Call: Critical Approaches to Horror in Doctor Who

27 Thursday Aug 2020

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Robert F. Kilker at Kutztown University has a call-for-papers out for “Critical Approaches to Horror in Doctor Who“, to form a book-length collection. The book will aim to be…

“a thoughtful examination of the ways Doctor Who operates in the horror genre, in its complication of generic definitions, its ideological work, and its relation to fandom.”

Studies of particularly famous ‘horror’ episodes seem to be especially welcome. There should be obvious scope for a discussion of Lovecraftian influences, present as late as “Heaven Sent” (Nov 2015) which drew heavily on both recently-discovered and published plot ideas from Lovecraft. Deadline for abstracts: 4th January 2021. There’s no mention of if the book will be Open Access or not, so I assume it’ll be a commercial academic book.

Call: Proliferations of Lovecraft: An Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference

26 Wednesday Aug 2020

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Proliferations of Lovecraft: An Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference. 18th to 19th April 2021, Vienna, Austria.

“The organising committee welcomes proposals on any subject linked to Lovecraft’s thinking and writing.”

Although note that the conference is being run by an outfit called “Progressive Connexions” who have it pegged under their “Evil” category. So something tells me that “Inclusive” here doesn’t mean that Robert M. Price is going to be a keynote speaker, in the cause of promoting intellectual inclusivity. Still, it’s an interesting topic and well stated, and at least it’s set to happen. Deadline for abstracts: 2nd October 2020.

Poe’s hoaxes

26 Wednesday Aug 2020

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“The Six Hoaxes of Edgar Allan Poe”. The final “Gold Rush” one was perhaps the most interesting, and then only for the motive…

My sincere opinion is that nine persons out of ten (even among the best informed) will believe the [hoax newspaper interview, a new way to cheaply ‘make’ gold] thus, acting as a sudden, although of course a very temporary, check to the gold fever, it will create a stir to some purpose.

So he may actually have changed history there, very subtly. By ensuring that slightly less young men carrying ‘the gullibility gene’ were headed west from Boston, during those vital few weeks of spring 1849. The paper, The Flag of Our Union, was a popular cheap Saturday ‘family miscellany’ newspaper, then two years’ strong.

“he projects his own mind through space…”

25 Tuesday Aug 2020

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S. T. Joshi’s revivified blog has a new post. Among other things, he reveals that he appeared by video feed at one of the recent big Mexican events for Lovecraft’s 130th birthday. I blogged about these some days ago now, re: my first round up of the Birthday doings. Joshi also notes the Russian Darker magazine has new translations of Lovecraft’s “Vermont – a first impression” and of Joshi’s own “Autobiography in Lovecraft”.

A few more facts on Arthur Leeds

25 Tuesday Aug 2020

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After I had found new details of Arthur Leeds and the Canadian Army in the Bloch letters, another new biographical item has been found in the volume of Moe letters. In September 1930 Lovecraft remarked…

I’d like to see the old boy [Leeds] myself, & certainly hope he’ll look me up if his itinerant outfit traverses this part of the world. Hope his prosperity is permanent — he deserves some peace and freedom from anxiety after the long gruelling years of the past [post-war poverty in New York City]. But what a beastly shame his Old Cap Colliers were not waiting for him. (Letters to Maurice W. Moe, page 515)

From this it appears that Leeds likely departed New York City soon after the Great Depression hit, and went home to Canada. There he found that his precious childhood things had either been thrown out or given away. “Old Cap Colliers” indicates that Leeds had once collected this 1880s-90s dime novel series (a series, incidentally, whose plots and situations were later extensively mined to fuel the 1930s pulp character Nick Carter, Detective).

After that Leeds had evidently once again ‘run away with the circus’ in the form of setting off with some travelling theatre, but this time at a better salary and perhaps as the manager. That’s how I read Lovecraft’s comments, and the new data is bolstered by Lovecraft’s 1931 comment that… “Leeds has come on slightly better times, through his side-line of the drama”. It seems likely this travelling theatre working the eastern Canada / Chicago area, perhaps travelling alongside and shadowing a large circus and thus quite lucrative. That Lovecraft thinks of it as a “side-line” may indicate it was seasonal work.

