18 Tuesday Feb 2014
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Am still hoping for paper review copies of the following, from 2013…
David Simmons (ed), New Critical Essays on H. P. Lovecraft.
Steven J Mariconda, H. P. Lovecraft: Art, Artifact, and Reality. (Now on its way to me)
David Goudsward, H. P. Lovecraft in the Merrimack Valley. (Now on its way to me)
Alex Kurtagic, Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature.
Gavin Callaghan, H.P. Lovecraft’s Dark Arcadia: The Satire, Symbology and Contradiction.
18 Tuesday Feb 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Nice bit of fannish art, from the cover of a 1975 vinyl LP…
17 Monday Feb 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
I made a quick whistle-stop tour around the conference listings for 2014…
Brown University Graduate Student Conference on the Monstrous and the Religious Imagination – 28th February 2014, Providence, USA. (No Lovecraft on the roster, oddly).
Pulp Magazine Studies, Popular Culture/American Culture Association National Conference – 16th-21st April 2014, Chicago, USA.
Monstrous Geographies, 14th-16th May 2014, Lisbon, Portugal.
The Power of the Monstrous, 26th-27th June 2014, University of London, UK.
Visualizing Fantastika: an interdisciplinary conference – 4th July 2014, Lancaster, UK
Fear, Horror & Terror: Rituals, Myths and Symbolism – 11th-13th September 2014, Oxford, UK.
A Fiend in the Furrows – Perspectives on ‘Folk Horror’ in Literature, Film & Music – 19th-21th September 2014. Queen’s University Belfast, UK.
17 Monday Feb 2014
Posted in Historical context
Geek Mountain State (tracking Vermont’s inner geek) has details of a Lovecraft talk on the 20th Feb 2014…
15 Saturday Feb 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Massive online gallery of Lovecraft tattoos. As far as I could see, no-one has yet had Innsmouth gills tattooed on their neck.
15 Saturday Feb 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
* Andrea Franzoni (2014), “From the Sea to Deep Space: the Leviathan in Herman Melville, Stefano D’Arrigo and Howard P. Lovecraft”, Disputatio Philosophica, Vol.15 No.1, 2014. (“…these three contemporary authors summon the Leviathan as the possibility to create a new order in the World: an attempt whose only possible outcome is a failure”. The Lovecraft section is rather short and cursory. Part of a special journal issue on evil and the monstrous)
* Harlan Morehouse (2013), Untitled. Review of Ben Woodard’s On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy, Society and Space journal website, undated.
* Rory Rowan (2013), Undermining the Ends of the Earth. Review of Ben Woodard’s On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy, Society and Space journal website, undated.
* Jordan K. Skinner (2013), A Philosophical Topology. Review of Ben Woodard’s On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy, Society and Space journal website, undated.
* Ben Woodard (2013) Response: Terrestrial Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness, Society and Space journal website, undated. (Response to three reviews of Woodard’s book On an Ungrounded Earth, reviews which appeared on the Society and Space journal website).
15 Saturday Feb 2014
Posted in Podcasts etc.
Iggy Pop explores the life and work of William S. Burroughs, in an hour long documentary tonight on BBC Radio 4 and online via the BBC Radio “Listen Again” service. I doubt he’ll be heavily flagged up as a possible Lovecraft disciple, and Burroughs never admitted on the record to a strong influence from Lovecraft, but I guess there might be a passing mention of the seeming influence.
15 Saturday Feb 2014
Due in April/May 2014, a glossy photobook documenting the pet cats of heavy metal musicians…
14 Friday Feb 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Podcasts etc.
14 Friday Feb 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
Popping up on the blog-dar today: Graham Harman was at Rice University yesterday…
“Harman’s [Lovecraft tinged] philosophy [the OOO variety of the new Speculative Realism] does not distinguish categorically between humans and nonhuman or life and matter. Drawing on Heidegger, Harman extends phenomenology’s account of the relation between human beings and the world to objects and the relations among objects.”
