John Coulthart today posted a bunch of his Lovecraft story illustrations as a blog post.
One of the illustrations for “The Colour Out of Space”.
John Coulthart’s Lovecraft illustrations
28 Friday Sep 2018
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Friday “picture postals” from Lovecraft: Lighthouse
28 Friday Sep 2018
Posted in Picture postals
The curious light-house at Bullock Point, Providence. It’s across the river and about four miles south, so is not something Lovecraft would have encountered or glimpsed every day. And so far as I know he never took a steamer to New York (though he did see people off at the docks, such as Morton, who were going back to New York that way). But it’s the sort of place he might have glimpsed on his youthful bicycle and play expeditions over to that side of Providence, and would have later encountered pictorially on postcards such as this.
In a letter of 1921 Lovecraft recalls “our boyhood play-scenes — East Providence, Seekonk, and Rehoboth”. This was in the context of returning there in an unexpected car trip around his old haunts, on which he states that “I had not been there for eight or nine years”. This statement would place the last visit there circa 1912, perhaps about the time this postcard was made.
I should note that he also had his rooftop observatory until at least 1919, from which he could see far and in detail along the shoreline with the aid of his telescope. Letters sent to Galpin record him training his telescope not only on the stars, but also down and across the river during the day.
Lovecraftian role-players may also like this crisp scan of another local lighthouse postcard from circa the 1940s, to print up as a gaming prompt…
Lovecraft: The Myth of Cthulhu
28 Friday Sep 2018
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
A new comics anthology of Lovecraft adaptations, Lovecraft: The Myth of Cthulhu, and it’s wholly new in English.
“Illustrated in haunting black and white by Esteban Maroto over 30 years ago, these comics are re-presented in a new edition, adapting three of H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous stories involving the Cthulhu Mythos: “The Nameless City”, “The Festival”, and “The Call of Cthulhu”.”
Very pleasing artwork and lettering…
It if reminds you a bit of the best 1970s Eerie or the oversize b&w Marvel Comics, that may be because the same artist did Red Sonja with Roy Thomas and appeared as an artist in Eerie. Thought it seems that these strips didn’t appear there, and are new translations from the Spanish. They are said to have appeared in the back of the Spanish children’s comic Capitan Trueno, of all places, and then vanished. The artist never had his art back from the publisher, but he recently found good photostats and has now republished the strips in English.
I’m not keen on the cover, but I guess ‘Show The Monster On The Cover’ is what gets a few extra sales in today’s crowded comic-store marketplace. Currently the book is only available in paper, and runs to 80 pages. If this gets onto Kindle at £3.99, once the print-run sells out, it should sell very well there.
Added to Open Lovecraft
28 Friday Sep 2018
Posted in Scholarly works
* V. Napoli, “‘Apocryphal Nightmares’: Observations on the Reference to Damascius in ‘The Nameless City’ by Howard Phillips Lovecraft”, Peitho: Examina Antiqua, 1, 5, 2014. (Italian with English abstract).
‘Tryout’ Smith Grave Marker Dedication – event report
27 Thursday Sep 2018
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
A detailed post-event report from local media outlet WHAV on the recent ‘Tryout‘ Smith Grave Marker Dedication ceremony. The report also states that…
[Derrick M. Hussey’s] Aeroflex Foundation also supported the cataloguing and conservation of ‘The Tryout’ collection housed by the New York Public Library.
The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension
27 Thursday Sep 2018
Posted in Historical context, New books, Scholarly works
Released back in April 2018, The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension: Higher Spatial Thinking in the Fin de Siecle. Not just a book of the history of mathematics, but a survey of the cultural influence of the new discoveries at the time when Lovecraft was a youth and young man…
“the volume describes an active interplay between self-fashioning disciplines and a key moment in the popularisation of science. It offers new research into spiritualism and the Theosophical Society and studies a series of curious hybrid texts. Examining works by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, Henry James, H. P. Lovecraft, and others, the volume explores how new theories of the possibilities of time and space influenced fiction writers of the period, and how literature shaped, and was in turn shaped by, the reconfiguration of imaginative space occasioned by the n-dimensional turn.”
At the Mountains of Manga
27 Thursday Sep 2018
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
French publisher Ki-oon is set to launch a new series of Lovecraft graphic novel adaptations, done in the Japanese b&w manga style by the best Japanese horror-manga artists. At The Mountains of Madness is released in French on 4th October 2018. Here’s a sample of a spread…
It’s being picked up by Dark Horse, for English publication.
