Big-budget Dunwich Horror movie in early development

10 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Films & trailers

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“H.P. Lovecraft Trilogy Being Planned by the Makers of ‘Color Out of Space’”, reports the movie-making world’s media. The news arises from an interview with… “SpectreVision’s Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah” who want… “at least three of them”. They have the obvious choice of The Dunwich Horror in the “early stages” of development, for a… “Lovecraft adaptation that truly capture[s] cosmic dread without the camp”. Sounds good, but it’s also said to be likely to be set in the near-future, and will have the inevitable political “messaging” that seems inescapable these days.

R.E. Howard letters going to POD

09 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in New books, REH

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The Robert E. Howard Foundation has apparently… “decided to re-print the Collected Poetry/Letters, as well as the sold-out books!” This was reported on the Forums after a reading of their Newsletter. Apparently the plan involves going to perpetual in-print print-on-demand for “The Collected Poetry and The Collected Letters”, presumably in indexed paperbacks and at affordable prices.

Great news, and hopefully there may even be Kindle ebooks versions too — but that last point is just my hope.

Wandrei’s Ivy Frost

07 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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Haffner Press is to publish The Complete Ivy Frost by Lovecraft correspondent and one-time protege Donald Wandrei. A $50 hardcover with 700 pages of mystery-science-detective stories…

Rather than following the usual hard-drinking, trench-coated style of many of his contemporaries, [Wandrei’s] strategy was to mix the logic of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes with the technology of Lester Dent’s Doc Savage.

I’d never heard of Ivy Frost before, but I like the sound of him. These gun-blazing mystery-science stories all appeared in Clues Detective Stories magazine from 1934-37 (not on Archive.org), so one assumes that Lovecraft was aware of them. One wonders how may ‘little nods to Lovecraft’ Wandrei might have snuck into the stories.

Let’s hope for a Kindle ebook version in due course. In the meantime there’s also I.V. Frost: Tales of Mystery & Scientific Investigation which is a 270-page collection of pastiche stories by later writers, available as a budget Kindle ebook as well as a paperback from Moonstone.

In other news on Wandrei, S.T. Joshi’s blog has updated and he notes that the Lovecraft letters book…

Letters with Donald and Howard Wandrei and to Emil Petaja is soon to appear from Hippocampus Press.

Lovecraft’s observations of the cosmos

05 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in Astronomy, Historical context, Scholarly works

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What better time than bonfire/fireworks night, to learn that Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University have opened up their newly acquired notebook to find Lovecraft drawings of a comet…

The latest manuscript added to Villanova University’s Distinctive Collections is the rare astronomical observation notebook by the noted horror author H.P. Lovecraft from the years 1909-1915. Observing from his Providence, Rhode Island home, Lovecraft noted, and then drew, various celestial phenomena including passing comets.

Slated for digitization in November and full transcription by a notable Lovecraft scholar soon after.

It’s interesting that the young Lovecraft took binoculars, presumably on his bicycle, to good observing spots way out toward Rehoboth. Given that he notes his location (not necessarily his house roof or adjacent ground) with some precision, one could presumably recreate these observational moments in full. This could be done via the free Stellarium software and its ‘time-and-place travel’ function, or similar. Although, the last time I looked, Stellarium doesn’t do comets in graphical form.

Gage Prentiss bust

04 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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Recently up for sale at The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, and sold, a Lovecraft Bust.

Gage Prentiss, the celebrated weird sculptor of Providence, has sculpted a life-sized statue of HPL which hopefully will soon have a permanent home in Providence. This bust of HPL is a replica of the full sized one, but at 10 inches by 5 inches, it’s much easier to ship and put on display in your home. It’s a tasteful and fitting tribute to the master of weird fiction.

Very appealing, and it definitely seems to evoke the dreamier side of Lovecraft.

Bally Yahoo

02 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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Even now, the once-great Yahoo service is continuing to crash and burn. The Pulp Net brings news that Yahoo Groups are to be erased…

“Then earlier this month, the future of Yahoo Groups became clear: They were going away. As of yesterday (Oct. 28), users can no longer upload content to the groups. Then on Dec. 14, Yahoo will wipe user content from its servers.”

Groups.io will port your Yahoo Group, for a price.

Voluminous

02 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in Historical context, Podcasts etc.

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The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society are posting Lovecraft letters, as audio readings. The first in the “Voluminous” ongoing podcast is his short opening letter to Robert Barlow, which runs 24 minutes with additional discussion before and after by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman of the Historical Society. The actual letter starts at 9:50 minutes in, if you want to skip introductory stuff you already know, and is from the book O Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow.

There’s a handy RSS feed for the show, which should give you a drop-down by which to download the source .MP3 file.

No listing for the podcast on ListenNotes yet, but I know that one has to have five episodes before you get an iTunes listing for any new podcast. Once on iTunes it will presumably percolate through to other pod-catching services and apps.