No video. But here’s a Dec 2013 talk by Harman I found, so decide what it all means for yourself…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK-5XOwraQo&w=560&h=315]
I mostly fail to see the usefulness or point of modern academic philosophy, possibly because I’m not trained in it but also because its hair-splitting concerns seem so utterly arcane. But for my own amusement I’ve just attempted at a quick translation of the above-linked Wikipedia page section. At first glance Harman’s core ideas seem to me rather like a standard semiotics framework, shunted sideways into the language and categories of contemporary philosophy. Here’s what I can make out, in as plain an English as I can manage…
* Real physical objects are made up of complex combinations of objects, sub-objects, materials, and forces.
* Real physical objects exist amid complex landscapes of other real objects and physical forces.
* Amid such ramifying complexity, most humans find it useful to imbue a real physical object with a shorthand mental caricature of it.
* We use these shorthand mental caricatures to engage with real physical objects, just as much as we use our eyes / fingers / ears.
* These shorthand mental caricatures about objects exist and operate within culture and language, where they tend to interbreed and mutate over time.
So, let’s try that on a real world instance: a suspension bridge across water can be both a real physical object and a cultural form. The bridge is imagined and designed, and as such it is undoubtedly a cultural form. Yet once constructed, the bridge is also undoubtedly a real physical object. Yet the real bridge rapidly becomes a shorthand mental caricature, part of a more complex symbolic landscape of nation, city, travel, speed, ambition, work and commerce, structural elegance, the alluring sublimity of weather and light at play over a large human structure, etc. But this complex web of symbolic meaning is not enough to keep the bridge aloft: since we only wish to actually cross the bridge if it can be shown to rest on immutable and objectively-real laws of physics and geometry. In this sense the bridge also rests in part on the accumulated historical labour of many human minds, those special men who in the past discovered the countless correct object-combinations needed to build such a bridge. The bridge also replicates itself physically into the future, as designers and engineers are inspired by it to create new structures elsewhere. Poets and artists may likewise develop the bridge’s symbolic meanings, long after it has been dismantled or has fallen into the river and decayed to rust, weakened by the implacable web of objects and forces — weather, wind, waves, tide, rain, human use and neglect/repair, accident, barnacle attack — in which the bridge was placed.
I’ve not looked in any depth at the new Lovecraft-inspired philosophy before, but (judging by Wikipedia and a video, and some vague memories of a couple of book reviews) one of the most interesting things the OOO variety of speculative realism appears to ask is: what happens when real objects autonomously interact and recombine? Especially when objects are able to autonomously develop interactions that lie beyond human symbolic meanings (perhaps initially via some kind of embedded generative/emergent semantic artificial intelligence, I’m guessing?) Thus OOO seems relevant to autonomous generative emergence in nature (the wheeling flight of many flocking birds, complex weather systems, population dynamics over time, and even weirdly unknowable deep earth-crust ecologies), and also to autonomous emergence in new human technologies (AI singularities, unstoppable grey nano-slime, online bot ecologies, etc). Most of which emerge relatively independent of us, and appears to care little or nothing for us.
Hence Lovecraft, presumably: unspeakable knowledge about unknowable realities; the cosmic indifference exhibited by nature and time, in terms of the fate of man; the arcane trajectories of unfeeling inhuman conspiracies; and the frailty of the human mind when faced with knowledge that such things can exist without reference to us.
10 Monday Feb 2014
Posted in Odd scratchings
Robert M. Price again recommended the series Babylon 5 on The Lovecraft Geek podcast, and he mused on the idea that its key plot themes could be seen as rather Lovecraftian. So that’s enough to encourage me to have another try at viewing this famous SF series. There are five seasons and five movies, so I may be away for some time… 🙂
I have tried Babylon 5 before. About two years ago I made the mistake of going into the first season “straight”. I slogged through about 11 or 12 episodes, before giving up. That’s apparently about as far as most people get, unable to face another twelve weary episodes of the same. The problem is mainly in the slabs of excruciating “problem-of-the-week” self-contained episodes, which I remember as being made worse by creaky dialogue and some even creakier early-90s political tub-thumping. Viewing the main story arc in season one is, regrettably, vital for later understanding and enjoyment. But the series becomes much better in season two, and by three and four it is generally acclaimed as some of the best TV SF ever screened.
But I never made it that far. I also made the newbie mistake of watching the pilot movie, followed by the very first episode. Different actors play the same characters in these two, and this proved a really jarring way to ease into a long series. That’s why I list (below) the pilot movie The Gathering as “optional”.
