26 Sunday Sep 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
Volupte : Interdisciplinary Journal Of Decadence Studies, a new open access journal. Literary decadence and its fellow swirlers in the incense-scented fin de siecle. The latest issue considers M. P. Shiel, Arthur Machen, Wilde, Baudelaire, and reviews Decadent Catholicism and the Making of Modernism among others.
25 Saturday Sep 2021
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
The Hungarian Black Aether has a series surveying international H.P. Lovecraft fan communities over in Europe.
In Hungarian, but now we have a Necronomicon incantation for summoning The Giant Mouth of Many Tongues auto-translation. There’s Google Translate of course, but in-browser the best add-on for extended Web snippets is Simple Translate 2.6.1. The Auto Translate for YouTube captions add-on is also useful at times — it forces subtitles ‘on’ and into English, but don’t expect perfection unless the source diction was very clear, the speaker had a good microphone, and was using non-technical / non-slang language. Mumbling Japanese hipsters, talking techie… not good. Though often amusing.
Not everything on the Black Aether site gets the Lovecraft tag, such as the new review of the old comics anthology Lovecraft Antologia #1.
25 Saturday Sep 2021
Posted in Odd scratchings
For sale on eBay, Frank Belknap Long’s “Throwback in Time”, aka Escape to Yesterday.
It appeared in Science-Fiction Plus, April 1953. Not Lovecraftian, and by the look of it a sugary sub-Bradbury sci-fi that was pitched to land in the springtime issue. Still, it’s interesting to compare the original and the resulting printed page.
24 Friday Sep 2021
Posted in Picture postals
This week another postcard sent to Lovecraft, rather than by him. He once had this card (or one very like it). I think it arrived from Paris and was sent by his young friend Galpin, though I could be wrong about that. Anyway he remarked, in a letter I recently read, on the very close resemblance of the painting to his elderly friend and adventure writer Everett McNeil. Then living in the slum of Hell’s Kitchen, New York City.
Though I should add that the good postcard promo-photo of the white-haired McNeil that I found (see my book on McNeil) shows no sign of the Innsmouthian nose-blobbling seen above.
Incidentally, now on Archive.org “to borrow”, two of McNeil’s best-selling boys’ adventure books. The librarians complained they were so popular with boys that (even with multiple copies) his books were almost impossible to keep on the shelves…
The Shadow of the Iroquois (1928)
The Shores of Adventure (1929)
McNeil’s later books are still hard to find in open form, due to copyright renewals by a family member… who then failed to keep the books in print. But his work should all fall out of copyright in the U.S. in 2025.
23 Thursday Sep 2021
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy. An open-access annual, now with four issues.
Speaking of philosophy, S.T. Joshi now has his Classical Papers available via through Sarnath Press. The book collects his papers on classical thought, produced during his early career.
22 Wednesday Sep 2021
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
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.
21 Tuesday Sep 2021
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts, New books
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.
20 Monday Sep 2021
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
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.
19 Sunday Sep 2021
Posted in Podcasts etc.
Voice of Arda completes an epic 12-part Tolkien and Lovecraft comparison series of short podcasts. In Italian. Hope they spotted the way that Sauron mentally sends out his Cthulhu-like ‘call’.
19 Sunday Sep 2021
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
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.
19 Sunday Sep 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
Bare.Bones #7 (Summer 2021) is now available and has a non-fiction lead article which may interest some… “The Stuart Gordon H.P. Lovecraft Adaptations” by Matthew R. Bradley.
18 Saturday Sep 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
Iris, a long-running French journal… “to promote and to disseminate research in the field of myths, images, symbols and cultural history.” Tested articles were all open access, had English abstracts, and were under Creative Commons Attribution NC.
