Weird Tails

22 Wednesday Sep 2021

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I stumbled on the blog of John Houlihan. He has news of several Lovecraftian items from the last year or so, such as the Mythos anthologies which (though not covered by Tentaclii) are continuing to thump down onto doormats.

Specifically Weird Tails… “Mythos fiction inspired by both H.P. Lovecraft and horror fiction’s ongoing fascination with all things feline.” And another devoted to Nyarlathotep tales, N: A Stygian Fox Anthology Concerning the Outer God Nyarlathotep. Glancing at both, I’m reminded that such anthologies could usefully offer aspiring artists / designers a chance at making a decent cover and thus add to their appeal. Or even retired artists such as the superb and still-prolific Bob May.

Weird Tails also has “LOVECRAFT AND CATS” in the TOCs, toward the end, which I’m guessing may perhaps be an essay rather than a story?

Houlihan appears to be involved with the new Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 RPG, which he discusses at length in a recent Innsmouth Book Club podcast…

a chat which encompasses books, Achtung! Cthulhu, computer games, the revenge of the nerds and the inexorable rise of interest in HPL and the Mythos.

Elsewhere, news of Chroniques Oubliees: Cthulhu, a French Lovecraftian 1920s tabletop RPG of 2018—. Seemingly not a translation of an English RPG. It had super-slick character art by Aurore Folny, some of which is now newly online at ArtStation.

New graphic-novel of Dream-Quest

21 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts, New books

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A new Lovecraft graphic novel of Dream-Quest, albeit currently only in Spanish. H.P. Lovecraft: Kadath is by screenwriter Florentino Florez, with Guillermo Sanna and Jacques Salomon. It’s been available for a couple of months now and several Amazon reviewers seem pleased with the large BD sized hardback, but neither Amazon or the publisher gives the page count. A little digging puts it at 210 pages.

Looks good, and good enough to get a paid-for English translation.

New on DeviantArt

20 Monday Sep 2021

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Another quick survey of some new artwork on DeviantArt:

“Untitled” by jpgman (“The Whisperer in Darkness”).

“Plateau of Leng” by Joxonart.

“The Dunwich Horror” by Sweenoy.

“Newburyport Historical Society Process” by DaleMartinArt.

“Innsmouth Bus” by DaleMartinArt.

“Sound From The Deep” by Silviapalmeroni (“Erich Zann”).

“The Ruins” by bestiaexmachina (a modern take on “The Nameless City”).

“H.P. Lovecraft” by Pilvilinnassa. (Definitely tapping into the incipient pop-art revival)

“The Old One” by SaReeNaShiNNoK (visiting Prospect Terrace, Providence?)

Also three new “Great Old Ones” pictures by Pascal Blanche, over on ArtStation.

And finally, “Set phasers to fun!” It’s Star Trek vs. Cthulhu.

New book: Io Sono Providence, vol. 3

19 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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Io Sono Providence: la biografia di H.P. Lovecraft. The third and final volume of the translation of Joshi’s I Am Providence biography into Italian. Congratulations to all concerned.

I see the same publisher has a new edition of the Italian journal Providence Tales No. 8, containing two translations of and an article on Mearle Prout. So far as I’m aware he’s still unidentified with certainty. One wonders if the Italian Lovecraftians have had any success with getting more biographical details? So far as the open Web is concerned the best that can be said is that in 1937 he wrote to Weird Tales from Oklahoma, and that in 2015 I identified a Texan of the right name and age who was living in Oklahoma at the 1940 census.

Picture Postals: “On Cykranosh”

17 Friday Sep 2021

Posted by in New discoveries, Picture postals

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“On Cykranosh” (July 1934). Not actually a postcard from Lovecraft this week, but rather an example of the sort of sci-fi postcard-print that Robert Barlow might have sent to his friend in the mid 1930s.

Barlow built this up over a real-world ’empty’ photo (possibly of Florida tree-tops, presumably by Barlow). In the Mythos ‘Cykranosh’ = the planet Saturn, which Mythos encyclopedias inform is the home-planet origin of Smith’s Tsathoggua. Encyclopedia items for “Cykranosh” have failed to also notice Lovecraft’s space-leaping Cats of Saturn, but it must also be their home. In Dream-Quest these alien cats are deemed “large and peculiar”, and have an affinity with the cosmic darkness on the Dark Side of the Moon. But the creature here is more of eel-like, a flying alien ‘eel-gannet’, and thus probably not meant to be one of the Cats of Saturn.

The scan of the card is from the small Barlow collection at Brown University. Looking through this again I find an update to my recent ravine post. Lovecraft’s own sketch map of Providence confirms my research. Two paths around the edges of York Pond, to a narrow ravine then running far back from the shoreline, and into a long oval which appears to indicate a narrow flooded area that was likely the “frog-haunted ponds” he later recalled. My feeling is the arrow may be, following mapping conventions, an indication of a steep incline. Rather than the western starting point of the ravine as he knew it. Note the importance he assigns to it here.

Timeline of Botanical Fictions

16 Thursday Sep 2021

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New to me, and perhaps to you. Timothy S. Miller’s fine and comprehensive “Timeline of Botanical Fictions”. Also covers fungal spores. Does not stray into modern high fantasy (e.g. Tolkien’s Ents) or flower-fairies and suchlike.

What we need now is a best-of-the-best collection, I’d suggest, which weeds out all the so-so jungle tales of giant fly-traps and poison pods, and the creakier pulp greenhouses-of-horror.

Bilal’s Le Bol Maudit

15 Wednesday Sep 2021

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Deep Cuts takes a look at Enki Bilal’s first collection of mostly Lovecraft-inspired short comic strip stories, published in the magazine Pilote between 1971 and 1974.

Below I take an additional look at the various covers. First published as one volume in French as a five-story BD by Minoustchine in 1975…

Deep Cuts unearths a partial 1982 English U.S. translation by Flying Buffalo, publisher of the early RPG gaming magazine Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Not a great translation, it seems, and they were likely working from the 1975 Minoustchine edition as they have the same five stories and the same cover but with English lettering.

Then the volume appeared in a popular 1982 French BD by Futuropolis as Le Bol Maudit (“The Cursed Bowl”), with eight stories.

There was also a later reprint of the latter in 1987, with a garishly jazzed-up colour cover.

Gou Tanabe’s “The Dunwich Horror”

14 Tuesday Sep 2021

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Manga master Gou Tanabe has revealed his next adaptation of Lovecraft into graphic novel form. The first episode of his “The Dunwich Horror” adaptation will run in Japanese in Kadokawa’s Monthly Comic Beam on 12th October 2021. This new Lovecraft adaptation, one of a growing number by Tanabe, will eventually enjoy an English translation in single-volume graphic novel form. It usually takes him about nine months to produce such a serial, so we might expect the English translation by Halloween 2022 at best. Or 2023 if there are publisher delays. Although these days there are Manga Translators for your browser, which work on automatic.

Lovecraft’s tale, which has a fairly good claim to be the most famous horror tale of the 20th century, needs no introduction here. “Cthulhu” has more name-recognition today, true. But only because the monster-name is in the title, and thus the clueless will nod when it’s mentioned, rather than because it’s widely read and enjoyed by many.