Howard’s story openings – the systematic survey

30 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in New books, Odd scratchings, REH

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The new Marvel comics Conan reboot opens with a defenceless Conan adrift at sea, before he goes “stumbling” into Stygia. Sounds like a rather mundane way to start, Marvel. I don’t read Conan for an approach which goes…

Hither wandered Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, depressed, no sword, bedraggled and stumbling, to hobble over the weary dust of Stygia with his blistered feet.

The new Marvel approach is to be enlivened by “romance and comedy”, apparently. Oh dear… it doesn’t sound good. But I’m probably not their intended audience, these days.

What would R.E. Howard have done, to make the big ‘splash’ opening just a touch more gripping and forceful? Mark Kirby posted a fine guide to that, a week ago…

Robert E. Howard did not leave us much in the way of personal writing advice. The few direct comments we have by him on the topic are gleaned from his letters, or revealed by Novalyne Price Ellis in her biography … There are eight primary elements most often used by Robert E. Howard in opening narratives.

A Brief REH-Inspired Guide to Writing Great Story Openings (Part One)

A Brief REH Inspired Guide to Writing Great Story Openings (Part Two)

He also usefully points to the currently-active main forum for Howard discussion.

Added to Open Lovecraft

30 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Scholarly works

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* M. L. Varnieri, “Medos aquaticos: uma poetica do horror liquido em H. P. Lovecraft”, Tessera, Vol. 1 No. 1, 2018. (Water as a symbolic story element in Lovecraft’s evocation of atmosphere. The journal appears to be a new Brazilian title on imaginative literature, with the first issue themed: “An Imaginary Dossier: Forerunners, Founders and Disciples”).

* M. Simicevic, Lovecraftian Horrors: Space and Literature in Silent Hill (2018). (Possibly a Masters dissertation, for the University of Zadar in Hungary. In good English, the author discusses spatiality and the elements of space in selected Silent Hill videogames, and identifies similarities with the texts of H. P. Lovecraft).

I Luoghi di Lovecraft

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Maps, New books

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Now available from the Italian Amazon site, the Italian travel guidebook for Lovecraft, I Luoghi di Lovecraft: novissima guida ad uso del viaggiatore. In English translation it’s something like, “The Places of Lovecraft, a new guide for the use of travelers”. Published by the Imaginary Travel Ltd and written by Michele Mingrone, Caterina Scardillo and Sara Vettori.

Apparently written to the Lonely Planet series style-guide, although the book is not one of their titles. Which means one gets things like history and shops, monuments to see, hotels, transport, and so on. It even ventures out of New England and has sections on Antarctica, the Nameless City, and even the Dreamlands.

Robert E. Howard: A Literary Biography

28 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by in Historical context, New books, REH, Scholarly works

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One book I seem to have unintentionally overlooked, in my blog’s rolling survey of such in Sept/Oct of last year, is Robert E. Howard: A Literary Biography (Oct 2018). The new book is intended as a reliable and well-written introductory biography for those new to Howard and his work, and who are not historians. It weighs in at 250 pages as a trade paperback or budget Kindle ebook. There’s a foreword by Rusty Burke, who praises the author and notes that the text was peer reviewed by Howard scholars. Howard’s fiction is stepped through in chronological sequence, with judicious plot summaries. Lovecraft and the backroom editorial matters at Weird Tales are covered adequately. The ‘deep background’ on Howard’s family history and early childhood is briefly surveyed in only a few pages, as this material can now be found elsewhere in good form.

More details on Ave atque Vale

28 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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S. T. Joshi has a new blog post, which usefully pins down the differences between the forthcoming-soon book Ave atque Vale: Reminiscences of H. P. Lovecraft and 1998’s Lovecraft Remembered…

“we have included most of the material in that [1998] volume (some items were omitted for copyright issues; others for editorial reasons) and included several newly discovered memoirs not included in Peter’s volume.”

Right, so it sounds like the Lovecraft scholar would still need both. The new book will be a $30 trade paperback, Joshi states, as well as a hardback.

Should one be considering sampling some of Dunsany’s vast output, on whom Joshi is also the expert, he usefully notes…

“Darrell Schweitzer’s “How Much of Dunsany Is Worth Reading?” (first published in Studies in Weird Fiction, Fall 1991)”

This has been reprinted in the new The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature (#11, 2018). It can also be found in Schweitzer’s essay collection Windows of the Imagination: Essays on Fantastic Literature.

Selling at PulpFest 2019

26 Saturday Jan 2019

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Selling at PulpFest 2019, the official blog post telling potential sellers and dealers exactly what they get and when. This year there seems potential for selling items from beyond the pulps themselves…

We’ll be exploring the profound effect of the pulps on popular culture across the globe at this year’s PulpFest. The fiction and art of the pulps reverberated through a wide variety of mediums — comic books, movies, paperbacks and genre fiction, television, men’s adventure magazines, radio drama, and even video, anime, and role-playing games. Please join us at PulpFest 2019 for “Children of the Pulps and Other Stories.”

Friday “picture postals” from Lovecraft: the Rhode Island letter-carrier (postman)

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by in Historical context, Picture postals

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The typical letter-carrier (in British parlance, ‘the postman’, in American ‘the mail-man’) of the 1900s, delivering the mail to houses.

One almost wonders if, at times, Lovecraft even had his own personal letter-carrier to haul up the hill his daily load of correspondence, subscription magazines and amateur journals, and occasional books. No doubt his aunts also had their share of correspondence and packages.