Ray Bradbury, dramatist

15 Wednesday Feb 2023

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New on Archive.org to borrow, a short survey of Ray Bradbury, dramatist (1989), a revised version of a 1977 edition. This 1989 Borgo edition is 56 pages. Amazon only sees one used copy of an out-of-print Borgo Press “second edition” from 1991. I’m guessing that 1989 was the hardback, and 1991 the paperback.

Also noted on Archive.org, and arrived in the last twelve months or so, Listen To The Echoes: the Ray Bradbury interviews and The Ray Bradbury Companion subtitled ‘a life and career history, photolog, and comprehensive checklist of writings, with facsimiles’.

Unknown Kadath – trade release date

14 Tuesday Feb 2023

Posted by in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts

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There’s now a date for the trade paperback of Unknown Kadath, 17th May 2023. Pre-ordering now. It’s just convention that the comics trade calls such things “Book 1” or “Vol. 1”. It’s the complete series of eight ‘spinner-rack comic-books’ (aka ‘floppies’), in one book. It was actually seven, last I heard, so with eight we could be now looking at over 300 pages for the trade paperback including the alternate covers, art gallery, and bonuses. The final part is due as a ‘floppy’ on 26th April 2023, then we get the trade paperback.

Alumni Magazine, RISD

13 Monday Feb 2023

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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A nice job… Associate Editor, Alumni Magazine, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Enormous salary, so much so that you wonder if it’s true. In the UK this would be a $28k a year post. Indeed, if they’d let me do it remotely then I could save them $50k a year. No deadline given, but posted five days ago. Details.

The Fantasy Fan as free audiobook (Ashton Smith only)

13 Monday Feb 2023

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.

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Well, here’s a turn-up for a Monday morning. The Fantasy Fan: The Complete Writings of Clark Ashton Smith is new on Librivox and in the public domain. As narrator Ben Tucker explains…

The Fantasy Fan Magazine was a periodical dedicated to people professing their love of and celebrating fantasy and weird fiction. In addition to the opinion pieces and non-fiction articles, The Fantasy Fan also included man short stories and poems by some of the authors it celebrated such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, a personal favorite of editor Charles D. Hornig. Smith contributed quite a variety of stories, poems and articles to The Fantasy Fan over its two-year tenure, all of which are collected here.

Also on Archive.org if you prefer a .torrent file.

Call of Cthulhu in Japan and Korea

12 Sunday Feb 2023

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Polygon has a long industry-focussed article on Call of Cthulhu in the Far East, in nations such as Korea and Japan…

20% of Call of Cthulhu users play in a language other than English. That’s double the rate of other systems.

There’s also a thriving indie sub-culture…

You go to any game store [in Japan] that carries RPGs and there’s the Call of Cthulhu book, always in the top five weekly, monthly sales. No matter how many years have passed, it’s always there. And you turn to the right and there are three shelves of Cthulhu supplements written by people where not a single penny goes to them or Chaosium.”

Marblehead

10 Friday Feb 2023

Posted by in Picture postals

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This week on ‘Picture Postals’ a pleasingly poetic set of pen-and-ink views of Lovecraft’s beloved Marblehead, almost as if it were a small port in his Dreamlands. In high resolution and crisp.

And a postcard which may interest those who have an RPG game with a Marblehead setting in the 1890s to 1930s, and who want printable and adaptable props. A dramatic storm-cloud over the town, with space enough to paint in any manner of faint but monstrous apparitions.

News from Germany

08 Wednesday Feb 2023

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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The German Lovecraftians have published their handsome new book of the translated poetry, based around the “Fungi from Yuggoth”. It’s far more than just this poem-cycle though, and looks like a rather chunky book.

Also, their Lovecrafter annual publication… “will also be available as a PDF on DriveThruFiction”. #0, #1 and #2 are currently on DriveThruFiction, with more expected. Some back issues can also still be had in paper from their online store.

Sadly, they report there will be no English translation of their open source pure-Lovecraft RPG FHTAGN…

We have to stop our English translation with a heavy heart — the project is too complex and time-consuming for us to be able to handle it ‘on the side’.

Perhaps there’s now an opportunity there for an enterprising translator to step in and take it off their hands?

Lovecraft and surrealism

07 Tuesday Feb 2023

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New on Archive.org, Cultural Correspondence #12-14 (1981)…

Some of [Frank Belnap Long’s] observations on the relationship between surrealism and the Lovecraft Circle were quoted in “Lovecraft, Surrealism & Revolution” in CC #10-11. The paragraphs below are excerpts from letters, published here with Mr. Long’s permission as a contribution to our symposium.”

The CC #10-11 article on Lovecraft, mentioned above, is also online.

Lovecraft’s letters in Spanish, for the first time

06 Monday Feb 2023

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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Javier Calvo has translated Lovecraft’s letters into Spanish, and apparently this is the very first time there has been such a book-length translation. The new book is evidently a ‘selected letters’, focusing on Lovecraft’s labour and growth as a writer…

Edited by Javier Calvo, based on a corpus of more than twelve thousand pages, this first volume, ‘Writing Against Men’, focuses on Lovecraft’s literary career: his projects, goals, successes, and failures; his relationship with his literary circle; and the birth of the momentous mythology of it.

Apparently this is the first of three planned volumes, something which seems almost certain given the strong interest in the man in the Spanish-speaking world. Said to be shipping in February 2023, and listed on Amazon.es under the title “Escribir contra los hombres. Cartas de H. P. Lovecraft, Vol. I”. The Amazon listing reveals that the first volume is a table-trembler at a hefty 544 pages. The price is 35 Euro, which converts to around $38.

Also in Spain, the leftist newspaper El Pais ($ paywall) had a weekend article on The Commonplace Book of H.P. Lovecraft. I can’t get past the paywall, but perhaps there’s also a new translation of the Commonplace Book in Spain, occasioning the new article?