by Jon Padgett and published by Grimscribe Press, is a wonder to behold.

The content-lists make it rather difficult to tell what’s an essay and what’s not. For instance, is Christopher Mountenay’s “Bequeathing the World to Insects” an essay on this post-human notion in imaginative literature (the far-future ‘mighty beetle civilisation’ of Lovecraft, etc), or a story?

The Kindle ebook issues can also be had on Amazon at £3.50 (about $5) each, and there are 10% free samples.

Giuseppe Lippi

27 Thursday Dec 2018

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Newly published online, “An interview with Giuseppe Lippi”, one of the leading Italian Lovecraftians, who passed away before Christmas after a short illness. Lippi was a prolific translator and editor and, according to his Italian Wikipedia page, his edited volumes include the 1993 Italian edition of Lovecraft’s letters from 1915-1937, and the definitive edition of Lovecraft’s entire fiction in Italian in four volumes.

Following the recent departure of Giuseppe Lippi, who passed away on Saturday 15th December, we would like to share this interview with Andrea Scarabelli. The interview was done for the magazine Antares, a special issue which focused on the work of H.P. Lovecraft and the role and importance of the fantastic imaginary for today’s world. Our most heartfelt thanks go to Lippi for all he has done.

The interview is a re-publication from Antares No. 8, 2014.

Other immediate short news and tributes are: Giuseppe Lippi: addio al curatore di Urania e traduttore di Lovecraft; Addio a Giuseppe Lippi, esperto di narrativa fantastica e curatore di “Urania”; and Remembering Giuseppe Lippi (English). Doubtless there will be more considered obituaries in the New Year.

Perhaps an English Wikipedia page would also be a fine tribute, if someone can get past the Wikipolice re: the strictures on starting a new page these days. If someone cares to jump that hurdle, please post the link here and then I’ll bulk up the page.

Apparently he also edited Clark Ashton Smith, and had a hand in the late 1970s and early 80s Warren magazine reprints in Italy (the comics from Creepy, Eerie, and their science-fiction title 1984 went far and wide in Europe, translated and often with new masthead titles). Lippi is also said to have been the editor of the first Italian magazine dedicated to that nation’s rich seam of horror and macabre cinema.

Masterplots in PDF on Archive.org

23 Sunday Dec 2018

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Frank N. Magill’s 1964 15-volume Masterplots is now partially at Archive.org, in open public PDF download. It offers short and precise point-by-point plot summaries of great works, for use by writers needing ideas, for scholars needing a reliable recap, and for the general reader in search of worthy reading.

The series seems likely to be of interest to writers who read my blog, especially as many of the works summarised are now in the public domain. Their plots are thus available to be directly re-worked in new genre-shifted forms and formats. The summaries are far superior to those to be found on the likes of Wikipedia, which often have strong political biases and omissions or are simply inadequate.

15 volume Masterplots:

Masterplots Vol. 5 — Essa-Grea.

Masterplots Vol. 7 — Huon-Last.

Masterplots Vol. 13 — Scho-Sunk.

Masterplots Vol. 14 — Supp-Unfo.

Masterplots Vol. 15 — U.S.A.-Zule.

Archive.org also appears to have the missing volumes available for Archive.org members to ‘digitally borrow’. Although the books usually have poor metadata, often extending even to the titles, which can make it difficult to work out which volumes they are without actually going through and laboriously borrowing each one.

Digest edition (?):

* Masterpieces Of World Literature In Digest Form. This appears to be a one-volume A-Z digest of Masterplots?

Series Two:

Added 500 more plots, of works which had been “crowded off” the original list of 1,000 or so, with older and antique works being here much more noticeable…

* Masterpieces Of World Literature In Digest Form: Second Series — A-Lay. (This is also at Hathi in public flipbook form and Hathi also has the second ‘Laz-Z’ volume in the same format).

Series Three:

Added an additional wealth of world literature including notable essays, biography and autobiography, some poetry, and key works of Chinese and Japanese literature. Here the format necessarily often becomes the concise essay-review…

* Masterpieces Of World Literature In Digest Form, Third Series.