But the Great Depression deepened and the job probably didn’t last more than a couple of seasons. S.T. Joshi notes that Leeds was back in Brooklyn, New York City, in June 1932. There he appears to have turned to dealing in used correspondence courses. At some point he began to live on the fringes of Coney Island, as I’ve detailed in another recent post. It would be logical to assume that he was able to pick up seasonal work at the famous Coney Island attractions, while having time to write in the winter.

All this augments my Leeds biography and photo, which is to be found in my book Lovecraft in Historical Context #4.

More 130th Birthday items

25 Tuesday Aug 2020

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Spanish, Italian and other languages are now starting to appear in the search-engine indexes covering the last five days. Here’s what I’ve picked up by search so far, to add to my previous coverage of Lovecraft’s 130th Birthday…

* New in Italian, and published on Lovecraft’s birthday, the book Chi ha paura di H.P. Lovecraft (Who’s Afraid of Lovecraft?, Oakmond, 290 pages)…

An articulate monograph full of ideas, De Sio’s work is framed by two experts in this area — Gianfranco de Turris and Sebastiano Fusco — who, in the extensive preface masterfully meld all the points covered by the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Oakmond Publishing have a page for the book and it’s shipping now.

* Pietro Sabatelli usefully rounds up about 20+ Italian blog links offering posts for Lovecraft’s 130th Birthday. Scroll down to the foot of his post, and look under this banner…

* The day was chosen to launch the ‘Biblioteca Lovecraftiana Fundamental’ the term being used for a new door-stopper book. Contos Reunidos do Mestre do Horror Cósmico (Tales Gathered, by the Master of Cosmic Horror, Ex Machina, 540 pages). The publisher is in Brazil, so I assume Portuguese for this weighty…

anthology containing all 61 short stories written by Lovecraft and published in various magazines between 1917 and 1935.

Photo of the Twin Islands

24 Monday Aug 2020

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Back in May 2019 I posted here on the Twin Islands. They don’t appear on all maps, but they are on this one of Providence…

At that time I was unable to find an actual photo of them. The photo is now found, and it also looks like it has a date that more or less fits…

The cameraman was up on Fort Hill and the picture looks up the Seekonk which then curves around to the left and goes out of sight. As a strong lad Lovecraft was a keen rower in a boat on the Seekonk, and he went down past the bridge and landed on these islands…

I used to row considerably on the Seekonk … Often I would land on one or both of the Twin Islands — for islands (associated with remote secrets, pirate treasure, and all that) always fascinated me.” — Lovecraft letter to Rimel, April 1934.

Being rather tidal, presumably they had a quite Dagon-ish texture underfoot…

When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away. — “Dagon

Lovecraft Annual 2020

23 Sunday Aug 2020

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Now listed on Hippocampus as shipping, the scholarly journal Lovecraft Annual No. 14, 2020.

Looking down the contents list, the follow items especially appeal…

* Steven J. Mariconda’s “Atmosphere and the Qualitative Analysis of ‘The Colour out of Space'”, which must be the major essay which was known about but which did not appear in his recent book collection.

* Dylan Henderson’s “Missing the Punchline: The Subversive Nature of H. P. Lovecraft’s Occult Detective”, which must be on Malone in “Red Hook”.

* Ken Faig, Jr.’s “John Osborne Austin’s Seven Club Tales: Did They Inspire Lovecraft?”.

* Andrew Gipe-Lazarou’s “The ‘Extreme Fantasy’ of Delirious New York” sounds interesting, presumably a survey of Lovecraft’s responses to ‘faery’ New York before it curdled into being his ‘feary’ New York.

I see that Lovecraft Annual No. 13, 2019, can also be had at a discount.

News from Association Miskatonic

23 Sunday Aug 2020

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France’s Association Miskatonic writes…

Hi! Since we had to cancel our 2020 [Lovecraft] convention due to the pandemic, we’ll be hosting online lectures this Autumn/Fall, in the last week of October. These will include…

* When Japan meets HPL.
* Junji Ito and HPL.
* How did the Call of Cthulhu RPG arrive in France, and what impact did it have?