The chronological viewing order that follows is the result of an hour or so of research and comparing viewing-order lists, and also skip lists, and it doesn’t contain spoilers. (Update: I also tweaked it slightly, after I had finished watching it all).
BABYLON 5: LIST OF THE COMPLETE VIEWING ORDER
* “SKIP” = “…but read the plot on the episode’s Wikipedia page” — taking great care not to look at the “Arc significance” section which is often filled with massive spoilers which reach across seasons.
* 
= “viewed out of broadcast sequence”.
Pilot:
OPTIONAL 1×00: The Gathering, The pilot movie. Note it also had a TNT 1998 special edition, with 14 mins extra and better pacing. Perhaps best watched between 1×08 and 1×13.
Season 1:
1×01: Midnight on the Firing Line
SKIP 1×02: Soul Hunter (tries to set up a key character, but has her act out of character)
1×03: Born to the Purple (sets up a key character)
SKIP 1×04: Infection
1×05: The Parliament of Dreams (bad, but establishes key character bonds)
1×06: Mind War
SKIP 1×07: The War Prayer
1×08: And the Sky Full of Stars
SKIP 1×09: Deathwalker
SKIP 1×10: Believers
SKIP 1×11: Survivors
OPTIONAL 1×12: By Any Means Necessary
1×13: Signs and Portents
SKIP 1×14: TKO
SKIP 1×15: Grail
SKIP 1×16: Eyes
1×18: A Voice in the Wilderness (1)
1×19: A Voice in the Wilderness (2)
1×20: Babylon Squared
SKIP 1×21: The Quality of Mercy
1×17: Legacies (not vital, but sets up the season finale)
1×22: Chrysalis
To consolidate your understanding of the Babylon 5 universe, the Season One DVD set has a “Universe of Babylon 5” overview extras set (spoiler free, once the first season has been viewed), with video profiles of key characters, technological innovations, and political and historical details introduced so far. Plus a brief tour of the space station itself, and its levels. If you really feel you have to skip the whole of season one for some reason (maybe you saw it a while back), then Tuning In To SciFi has an excellent five-minute video summary of the season.
The first few episodes of Season 2 get rather creaky, as the series re-orients itself. But stick with it…
Season 2:
2×01: Points of Departure
2×02: Revelations
2×03: The Geometry of Shadows
SKIP 2×04: A Distant Star
2×05: The Long Dark
2×06: Spider in the Web
SKIP 2×07: Soul Mates
2×08: A Race Through Dark Places
2×09: The Coming of Shadows
SKIP 2×10: GROPOS
2×11: All Alone in the Night
SKIP 2×12: Acts of Sacrifice
2×13: Hunter, Prey
SKIP 2×14: There All the Honor Lies
SKIP 2×15: And Now for a Word
2×17: Knives
2×16: In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum
2×18: Confessions and Lamentations
2×19: Divided Loyalties
2×20: The Long Twilight Struggle
2×21: Comes the Inquisitor
2×22: The Fall of Night
Season 3:
3×01: Matters of Honor
3×02: Convictions
3×03: A Day in the Strife
3×04: Passing Through Gethsemane
3×05: Voices of Authority
3×06: Dust to Dust
3×07: Exogenesis
3×08: Messages from Earth (1 of 3)
3×09: Point of No Return (2 of 3)
3×10: Severed Dreams (3 of 3)
3×11: Ceremonies of Light and Dark
3×13: A Late Delivery from Avalon
3×12: Sic Transit Vir
3×14: Ship of Tears
3×15: Interludes and Examinations
3×18: Walkabout
3×16: War Without End (1)
3×17: War Without End (2)
3×19: Grey 17 Is Missing
3×20: And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place
3×21: Shadow Dancing
3×22: Z’ha’dum
Season 4:
4×01: The Hour of the Wolf
4×02: What Ever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?
