14 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
How to make a cute 3D-rigged Elder Thing, in the Spore Creature Creator module.
With a bit of wrangling it’s possible to get these to Collada .DAE format, and then into Maya or 3DS Max and from there to other software. Blender perhaps, if you want free software, although their 2010 Open Collada support is apparently basic and has been abandoned since circa 2012.
13 Monday Jan 2020
Posted in Historical context
The MPorcius Fiction Log takes another look at the Weird Tales Winners, the subject of his longer blog post back in 2017. Both posts being inspired by the fact that in the World Fantasy Convention 1983 Souvenir Book there was…
an article in the program [book] by SF historian Sam Moskowitz entitled “The Most Popular Stories in Weird Tales: 1924 to 1940, with Statistics and Analytical Commentary.
Moskowitz had acquired the set of tally-cards used by editor Farnsworth Wright to decide the most liked writers in Weird Tales.
Where to find this article? Sadly only the Pocket Programme and Progress Report booklets are online for the World Fantasy Convention 1983, not the book itself. But the Moskowitz article was reprinted more recently in Jim van Hise’s Sword & Fantasy No. 13 (2017), which may prove an alternative route for those who want to obtain a copy.
12 Sunday Jan 2020
Posted in New books
Christophe Thill’s Le Guide Lovecraft, listed as due in French on 20th March 2020. Thill is the lead editor of the French edition of Joshi’s I Am Providence. There was a 2018 edition of Le Guide Lovecraft in affordable paperback, so I’d imagine this might be an expanded second edition… and with a new and more pleasing cover.
12 Sunday Jan 2020
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraft as character
Snagged from the listings. This is what Driftwind would have looked like as Lovecraft opened his mail in November 1931. This particular issue had a checklist that included some of his own publications.
More covers here and a picture of the editor Walter J. Coates.
And a June 1937 Pantagraph, with a Lovecraft-tribute fan-poem on the cover. The *** .. *** is presumably meant to call attention to the implicit evocation of Lovecraft. A such it’s another item for a possible Encyclopedia of H.P. Lovecraft as a Character.
11 Saturday Jan 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Board Games UK has an in-depth and very informed review of the new board-game Cthulhu: Death May Die. Even if you don’t care to play such Derlethian things, it appears to be quite a minor work of art in itself, with fine card-art and hand-painted miniature pieces.
10 Friday Jan 2020
Posted in Picture postals
A 1911 photo postcard from Union Station, Providence. Possibly a useful bit of visual information for those crafting graphic novels featuring scenes from Lovecraft’s life. I imagine the trains were much the same a decade or so later. Passenger steam trains only appear to have begun to fade away in the mid 1930s, when one can find mentions of new diesel engines running passenger services on the Providence and Boston line.
In the following May 1926 letter Lovecraft has almost returned home from New York City, and his train is slowing on its approach into Union Station…
… I fumble with bags and wraps in a desperate effort to appear calm -THEN- a delirious marble dome outside the window – a hissing of air brakes – a slackening of speed – surges of ecstasy and dropping of clouds from my eyes and mind – HOME – UNION STATION PROVIDENCE!!!! Something snapped – and everything unreal fell away. There was no more excitement; no sense of strangeness, and no perception of the lapse of time since last I stood on that holy ground. […] Simply, I was home and home was just as it had always been since I was born there thirty six years ago. There is no other place for me. My world is Providence.” — from Selected Letters II.
09 Thursday Jan 2020
Posted in Odd scratchings
The WikiPolice plan to delete the page for Lovecraft’s Providence and Adjacent Parts.
09 Thursday Jan 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
From the music press, news that…
Dark ambient label Cryo Chamber are releasing a two-hour dark soundscape album recorded by over 20 ambient artists to pay tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. […] The label is keen to stress [the album] is not a compilation, rather a collaboration — and a huge undertaking.
Casey Douglass has a review.
08 Wednesday Jan 2020
Posted in Historical context, Podcasts etc.
The excellent in-depth podcast EconTalk sprang a Christmas surprise. 90 minutes with Joe Posnanski on the Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini…
Journalist and author Joe Posnanski talks about his book, The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Posnanski explores the enduring fame of Houdini who remains an iconic cultural figure almost a century after his death. Topics discussed include the nature of celebrity, the nature of ambition, parenting, magic, and the use of public relations to create and sustain reputation and celebrity.
07 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Podcasts etc.
The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast Archive. A combined 7Gb, on a new .torrent at Archive.org.
07 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Odd scratchings, REH
A new post from Robert E. Howard Days gives an early outline of the structure of Howard Days 2020. Sadly there’s no British delegation set to fly a classic 1930s airship across the Atlantic and land it in a field next to REH’s house, but apart from that it looks excellent.
07 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, Odd scratchings, REH
The Library of America selected a prime “R.E. Howard writes Lovecraft” story as their Free Story of the Week: “The Black Stone”. At the end of 2019 it proved to be at #5 in their end-of-year tally of their most popular stories.
Here it is in Weird Tales for November 1931.
The cover of this issue is also interesting. C.C. Senf provides a bristling black kittee that must have delighted the cat-loving Lovecraft when he saw the picture.
