“Dimensione Cosmica” returns

20 Sunday Oct 2019

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Dimensione Cosmica has returned to regular quarterly publication in Winter 2018, after being absent for some years. This is an Italian language magazine of non-fiction, reviews and interviews, with a strong focus on the history of the fantastic.

Translated, titles of selected historical and Lovecraft articles for the issues to date…

No. 1.

* Lovecraft at 80. [Perhaps an article on Lovecraft’s ‘baseline’ presence in Italy in either 1970 (age 80) or 1980?]

* The Italian Star Wars.

* J.R.R. Tolkien, a professor with many anniversaries.

* Arthur Machen, scribe of miracles and magical realist.

* James Allison, a forgotten hero. [R.E. Howard]

* Conan and the Ninth Art. [R.E. Howard]

* Gnome Press: when science fiction conquered books.

No. 2.

* Neo-symbolism: features for an exegesis of the fantastic literature of Alex Voglino.

* The Babel Catalog: E. Vegetti: the story of a friend and his endless work.

* The Cosmic Dimension interviews: Alan Lee, the art of Middle-earth. [A leading Tolkien illustrator]

* The damned Bran Mak Morn. [R.E. Howard]

No. 3.

* Challenge to infinity: Futurism and the future.

* The thousand faces of Solomon Kane. [R.E. Howard]

* Welcome to the “Bradbury Center”. [Perhaps a Ray Bradbury museum in Italy?]

* The kingdom of Hyperborea, between horror and decadence [R.E. Howard]

* Is there a fantastic fiction crisis?

* Sounds from deep space: when music meets science fiction.

No. 4.

* Scientification: Alternative History of Italian Science Fiction.

* Ursula K. Le Guin: a true glory?

* Fantastica “Made in Italy” and the foreign market: a conversation with Alessandro Manzetti.

* 1828-2018: Verne is dead, live Verne! [Presumably a history of the reception and afterlives of Jules Verne in Italy?]

* Frazetta: when the flesh becomes art.

No. 5.

* Tolkien between Myth, Symbol and Literature.

* Tale of the Holy Grail and Lord of the Rings: two “intertwining” stories.

* The “Cosmic Dimension” in comics. [inc. Kirby]

No. 6.

* Mr. Urania: memories of Giuseppe Lippi. [Memories of the leading Italian Lovecraftian, by multiple authors]

* Of the attempt to obscure Tolkien. [Perhaps a history of the attempts at erasure by leftist critics, in the 1970s and 80s?]

* “Lo Smeraldo”: the dream-apocalyptic journey of Mario Soldati in the Italy of the future.

* Robert E. Howard and the Italian writers of the fantastic.

* Providence: between Lovecraft and Moore. [Presumably a review of Alan Moore’s completed Providence comic?]

No. 7 (summer 2019).

* Mystery is my job: interview with Alfredo Castelli.

* A nineteenth-century French Tarzan.

* The return of the myths of Cthulhu. [At a total guess, perhaps a survey of how clueless and gullible many modern ‘fans’ are about Lovecraft and his original mythos?]

* “From an enthusiastic Frenchman”: a letter from Jacques Bergier to Weird Tales.

The originals are in Italian, and the above are just my translations. The magazine also carries regular book reviews.

Friday ‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Outward Bound

18 Friday Oct 2019

Posted by in Night in Providence, Picture postals

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Providence R.I., outward bound, 1906.

“Into this bay of [Providence] used to come the shipping of all the world, and about a century ago it was a veritable forest of masts. The great storm of 1815 caused the bay to overflow and inundate the whole waterfront. Full-rigged ships were cast up on Market Square, and one schooner was driven some distance up Westminster Street — past the corner known as Turk’s Head. Never hath so great a storm lash’d the shore since. The shipping has sadly fallen off during the last fifty or sixty years, but the bay is still beautiful — as it will always be in spite of decadence and Bolshevism [i.e.: the revolutionary socialism of 1919].” — Lovecraft, letter to Galpin, 30th September 1919.

“Providence, of the old brick sidewalks and the Georgian spires and the curving lanes of the hill, and the salt winds from over mouldering wharves where strange-cargoed ships of eld have swung at anchor.” — Lovecraft, “Observations on Several Parts of America”, 1928.

“Providence, whaling ships, streets and roads that climb uphill and end against the sky, long s’s [in 18th century books], narrow winding streets with old bookshops near a waterfront amidst which one cannot be sure where one is, dark rivers with many bridges…” — Lovecraft, letter to Morton, January 1931.

“The effect of night, of any flowing water, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it.” — R. L. Stevenson, noted by Lovecraft as entry No. 222 in his Commonplace Book of story ideas. He had found it quoted in John Buchan’s The Runagates Club (1928). It was to be his last entry in his Commonplace Book.

Swamp Monsters

18 Friday Oct 2019

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One I missed, back when it appeared in spring 2019. Swamp Monsters is a 144-page survey of swamp monsters in American comics, from the days before the Comics Code. With a 15-page introduction and survey.

Related is a forthcoming December 2019 book on what grew out of such schlock… Monstrous Imaginaries: the legacy of Romanticism in the comics. This will look at… “Enki Bilal’s Monstre tetralogy, Jim O’Barr’s The Crow, and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters … Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing“.

