I’m pleased to see there was a good encyclopaedia for Dune, back in the 1980s, Dune Encyclopedia. It was written as if ‘in-world’, and as such felt free to elaborate new ideas on the background and character back-stories. Today it can be understood as a possibly-correct history, with errors and misunderstandings made by some of the ‘historians’ involved. This is because Herbert himself later contradicted some of the elements in the Dune Encyclopedia, with his later Dune books.

Note that the new Dune Companion book from McFarland is apparently a stinker, and is to be avoided.

After a little digging and testing I find that the reading order for unabridged audiobook readers is:—

1. Book 1: Dune. The unabridged audiobook reading by George Guidall is the best one to listen to. Also, note that the Scott Brick audiobook version is apparently abridged for some reason.

2. Interlude: “The Road to Dune”. A quite short work by Herbert that sits between the first two novels, to be found in his short-story collection Eye. There appears to be no audiobook of this, so it would need to be read in ebook form. Said to take the form of “a guidebook for pilgrims to the planet Arrakis”. (Update: A Scott Brick / Audio Renaissance audiobook titled “The Road to Dune” was released in 2012 – some say 2005 – but apparently it does not actually contain “The Road to Dune”!).

3. Book 2. Dune Messiah. The unabridged audiobook reading by Scott Brick et al.

4. Book 3. Children of Dune. The unabridged audiobook reading by Scott Brick et al. is the most listen-able.

There is also a Book 4, God Emperor of Dune. It’s by Frank Herbert, rather than some later cash-in writer. But it is widely said to be a rather depressing and dour coda to the original trilogy. It also departs heavily from the style of the core trilogy. As such, you may well be happy with just the original trilogy.

Note that each of the three core books appears to have “Deleted Scenes & Chapters from…” fannish ebook floating around the Internet, which might be looked at after each novel. Some of these are in audio as part of “The Road to Dune” audiobook mentioned above.

A new 2018 issue of the open access journal Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural is a “Fearful Sounds” special issue on supernatural sonics.

Looking back over the contents of their two earlier issues, I see that the essay “‘Stop All The Clocks’: Elegy and Uncanny Technology” also fits with the same theme, albeit with reference to establishment authors rather than to weird writers.

They have a page offering Guest Editing Opportunities for complete themed issues.

Newly listed on Amazon, Letters to Maurice W. Moe and Others. It weighs in at 630 pages, and is pre-ordering now for shipping “30th September 2018” in paperback. It’s rather costly on Amazon UK at £30 (nearly $40 + shipping). No price listed at Amazon USA, but it’s likely to be slightly cheaper for USA buyers direct from Hippocampus, which currently has the book at an introductory $25 plus shipping. It may even be cheaper for UK buyers to get it via Hippocampus, despite the shipping cost.

The book has the usual annotations from Joshi and Schultz, and in addition to the Moe letters…

“The volume also contains Lovecraft’s extensive correspondence with Bernard Austin Dwyer, a weird fiction fan who engaged in wide-ranging discussions with Lovecraft on such subjects as cosmicism, Lovecraft’s upbringing, and political developments in the 1920s and 1930s. [And includes] a rare weird tale by Dwyer.”

I have a biographical chapter on Dwyer in my latest Lovecraft in Historical Context (#5) book, “”A mighty woodcutter”: on the trail of Bernard Austin Dwyer”. It has lots of new discoveries. Lovecraft corresponded with Dwyer from early 1927, and had with him… “a long and interesting correspondence” that lasted constantly for years. Dwyer was about the only one of the Lovecraft circle whom he felt truly shared his own cosmic outlook…

“It is not every macabre writer who feels poignantly & almost intolerably the pressure of cryptic & unbounded outer space. […] Among the individuals of my acquaintance, it is rarer than hen’s teeth. You [C. A. Smith] have it yourself to a supreme degree, & so have Wandrei & Bernard Dwyer; but I’m hanged if I can carry the list any farther.” (Selected Letters III, page 196)

Crypt of Cthulhu 111 (Michaelmas 2018) is now on pre-order.

Contents:

Disturbing and Disquieting Editorial Shards by Robert M. Price.

Sadiva’s Lover by Gary Myers.

The Many Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith by Scott Connors.

Asperger Syndrome in R. H. Barlow’s “The Summons” by Charles D. O’Connor III.

Through the Gates of the Prepositional Phrase by Donald R. Burleson.

H. P. Lovecraft and the American Stonehenge: Hokum, Pseudo-archaeology, & the Imagination by Darrell Schweitzer.

The Muddle in High Street by Timothy Burall.

Maal Dweb of Xiccarpth by Will Murray.

R’lyeh Reviews.

Mail Call of Cthulhu.

Poems by Randall D. Larson and Charles Lovecraft.