The Hindu newspaper profiles S.T. Joshi

31 Saturday Dec 2011

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India’s The Hindu newspaper (their equivalent of the London Times or the New York Times) has a profile of S.T. Joshi…

“Meet S.T. Joshi, prolific scholar and authority on horror and weird fiction. I think it is just fantastic that the greatest and most prolific scholar and bibliographer of horror fiction in the world is an Indian. (I mean, how refreshing to find an Indian scholar working on something other than post-colonial/subaltern studies.)”

Fantasy Scrapbook Animation Competition

30 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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Got monsters? Ray Harryhausen‘s Fantasy Scrapbook Animation Competition…

“Your task is to create a winning storyboard on the theme of monsters for a stop motion animation short — that, when shot, would last between 30 seconds and 3 minutes.”

Deadline: 12th February 2012. Note that they only want the storyboard, so real-time software such as iClone 5 (with its new sketch mode) could easily and quickly produce the stills for such storyboards.

Twas brillig, and the slithy poems did gyre and gimble in the wabe…

30 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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Many will have a horror of poetry. Possibly this was inculcated by being forced to wrestle with Beowulf and Chaucer in school English Literature lessons; then having to endure dire performance poets at “open mic” student nights while at university; and perhaps also by a simple 21st century incomprehension of any media form that does not immediately reveal its meanings. But poetry can have a horror all its own. Evan Peterson mused on the form a few weeks ago, in his article “Intimate Monsters: Examining the Value of Horror in Poetry“. I was inspired by this article to go in search of similar open access articles, and found “Fresh Graves: An Essay On Horror Poetry“; “The Stigma of Horror Poetry“; and “Horror Poetry: Why The Hell Would You Want to Write That Shit?“. There is also a newsletter, Dark Metre: The Free Newsletter For Horror Poetry which was started in 2011 and which has so far produced a laudible 11 issues. I also noticed that there’s a mild debate on ‘can heavy metal music lyrics count as horror poetry?’

Panel Borders, Lovecraft series podcast #4

19 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Podcasts etc.

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Panel Borders concludes its mini-series of podcasts about Lovecraft in the comics, with #4, “Unnamable Horrors in Genre Comics“…

“Concluding our series of shows about H.P. Lovecraft, Alex Fitch talks to three creators who have recently penned comics inspired by his monsters and scenarios. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning talk about adding a Lovecraftian twist to Marvel Superheroes in their titles Realm of Kings and The Thanos Imperative, which feature alternative versions of Captain Marvel and the Avengers possessed by the ‘Many-angled Ones’. Also Ed Brubaker discusses Fatale, his latest collaboration with artist Sean Phillips, following Sleeper, Criminal and Incognito, which mixes noir storytelling with occult ceremonies and tentacle-faced Nazis.”

You know you’re having a Lovecraftian Christmas when…

17 Saturday Dec 2011

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You know you’re having a Lovecraftian Christmas when…

* You read At The Mountains of Madness to get “that snowy Christmas feeling”.

* You fasten your Christmas present parcels with tape printed to look like a tentacle.

* Roasting chestnuts by the fire reminds you of the cultists’ scene in “The Call of Cthulhu”.

* At parties you begin to gibber wildly that Santa is an anagram of Satan.

* Christmas carollers are met at your door by a wreath of mistletoe, ivy and holly twisted into a hideous pre-Christian mask.

* Scrooge seems like a rationalist atheist hero to you…

* Your oddly-shaped Christmas tree is delivered by an in-bred backwoods man, who warns you not to listen to the voices that may come from it.

* You think the Three Wise Men were named Alhazred, Atal, and Kuranes.

* “The Festival” seems like a description of an ideal Christmas with the family.

* You get the North Pole mixed up with the Plateau of Leng.