13 Tuesday Jan 2015
Posted in Podcasts etc.
I recently undertook my quarterly fly-by of BBC Radio 3’s talk based programmes, available online as “listen again…”. Sunday Feature : The Supernatural North and Landmark : 2001: A Space Odyssey are two 45 minute programmes that might appeal to readers of this blog.
12 Monday Jan 2015
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
There’s something rather Lovecraftian about this beautifully filmed short movie of a forest. Not least the bioluminescence, little-seen these days but remarked on by Lovecraft a number of times in his fiction (“dancing death-fires”, “tales of dancing lights in the dark of the moon”, “swarm of corpse-fed fireflies”, “the faint glow of the vegetation”, etc). We don’t tend to see it these days because of light-pollution, electric torches and reflective jackets, and possibly because our eyes are not those of a rural old-timer who’d spent thirty years learning how to navigate a farm in the pitch dark so as to save the cost of lamp oil.
In this case it’s digitally-projected, but gives us a taste of what it might be like if we could see the bioluminescence happening in the web of forest ecology. Details at Bioluminescent Forest (requires Flash).
12 Monday Jan 2015
Posted in Odd scratchings
In relation to 2014’s ‘summer of rage’ over the Lovecraft statuette, this last week saw the publication of two detail analyses of the tactics used. They lay out the leftist ‘attack playbook’ for this sort of emotion-driven attack, over at Spiked magazine and at Slate Star Codex…
It’s in activists’ interests to destroy their own causes by focusing on the most controversial cases and principles, the ones that muddy the waters and make people oppose them out of spite. And it’s in the media’s interest to help them and egg them on.
Too often the “cases” turn out to be simply fabricated, or the inconvenient hard facts quickly become heavily obfuscated, I might add. Overall these tactics are a morbid symptom of the activist left’s weakness and decay, their inability to make and defend rational evidence-based arguments, or to cohere their raggle-taggle bands around more challenging targets. The best defence against such tactics seems to be not to take offense at leftists’ ‘offense’.
12 Monday Jan 2015
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination has grants to…
support undergraduate student projects on imagination. Specifically, projects that will lead to a deeper understanding of imagination as a neuro-cognitive and socio-cultural phenomenon, as well as projects that apply imagination in novel and impactful ways are encouraged. Creative works (art, music, dance, theater, literature, etc…), technology development, or scientific study, in which the role of human imagination is foregrounded are appropriate for the funding. Projects that involve cross disciplinary collaborations are particularly encouraged, and all funded projects are expected to be featured in Clarke Center events and facilities per the timeline below. We anticipate awarding three grants this year.”
Opens 25th January 2015. Fleeing night-dream memories and their potential for having subtle impacts on everyday waking decision behaviors, that would be my choice of a topic. Which would also tie into Lovecraft’s interest in dreams somewhat.
11 Sunday Jan 2015
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Doc Con XVII will be a Doc Savage fan convention in Glendale, Arizona. Apparently set for 17th-19th October 2015.
No news since last summer, it appears, about Sony’s mooted Doc Savage movie. And, given the Sony hack, there may not be for some time. The job might be done better by a lavish 1930s costumed TV mini series, showing 6 x two-parters of the very best 181 original Doc books (1933-1949). And ideally with no modernising tweaks. A quick scoot around the Web suggests The Man of Bronze and The Polar Treasure are two likely candidates… but it seems there’s no handy list to be had with a title like: “The Six Very Best Doc Savage Novels, for those who really don’t want to slog through all 181 titles”.
Though a handy slog-free taster of Doc can be had from the quarterly Doc Savage magazine (1975-1977), oversize b&w ‘mature’ comics with extra-long stories. I remember being very fond of these, pieced together as a collection of used copies picked up from comic shops. They are collected in a huge hardback reprint Doc Savage Archives Volume 1: The Curtis Magazine Era
Oh, and about that time when H.P. Lovecraft let Dent use his settings and monsters? Doc Savage: Madness from the Sea, perhaps…
10 Saturday Jan 2015
Posted in Odd scratchings
Sad to hear that the film actor Rod Taylor has passed away. He had his breakthrough as The Time Traveller in one of my favourite movies, the 1960 George Pal adaptation of Wells’s “The Time Machine”.
Maker of the famous movie, George Pal, at the same controls…
10 Saturday Jan 2015
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
IlluXCon, a fantastic art convention, 21st–25th October 2015 in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
10 Saturday Jan 2015
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, NecronomiCon 2015, Scholarly works
Pulpfest 2015 in Columbus, Ohio from 13th-16th August 2015. Pulpfest 2015 has announced a “H.P. Lovecraft and Weird Tales” theme for 2015. Pulpfest 2015 thus segways rather neatly with NecronomiCon in Providence on 20th-23th August 2015, making for a potential two-week Lovecraft love-in. Three weeks, even, if one were to stay on in Providence to peruse some of the rare treasures of the Lovecraft collection at the John Hay Library and visit some of Lovecraft’s places such as Marblehead.
10 Saturday Jan 2015
Posted in Podcasts etc., REH
Pulp Crazy sneaks into the Tower of the Time and emerges, persued by Giant Apes, clutching a “Conan and The Birth of Sword & Sorcery” panel recording snatched from the jaws of PulpFest 2012…
Rusty Burke, Don Herron, Brian Leno, and John D. Squires discuss the contributions of Robert E. Howard and Conan The Cimmerian to the birth of Sword & Sorcery. Some great overall Robert E. Howard discussion as well.”
08 Thursday Jan 2015
Posted in Odd scratchings
New year, new blog. 2020: Tracking Optimism will track and comment on important expressions of rational optimism. I’ve pump-primed it with a week of posts, and now it’ll just be an ‘occasional’ blog with postings as I happen to find stuff worth talking about.
08 Thursday Jan 2015
Available on Amazon now, The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard : Index and Addenda
Volume One is SOLD OUT; Volumes two and three are still available.
Hopefully there will be a paperback edition in print-on-demand at some point, but the Index‘s author Bobby Derie doesn’t know of any plans for one.
06 Tuesday Jan 2015
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Should you be huddling in Huddersfield, England, this coming Friday…
Friday, January 9, brings something quite different to the Square Chapel audience – an atmospheric evening of horror and fantasy presented by Michael Sabbaton. His one-man show, The Temple, is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s undersea tale of possession and madness and tells the tale of what happens when a strange ivory, carved head comes into the possession of a submarine commander… The show starts at 8pm.”