New recorder music pieces from South America, with inspirations found in Lovecraft stories.
“Of piping flutes…”
11 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Audio: The Horror in the Burying-Ground
11 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
“The Horror in the Burying-Ground” by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald (c. 1933-34). Newly recorded as a free 35 minute audio story, narrated by Ian Gordon, who always does a good reading.
The Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that, given the dating, Lovecraft was having some fun with the story and was not taking it overly seriously…
this is evidently the last of the tales he ghostwrote for her. Much of the story is narrated in a backwoods patois [and was likely meant,] if not as an actual [self]parody, at least as an instance of graveyard humor.
Nevertheless it found its way to Weird Tales and was published May 1937 under Heald’s name.
One wonders if the illustration’s somewhat Lovecraft-like head, looking over the shoulder of and spooking a vaguely Heald-like face, was meant to convey anything to Weird Tales insiders?
Ricardo Parabere’s visualisation of “Mountains of Madness”
10 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
A 256-page Secuencia Grafica 1 (‘graphic sequence’) an ambitious and visually very stylish storyboard/storytelling exercise by Ricardo Parabere for Lovecraft’s “At The Mountains of Madness”. Not a graphic novel, not least because it’s wordless, but more a visual conceptualisation in story sequence. It’s undated by Amazon but, judging by the timing of samples pages released on DeviantArt, it was released early July 2019.
Available now for a modest price on the Kindle via Amazon, in Spain and the UK, and I assume the USA too.
Call: The Dark Man journal
10 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in REH, Scholarly works
The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies, call for the Vol. 10, No. 2 issue…
Note that during their Howard Days presentation the editors said they were also interested in Lovecraft and wider pulp magazine history of the period. Though I’d imagine that papers on these would probably be most welcome if they featured themes and concerns found in Howard’s work and/or life.
I wonder if “The Small Town” might be such a theme, and if it might even make a special themed issue, with essays on the early pulp-magazine use of the theme by Howard, Lovecraft, Simak, Bradbury and others. Possibly also an examination of the demographics and spread of the readership, to determine how ‘remote’ and small-town some of the readers were, and what the pulps meant to them in that context.
Added to Open Lovecraft
10 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
* P. Israelson, The Vortex of the Weird: Systemic Feedback and Environmental Individuation in the Media Ecology of Ito Junji’s Horror Comics”, Orientaliska Studier, No. 156, 2018. (Illustrated. Possibly not safe for download at work or college, depending on regime. A study of noted Japanese manga artist Ito Junji in relation the literary horror of H. P. Lovecraft).
* J. Norman, ‘Sounds Which Filled Me with an Indefinable Dread’: the Cthulhu mythopoeia of H.P. Lovecraft in ‘extreme’ metal (Short chapter from the book New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft, 2013. ‘Metal’ = metal rock music).
* L. Sorensen, A weird modernist archive: pulp fiction, pseudobiblia, H.P. Lovecraft, Modernism/modernity, Vol. 17, No. 3, September 2010. (In “The Shadow out of Time” the archive is “possessed of disturbing agency”, and this idea counters the high modernist ideal for such things. Also has some useful observations on Lovecraft’s stance on the familiar and the unknowable, and notes that Boas shared much the same sentiments).
Kittee Tuesday: Kreativity for Kats
09 Tuesday Jul 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
This week’s kitty is a Dick Francis illustration for the story “Kreativity for Kats” (Galaxy, April 1961), anticipating the now-lost Catscan website by some 40 years. “Kreativity for Kats” was Fritz Leiber’s sequel to his acclaimed “Space Time for Springers” science-fiction cat story.
Over time “Space Time” became the first of a series of ten super-kitten and other cat stories by Leiber, which were collected together in the limited-edition illustrated hardback Gummitch and Friends (1992). I’d guess a new audiobook for that might Kickstart quite well, today, with the permission of the Leiber estate?
Crypt of Cthulhu #113
08 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Crypt of Cthulhu #113, now with a pre-order page and table of contents. This double-sized jumbo book edition should out by the 1st August 2019, according to the page.
Looking interesting…
* “Memory” Re-membered, by Donald R. Burleson. [Presumably re-visiting Lovecraft’s “Memory”]
* A Heritage of Hubris: Sources for “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”, by William Fulwiler.
* Atmosphere and the Qualitative Analysis of “The Colour Out of Space”, by Steven J. Mariconda. [Presumably the “Colour” essay mentioned, but not included, in his recent book collection]
Also, elsewhere DMR blog has a new A Shout-Out to Robert M. Price, Crypt editor, on his 65th birthday.
Providence Tales #4
08 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
The Italian magazine Providence Tales #4 (Spring/Summer 2019) is a special tribute to Italian Lovecraft scholar and publisher Giuseppe Lippi, who was one of the leading Italian Lovecraftians. The magazine features a fine portrait of him on the cover, framed by pleasingly lively typography. Inside there are two memoirs. He passed away before Christmas 2018, after a short illness.
Translating the contents page for the magazine’s back-issues, I see it also has other non-fiction articles. #3 has an article on Lovecraft’s appearances in the Weird Tales letters pages, and the magazine has five such letters translated into Italian.