Next year, hopefully in October 2021, we should be able to organise a ‘physical’ event here in Verdun, France, with lectures by Lovecraft scholars, screenings and exhibits.

H.P. Lovecraft’s 130th Birthday: the round-up

21 Friday Aug 2020

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There will probably be more to come, but this is my round-up so far for 2020:

* The key website hplovecraft.com has… “completely overhauled and re-organized the “Lovecraft’s Letters” page” as a 130th birthday present. This being the page for the Lovecraft letters as published in book form.

* Portland’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival is celebrating Lovecraft’s 130th Birthday on the nearest weekend, via a “streaming event available to stream from anywhere in the U.S.”, and featuring “short films both new and classic from the festival’s 25 year history” and billed as “HPLFF Presents 130 Years of H.P. Lovecraft”. There is also a t-shirt for the event and the Festival’s co-director and “fellow Portland horror writers” ran an online Lovecraftian horror panel.

* The ‘Segundo Festival Literario H.P. Lovecraft’, aka ‘Literario 2do Festival H.P. Lovecraft’, appears to be taking place in Mexico from 20th-22nd August 2020, bringing together Lovecraftian artists, writers and film-makers in Mexico. Last year it was a physical event with stalls, talks and screenings at La Moderna. But this year it was perhaps only virtual. Online already is “Remanentes del pesimismo Schopenhaueriano en al obra de H.P. Lovecraft”, a 45 minute video lecture in Spanish on Schopenhauerian pessimism in Lovecraft. Doubtless more videos from the event will appear online soon.

* Elsewhere in Mexico there was a university event to launch the fourth edition of the La ciudad de las montañas de la locura (At The Mountains of Madness) and the blurb had it that… “there will be talks, short film screenings and will talk about art, science and cinema, all related to the writer.” The Casa Universitaria del Libro de la UANL also has livecasts via Facebook from August 17th to 22nd. “Among the themes will be addressed the relationship between Lovecraft and the First World War, his vision as a popularizer of science, the relationship between cinema and literature, and his poetry.”

* Also in Mexico, the 19th Macabre Film Festival at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico runs… “from August 25th to 30th, and will commemorate a hundred years of German Expressionism, and 130 years since the birth of H.P. Lovecraft”. The PDF Programme.

* Nothing from the Italian or other European Lovecraftians, that I can see. But possibly the search-engines have not yet got around to indexing the latest from across Europe. I get that impression from searches.

* I released my Annotated “Hypnos” at Tentaclii. This is the first substantial annotated edition, as Klinger omitted it from his two volumes, and the notes to be found from S.T. Joshi are fairly short.

* The latest Sept/Oct Halloween issue of Digital Production magazine, the substantial German trade magazine for high-end movie and TV digital FX and similar, was released on Lovecraft’s birthday with a ‘Cthulhu creation’ feature (article not yet online).

* There’s a “Cthulhu Mythos Sale” over on DriveThuRPG, which appears to be one of the largest of the RGP book sites. Tenkar’s Tavern has waded in and selected five of the best, and promises more picks soon.

* RPG gamers also chose the day to unleash Apocthulhu… “successfully launched the PDF edition of the APOCTHULHU Core Rulebook. It’s a 330 page behemoth packed with rules, world building resources, pre-defined settings…”.

* Comics artist Frank Brunner & Friends posted a nice arty ‘birthday-card’ on Facebook…

* A slightly less impressive Cthulhu Minecraft Skin was released. But fun, if you need a Cthulhu in there.

* Makowh released his full reading of “The Rats in the Walls”, accompanied by his own artwork which can be seen in crisper form at ArtStation.

* Harry Piper put together special 130th Birthday musings on “The Cosmic Pessimism of H.P. Lovecraft”.

* And lastly and rather more cheerily, the Journal of Geek Studies chose the day to celebrate Pokécrustacea: the crustacean-inspired Pokémon.