Added to Open Lovecraft

02 Saturday Mar 2019

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Newly added to the Open Lovecraft page on this blog…

* K. Dodd, “Narrative Archaeology: Excavating Object Encounter in Lovecraftian Video Games”, Studies in Gothic Fiction, forthcoming 2019.

* V. Sirangelo, “Sulla natura lunare di Shub-Niggurath: dalla mythopoeia di Howard Phillips Lovecraft a The Moon-Lens di Ramsey Campbell”, Caietele Echinox, Volume 35, 2018. (Short article in French on Shub-Niggurath in Lovecraft and Ramsey Campbell. Part of a special issue on the Neo-Gothic).

Caietele Echinox‘s large archive of themed special issues also looks interesting, though articles need to be bunged through Google Translate unless you can work with English abstracts.

Friday ‘picture postals’ from Lovecraft: The Biltmore

01 Friday Mar 2019

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I imagine that people are making their hotel bookings about now for NecronomiCon. So here are two evocative postcards showing the main hotel which will host the NecronomiCon 2019 Lovecraft convention. One could almost imagine that the fellow in the drawing might be the Old Gent himself, perhaps taking a close look at the pigeons to check for signs of Yuggothian tendencies.

The hotel opened in 1922. While it may seem unlikely that Lovecraft or his friends ever lounged in the lobby here, one can imagine Frank Belknap Long’s affluent family staying there overnight. Though I know of no evidence that they did. A Spanish text I have suggests that when Barlow was travelling with his family they stayed in this level of hotel. But again, I know of no evidence they ever came with Barlow to Providence.

Possibly Lovecraft was more familiar with the park adjacent. It looks like the sort of place where one might have a pleasant wait away from the crowds, if a train was heavily delayed. Or could have served as a place to sit out with friends, while they recovered from their train journey enough to walk up the hill.

The hotel is briefly mentioned by Lovecraft in “Dexter Ward”, when Lovecraft evokes in fiction his own homecoming to Providence from New York…

“his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down to the terminal behind the Biltmore … It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.”

February on Tentaclii

01 Friday Mar 2019

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All right, so… 1st March 2019. February is gone. Doesn’t time fly! The signs of early springtime are everywhere here in the UK, though the first leaves are not yet out and the nights are still shiver-ish.

Here at Tentaclii, February saw 10,000 words posted, even with the week’s holiday from daily posting at the end of the month. The most important post was one of the Friday ‘Picture Postals’, which became a lengthy and highly illustrated essay on an overlooked area of New York City during Lovecraft’s time there. Given that Sheepshead Bay and its environs was such an unusual and eerie terrain, it was rather surprising that other Lovecraftians had not already delved into the topic. The post now effectively serves as an additional chapter for my book on Lovecraft’s sojourn in New York in the 1920s, and will be added and footnoted if there’s ever a new edition. Those considering new fiction featuring Lovecraft in the 1920s might also take this unusual watery setting and run with it. The Dutch marshlands of New York at the turn of the century could also make an unusual ‘true-life setting’ for a non-scary children’s picture-book, though Gravity Falls-like elements might still be woven in.

I also found minor new supporting information about Lovecraft’s favourite coffee-house in New York. Numerous new books and comics collections were noted, including an important one on Lovecraft in Japan. Pictures that were new to me were were found, including three of the interior of the John Hay Library and a large new scan on the Brown archive of one Lovecraft’s boyhood publications. Five new scholarly items were found and added to the Open Lovecraft page. Various other useful things were spotted and linked, including the welcome return of The Lovecraft Geek podcast, and a series of in-depth insider posts on the state of the Lovecraftian RPG market in 2018. I also picture-researched and published a new game scenario “The Assemblage of Dr. Arnold Astrall”, and my Patreons have access to the pictorial .zip bundle for this with public-domain pictures.

As you can see, daily posting at Tentaclii has now started again, after a week’s break, and the blog is now Patreon-only.

My thanks to those who have decided to become or remain my patrons on Patreon. You have ongoing access to the Tentaclii blog, which now has nearly a decade’s worth of posts, consisting of around 2,500 back-posts. These contain millions if not tens of millions of words plus Web links, all searchable by keyword or phrase, thus providing you with a unique resource for your own Lovecraft studies and musings.

Please encourage others to access this unique resource — all it takes is $1 a month via Patreon.

Going underground…

01 Friday Mar 2019

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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

01 Friday Mar 2019

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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

22 Friday Feb 2019

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“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

21 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in Housekeeping

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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

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Podcasts etc., Scholarly works

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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

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

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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

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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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.