Io Sono Providence

17 Thursday Oct 2019

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Io Sono Providence: la biografia di H.P. Lovecraft is the Italian translation of S.T. Joshi’s monumental biography. The 630-page Vol.1 (of three) is set to ship in October 2019, and S.T. Joshi’s blog has already shown the rather nice slip-cover as an online preview. The publisher’s shop announces that shipping for the store will be suspended 18th to 28th October, which I would guess may be for them to take delivery, unpack, grade and check, re-box and label all the pre-orders for Io Sono Providence. Then they state that their shipping resumes 29th October.

Robert Ross

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

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As we head toward the Bonfire Night and fireworks season, some intellectual fireworks I found while looking for unknown archival Lovecraft-related material. A 1963 woodcut by Robert Ross in Providence’s Brown Alumni Monthly magazine, in a supplement on the role of the teacher in communicating ideas.

Kittee Tuesday: Something About Cats

15 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Historical context, Kittee Tuesday

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A weekly blog post, celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.

The cover illustration and jacket for Something about Cats and other Pieces, ed. August Derleth, Arkham House, 1949. This usefully reprinted an initial set of memoirs including Providence items such as neighbour Clara L. Hess’s memoir-letter to The Providence Journal newspaper, which had appeared 19th September 1948. This appeared in the book as “Addenda to ‘H.P.L.: A Memoir’” with some additions from an interview Derleth had managed to obtain with Hess. The chapter’s title positioned it as an update on Derleth’s own earlier book H.P.L.: A Memoir (1945). Sadly both books are now collectable first editions from Arkham, and thus unobtainable by scholars expect at substantial cost. I’m unsure who the cover artist of Something about Cats was.

Update: the Hess letter + additions from her interview with Derleth, and some further research from, is in the book Lovecraft Remembered and is there listed not under Hess but as ‘August Derleth, “Lovecraft’s Sensitivity” (1949)’. My thanks to magister76se for pointing this out.

Into The Weird

14 Monday Oct 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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Into The Weird, Episode 13. Continuing their mini-series of two-hour podcasts which discuss certain ‘weird’ issues of Marvel’s Bronze Age comic books in depth. This episode, another dive into…

Doctor Strange goodness with Marvel Premiere #7 and 8, where Stephen wades through yet another host of Lovecraftian foes.

Marvel Premiere was a relatively innovative (for 1970s Marvel) ‘try-out’ title which featured among others Starlin’s Warlock, Woodgod, Chaykin’s Starstalker, Solomon Kane, and Ploog’s Weirdworld.

Foundation Trilogy as a TV series

12 Saturday Oct 2019

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I’m glad to hear that Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy is finally being filmed as ten-episode series. Although sadly it’s not being made for the cinema by the Independence Day director, as was mooted about a decade ago. It’s being made for TV in Ireland by Skydance for Apple Studios, by the director of the recent Ghost In The Shell. Filming reportedly starts next month, for a wrap-up in June 2020 and a screening in perhaps Fall 2020 or early in 2021.

I assume it’s the original trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation). Not the non-Asimov prequels now also available, or Asimov’s own sequel novels.

If you can’t wait, there’s a pre-PC 1973 Foundation Trilogy radio adaptation by BBC Radio on Archive.org, which runs eight hours. Sound design by the famous Radiophonic Workshop. There’s also another copy here.

The freeware AIMP Player and its “Headphones” preset is what you want to listen to this. Presumably it emulates more closely radio speakers, as in the original audio broadcast, dampening the sharp electronic music enough to make it listenable.

Savage Sword of Conan – properly reprinted

12 Saturday Oct 2019

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I’m pleased to see that Marvel are producing beautiful crisp reprint print-books of their black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan magazines and its precursors. The first 1000-page volume is out now, with Vol. 2 due in mid November, and Vol. 3 in January 2020. According to the reviews Marvel have done an excellent job here, apparently marred only by some copyright trolls who are preventing the reprinting of stories featuring certain of R.E. Howard’s supporting characters. Vol. 3 has a bit of a naff front cover, which I’m thinking may be a ‘holding cover’.

These are the old magazines with black-and-white art by the likes of John Buscema, Gil Kane and Barry Windsor-Smith. The art hasn’t been given the usual gaudy re-colour, thankfully, though possibly the paper may feel a bit too bright n’ white. Scripts by Roy Thomas match the quality of the art, and being magazines aimed at an older market in the 1970s and 80s they were not subject to Comics Code censorship. Which means art that can get a lot closer to the Lovecraft-influenced bits that Howard employed in his Conan stories.

The PorPor Books Blog has pictures of interior pages in his review.

The reviews also usefully point out the poor quality of the previous attempt to reprint Savage Sword as collected volumes, and the superiority of the new Marvel books.

While one could tweak up a good .CBZ reader app’s contrast and saturation settings, on scans of old yellowed originals, these new 1000-page slabs seem the ideal — if rather costly — way to view the art in the crispest manner possible. Just make sure to also order a pair of the Conan™ Steel Wrist-bands, so you can heft and hold these slabs.