New book: The Recognition of H.P. Lovecraft

30 Thursday Sep 2021

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S.T. Joshi’s blog has updated. The main good news is his new history book which surveys Lovecraft’s 1938-1988 period…

The Recognition of H.P. Lovecraft should appear within a few weeks, enhanced by a fine cover design by Jason Van Hollander.

Google Books suggest the full title is to be The Recognition of H. P. Lovecraft: His Rise from Obscurity to World Renown, but can as yet provide no table-of-contents or cover.

Among other items Joshi notes is the arrival of the new expanded Samuel Loveman collection Out of the Immortal Night (original book was 2004), and the slight delaying of the expected premiere of the new Lovecraft documentary. It has originally been mooted for the Lovecraft Film Festival, but is now to be shown via streaming only and “occurring a week after” the Festival.

Deep-sea biology in the time of Lovecraft

29 Wednesday Sep 2021

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The History of Oceanography blog has a new article, “The Abyss: Resurrecting Deep-Sea Biology in the Mid Twentieth Century”. This adds some interesting historical context to Lovecraft’s ‘turn to deeps’ in his fiction…

“After the publication of the last Challenger Report in 1895, deep-sea biology fell out of favor with marine biologists. [… then] after 1900 deep-sea biology disappeared from the scientific stage and the lights dimmed on biological work in deep water for close to half a century […] Biology — [then in the process of] professionalizing in universities and in government — moved on the one hand toward [lab-work investigating marine] cellular structure and mechanism, and on another hand toward solving [the] practical problems of fisheries. Deep-sea biology became a side-issue, pursued by very few. […] Only after World War Two did deep-sea biology come back into favor.”

Morgoth’s Review on “Nyarlathotep”

29 Wednesday Sep 2021

Posted by in Censorship, Podcasts etc., Scholarly works

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New on Archive.org today, a Morgoth’s Review podcast lecture on “Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep And Our Changing World”. This turns out to be a YouTube podcaster with a slightly-difficult accent and obvious high intelligence, who has discovered Lovecraft’s fiction via the Warhammer game of all things. Here he’s bowled over by Lovecraft’s prose-poem “Nyarlathotep”, and points out the congruence of the short tale with our current times, and many pithy points are made. An entertaining and illuminating view from a Lovecraft newcomer.

But worthy of automatic censorship? He does seem to be from that wing of the Christian-Right which believes in the existence of evil-as-an-active-force (but presumably doesn’t frown on the likes of Warhammer as an abode-of-demons?). But there’s nothing objectionable in his lecture and partial reading that I can hear. Nevertheless spotting it popping up on Archive.org made me aware of the existence of the curious ‘Deemphasized Collections at Internet Archive’ category, to which the lecture has presumably been auto-added by bots rather than the uploader. The category includes “Adult and Mature Comics” and “Vintage Men’s Magazines”, and in general is an amazing collection of weirdness and smut. All of which is presumably suppressed in searches. But which Archive.org then allows you to search all in one go, very conveniently for some.

Here ‘lovecraft’ means something very different, though a search for his name does sometimes give a few results in contexts other than a tawdry scan of a 1970s Busty British Bar-maids Vol. 1 and suchlike. For instance I see that Thomas Ligotti’s acclaimed The Conspiracy Against The Human Race and even Lovecraft’s Collected Works languishes in this suppressed category, nestling against the ‘Ancient Aliens’ Collection and other such high weirdness. Possibly the crap front-cover and the word “Conspiracy” in the title were enough to damn a great writer, but who can fathom the unexplained caprices of censorship these days? A lone copy of a 1920s Weird Tales is even consigned to the category, once deemed suitable fare for juvenile readers and distributed to every city news-stand in America.

