20 Monday May 2013
Posted in Historical context
New topographical article tracing one of Lovecraft’s 1924 excursions, “Chasing Lovecraft on Staten Island”.
Above: the scary-looking Staten Island steam train, 1925. Possibly the “wheezy accommodation train” Lovecraft used. Seeing photos like this makes one realise that Lovecraft still had one foot in the steam age.
19 Sunday May 2013
Posted in Odd scratchings
World map of all cats known to be resident in libraries, and the Library Journal article that led me to it.
18 Saturday May 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
New stage play, Stephen Near’s Monstrous Invisible, which…
“tells the relatively unknown story of [H.P. Lovecraft’s] brief courtship, marriage and subsequent divorce to a woman named Sonia Greene.”
23rd-25th May 2013 at Theatre Aquarius in Canada.
17 Friday May 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
17 Friday May 2013
Posted in Historical context
Found online, a couple of photographs of Lovecraft that I don’t remember seeing before…
1. Lovecraft in a sunny nook at the side of the Van Wickle Gates (built 1901) at Brown University…
2. Probably 1922 on the cliffs at Magnolia, specifically the rocks above Rafe’s Chasm…
17 Friday May 2013
Posted in Historical context
Neat timeline by Alfred Hamilton Barr, Jr. of the movements in modernist abstract art during Lovecraft’s lifetime. The influence of the archaic primitive Greek sculptures collected by Ruskin might be added to the influences alongside “Negro Sculpture”.
16 Thursday May 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
The Young Man of Providence is a 43-minute BBC Radio dramatised documentary on Lovecraft, dug up from Halloween 1983 and online as an mp3. It’s a mix of narrated documentary and his letters, with occasional fragments from the stories read by old-school actors and mixed with excellent FX. The best Lovecraft documentary, I’d say, although not perfect. I wonder if it might be worked up into an unofficial fan-film documentary? It could be carefully expanded into a feature-length movie by inserting new narration-free sections (contemplative Ken Burns-style pans across archival materials / evocative landscapes / old haunts / Jarman-esque dream-montages) to slacken the galloping pace that the format of a 40-minute radio programme necessarily enforced on the producers.
Above: Lovecraft at 10 Barnes St. (1926-1933) by Cortney Skinner.
15 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in 3D, Lovecraftian arts
Need Cthulhu to do your bidding? No need to mess around with The Neconomicon and star-charts. The excellent Cthulhu Rising 3D model is currently 40% off, at $20.97. It’s a 3D digital model that you can pose and light and render (i.e. make a picture of) using the free DAZ Studio 3D software. Images made with him are royalty-free.
There’s also a range of other Lovecraftian monsters available, and even a 3D Lovecraft himself.
15 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian places
More Lovecraftian places that really exist…
Abandoned entrance, Sweden.
One-mile long abandoned tunnel under College Hill, Providence, New England.
Cheve Cave, Mexico.
The Windsor Ruins, Mississippi.
Ruins from the Old Kingdom (5000 years ago), North Faiyum Desert, Egypt.
Underwater excavation of Cleopatra’s ancient temple, off the coast of Egypt.
Presidential Library, Arkansas.
Pyramid in St. Anne’s Churchyard, Limehouse, London.
Tower at Laguna Beach.
14 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
David Rose’s “The Mycologically Strange: fungi and myxomycetes in surrealism, fantasy, and science fiction (Part 2)”, Fungi, Vol.2:3, Summer 2009, pp.20-34. A breathless overview of 20th century literary uses of fungi. Part two briefly notes Lovecraft’s work. Part one is here.
14 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Bill Coberly has a long and interesting essay on “The Call of Leviathan: Mass Effect and Lovecraft” at The Ontological Geek. Warning: big plot spoilers for Mass Effect 3, and the Mass Effect 3 DLC “Leviathan”.
I bailed out of the Mass Effect trilogy at the end of the excellent first PC game, put off by press reports that the second game would do that “so 2009, dude…” thing of making the game experience dark and gloomy and depressing. I don’t remember the first game as being Lovecraftian, other than perhaps the cosmic levels of boredom induced by its bad DLC episodes. But with its sumptuous SF settings and excellent reviews, cosmic sweep and official God Mode, and the “Call of Cthulhu”-like DLC episode “Leviathan”, I might give Mass Effect 3 a try at some point this year.
11 Saturday May 2013
Posted in Fonts, Lovecraftian arts
Ann Megg Arbotante’s Tentacle Alphabet (2013), which doesn’t yet appear to have become a digitised font… a Kickstarter needed to make it so, perhaps?