Toward an ‘Open Cthulhu’
07 Sunday Jul 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
Tabletop gamers have been having some interesting discussions re: which of Lovecraft’s monsters could be ‘safely’ included in a new ‘open’ RPG. Cthulhu Reborn has a hankering for an open tabletop RPG based on pure Lovecraft, and has three posts which usefully summarise this recent debate. He also does some additional useful digging.
3. Can Cthulhu Be Open? Part 2.
In the post at link 2, he notes that the debate made him aware of a…
Lovecraftian [‘open game’] RPG in German called FHTAGN. [for which the maker] spent a long time researching the various named beings and gods that are mentioned in short stories to find which are truly Public Domain [in Europe]. … in the interests of making the results of his/her research more accessible to English-speaking audiences, I have extracted the list of “safe” Mythos Entities and translated the relevant names back to English.
This seems useful, re: being researched for the public domain rules in the UK and Europe, and not the USA. One could probably include some of the early Long additions to the Mythos, which are or will shortly be in the public domain by 2020/21.
For cultists and clans one might add…
* The Martense clan (“The Lurking Fear”, with a story setting on a river that ultimately flows down to empty at Red Hook).
* Cthulhu cultists, and also the “undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China” claimed by Castro.
But assuming the German list wants monsters and ‘rites’ only, then The Haunter of the Dark could probably still appear in a game. It would just have to be unnamed as such, but with the same characteristics (lots of sinister lurking silence in darkness, then a sudden single explosive killer fear-lightning release during a storm). It would just have to be used under a more generic name, such as ‘The Dark’ or ‘The Unnamed Dark’, if there really are copyright worries in the UK and Europe.
Looking at ‘published pre-1924’ Lovecraft, I’d also suggest adding to the German list…
* Erich Zann (though not a monster he might have been deemed to have become one, in a new game).
* The Terrible Old Man (ditto).
* The Street (as a monster ‘character-entity’ in its own right).
* The Cats of Ulthar (inexplicably missing from the German list, perhaps because not considered to be monsters).
Alternatively, Zann, The Old Man, the Street and the cats could all be deemed ‘ally class’ elements of the game, helping the players in various ways.
The Shunned House (1928) up for sale
07 Sunday Jul 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
Paul Cook’s 1928 loose edition of Lovecraft’s The Shunned House is newly up for sale in Fine condition. Albeit at a rather high price, and unbound in a later slipcase…
“This is one of about fifty sets of unbound sheets Derleth distributed prior to 1961, before binding 100 copies in the black cloth usual of Arkham House bindings.”
The remaining Howard Days videos for 2019
07 Sunday Jul 2019
Posted in Historical context, Podcasts etc., Scholarly works
I don’t see more of videos coming online from the 2019 Howard Days, so below are links to what I take to be the final tranche.
Previous posts here at Tentaclii have already covered Howard Day 2019 – the first videos (trailer, keynote, and a main panel) and More Howard Days (“What’s new with REH”, and an excellent “History of Project Pride” which gives a fine insight into how just a few dynamic can-do people make all the difference to a small town).
The remains videos to be linked are:
* The Writers of REH, a 58 minute panel during which “Biographers of Howard answer biographical questions”.
* Glenn Lord Symposium 2019: Nicole Emmelhainz, giving a 40 minute talk about Howard’s letters and correspondents.
* Glenn Lord Symposium 2019: Ralph Norris, giving a short 20 minute talk about Howard’s Kull character.
* Fists of the Ice House 2019 is a 48 minute talk on Howard’s boxing stories, given dynamically in the very place where the author used to box. Followed by a 50 minute panel on Sailor Steve Costigan of the boxing stories.
Many thanks to Ben Friberg for the uploads and (I assume) he was also the one to be thanked for the clear audio and professional recordings.
Others? Unfortunately YouTube has near-enough turned off their ‘sort by date’, to the extent that it’s now very difficult to get a comprehensive slate of ‘most recently posted’ videos in the results for any keyword or phrase. So my apologies if someone else has also posted a Howard Days 2019 video, but I wasn’t able to find it. Nothing pops up on ListenNotes either, which is the best podcast search-engine. Sadly it’s 2019 and the world still lacks a ‘timely blog-post search’ engine like the old Technorati, but using the general search-engines to approximate that didn’t turn up anything in the form of .MP3s or video.
* The Abeline Reporter local newspaper has a good long write-up and crisp photos, “Howard Days celebrates Cross Plains writer’s legacy”. I’m pleased to see that this is accessible outside the USA (many small town newspapers block outsiders now). It includes the interesting news that…
At this moment, Howard is way bigger in France than he is the [United] States,” said French scholar Patrice Louinet, who regularly travels to Cross Plains to present at Howard Days. “He’s everywhere [in France].”
The local cemetery website also has a nice look at the excellent promotional poster for 2019, along with the artist’s details if you’d care to commission him for something similar for your town…
New book: Encyclopedia of Weird Detectives
06 Saturday Jul 2019
Posted in New books
Encyclopedia of Weird Detectives, new and set to ship at the end of September 2019. A survey which sleuths across a variety of media, in 187 pages. Priced for academic libraries rather than fans, regrettably.