Two major Odilon Redon shows

28 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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“Collecting Dreams: Odilon Redon” runs from 19th September 2021, through 23rd January 2022, at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Includes a newly acquired…

“group of drawings that Redon termed ‘noirs’ for their use of black materials, such as charcoal, and their foreboding mood”

Meanwhile, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, “Bonger and Redon, Friendship and Collecting” from 29th October 2021 up and until 30th January 2022…

“The finest works by Redon will be presented at the museum from the end of October: dark charcoal drawings, but also colourful pastels, paintings and wall decorations, illuminating the special interplay between the artist and collector.”

“Hideous Larvae” (1896)

Penumbra No. 2

28 Tuesday Sep 2021

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Now listed at Hippocampus, Penumbra No. 2 (2021) is the second issue of S.T. Joshi’s new journal. The non-fiction includes…

* Guy de Maupassant: Women, Madness, and the Horla.

* A Matter of Belief: Further Thoughts on Lord Dunsany and Religion.

* [Lovecraft’s 1921] “The Quest of Iranon” and [Dunsany’s 1922] Don Rodriguez: Two Exercises in the Picaresque.

* Icy Portents of Doom: Clark Ashton Smith’s Hyperborean Cycle and the Polar Myth.

* Hodgson, The Night Land, and William Morris.

PulpFest 2021 recordings / Campus Miskatonic 2021

28 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings

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PulpFest 2021 now has a new PulpFest 2021: Reviews and Recordings page, linking up the various items. Also a sidebar note that in 2022…

PulpFest Returns to Pittsburgh! PulpFest 50 will begin Thursday, Aug. 4, and run through Sunday, Aug. 7. It will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry. Please join us for “Action for a Dime!

On reading down the recordings/reviews page one finds the twin themes are announced for 2022…

* the centennial of Fiction House, the pulp magazine and comic-book publisher.

* the ninetieth anniversary of Popular Publications’ ‘Dime’ magazines.

Meanwhile, over in France… this year’s French Lovecraft ‘Campus Miskatonic’ event returns for a second year. It will take place in-person in Verdun (about 100 miles east of Paris) shortly before Halloween 2021. The programme includes…

* Lovecraft’s influence on 20th century comic-books and later pulps. Presumably with reference to French BDs and comics-magazines, as well as to American and British comics.

* Lovecraft’s philosophical and political discussions, and their relevance today.

* What appears(?) to be a general panel discussion with noted French Lovecraftians.

* A screening of The Whisperer in Darkness (2011).

* An RPG games evening.

Lovecraft Annual 2021

28 Tuesday Sep 2021

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Lovecraft Annual 2021, now listing on Amazon UK and (for an extra £5) on eBay UK. Sadly not fitted with translucent flexi-cover with washes of faint and unplaceable iridescent colours, as I had rather whimsically expected after seeing the blank slot on the initial Hippocampus listing. More of a ‘hot curry’ colour for the cover, this year. Which I like and I guess will sit well alongside the latest book of Letters… containing as it does a curry recipe.

New book: Providence Blue

28 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by in Lovecraft as character, Lovecraftian arts, New books

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Providence Blue is a new ‘Lovecraft as character’ fantasy novel. Warning: general ‘structure-of-the-novel’ spoilers below.

In Rhode Island mysterious creatures were…

encountered by renegade preacher Roger Williams on his historical journey that ended with the founding of Providence, Rhode Island. [Later in Providence] Lovecraft is an accomplished and impish ‘Magus'”.

He investigates these historical encounters, as these seem to have foreshadowed his own monsters and to have links with a real Cthulhu cult. Even later in Providence…

An anxiety-filled former punk-rocker [Wilum Pugmire?], a drifting Athenaeum employee, and an entire cast of unique and well-developed characters find themselves thrown into a puzzling and some harrowing ride around Providence [and beyond]

Catholic World Report newspaper has an interview with the author (with some detailed spoilers, and also a horrid pop-up page-blocking overlay and nags)…

Pinault is a Professor of Religous Studies at Santa Clara University, and a native of Providence. … The author’s Catholic faith is evident throughout the story, as each character seeks redemption and an ultimate answer to the myriad sufferings of mankind.

