John Couthart’s comic book adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu (collected in The Starry Wisdom), reviewed at Robot 6, plus a short interview with Couthart.
John Couthart interviewed
04 Thursday Nov 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
The Valdemar Heresy
04 Thursday Nov 2010
Posted in Films & trailers, Lovecraftian arts
Trailer for Spanish Lovecraftian movie La Herencia Valdemar (2010), apparently currently looking for a US distributor and translator…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-vBOgY2Bk&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3]
From a Spanish interview with the director, one of Spain’s major talents…
Q: “The Valdemar Inheritance” is based on the Lovecraft universe. Is not this an unknown writer [the journo means ‘in Spain’, presumably]?
“It may be unknown to the [Spanish] public, but for those addicted to the genre it should be a compulsory piece of homage to the creator who showed us how the best horror can be done; complex but full of imagination. It was a joy to portray this vision, although it was not developed from any particular book by Lovecraft.”
Barring the Unforeseen
04 Thursday Nov 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
A Village Voice review of a New York stage monologue…
“Why are we compelled to tell scary stories? And why do we love listening to them, nerves on edge, quivering with terrible anticipation? These questions are at the center of master storyteller Mike Daisey’s eerie new solo piece, Barring the Unforeseen. […] Starting with an anecdote about an illicit séance he and some friends staged in horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s former Brooklyn apartment — where Lovecraft lost his mind for the second time…”
I Am shipping
29 Friday Oct 2010
Posted in New books
My copy of I Am Providence : the life and times of H. P. Lovecraft is on the way…
“This shipping notification is being sent to you by the U.S. Postal Service…”
I’d like to think the book is making its way across the Atlantic in the dark and slimy hold of an aged tramp steamer, accompanied by wild-eyed Norwegian sailors. But possibly not. I’m hoping to be opening the package in about two weeks.
The City in the Sea
26 Tuesday Oct 2010
Posted in Historical context
One of the illustrations for The poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1900), by Heath Robinson…
Fiction mags links-list updated
26 Tuesday Oct 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
The “fiction magazines” links-list, over on the right-hand sidebar of this blog, has been updated with a clutch of new titles. Now more than 30 magazines listed.
GalleryNucleus show now online
24 Sunday Oct 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Pictures of all the works in the new At the Mountains of Madness: a tribute to the writings of Lovecraft gallery show are now online.
New H.G. Wells bibliography on The Time Machine
24 Sunday Oct 2010
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
Those interested in the possible influence of H.G. Wells on H.P. Lovecraft (Victorian pessimism about the ultimate fate of man in the light of advanced science and the unsustainability of religious belief, degeneration of the race, seamless blendings of horror and science fiction, the uncertainty of perception and world-understanding on the part of the scientific/rational narrator, tentacles, etc) might be interested that I’ve just published a Selected Bibliography of Scholarship on H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine (PDF link, 220Kb). I undertook it as part of creating a new 18,000 word novelette The Time Machine: a sequel for the Amazon Kindle Store.
Another Lovecraftian postcard
21 Thursday Oct 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Another of my fun Lovecraftian postcards, this time photo-montaged from Creative Commons elements by: Playingwithbrushes; Barnaby; MrsMinifig; Tambako the Jaguar; and geishaboy500.
“Samples from the Greenland Expedition, 1856”
A bit heavy on the sun-faded look, I think. There’s also a darker version…
Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book, written
21 Thursday Oct 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book of unwritten story ideas, written up as about 25 new stories…
“I put together a pool of writers from across the country, ranging from playwrights to improv actors to magazine editors to internet comedy writers, and I gave them all the same simple proposal: I would use a random number generator to assign them one of the Lovecraft ideas. They would then write, with the only limitation being that they fulfil all aspects of the idea they were given.”
Lovecraft’s full original list is available here or as a PDF here. Just one example…
“Adventures of a disembodied spirit — thro’ dim, half-familiar cities and over strange moors — thro’ space and time — other planets and universes in the end.”
Innsmouth Free Press #5
21 Thursday Oct 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Fifth issue of Innsmouth Free Press is out now. The full PDF issue is here (1.8Mb), and has superb cover by M.S. Corley.
Fish-frogs
20 Wednesday Oct 2010
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts
Frog-people of Innsmouth? An old illustration of degenerative inbreeding…
“There certainly is a strange kind of streak in the Innsmouth folks today – I don’t know how to explain it but it sort of makes you crawl. You’ll notice a little in Sargent if you take his bus. Some of ’em have queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, starry eyes that never seem to shut, and their skin ain’t quite right. Rough and scabby, and the sides of the necks are all shriveled or creased up. Get bald, too, very young. The older fellows look the worst – fact is, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a very old chap of that kind. Guess they must die of looking in the glass! Animals hate ’em – they used to have lots of horse trouble before the autos came in.” — Shadow over Innsmouth.