02 Monday Aug 2010
Posted in New discoveries, Summer School
Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 reading assignment for 2nd August 2010: “Nyarlathotep”.
“Your short assignment today […] Lovecraft’s use of intricately detailed descriptions of sound […] Is his use of cacophony just another way to fully realize his scenes of horror? How does his use of sound relate to the chaos of the Other?”
TASK SEVEN: 2nd August 2010.
Update: superseded by my Aug 2011 Annotated “Nyarlathotep”, with 3,500 words in 70 annotations.
02 Monday Aug 2010
Posted in Podcasts etc.
I’m currently working my way through the first five Lovecraftian Obsession podcasts, the fifth of which has just been released. These are long and intelligent in-depth interviews, by author Rick Dakan, with people who really know their Lovecraft. Very enjoyable.
For other free audio, I also recently found the BBC Radio 3 “Weird Tales” documentary has been nicely fan-illustrated on YouTube.
And if you’re in the UK (and only in the UK, as the BBC website gets all huffy and fascistic if it detects you’re outside the UK) there’s a new 45 minute “In Our Time” round-table on the science and history of the exploration of Antarctica. Much more on the discovery of the science and geology than the human and technological story of the early expeditions, sadly.
02 Monday Aug 2010
Posted in Odd scratchings
Tweeting Cthulhu contest. Nooo! The horror!! Although it seems somehow appropriate to choose the ugliest form of media to celebrate Lovecraft’s 120th birthday on 20th August. Can you convey cosmic horror in 140 characters?
I guess the message would look more Lovecraftian if also presented in the guise of an old fashioned telegram card. Propnomicon kindly has a hi-res Western Union telegram blank (more genuine historical samples here). Interstate-LightCondensed is the font you want for making such telegrams with Photoshop.
[ Hat-tip: Rex Scribarum ]
01 Sunday Aug 2010
Posted in Films & trailers
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3tuiND_xk&hl=en_US&fs=1]
Spliced together by Propnomicon from existing footage (I recognised the Sky Captain bits), but it’s certainly rather effective.
01 Sunday Aug 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
FantasticFest has an interview with the designer of their beautiful Lovecraftian/1970s-retro poster, Mike Saputo…
31 Saturday Jul 2010
Posted in Summer School
Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 reading assignment for 31st July 2010: “The Call of Cthulhu”.
“Your short assignment today […] discuss Lovecraft’s influence on [John] Carpenter’s oeuvre”
TASK Six: 31st July 2010.
I can’t talk about the films of Carpenter because I haven’t seen them, and I generally dislike post-1970 filmed horror unless it’s strongly science-fiction.
What I find much more interesting is the possible influence of the early cinema on Lovecraft. This appears to me to be a very neglected area, judging by my Web searches and searches of Google Books. And yet we know that Lovecraft was an avid cinema goer from the early days of the movies onwards…
“I am a devotee of the motion picture” — letter of 1915.
As far as I can tell from Google Books, this is where Joshi’s definitive biography stops in terms of examining the possible influences from early cinema and newsreels. Lovecraft found Chaplin funny, disliked the 1930s Dracula, end of story. A search of the index of Lovecraft Studies finds one lonely article with “cinema” in its title, and that on “Cinematic Interpretations of the Works”. Zero records are found for “film” and “films” or “motion”. Are Lovecraft scholars in need of a joint symposium with the historians of early fantastic cinema?
31 Saturday Jul 2010
Posted in Scholarly works
S.T. Joshi’s monumental Lovecraft biography I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft should be publishing/shipping in August 2010, or so the Hippocampus Press website says. This book is the sumptuous $100 2-volume hardback of S.T. Joshi’s H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), but in a new edition that adds 150,000 words originally cut for length/cost. Plus the text has been…
“thoroughly revised and updated in light of the new information on Lovecraft that has emerged since 1996”.
Unfortunately those in the UK will have to add a rather hefty $55.95 for standard U.S. Postal Service shipping, more than half the cost of the books themselves(!). At current exchange rates that means a total cost with shipping of £99.95. Expensive, but only 1000 copies will be issued, and one third of the run appears to have already been pre-ordered based on word-of-mouth and forum mentions. And compare that price to the cheapest price for a brand-new copy of the 1996 paperback edition via Amazon UK — currently £42.40 inc. shipping. Or the abridged version of the 1996 text, A Dreamer and a Visionary, which sells for £42.50 new.
No news on any possible future paperback edition. I’m guessing we may only get this definitive hardback edition. Many of which will hopefully go to major libraries around the world, once the reviews and notices hit the library journals.
Hopefully this new book won’t continue the tradition of dreadful cover-art, something that seems to plague Lovecraft books.
31 Saturday Jul 2010
Posted in Scholarly works
If you can read Italian, the new 200-page edition of the scholarly journal Studi Lovecraftiani (#12, July 2010) is free online. For the first time, it seems…
“The move of SL from traditional paper format to an electronic version is an experiment which — it is hoped — will bring new readers. From the next issue, however, we will also return to having a paper version of SL, which will complement the electronic one.”
The PDF text allows copy and paste, so you can run it through Google Translate and/or Babelfish if you want to figure out what’s being said — sadly there are no English summaries of the articles.
And it’s easy enough to get a print-on-demand copy of your PDF edition, via an upload to lulu.com, if you really must have one for your collection.
The ‘new publications’ notes at the end of the volume refer to the essay “Sufi Motifs in the Stories of H.P Lovecraft”, but the text doesn’t provide the PDF link: it’s here.
31 Saturday Jul 2010
Posted in Summer School
One of the many new unknown species being discovered this summer in the deep waters off the coast of Newfoundland…
Click for a larger version.
“Still at sea, a team of Canadian and Spanish researchers is using a remotely operated vehicle called ROPOS for dives off Newfoundland with a maximum depth of about 9,800 feet. The 20-day expedition aims to uncover relationships between cold-water coral and other bottom-dwelling creatures in a pristine yet “alien” environment, according to the researchers’ blog.”
Talking of which, Geeks are Sexy has its Summer Squidwatch report out today.
31 Saturday Jul 2010
Posted in New discoveries, Summer School
Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 reading assignment for 30th July 2010: “The Call of Cthulhu”.
“Your short assignment today […] meditate on what makes Cthulhu the truly definitive Elder God. What, exactly, is the appeal?”
TASK FIVE: 30th July 2010.
The long story “The Call of Cthulhu” famously crystallises his proto-Cthulhu mythos, details it, and introduces the Old Ones.
Possible origins and influences — the 1925 eclipse:
The detailed plot of “Cthulhu” was written in the summer of 1925, while Lovecraft was living in New York. By 1925 New York was a city of over 1,000 towering skyscrapers, and the foundations of 30 more were being laid. This great crucible of modernity was plunged Continue reading
30 Friday Jul 2010
Posted in Housekeeping
I’m pleased to say that the Lovecraft links directory (see the foot of the front page of this blog) now stands at over 250 freshly-collected Web links.
30 Friday Jul 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Sounds like someone’s having a whole lot of fun in Chicago…
“Artists are being sought for the first Summer of Lovecraft Art Show. The event will be 14th August 2010 in the 5800 block of Sixth Avenue, beginning at 4 p.m. The show is similar to Dale “Dr. Destruction” Wamboldt’s annual Dorian Gray art show — “for artists who may not have found a fit at other art venues,” Wamboldt said. The Gypsy Museum of the Macabre will be there, and there will be a Twilight lookalike contest, along with appearances by Dr. Cryptocis, Dedgar Winter and Dr. Destruction. For more information, e-mail crimsontheatre@sbcglobal.net
