New from Timo Airaksinen (The Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft), a 2023 article on “The Idea of Lost Identity in Fantasy Fiction: Stevenson, Stoker, and Lovecraft”. Released June 2024, and freely available for download.

Also, if you’re interested in delving deep into Lovecraft’s apparently more-than-passing interest in the British philosopher Bishop Berkeley, I see that Timo Airaksinen edited a book on Berkeley’s Lasting Legacy: 300 Years Later (2011).

    “Another outland pilgrimage is to the Bishop Berkeley country, some four miles beyond Newport beach on the road to Middletown.” (Lovecraft, Selected Letters II)

    “the rocks and surf on which we looked down from our exalted perch — a perch which 200 years ago [1728-32] was a favourite of Dean (later Bishop) Berkeley as he composed his famous Aleiphron or, The Minute Philosopher. (Lovecraft, Selected Letters IV)

    “discussed the cosmos with Dean Berkeley’s shade [i.e. ‘ghost’]” (Lovecraft)

Berkeley believed, among other things, that “reality isn’t separate from perception” and was a deep thinker on language who was later compared to Wittgenstein. Both of which might have interested Lovecraft, as well as his long-ago presence in nearby Newport. Apparently, according the blurb for Airaksinen’s book, by the 20th century Berkeley had been forgotten for all but his early writing on reality/perception. But one wonders what Lovecraft picked up of Berkeley in his deep reading of the 18th century texts in his grandfather’s attic library, and also by reading Berkeley direct (there was also a 1929 sampler). Note also “George Berkeley and the Alchemical Tradition” which “examines the presence of alchemical tradition in Siris, the last published book of George [Bishop] Berkeley”. This is a chapter in The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Reenchantment (2007).

Alex Kasman’s MathFiction: Database of mathematical fiction. Free and online. 1,600 entries, of which over 600 are science fiction and 55 horror.

New on Archive.org, part of their large ingest of OApen’s open-access ebooks, the book Ghosts — or the (Nearly) Invisible: Spectral Phenomena in Literature and the Media. Chapters on “Ghostly Science or Scientific Ghosts: The Fourth Spatial Dimension in Children’s Literature”, and “Haunting the Wide, White Page: Ghosts in Antarctica”, among others.

Another retrospective set of thoughts on Lovecraft’s illnesses and genetic inheritance. New on The Polyphony, a ‘medical humanities’ magazine from Durham University in the UK. “Narrating Anxiety through Lovecraftian Horror”, in which… “Buke Saglam takes us through the weird and wonderful world of Lovecraft’s writings, exploring the link between his work, his anxieties, and posthumanist thinking”.

An amusing (but true) new arrival on Archive.org, Our face from fish to man (1929) from a Columbia University professor. One wonders if Lovecraft saw it, or a review of it, before writing the ending of his “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (1931).

With 119 illustrations.

Also seeming somewhat relevant to ye olde fishy-ones, news that “Pluto’s Subsurface Ocean is 8% Denser than Seawater on Earth”. Yup, “in recent years, scientists have gathered evidence suggesting Pluto likely contains an ocean of liquid water beneath the ice”, ice which provides “a blanket of protection that likely keeps the inner ocean from freezing solid.” Who knew? Not me. But it appears that the real Yuggoth has a liquid ocean habitat, of sorts.

“Whatcha thinka the NEW PLANET? HOT STUFF!!! It is probably Yuggoth.”” (Lovecraft to Morton, on the discovery of Pluto).

A new “personal call” for pointers to scholarly items relating to Lovecraft’s cinema.

The submissions (not bookings) deadline is fast approaching for The Armitage Symposium part of NecronomiCon. The deadline is 24th May 2024. The event is at the Omni hotel in Providence, 15th-18th August 2024.