“Of his madness many things are told…”

17 Monday Apr 2023

Posted by in Lovecraft as character, Scholarly works

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A new consideration of Lovecraft’s own “psychopathologie” and also a survey of “the various diagnoses that have been issued” for him posthumously. Regrettably the new article in the journal L’Evolution Psychiatrique is both in French and behind a paywall. But there’s a generous sampling for free and in HTML, which means Google Translate can be used. The author concludes that not only did Lovecraft keep madness at bay by writing it out in various ways…

Writing is for him an addictive, continuous, protective and necessary exercise: he never stops writing.

But that he also embarked on…

an extraordinary journey of self-therapy

A Suitable Flesh / Dredge

16 Sunday Apr 2023

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Nightmare on Film Street reveals a new big-screen Lovecraft adaptation by director Joe Lynch…

“The thing that I loved about this particular script, which was originally based on the Lovecraft short story ‘The Thing on The Doorstep’, was the lineage involved … Brian Yuzna is one of our producers, who produced Re-Animator, and From Beyond, and directed Society. Dennis Paoli who wrote those movies, wrote this script.”

Sounds promising, and I see he has a half dozen big-screen movies to his credit. The title of the new movie is A Suitable Flesh, and it seems it hasn’t yet screened at a film festival. With Barbara Crampton.

Update: It will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2023.

Elsewhere, RPGFan reviews the much-touted Lovecraftian videogame Dredge…

While not a hardcore gaming experience, Dredge certainly sates the thirst for Lovecraftian vibes. … Authentically Lovecraftian.

Just one of an ongoing tidal wave of Lovecraftian games, including the newly remade mystery Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.

The Story of Saxon and Norman Britain Told in Pictures

15 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by in Historical context, Scholarly works

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New on Archive.org, a key ‘picture-book history’ from a series that Lovecraft collected and enjoyed after he saw some of them offered at budget prices in the local Woolworth store. The upload of The Story of Saxon and Norman Britain Told in Pictures (1935) is of a good clear scan, and the 122Mb PDF file is freely available for download.

Also uploaded a few months ago “to borrow”, another in the series, The Story of Tudor and Stuart Britain Told in Pictures.

“The requisite impression of lurking terror…”

14 Friday Apr 2023

Posted by in Picture postals

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I’m still not feeling 100%, what with a lurking and persistent cough. So this week’s ‘picture postals from Lovecraft’ is a quickie and actually a rubbing. A ‘brass rubbing’ as they’ve often known, or a ‘grave rubbing’ when done from stone.

Last I heard such things were frowned on by Lovecraft’s cemetery, even when using specialist soft-wax and paper materials that don’t damage or mark his plain grave-marker. But a while back such rubbings could be found listed on eBay. Above is a pleasing and clear one I snagged then, now able to be enlarged a bit by AI.

I’m uncertain if Lovecraft ever habitually ventured into Swan Point Cemetery for walks while alive, though he certainly anticipated the outcome of his…

ancient plan of shuffling off to a Swan Point subterranean repose. […] among the sepulchres of Clark ancestors extending back to 1711. Green wooded slopes rise beside the mournful spot, and close by is a great hollow tree inhabited by a woodpecker

I seem to recall he didn’t favour it as a destination for walks, other than that fateful walk on a “June day in 1917” which began his weird fiction writing career. But if he ever did explore properly then this spot then would have surely attracted his attention. The cemetery’s “rock garden” overlooking his beloved Seekonk…

The Weird Tales Story reviewed

13 Thursday Apr 2023

Posted by in Scholarly works

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Gary Romeo usefully takes a comparative look at The Weird Tales Story in its three editions, including the “expanded and enhanced” third edition of 2021. This is then reviewed, and the new additions and omissions noted.

It seems the third edition is still only available in paperback, at present. No ebook, at least not on Amazon UK.

The Dark Man journal also has an online review of the latest edition.

Black metal in Norway

12 Wednesday Apr 2023

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Norwegian black metal has a major exhibition at the National Library of Norway…

Once feared and frowned upon, Norwegian black metal has finally come in from the cold. Norwegian black metal bands are enjoying considerable success with good record sales, sold-out tours and mainstream awards. The exhibition tells the story of this journey in the form of media coverage of 30 years of Norwegian black metal.

Runs until the 16th September 2023, at the National Museum in the capital Oslo. Free entry.

“The Call from Beyond” (1950)

11 Tuesday Apr 2023

Posted by in Podcasts etc.

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New on Librivox, Ben Tucker’s 70-minute public-domain audio reading of “The Call from Beyond” by Clifford D. Simak.

Back in 2016 Michael May appreciated “The Call from Beyond” for its Lovecraft derived ideas and links…

The May 1950 issue of Super Science Stories has a Simak story called “The Call From Beyond.” The very title rings of Lovecraft’s “From Beyond” and “The Call of Cthulhu.” […] He obviously had a lot of fun with the Lovecraftian elements, though they made the story unsellable to John W. Campbell at Astounding. Thus [it appeared in] Super Science Stories, a crappy low-pay mag.

Although be warned of May’s huge plot-spoilers. He recounts the entire plot including the finale.

Despite its super illustrations, the story is not one of Simak’s best. But it was written in the late 1940s and at that point he was only a few years into writing some good and enduring SF tales. It’s thus interesting to see him leaning on Lovecraft to keep his writing moving forward.

HPL in 1922

10 Monday Apr 2023

Posted by in AI, Lovecraftian arts

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A more painterly output from Dream by Wombo, compared to the previous post. The hair probably needs to be fixed. It’s too dark, ‘shoe-polish’ black. But imagine it’s 1922 and Lovecraft is “waiting for Loveman” at a rooftop cafe in Cleveland…

“Waiting for Loveman”

HPL at 65

10 Monday Apr 2023

Posted by in AI, Astronomy, Lovecraftian arts

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What might have been… a well-fed and hairpiece-augmented Lovecraft imagined at age 65, at the end of a career as the venerable and respected astronomer who discovered the planet Pluto.

In this alt. history picture one might imagine that it’s 1956 and his retirement portrait is to adorn the newly-built hallways of NASA. As a writer, in his youth he published a few classic Dunsanian fantasy tales, but then fell silent in fiction. Yet he has just published a slim volume expounding a curious new ‘cosmic’ philosophy, a work said to be exciting some keen interest among European intellectuals.

The picture is more ‘Nick Cage plays Lovecraft’ than Lovecraft, perhaps, but that’s one of the tendencies that Wombo veers towards. The other is Buster Keaton. An AI isn’t making visual distinctions, it just knows a certain set of facial images are associated with the keywords 1920s (Keaton) and with Lovecraft (Cage). There are three ways I know of to control that. One is luck and a good text prompt. The other is a knockout word presented as $Buster$ and the other is to upload a ‘seed’ image of the real Lovecraft.

Thanks to the Dream by Wombo AI and Photoshop. I know I said I’d keep AI generated images off Tentaclii, but it’s getting so good now…