Arthur Machen Essay Competition

11 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

Wormwoodiana has news of an Arthur Machen Essay Competition, with Cash Prizes. Deadline “by early September”.

The Friends of Arthur Machen have announced a competition for essays on Machen … £200 prize for the best essay, and two runner-up prizes of £100 each. … 4,000 words [or more] … open to non-members”.

Worth having. Unfortunately I don’t know what hasn’t yet been discovered about Machen, or I’d unleash the Tentaclii Towers truffle-pigs on the online archives.

New journal: Dead Reckonings #25

11 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

The review journal Dead Reckonings #25 has been published in paper. The issue’s Web page says “Spring 2018”, but the cover says “Spring 2019” and the journal’s catalogue page has an eta for arrival of “June”. So I’m guessing the Web page should read “June 2019”.

Of Lovecraftian interest, among the contents:

* “A Look Behind “The Challenge from Beyond””, by Michael D. Miller.

* “Weird Fiction and Decadence”, the S. T. Joshi review of the important new mainstream academic book Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939.

* “Sesqua Valley’s Weirdest Inhabitant, Wilum Pugmire”, by David Barker.

* “Weird Fiction in the 21st Century: A Conversation with S. T. Joshi”, by Alex Houstoun.

* “Some Notes on Call of Cthulhu and Other Lovecraftian Video Games” by Geza A. G. Reilly.

Possibly the journal is also on Amazon. But they annoyingly mix books titled “Dead Reckoning” into results for a specific search for “Dead Reckonings”. Meaning that I’m not inclined to trawl through the resulting stew of dross to discover if the journal is listed there.

Index To The Verse In Weird Tales

10 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by in Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

Thomas G.L. Cockcroft’s Index To The Verse In Weird Tales (1960), free on Archive.org. Also related magazine titles edited by Farnsworth Wright, such as Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet.

Many good scans of Weird Tales can now be had free on Archive.org, but this Index should help speed up the finding of ‘on the original page’ verse by your favourite authors. Since it’s also effectively a keyword index to likely header illustrations, it might also be used as an index for finding illustrations by theme.

Also, I wonder if it might be possible for an ambitious student typographer, seeking a project, to get in touch with the heirs of Thomas G.L. Cockcroft (1926-2013) and request permission to do a new properly typogrified, designed and printed version of this old stencil-duplicated Index To The Verse In Weird Tales. Perhaps the new edition might integrate the best of the poem illustrations in the public domain, and for each poem add a line of colour-coded keywords indicating theme and symbolism/setting?

Three surveys

10 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

Black Gate has a new survey of “The Weird Tales Anthologies”. With covers and some tables of contents. It’s not comprehensive but lays out what you might find cheaply and has useful brief assessments. Note that some of the book covers may not be “safe for work”, in these prudish days.

Another new survey is a detailed evaluation by The Pulp Hermit of the run of Bronze Shadows, the ground-breaking early Doc Savage / Shadow fanzine which ran for 15 issues in the 1960s. Altus Press also has an evaluation of its place in history, in “Bronze Shadows & The Moon Man”.

Also in the category of retrospectiva posts, Murray Ewing has a new long post in which he revisits Erich von Daniken’s influential Chariots of the Gods? book and its claims…

Von Daniken’s own method mostly consists of rhetoric rather than proof. [His] technique is to find oddities, puzzles, and things that the average reader might be surprised to find in the ancient world, then point at them and say, “Well, who can say it’s not aliens?”

New book: Windy City Pulp Stories #19

10 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by in New discoveries, Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

The Pulp Super-Fan reviews Windy City Pulp Stories #19, the substantial 2019 program book for the convention and trading fair.

This year the focus is on the pulp writers, editors, and publishers from the Chicago area.

Th Farnsworth Wright section has the 1933 profile of him I posted here in April (I had no idea they were going to include it in the programme book). But there’s also much more on the other editors and publishers from the Windy City.

The making of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

09 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

PC Gamer this weeks reprints on the Web an article from “issue 172 of Retro Gamer” (not on Archive.org). It’s a long and detailed insider account of “The making of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth“. The game was made in the early 2000s and it’s widely hailed as one of the most authentic and lovingly-made Lovecraftian videogames. It was largely developed in the West Midlands of England, if I recall correctly, somewhere just north of Birmingham.

The best free HD texture-makeover I could find in a few minutes of searching is the HDR ReShade together with step-by-step install instructions…