Sounds fun but there’s no ebook or audiobook version, sadly, just a paperback. Might make for a good chunky graphic novel, by the sound of it, it you were looking for such a book to adapt.

Kaja Saudek

27 Monday Sep 2021

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A superb emulation of Moebius by Kaja Saudek for the cover of the Czechoslovakian pocket edition of “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, Stin nad Innsmouthem (1990).

According to a local site this was the nation’s first non-samizdat taste of Lovecraft after the collapse of communism…

Writings by H. P. Lovecraft appeared on the common Czechoslovak book market as early as 1990 [as a] series of several parts containing the short stories was published by Zlaty kun (the cover and title pages were illustrated by Kaja Saudek).

This comment suggested to me that there were more covers like this, yet to be found. A little digging finds that there are, and you can actually still some of buy them. Although not the Innsmouth one, for some reason. The cover of the 1991 Randolph Carter translation is also ‘very Moebius’. and there are even a couple of R.E. Howard items.

Daildeli Databaze has what appears to be the full set of covers and interior illustrations…

So far as I can tell, though he made many comics during his career, he never did a Lovecraft adaptation. He appears to have developed his own series, such as Arnal, with a faster and more Crumb-like style that could veer toward pop-art.

Bulk PDF download from Archive.org

26 Sunday Sep 2021

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How to bulk download a disparate set of PDFs from the Internet Archive? The following workflow may be useful for those downloading sets of publications.

If what you want is already in a neat and discreet ‘Collection’ then you’re in luck. There is already a Collection Downloader. Possibly there are others.

If the set is not in a Collection and you don’t want to make one, or is otherwise jumbled and problematic, this roundabout solution will work.

1. Install the Web browser add-on Copy Open Tab URLs. This can copy the URLs of all open tabs to a list with ‘one URL per line’.

2. Visit Archive.org and find all your uncollected issues of a journal or ‘zine run and its successors. Quickly right-click/open each one into a new Web browser tab. I am assuming there are perhaps 40-70 scattered issues, not hundreds or thousands. And that your PC memory and Web browser can handle that many open tabs without crashing.

3. Using your new Web browser addon ‘Copy Open Tab URLs’, instantly capture all the open tabs into a one-URL-per-line list.

4. Paste the resulting list into my URL converter .XLS spreadsheet. This takes advantage of the fixed format that Archive.org URLs and PDFs links have. For instance…

https://archive.org/ details/fluffy_kitty_tales

The PDF at this page this will almost always be…

https://archive.org/ download/fluffy_kitty_tales/fluffy_kitty_tales.pdf

As you can see in the above spreadsheet, the hidden formulas in the spreadsheet automatically fix the URLs. Copy the final ‘fixed’ list of links from the spreadsheet. Save the list to a plain .TXT file.

I could have done this with a regex, but people are more familiar with the .XLS spreadsheets in Microsoft Office.

5. Now use a simple bit of freeware that will just download a list of files. The well-established free Chrome/Firefox browser addon DownThemAll! will do the job, with a bit of initial wrangling. First set it to go directly to its Manager when opened.

Then in the Manager right-click somewhere, and “Import from file”. Select your list of PDF links.

Ok, you should be done. Start the downloads running, keep your browser open, and go off and do something else. Because it’s going to take a long time.

When finished check the list for any ‘404’ PDFs. They may be a few where the URL failed, and they will need to be manually downloaded from the page.

Ideally, the .torrent file linked in each tab would be extracted instead, loaded up to your torrent software, and then just the .PDF file in each torrent set running and nothing else. But how one would do that in a bulk/automated manner, I don’t know. And it’s possible that the cross-file slaloming of a .torrent means most of the other files also get downloaded anyway, in effect. So maybe straight .PDF links is the best way.