Going underground…

Two new books that may be of interest to readers, on the mysteries of the subterranean. Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet has just been published, front-loaded with so much lamestream media acclaim that I’m slightly suspicious. Apparently it uses a reportage style, focusses on human works, and packs it all into 288 pages.

The other book is said to take more of a science-writing approach, and came out this time last year. The Evolution Underground – Burrows, Bunkers, and the Marvelous Subterranean World Beneath our Feet weighs in 400 pages. For some reason Amazon UK highlights a pointless one-line 2-star review, and to add insult to injury claims there is only that one review for the book. On scrolling down the page one finds there are actually 12 reviews available, all reasonably positive.

Coming in October 2019, Underground Cities: Mapping the tunnels, transits and networks of our cities.

Lovecraft in 3D

Stefano Ciarrocchi is making the first steps to modelling a 3D bust of H.P. Lovecraft using the Blender software. He obviously hasn’t quite got the period clothing yet, as he’s using a 1970s ‘Bill Gates’ collar and tie that Lovecraft would have run screaming from. But it’s an interesting try in 3D.

Masket Charro gets a lot closer, and avoids the ‘uncanny valley’ effect by going a little toony. Still let down by the collar and tie.

In a similar 3D format, the My neighbor Cthulhu scene. Ruined by the crappiest sort of sign lettering. But in this case one can buy and download the 3D model, in which case the lettering could presumably be removed. Although beware that it’s a .Blend file. Though Blender is free, navigating the infernal Blender interface (to cleanly extract a 3D mesh with aligned material zones) is usually a bit of a nightmare.

It helps if you know Miyazaki, to get the sweetly inter-twingled cultural reference in this scene.

If you want to do something similar then the Miyre Store has a good and affordable Lovecraft 3D figure for the Poser software, and there’s a free pack of face expressions for him.

Friday ‘picture postals’ from Lovecraft: Prospect Terrace

“the mystic sunset flaming beyond the antient Baptist steeple, the narrow colonial hill streets with their fanlights & double rows of steps, & the great outspread sea of roofs & domes & spires leading off to the purple western hills as glimpsed from old Prospect Terrace? Zeus! the charm & mystery of the violet early evening, when the lights of the ancient city below began to twinkle forth one by one! […] Why, Sir, modernity cannot exist for one who has really gazed upon the elder world!”

“the sunset, seen beyond the mystical spires and domes of the lower town from Prospect Terrace, always fill[s] me with a curious sensation of opening gates and about-to-be-revealed wonders”

“What I want [is] a seclusion amidst ancient scenes wherein I may cast off the actual modern world in a quiet round of reading, writing, & pilgrimages to quaint & historick places. I want to dream in an atmosphere of my childhood — to sit on Prospect Terrace with an old book or a pad & pencil in my hands.”

Going Patreon-only

Thanks for reading Tentaclii. My Patreon patrons have now declined to $30 a month. After six months of intense daily blogging at Tentaclii I think it’s now safe to say that the Tentaclii revival has been a whole lot of work, but has not proven a success. This means that at the end of this month I’ll be taking the blog “Private”, making it entirely invisible to the public Web and available only to my Patrons on Patreon.

The Lovecraft Geek podcast returns

I’m pleased to see there’s a new episode of The Lovecraft Geek podcast with Robert M. Price, The Lovecraft Geek Podcast, 19-001. 19 presumably stands for 2019, and the 001 is self-explanatory. My podcatcher software refuses to download locally (“cannot verify talkshoe.com”), but it streams fine.

Price says at the start that he needs more questions sent in. I had sent in a list of questions by email last October, but he doesn’t seem to have got them. More questions are needed, to: criticus@aol.com

He notes that Ulthar Press has a set of Price-edited books lined up. Already published is The Mighty Warriors (summer 2018), his edited collection of new stories likely to interest those who like 1970s sword & sorcery action — with the twist that here we have… “aging once great heroes” rather than rippling youths.

Also announced was the book Narcotic Pnakotic Fragments (I think I heard that correctly, presumably a play on ‘necrotic’), a collection of his essays on the Mythos cycle, from Ulthar Press.

Sounding rather further off in time, and also from Ulthar Press, were various anthology titles. Most interesting to Lovecraft scholars is probably Price’s mention of his The Exham Priory Cycle. Since it will include historic “precursor stories” to Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” as well as new stories influenced by the famous tale.

Chaosium is apparently getting back into everything from action figures to anthologies, and the latter seem likely to include Price’s long-languishing ‘Cycle’ anthology manuscripts. Including one with stories expanding on Lovecraft’s revision tales. Price didn’t say so, but I presume that Chaosium are flush with cash from the success of the big-budget videogame and its associated boost to the sales of the table-top game and related books.

Price’s next Crypt of Cthulhu magazine should ship in the next couple of weeks. Presumably that’ll be #112, but Necronomicon Press doesn’t have its table-of-contents up yet. Although a note elsewhere on the Web-o-sphere tells of one of the scholarly essays in it…

“First and Final Estimates: August Derleth Looks at Weird Tales Magazine” is to be included in Crypt of Cthulhu No. 112 (late 2018 or early 2019). This builds upon Haefele’s earlier discussion in August Derleth Redux: The Weird Tale 1930-1971 (H. Harksen Productions, 2009), emphasizing Derleth’s positive impact on the reputation of Weird Tales magazine.”

Wordsmiths

I recently spotted a rare lauding of Lovecraft, from Gunjan Patni, on a board for those studying the forms of language. He appears to be in India, and is thus presumably blissfully unaware that ‘you’re not supposed to say that’…

“I dabble in creative writing here and there. Wordsmiths like Tolkien and Lovecraft are a pleasure to read for their sheer skill in sentence structure and plethora of words.”

‘Trends, Observations and Conclusions’ for Lovecraft RPGs in 2018

A while back I noted a 10,000-word survey of Lovecraft RPG publishing in 2018, which at that point was about to move on to a series of articles scrutinising individual titles.

Now there’s a final part, Cthulhu in 2018: A Retrospective, part 5. In the first section this looks at 2018 Kickstarter campaigns that have yet to ship, and then concludes with a general “Trends, Observations and Conclusions” section. The latter is a useful addition to the articles I linked to in my earlier post.

Weird Fiction Review #9

S. T. Joshi’s blog has updated. He’s warmed in, in Seattle. While here in the UK it’s bright sunshine, ten degrees and the very earliest breath of springtime wafts over the moist soil. Joshi’s blog brings news that Weird Fiction Review #9 is out with a Colin Nitta cover re-imagining the famous Fantastic Four debut cover…

Includes “an illustrated history of Gnome Press”, an essays on surrealist horror novels, and another on “H.R. Giger-inspired Alien toys”.