In Strasbourg, the exhibition “Phantasmagoria, the Fantasy World of the Magic Lantern”. A “Phantasmagoria” was a ghoulish sub-genre of the magic-lantern show and thus a likely progenitor of spiritualist fakery. Closing on 8th February 2021, though, if it’s even open in the lockdowns. But some may wish to enquire if there’s a catalogue or the possibility of bringing it to their city as a touring show.

See also the new book, Grand Illusion: Phantasmagoria in Nineteenth-Century Opera.

The snow has melted and here in the English Midlands one can just about feel the springtime around the corner. Or one could if one was allowed out-of-doors, as the UK’s futile lockdown drags ever onward. It’s been a while since a monthly summary was posted here, as I took a long Christmas/New Year break from posting. This summary thus covers December and January at Tentaclii.

In useful research tools, I spotted a complete run on Editor & Publisher (1901-2015) arriving on Archive.org, and also Publishers Weekly (1872-2016). Both runs should be useful for those researching publications related to Lovecraft and his circle, and both have microfilmed photos.

In my weekly “Picture Postals” posts I found a fine modernist-gothic view of what had been H.P. Lovecraft’s home at 66 College Street; I cruised past the exterior of the Strand cinema, Providence and researched what might have been showing there during the week Lovecraft returned from New York City; I briefly visited the Art dept. of the Providence Public Library in 1906; and the Brooklyn dockside in 1925 to get a good look at a tramp steamer of the sort found in “Red Hook” the same year. More recently I found a Providence-at-night card series (more next week); and I hovered the magnifying glass over a new up-for-auction postcard from Lovecraft, sent 17th November 1931. I also noted that Lovecraft’s copy of Virgil is apparently up for auction. I delved more deeply into Lovecraft’s life and times with the long post “On Lovecraft and Prohibition”.

In discoveries I spotted that a 1964 article titled “The Other Lovecraft”, by science-fiction author James Blish, is seemingly still unpublished. I also caught a scan of a rare Cthulhu still from The Cry of Cthulhu movie, as it zipped through eBay. On Lovecraft’s copyrights, it appears that “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” by C. M. Eddy, Jr. and Lovecraft has now entered the public domain in the USA.

In scholarly works, I learned that the recent Ideology and Scientific Thought book on Lovecraft is in English and not Spanish. Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard is now officially out, from the University of Texas Press. S.T. Joshi noted the passing of the early French Lovecraft scholar and publisher Joseph Altairac (1957-2020). More cheerfully, Joshi announced on his blog that the editions of Lovecraft letters could be complete relatively soon. I’m please to say that I’ve acquired more of these and that your Patreon patronage has enabled me to bag two chunky new books of the Lovecraft letters, the newly expanded Galpin letters and the Nils Frome et al letters. £24 got me both inc. free shipping to an Amazon locker, meaning I’ll have them half-price. They should arrive in a few days. I’ve also made a few random dips into the as-yet-unread Letters to Family volumes.

Also from Joshi, news of his forthcoming The Progression of the Weird Tale collection of essays and memoirs — with sections on Lovecraft and Barlow, and critiques of two novels by Frank Belknap Long. The Italian Lovecraftians have also shipped the translation of his I Am Providence, the second volume of three.

In the arts the masterful comics artist Richard Corben passed away, and I wrote a short survey of his career and pointed to the relatively recent Lovecraft books. The major Lovecraftian videogame Call of the Sea was successfully launched, and seemingly with only one negative anti-fan review rather than the usual howling mob; Richard Stanley’s movie of “The Dunwich Horror” is now ‘greenlit’ and set for 2021 production; in comics I found the fine cover of the Italian book I gatti di Ulthar e altri racconti da H.P. Lovecraft, which bodes well for an eventual English translation. Also in comics, I had a new post “More on Horacio Lalia” in which I found he has three more books of Lovecraft material ripe for translation. The interactive comics titled iLovecraft were noted.

In fiction from Lovecraft’s circle, Donald Wandrei’s The Complete Ivy Frost finally shipped in hardcover. I looked at exactly what F.B. Long’s John Carstairs, Curator of the Interplanetary Botanical Gardens series of stories was, and where it might now be found at an affordable price. This inadvertently led me to Richard A. Lupoff’s Marblehead novel, and thus to test a curious and somewhat oblique claim made for it in Lupoff’s Introduction to the budget-priced John Carstairs ebook. I also got around to listening to the audiobook of Clark Ashton Smith’s “The City of the Singing Flame”, and this spurred me to work out what its kin were. Of which, Smith’s Captain Volmar tales are not in audio, but the Venusian “The Immeasurable Horror” is and it sounds promising. Henry Kuttner was evidently producing similar pulp during the war and his “Crypt-city of the Deathless One” also sounds like a similarly fun trek through the “hell-forests” — in this case on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Both are now in free audio and they could be a double-bill for me, at some point. Evidently there was an ‘alien plants’ theme going on during the war, with Belknap Long, Kuttner and Smith, and it might offer someone an entertaining topic for a survey article. “Triffids Have Roots” might be one title. Possibly these writers were in part also responding to the few earlier ‘plant tales’ (Wells and others) that can be gleaned from the Edwardian period of proto sci-fi. There is an academic book on the topic forthcoming, but it barely scratches the surface of the history (e.g. “Belknap” does not occur anywhere in the text) and is more concerned with the contemporary political angles.

A new issue of the free Digital Art Live magazine was also produced as Editor, and can be perused for free at Issuu as a flipbook.

If you can help me with a few dollars via Patreon or a Paypal donation, it would be very welcome, thanks. That’s it, more next month.