Automata
26 Wednesday Sep 2018
Posted in Podcasts etc.
In Our Time : Automata. BBC Radio 4’s flagship programme… “discusses the history of real and imagined machines that appear to be living, and the questions they raised about life and creation”, with the usual intimate round-table of scholars and scientists. Unlike many BBC programmes, the In Our Time recordings are available to those outside the British Isles — and even have .MP3 files.
Picture: impsandthings: Steampunk Automata (2010). He also has video of it working.
Dune Encyclopedia
26 Wednesday Sep 2018
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
I’m pleased to see there was a good encyclopaedia for Dune, back in the 1980s, Dune Encyclopedia. It was written as if ‘in-world’, and as such felt free to elaborate new ideas on the background and character back-stories. Today it can be understood as a possibly-correct history, with errors and misunderstandings made by some of the ‘historians’ involved. This is because Herbert himself later contradicted some of the elements in the Dune Encyclopedia, with his later Dune books.
Note that the new Dune Companion book from McFarland is apparently a stinker, and is to be avoided.
After a little digging and testing I find that the reading order for unabridged audiobook readers is:—
1. Book 1: Dune. The unabridged audiobook reading by George Guidall is the best one to listen to. Also, note that the Scott Brick audiobook version is apparently abridged for some reason.
2. Interlude: “The Road to Dune”. A quite short work by Herbert that sits between the first two novels, to be found in his short-story collection Eye. There appears to be no audiobook of this, so it would need to be read in ebook form. Said to take the form of “a guidebook for pilgrims to the planet Arrakis”. (Update: A Scott Brick / Audio Renaissance audiobook titled “The Road to Dune” was released in 2012 – some say 2005 – but apparently it does not actually contain “The Road to Dune”!).
3. Book 2. Dune Messiah. The unabridged audiobook reading by Scott Brick et al.
4. Book 3. Children of Dune. The unabridged audiobook reading by Scott Brick et al. is the most listen-able.
There is also a Book 4, God Emperor of Dune. It’s by Frank Herbert, rather than some later cash-in writer. But it is widely said to be a rather depressing and dour coda to the original trilogy. It also departs heavily from the style of the core trilogy. As such, you may well be happy with just the original trilogy.
Note that each of the three core books appears to have “Deleted Scenes & Chapters from…” fannish ebook floating around the Internet, which might be looked at after each novel. Some of these are in audio as part of “The Road to Dune” audiobook mentioned above.
“In my youth I was a veritable bicycle centaur” – H.P. Lovecraft.
25 Tuesday Sep 2018
Posted in Odd scratchings
28th October 2018: “Tour de Tentacle”. 65 Weybosset Street, Providence. Booking now. Eastside Monthly reports…
Billed as ‘a weird bike odyssey in Providence’, this collaboration between the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council and Confluence Placemaking begins and ends at dusk at The Arcade [in Providence, Rhode Island] “for a dark cosmic reckoning.” Event organizers promise ‘tentacles and beer’, but note that this is BYOB as in [bring your own] bike.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as cosmic horror
25 Tuesday Sep 2018
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
“Douglas Adams’s” Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as a Representative of Cosmic Horror”, a new B.A. undergraduate dissertation, in English from Hungary. Online and public. At first glance it looks short for a final dissertation, but that’s a trick of the formatting — since it does run to 6,000 words. It puts forward an interesting claim that some of this blog’s readers might want to note…
Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker series is usually labelled as science fiction. [But] Adams abandons the traditional devices of science fiction and because he borrows from cosmic horror, it could be argued that the Hitchhiker series could be considered a representative of cosmic horror.
Listed as relevant factors are:
* “Cosmos as a threatening entity”.
* “Merciful ignorance”.
* “Merciful lack of self-knowledge”.
* “Irony – the effect and technique”.
Howard Days: recording of a panel on the Lovecraft – Howard letters
25 Tuesday Sep 2018
Posted in Historical context, New books, Podcasts etc., REH, Scholarly works
From 2015, a one-hour panel discussion by scholars of the two-volume A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.
Part of Ben Freiberg’s fine and seemingly comprehensive collection of recordings of the ‘Howard Days’ panels and speeches. ‘Howard Days’ look excellent and, as as I’m never likely to get to Texas, a big thanks to Ben for placing clear recordings online.