Ethernautica digested

21 Thursday Mar 2019

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Ethernautica, Season 1 Recap and Ethernautica, Season 1 Recap – Part 2. Some 22 free episodes and specials, trimmed and edited down. I haven’t yet got as far as discovering if there will also be a “Part 3”, but I guess there might be.

Set in an amalgam of Neo-Victorian and Lovecraftian worlds, combining the genres of Steampunk and Cosmic Horror, ETHERNAUTICA seeks to create a world of retro science fiction in a strange and exciting universe of both eldritch monstrosities and grand pulp adventure! … An Actual Play podcast, playing a combination Space 1889 and Call of Cthulhu [RPG] game, utilizing the Cortex Classic System.

New Book: an important memoir, re-published

20 Wednesday Mar 2019

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New to me, I’m pleased to see that Wildside Press republished Frank Belknap Long’s memoir Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside as an affordable paperback in September 2016. Not only that, but there’s an ebook and a German translation.

Important though the book is, I’ve clearly shown in Lovecraft in Historical Context that Long’s memory over that long distance of time is not to be entirely trusted. His recall needs to be checked against good primary evidence from the period.

Amazon have used paperback copies at around £10 inc. shipping. As usual the new paperback is about 70% more expensive from eBay than from Amazon. Still, even then it’s cheaper than the 1975 Arkham hardback.

No ebook listing on Amazon, but Wildside’s ‘up again, down again, broken images’ website reveals an ebook there priced at a “can’t-afford-it but got-to-have-it” $4.99. Checkout works but regrettably there’s no Paypal, and also uncertainty about if one will have to sign up to the site in order to download one’s purchased book.

I’d never heard of, seen or used, Amazon Pay before. I assume it’s a very lagging competitor to PayPal. But apparently it comes pre-loaded with your Amazon account…

Yet Amazon logged me in with my US rather than UK account, so… fail. Just get the ebook onto the regular Amazon USA and UK, please, guys.

Lovecraft was related to Barlow

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by in Historical context, Scholarly works

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A new article on “H.P. Lovecraft and Block Island”. By Edward Guimont, a PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut, who looks deeply and diligently for connections to the place but comes up rather empty handed. He does however end on the fascinating point that Lovecaft was very distantly related to Barlow….

R. H. Barlow, a young collaborator [was, as] Lovecraft discussed in an August 27, 1936 letter to their mutual friend Elizabeth Toldridge […] descended from Rathbone1. In a visit to Lovecraft in the summer of 1936, Barlow and Lovecraft discovered that Barlow’s family tree split with the original Rathbone’s son, making the two authors sixth cousins.

Lovecraft also had had some distant family-tree members living on Block Island, but I’ve never yet found any mention of him going there to check the graveyards etc.

1. John Rathbone = “one of the original 16 purchasers of Block Island from 1661 now immortalized (under the spelling John Rathbun) on the Settlers’ Rock plaque near the North Light.”

The Paperback Fanatic #41

18 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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A British fanzine that’s new to me has a new issue… The Paperback Fanatic #41 is for collectors of vintage popular paperbacks. This new issue is 64 pages and includes, among others…

* “Crom’s Tomes” — 50 years of Conan in paperback.

* Brian Hayles – Dr Who and Doom Watch script-writer

It also has occasional interviews with cover artists, it seems. Their website is dead but it also seems the issues are paper-only and rapidly go ‘sold out’ and out-of-print.

Shown are the British 1970s Sphere paperback covers, with Frazetta cover paintings.

Invisible Monsters in Magnolia

17 Sunday Mar 2019

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Bobby Derie, at the Deep Cuts blog today, has a new appreciation of “The Horror at Martin’s Beach” (1923) by Sonia H. Greene & H. P. Lovecraft.

I see there’s also a new PDF scan of its appearance in Weird Tales as “The Invisible Monster”, because it’s now in the public domain. It can also be seen in its original Weird Tales context.

Magnolia, Gloucester was evidently the inspiration for the moonlight/ropes elements of the story. Though one was to wonder if Lovecraft’s earlier story “The Moon-Bog” (written 1921) didn’t play its part in Lovecraft’s ‘instant inspiration’ on the beach at Magnolia, with its similar moonlight-ladders and bewitched chain of people being drawn to their watery doom. Only published in June 1926, it’s possible that Sonia had not yet seen or heard a reading of “The Moon-Bog” in the early 1920s.

I’d suggest that for the first part of “The Horror at Martin’s Beach” (the capture and display of the sea-monster) Lovecraft was also splicing the Magnolia atmosphere with the fabled sea-monster of Sheepshead Bay. That was where the amateurs often met, at Dench’s house on the waterfront, and to hint that the setting was similar would add a slick veneer of Jaws-like local interest. Possibly that part had significant input from Sonia? The twist ending in the final line is also a bit ‘off’ in the believability of its twist, I think, and I’m not sure that’s from Lovecraft either.

