“The Call of Cthulhu” for the screen

15 Thursday Jun 2023

Posted by in Films & trailers

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James Wan in an interview this week with Bloody Disgusting… “My dream project, that I have been secretly cooking away on the down low for the last five years, is “The Call of Cthulhu””.

I had to look up what he’s done in the past, turns out he’s a Producer rather than a Director. Lots of commercial horror projects in IMDB incuding TV series. He probably has loads of contacts, and looks very capable of doing it.

But these days I’m not that interested in anything new from the corporate media. Because they’re going to find some way to make it Politically Correct, either subtly or just outright spitting-on-the-fans, and so I’d rather give my time to other material.

Into the Nightlands…

14 Wednesday Jun 2023

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works

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S.T. Joshi has a new blog post.

A new second volume from Ken Faig Jr. is reported to be in the offing, More Lovecraftian People and Places. Super.

Joshi reports having a great time at the recent Nightlands festival and he’s joined with the organisers…

We are now planning a much larger event in two years’ time, with panel discussions, perhaps an art show, and much else. In all frankness, we will consciously plan this event as an antidote to the increasingly narrow and hyper-political conventions that now dominate the realms of science fiction and fantasy. We shall have freewheeling discussions (without any attempt to censor unpopular views) and avoid political ranting in its entirety. Let’s see what happens!

Sounds good. He also brings news of a new screen documentary on Lovecraft, Lovecraft’s World, will be appear at the Campus Miskatonic festival in France in November 2023. I assume it may be in French? Or maybe not.

Read the whole post, for much more news.

Pulp fiction of the ’20s and ’30s

13 Tuesday Jun 2023

Posted by in Scholarly works

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New on Archive.org “to borrow”, a scan of Pulp fiction of the ’20s and ’30s (2013). The press appear to have kept it in hardcover only, according to Amazon UK, and it’s now thoroughly out-of-print there. No sign of it on eBay either. Thus, it looks like I’m not dinging anyone’s wallet by linking to it here. The contents include, among others…

* On Pulp Fiction and Weird Tales

* Robert E. Howard and the Creation of the Sword-and-Sorcery Sub-genre

* Cthulhu’s Empire: H.P. Lovecraft’s Influence on His Contemporaries and Successors (Joshi)

* Nostalgia in H.P. Lovecraft

* Henry Kuttner: Often-Overlooked Pillar of the Weird Tale

* The Fantastic Pulp Fiction of Frank Belknap Long

Out Of Mind (1998)

13 Tuesday Jun 2023

Posted by in Films & trailers, Lovecraft as character

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New to me, the well-made film Out Of Mind: The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (1998), now in full on YouTube at 720px…

Made for Canadian television in 1998, the film offers an encounter with Lovecraft and enters into his world. Engaging in a kind of ‘game’ around the writer, the film playfully winks at some of the themes characteristic of his work: the occult, cursed books, monstrous creatures. Out of Mind draws its inspiration from Lovecraft’s personal correspondence and many of his stories, carrying the viewer through a labyrinth ‘beyond the wall of sleep’.

Also to be had on Archive.org. As well as being a 57 minute TV movie it was also released on VHS tape, but Amazon UK knows nothing of it.

Texaco Star & R.E. Howard

12 Monday Jun 2023

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Talman’s Texaco Star trade magazine is online in a full 1913-1963 run, in archival scans at the University of Houston, Texas. This was the official free internal monthly magazine of the Texaco oil company, which he edited from 1930. The run appears to have been placed online in March 2021.

Sadly it can’t be searched across in full-text from a single search-box, and there are no TOCs alongside each issue. But scholars know that it was, under Talman’s editorship, home to some items linked with Weird Tales contributors. There’s a story about Everett McNeil which features him as a character, for instance. Lovecraft talked himself onto the mailing-list by the end of 1930 (for the historical and travel articles), and also considered how he might contribute travelogues. And here’s the Robert E. Howard article from April 1931. He doesn’t get the cover, but I’ve also included the front and back cover for context.

There’s also talk in the Talman letters about a forthcoming Providence article and map in the Star, though I haven’t got that far in the book yet.

Non-Euclidian Lovecraft at Calgary

11 Sunday Jun 2023

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From the University of Calgary, a short online news-puff, “A century later, pulp magazines still leave their mark on genre fiction”. This points out that the University is home to…

The Bob Gibson Collection of Speculative Fiction, which contains more than 28,000 published items, including runs of more than 400 pulp magazines like Weird Tales.

And that this is especially appreciated by…

Dr. Anthony Camara, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of English. […] Camara is currently working on an article about non-Euclidian and higher dimensional geometry in Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House” from the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales.

Meanwhile, over at Northern Illinois University, the Horatio Alger Fellowship for the Study of American Popular Culture.

Dagon and Dr. Emmerson’s Nocturnes

10 Saturday Jun 2023

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The maker of the well-regarded videogame Dagon (September 2021) has revealed his next game, Dr. Emmerson’s Nocturnes, billed as an… “original approach to bringing literature into the interactive medium”.

I see there have also since been two paid DLC add-ons for Dagon, “The Eldrich Box” and “The Little Glass Bottle”. Those who have the free game from 2021, but missed hearing about these, may want to nab them.

The maker has also reported that all of the money made on the paid DLCs for Dagon (an impressive $30k+) has now gone to worthy charities. Yes… even a 30-minute free game, from a tiny Polish studio, can make big money these days on the DLC alone.

Also in games, Learn to Play Call of Cthulhu, Online in June 2023. One seat left, and probably gone by the time you read this. But a nice idea at $15, and with perhaps the potential to raise some money for charity along the way.

The Arcade and the Seekonk

09 Friday Jun 2023

Posted by in Picture postals

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This week on ‘picture postals’, two of Lovecraft’s favourite local places.

‘The Arcade’ which he had known since earliest youth, in a newly colourised stereo picture.

And a very nice scan, also new on eBay, of the driveway along the shore of the Seekonk in Providence. I’d seen this before, but usually as a poor CardCow scan. This scan is excellent.

In Lovecraft’s infant years the drive was then along the shore alongside Swan Point Cemetery. Local ‘calls for action’ confirm this, calling for it to become part of a longer drive. In time this longer drive came, and by Lovecraft’s middle childhood the ride also ran along the shoreline at Blackstone Park. Thus the location of the view is actually about a mile away from his later favourite spot in the wooded bluff above York Pond. But the picture still gives a flavour of the Seekonk, and doubtless he and his pals ventured this far up from Blackstone on occasions.

You’ll recall that it was the Seekonk which gave rise to horrible dreams of it being completely drained to mud and slime, and thus to “Dagon” and the Mythos.

New from Germany

08 Thursday Jun 2023

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News from Germany, translated…

* “The knowledgeable Lovecraft translator Andreas Fliedner and [the publisher] Festa Verlag have now decided to present all of Robert Aickman’s stories in a new translation. A real stroke of luck for the German-reading audience. The first volume, Dark Gates [Dunkle Pforten], was recently published.”

* “From 2nd to 4th June, the Lovecraftian theatre show “The Shadow over Innsmouth – A Tale by Lovecraft” will be performed three times in English at the Brotfabrik in Bonn, Germany.” Supported by the regional Ministry of Culture too, something that here in the UK would likely cause fainting fits among the Sacred Order of the Perpetually Offended — followed by a speedy cancellation of the funding.

* A German audio appreciation of Wilum Pugmire’s Sesqua Valley & Other Haunts.