Pre-Kong fantasy films

09 Monday Aug 2010

Posted by in Films & trailers, Historical context

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A new list of early fantasy/horror films that might have influenced Lovecraft…

King Kong – The Eighth Wonder Of The World [1933]

Frankenstein [1931]

Dracula [1931] ~ Bela Lugosi

Man Who Laughs, The (1928) ~ Mary Philbin

Metropolis [1927] ~ Brigitte Helm

Faust [1926] ~ Gosta Ekman

The Lost World [1925] ~ Wallace Beery

The Phantom Of The Opera [1925] ~ Lon Chaney

Hands of Orlac [1924] ~ Conrad Veidt

Die Nibelungen [1924]

Waxworks [1924] ~ Emil Jannings

The Hunchback of Notre Dame [1923] ~ Lon Chaney

Man From Beyond, The [1922] ~ Harry Houdini

Nosferatu [1921] ~ Max Schreck

Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde [1920] ~ John Barrymore III

The Phantom Carriage [1920] ~ Victor Sjostrom

Der Golem [1920] ~ Paul Wegener

Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari [1919] ~ Werner Krauss

Le Voyage Dans La Lune

H.P. Lovecraft search engine.

08 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by in Housekeeping

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You can now search all the 250+ websites linked in my 2010 “Lovecraft on the web” directory (see below). I made a basic on-the-fly Google Custom Search Engine for all the links. It’s not as good as a proper Google CSE, but it’ll filter out most of the junk you’d pick up in a normal Google search.

After about three pages of custom results, you’ll be thrown back into the main Google search results. You may see Google’s AdWords ads, if you don’t run an ad-blocker add-on.

Lovecraft Annual 4

08 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by in Scholarly works

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Hippocampus Press is listing the scholarly Lovecraft Annual No. 4 (August 2010) as available for their checkout.

Table of Contents:

Lovecraft’s “The Bride of the Sea” and the Uses of Bathos | Manuel Pérez-Campos

Following “The Ancient Track” | Jonathan Adams

Letters to Carl Ferdinand Strauch | H. P. Lovecraft

Appendix: A Library Goes Regionalist | Carl F. Strauch

The Construction of Race in the Early Poetry of H. P. Lovecraft | Phillip A. Ellis

The Ecstasies of “The Thing on the Doorstep,” “Medusa’s Coil,” and Other Erotic Studies | Robert H. Waugh

Notes on a Nonentity | H. P. Lovecraft

In Memoriam: Dr. Harry K. Brobst (1909–2010) | Christopher M. O’Brien

Time, Space, and Natural Law: Science and Pseudo-Science in Lovecraft | S. T. Joshi

Lovecraft’s jackets

08 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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A week ago I wrote of S.T. Joshi’s monumental Lovecraft biography I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft…

“Hopefully this new book won’t continue the tradition of dreadful cover-art, something that seems to plague Lovecraft books.”

Now, news of the jacket design, courtesy of W.H. Pugmire on the SFF Forum…

“S.T. shew’d me the jackets and they are wonderful. Each has the Shunned House on Benefit Street in the background. The photo of young HPL on Volume One is the same that Ellen used for Lovecraft Unbound, and then for [ Volume ] II there is an older HPL in a photo that is S. T.’s favourite image of the author. […] official release later this month.”

I must say that I’ve plundered my PayPal account to buy a copy (there go the profits on selling my self-published books for the last six months…) and am greatly looking forward to being able to start reading the two volumes. I’ve been able to read parts of the Life via Google Books, and they’re fascinating.

Lovecraft at sunset

07 Saturday Aug 2010

Posted by in Astronomy, Historical context

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The Boston Globe‘s “Star Watch” astronomy column has a charming column today on Lovecraft…

“Around 1893, when the poet and horror-story writer H.P. Lovecraft was a very young child, his mother took him at sunset to a bridge in Newton’s Auburndale district spanning the train tracks where the Massachusetts Turnpike now roars. The golden scene of the town’s Victorian roofs and tree-covered hills, under fantastic cities of clouds stretching to unknown glowing dreamlands, imprinted the precocious writer with a sense of wonder, expectancy, and mystical longing that, he said, drove his work for the rest of his life.”

Possibly this sunset was made especially intense by an unknown volcanic eruption…

“The erupting volcanoes that were responsible for the small atmospheric disturbances of 1890 and 1893 have never been definitely identified” — Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 101.

Perhaps his mother remembered the spectacular skies that resulted after the great eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, and jumped at the chance of having her son experience a similar spectacular sunset.

Vacation Necronomicon School – final assignment

07 Saturday Aug 2010

Posted by in Summer School

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Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 assignment for 7th August 2010: “Final Creative Task”.

“Your long-term assignment — the end to our expedition — is to create your own Lovecraftian composition. It can be a short story, a poem, or some other creative work that expresses your personal interpretation of the genre.”

TASK TWELVE: 7th August 2010.

THE MONOLITHS UNDER THE SEA.

Being a new Lovecraftian tale and a prequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu”.

Download the printable PDF file + 35-minute audio-book reading (33Mb, .zip file).

My new short story has been crafted for the Vacation Necronomicon School. It is constructed around a scaffolding made of appropriated public-domain materials. These date from between 1859 and 1893 — one unpublished letter, a magazine article, and two hardly-known short stories by very obscure authors (full details at the end of the story). I have blended these sources together, generally rewritten sections, tinkered, cut ruthlessly, rearranged, and have added my own words to fill any resulting gaps. In this experiment I take my cue from Lovecraft himself, who once wrote in a letter of March 1933…

“Someone ought to go over the cheap magazines and pick out story-germs which have been ruined by popular treatment; then getting the authors’ permission and actually writing the stories.”

I hope the story also expresses the discoveries I’ve made on this summer school, about just how much Lovecraft was an expert collage-ist of his many diverse borrowings and inspirations.

Enjoy!

Vacation Necronomicon School – assignment eleven

07 Saturday Aug 2010

Posted by in Summer School

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Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 reading assignment for 6th August 2010: “Recommending Lovecraft”.

“Your assignment for today is [ to] explain which story you would recommend to someone unfamiliar with Lovecraft’s [ literary ] work. Which story seems most accessible to the new reader? Which do you think makes a good introduction, and why? Explain in 200 words or less.”

TASK ELEVEN: 6th August 2010.

“The Cats of Ulthar”: written 15th June 1920.

I would probably recommend the short story “The Cats of Ulthar”, for a newcomer to Lovecraft and to “weird horror”. This perfectly-formed early tale is in Lovecraft’s dream-cycle, and was one of his personal favourites. And can one possibly be a Lovecraft reader if one dislikes or detests cats? Affinity for the Felidae is surely the litmus-test Lovecraft himself would have applied to his readers — had Weird Tales ever been printed on a sort of “psychic paper” or somesuch. The story’s geography has a faint Tolkien flavour, and the medieval swamp-gothic atmosphere is somewhat akin to the fantasy RPG videogame The Witcher (PC, 2008). These are surely factors which might encourage a new reader coming to Lovecraft from a diet of quality fantasy media. The story is also short, the language is clear, and the ending is memorable. And did I mention it features cats? Lots of cats. The mountain-sized unspeakable mountains of slime and wings, and the tentacle-tangles of eldritch language, can all come later on in a reader’s encounter with Lovecraft. Bring on the kitties!