New book: The Culture and Art of Death in 19th Century America

17 Sunday Mar 2019

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A new book from McFarland, The Culture and Art of Death in 19th Century America…

“Nineteenth-century Victorian-era mourning rituals — long and elaborate public funerals, the wearing of lavishly somber mourning clothes, and families posing for portraits with deceased loved ones — are often depicted [today] as bizarre or scary. But behind many such customs were rational or spiritual meanings. This book offers an in-depth explanation at how death affected American society and the creative ways in which people responded to it. The author discusses such topics as mediums as performance artists and postmortem painters and photographers, and draws a connection between death and the emergence of three-dimensional media.”

Currently on available on Amazon USA, and quite expensive at $55.

New book: Phantom Islands

16 Saturday Mar 2019

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Due in spring 2019, Phantom Islands in 180 pages…

“Phantom Islands tells the story of 30 such islands. Beginning with the alleged discovery of each, Dirk Liesemer recreates their fabled landscapes, the voyages attempted to verify their existence and, ultimately, the moments when that existence was at last disproved. Spanning oceans and centuries, these curious tales are a chronicle of the human lust for discovery and wealth. Beautifully illustrated with coloured maps and charts, Phantom Islands shows the cunning of imposters and frauds, the earnestness of explorers searching for knowledge, and the pleasure that can be found in our willingness to deceive and to be deceived.”

Cirsova Magazine #1

15 Friday Mar 2019

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I’m pleased to hear about what amounts to a new pulp magazine, published today. The Cirsova Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense, Issue #1 / Spring 2019, apparently takes an old-school approach to pulp. Or perhaps we should now call it the New Pulp. The story descriptions certainly sound alluring…

Young Tarzan and the Mysterious She, by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Michael Tierney. Based on a fragment from 1930, this previously “Lost” Tarzan adventure takes place in the Jungle Tales period.

Atop the Cleft of Ral-Gri, by Jeff Stoner – The Nazis’ never-ending quest for powerful and sorcerous relics to aid the Father-land’s conquests brings the SS to the mountains of Tibet, where a deadly and mysterious weapon is rumored to lay dormant and waiting for a new master!

The Idol in the Sewer, by Kenneth R. Gower – A reverse of fortune sends Kral Mazan fleeing through the labyrinthine sewers of Vasaros empty-handed from his audacious heist! His life may be forfeit to the rat-men who lurk in the tunnels—unless he accepts a job to retrieve their idol for them!

Born to Storm the Citadel of Mettathok, by D. M. Ritzlin – For aeons, Verrockiel the Warlord has struggled vainly to seize the stronghold of Mettathok! With infinite time and resources at Verrockiel’s disposal, what of those fated to claw, tooth and nail, inch-by-inch, progress towards their master’s goals?!

The Book Hunter’s Apprentice, by Barbara Doran – An ancient and powerfully magic book has laid a curse of death upon a sage who had spitefully defiled it! Can Zhi, a book hunter, and Qing, her apprentice with the power to “fall” into nearby closets, retrieve the volume from a haunted manse?!

How Thaddeus Quimby the Third and I Almost Took Over the World, by Gary K. Shepherd – A strange object has fallen from the sky and into the hands of one Thaddeus Quimby III! The alien artifact creates life-like facsimiles of anything imaginable, so it’s only a matter of time before everyone’s wildest dreams may be fulfilled, right?!

Deemed Unsuitable, by W. L. Emery – A beautiful young woman is at the center of a high-speed chase and shoot-out right where Morgan, a crack-shot Construct, was about to grab some lunch! Against his better judgement, Morgan enters the fray, but who is after this woman and why?!

Warrior Soul, by J. Manfred Weichsel – A strange man with a mysterious camera claims that he can capture the truth and inner beauty of a subject’s soul! Lured in by the photographer and his entrancing prints, a pair of young women find themselves imprisoned and in dire peril!

Seeds of the Dreaming Tree, by Harold R. Thompson – Its fruit are the subject of myth and legend—some hope to exploit it for knowledge and medicinal purpose while others are prepared to kill to keep its secrets! Can the bookish adventurer Anchor Brown survive the trials of the Dreaming Tree?!

The Valley of Terzol, by Jim Breyfogle – Kat and Mangos have been hired to accompany the adventurer Andorholm Wallenoop to the ruins of Terzol in search of an ancient lost delivery! A thousand-year-old receipt offers a clue to fabulous reward or certain death in the Valley of Terzol!

The Elephant Idol, by Xavier Lastra – The blind thief Auger sneaks into the opera house to steal a trinket that the lovely Trannen von Fitzburg received from a lovestruck foreigner! The gift-box’s riddle and its giver’s suicide engulf Augur — and the opera house — in a world of darkness!

Moonshot, by Michael Wiesenberg – The Government wants to put a barn on the Moon — why?! To prove that the United States is capable of landing a barn on the Moon, of course! But the question is, whose barn are they going to send and can they send it to the moon on budget?!