4×03: The Summoning
4×04: Falling Towards Apotheosis
4×05: The Long Night
4×06: Into the Fire
4×07: Epiphanies
4×08: The Illusion of Truth
Movie: Thirdspace
4×09: Atonement
4×10: Racing Mars
4×11: Lines of Communication
4×12: Conflicts of Interest
4×13: Rumors, Bargains and Lies
4×14: Moments of Transition
4×15: No Surrender, No Retreat
4×16: Exercise of Vital Powers
4×17: The Face of the Enemy
4×18: Intersections in Real Time
4×19: Between the Darkness and the Light
4×20: Endgame
4×21: Rising Star
!!! NOT THE FINAL 4×22 (it should be viewed later)
Season 5:
5×01: No Compromises
5×02: The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari
5×03: The Paragon of Animals
5×04: A View from the Gallery
5×05: Learning Curve
5×06: Strange Relations
5×07: Secrets of the Soul
5×09: In the Kingdom of the Blind
5×10: A Tragedy of Telepaths
5×11: Phoenix Rising
5×12: The Ragged Edge
5×08: Day of the Dead
5×13: The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father
5×14: Meditations on the Abyss
5×15: Darkness Ascending
5×16: And All My Dreams Torn Asunder
5×17: Movements of Fire and Shadow (1 of 2)
5×18: The Fall of … (2 of 2)
5×19: The Wheel of Fire
5×20: Objects in Motion
5×21: Objects at Rest
!!! NOT the FINAL 5×22 (it should be viewed later)
Movie: River of Souls
Movie: The Legend of the Rangers (a rather poor movie)
Movie: A Call to Arms (sets up the Crusade series that follows)
Crusade spin-off series: (optional, all are out of broadcast sequence)
Crusade 1×09: Racing the Night
Crusade 1×11: The Needs of Earth
Crusade 1×10: The Memory of War
Crusade 1×02: The Long Road
Crusade 1×12: Visitors from Down the Street
Crusade 1×03: The Well of Forever
Crusade 1×13: Each Night I Dream of Home
Crusade 1×05: Patterns of the Soul
Crusade 1×04: The Path of Sorrows
Crusade 1×06: Ruling from the Tomb
Crusade 1×07: The Rules of the Game
Crusade 1×01: War Zone
Crusade 1×08: Appearances and Other Deceits
[Unfilmed final episodes for Crusade]
[The Memory of Shadows, a failed, shelved theatrical feature film — read up on the plot idea online]
6×01: The Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark (a special one-shot DVD)
Novo Babylonia: a fan audio series (optional). A free and unauthorised audio-only B5 series. Amateur cast. Only a few episodes left, at Feb 2014, to complete the series. Fits into the overall story arc after 6×01: The Lost Tales. Download.
Movie: In the Beginning
5×22: Sleeping in Light
4×22: The Deconstruction of Falling Stars
There are also a number of fill-in-the-gaps authorized novels, short stories written by the Babylon 5 showrunner, and an 11-issue run of DC comic books, that all help fill out the story if you’re still anxious for more. The Correctness blog seems to have done a ton of work making a good short timeline that shows exactly where the novels fit into the overall arc chronology (warning: has spoilers!!).
There are also print encyclopedias in paperback: The Babylon File: The Definitive, Unauthorised Guide (as Vol. 1 and Vol. 2). There is also the “100% canon” Babylon 5 Encyclopedia: Complete Set (2019). What the relationship may be between The Babylon File and Babylon 5 Encyclopedia, I don’t know. Possibly the latter was a repackaging and re-titling of the former? But having either may be especially useful for those writing fan fiction set in the B5 universe.
09 Sunday Feb 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
Following the recent Robert M. Price podcast, and its musings on the most Lovecraftian of Stephen King’s stories, I listened to the free 90-minute professional audio reading of “Jerusalem’s Lot”. It, and some King I tried in the past, doesn’t make me inclined to plough through the rest of King. It seems to confirm various sentiments I’ve heard to the effect that most of his work is turgid, ersatz, simple, without any real style, hugely over-padded and generally fit only for the more uncritical end of the post-1970s modern horror readership. But I was pleased to find it at least tries to be a neat remix of a number of Lovecraft stories, while sustaining a Lovecraftian feel, tone, and setting throughout. Five marks out of ten for trying, at least.
What it fails to port over from Lovecraft: his close attention to period architectural details; his skill with the dialect of remote rustic types; the deft interweaving of his own autobiographical detail; the use of his deep chorographic topophilia to bring veracity and psychological depth to descriptions of the New England landscape. King’s addition of small touches of ‘the cosmic’ also feel forced and are just tacked on as afterthoughts. If this is really the most cogently Lovecraftian story he can muster, then the rest must be mediocre at best.
