A talk on “John Michell’s Enchanted Landscape”, 29th May 2019 in London.

It’s good to see there’s still interest in him. Many in the British Isles will remember him as one of the key writers of the 1970s and early 1980s on the alleged ‘prehistoric geometry’ of the English landscape, on general astro-archaeology, and as an assiduous ley-line hunter. An authentic ‘fringe traditionalist’, of the sort that England increasingly had no patience with from about 1985 onwards, as the authentic place-rooted ‘eccentric’ type who had previously thrived was slowly but firmly purged from modern life.

He was the inheritor of an earlier 1920 tradition around ley-lines and Alfred Watkins, which I suspect the Anglophile Lovecraft partly knew about and drew on for some small elements of stories such as “The Lurking Fear”. See my annotated “Lurking Fear” for details, page 38 and footnote.

Transcription: H.P. Lovecraft’s Letter to Author C.M. Eddy Jr on Nov. 20th, 1924…

“As of today, Buzz Bookstore has acquired a handwritten letter from “the father of modern horror”, HP Lovecraft, to his friend and collaborator CM Eddy Jr. In looking through my collection of Arkham House “Selected Letters of Lovecraft” books, I was unable to locate a existing transcription of this particular piece.”

Perhaps unpublished, but the transcription has nothing that’s not already known, as far as I can tell. Except perhaps his opinion on two Weird Tales “art headers”…

“meanwhile pray accept my apology for delay of your tale. Hope it gets a good art heading. I’ve seen the Brosnatch drawings for my “Festival” & “Randolph Carter”, & although they’re good, they don’t fit the narratives any too well.”

Cthulhu sea cucumber that stalked the oceans 430 million years ago…

“Researchers at Yale, Oxford, the University of Leicester, Imperial College London, and University College London have identified a 430 million-year-old fossil as a new species related to living sea cucumbers. They named the creature Sollasina cthulhu, after H.P. Lovecraft’s tentacled monster, Cthulhu.”

New on Archive.org, The Science-Fiction Collector #4 (July 1977). Includes “Bibliographic Notes on some HLP Books” by British Lovecraft collector and dealer Ted Ball. The information delves into printing histories and is thus still likely to be of use to collectors of the titles discussed. For instance, stating that some copies of Selected Letters I will have pink lettering on the jacket.

Collector #4 has a survey and bibliography of science fiction paperbacks that (in those days) classed as outright ‘pornographic’, and were published during the first half of the de-censorship era, approx. 1961-1975. Includes Frank Belknap Long’s 160-page novel Mating Center (1961)…

S. T. Joshi’s blog has two new posts, both on the passing of Wilum Pugmire — delectable author and painstaking student of Lovecraft’s works. Joshi’s first post is a tribute, “My Friend, Wilum Pugmire”, and the most recent is “More on Wilum”.

The latter post brings news of a Memorial Event on Saturday 4th May 2019. For those able to attend, I’d suggest that this farewell might then be followed by this unconnected but very respectful-looking event for Lovecraft’s work, to be held at Lincoln Woods on the 5th May.

Joshi’s second post also usefully points to Brian Keene’s podcast ‘The Horror Show’, where the most recent episode is a “podcast full of tributes to Wilum”.

There are blog tributes to be found from his good friend David Barker, reporting the news that Lovecraftian author W. H. Pugmire has died. John D. Haefele sent an in memoriam statement to Don Herron’s blog and Herron himself posted Mort: Hopfrog Nevermore. Bobby Derie has penned the tribute W. H. Pugmire; and William Tea has posted a short goodbye. Possibly there are others, though I haven’t found them, and there will surely be more to come over the next few weeks and months.

The science-fiction news magazine Locus swiftly published a short obituary W.H. Pugmire (1951-2019) and his Wikipedia page has full details of his life and works. The Classic Horror Film discussion board has a less dry and, I’d like to think, rather more Pugmirish memory of him which seems fitting to end this post on. I only knew him through his audio interviews and some of his YouTube book reviews, and I don’t think he read Tentaclii, but from that audio I have the feeling that he might have enjoyed this being re-told (by one ‘Gef the talking mongoose’)…

In probably his late teens & 20s he worked at an attraction in Seattle called Jones’ Fantastic Museum…

“For 13 years the museum featured a real live vampire named Count Pugsly who roamed around scaring children and adults alike, even outside the museum. Sometimes he would appear to be a mannequin, standing still until an unsuspecting visitor stepped in front of him. As soon as the realization struck the visitor that no activating floor mat was there, he would walk towards them, often eliciting loud screams of fright.”

That was Wilum.

If you wish to link people to this post, there’s also a public re-post at my Spyders of Burslem blog.