Friday picture postals from Lovecraft: un-tarred Brattleboro back-road to the mountain

15 Friday Mar 2019

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“The kinship and hospitality of the Main Street [of Brattleboro] spread over us, and encourage us to climb higher into the charmed sea of westerly greenness to which these atavistic bricks form pylon and peristyle. The wild hills are before us […] Narrow, half-hidden roads bore their way through solid, luxuriant masses of forest, among whose primal trees whole armies of elemental spirits lurk.” — H.P. Lovecraft, “Vermont: A First Impression” (September 1927).

Lovecraft’s friend and fellow amateur pressman Arthur H. Goodenough lived near Brattleboro, hence Lovecraft came to know the place quite well on several visits. He also visited with Vrest Orton, also near Brattleboro.

The local history Brattleboro Words project also has…

“I’ve never seen no country niftier than the wild hills west of Brattleboro,” Lovecraft wrote to a friend. “The nearness and intimacy of the little domed hills become almost breathtaking. Their steepness and abruptness hold nothing in common with the hum-drum standardized world we know, and we cannot help feeling that our outlines have some strange and almost forgotten meaning.”

The full quote, uncensored by political correctness, is as follows. Lovecraft starts off in contemporary slang…

“I never seen no country niftier than the wild hills west of Brattleboro, where this guy hangs out. Brat itself is the diploduccus’ gold molar, with its works of pristine Yankee survival, but once you climb the slopes toward the setting sun you’re in another and an elder world. All allegiance to modern and decadent things is cast off — all memory of such degenerate excrescences as steel and steam, tar and concrete roads, and the vulgar civilization that bred them —”

The nearness and intimacy of the little domed hills become almost breath-taking — their steepness and abruptness hold nothing in common with the humdrum, standardized world we know, and we cannot help feeling that their outlines have some strange and almost-forgotten meaning, like vast hieroglyphs left by a rumoured titan race whose glories live on in rare, deep dreams.”

Some notes on Hugh B. Cave’s “Magazines I Remember”

15 Friday Mar 2019

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Some notes made on reading Hugh B. Cave’s book Magazines I Remember: Some Pulps, Their Editors, And What it Was Like to Write For Them, newly on Archive.org and which I linked to yesterday in the post The Cave of Pulps.

* Cave lived in Pawtucket (a long trolley/tram ride from Providence), and sometimes took an apartment in Boston. While he briefly corresponded professionally with Lovecraft in the early 1930s, and Cave had at least two fulsome replies from the master, they never met or even telephoned.

* Newspapers then reprinted pulp stories. Also, Farnsworth Wright nearly interested radio in ‘putting Weird Tales on the air’, to the extent of casting the male lead for a radio adaptation of a Cave story — yet he obviously never succeeded.

* There was an informal blacklist among pulp editors of young authors known to have plagiarised the stories of others and who tried to sell the result.

* Farnsworth Wright marked unpublished manuscripts with red ink dots in the margin, in the process of assessing them, thus making them difficult to send to other editors who knew Farnsworth’s ‘ways’ and could thus spot a ‘Weird Tales reject’. This fact suggests that if a Lovecraft manuscript was rejected by Weird Tales, then he would likely have to retype it — which he hated doing.

* The “summer is a dead time in the pulps”, said of story acceptances in the early 1930s.

* Even when a pulp writer was obviously ‘working at it’ like dog, the early 1930s were a real roller-coaster for the finances of a pulp author. It seems that one could sell quite regularly, sell overseas rights, newspaper rights, and even movie options (to RKO in this instance), as well as selling to the ‘slicks’, and still find oneself living in dire poverty for long periods as magazine failed to pay or went bankrupt. I’d already known something of this re: Lovecraft and R.E. Howard, but it was interesting to see another pulp writer’s detailed perspective on the pulp market in the period.

* The ‘spicy’ pulps could be found on open sale on news-stands in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1934. They were a new development in the market at that time and were rumoured among writers to be ‘under the counter’ yet Cave found it otherwise even in Pawtucket. In Cave’s professional opinion they were no more than regular pulps stories with some hackneyed sex inserted here and there.

* It seems that, to save money, writers often did not buy pulps regularly. With perhaps the exception of Weird Tales. They would only purchase if they were being published in an issue, and then they might buy a number of copies. The British reprint and anthology market would accept magazine pages instead of a typed manuscript.

* In the early 30s Cave held J. D. Newsom in very high regard for his slick funny adventure stories of the French Foreign Legion. A quick look for the name finds there’s a blog review and Pulpdom #46 (June 2006) had the article “The Men Who Made the Argosy: J. D. Newsom”.

* In the 1970s Jacobi thought that much of August Derleth’s ‘juvenile’ work (i.e. what would today be called ‘young adult’) was his strong point as a writer and that many were ‘masterpieces’. Judging by a quick search, the $7 essay collection Return to Derleth (Vol 1) has what might be the best survey of these, with one review stating that an essay by… “Marion Fuller Archer tackles the juvenile novels with rare understanding of their impact on Derleth’s own life.” Jacobi also expresses his puzzlement at the growing ‘Lovecraft cult’ of the 1970s.