On Kipling as an influence on 20th century SF writers

07 Wednesday Sep 2022

Posted by in Kipling, Odd scratchings

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Kipling was… “the first modern science fiction writer” — John W. Campbell, editor of the seminal Astounding magazine and pioneer of hard science-fiction.

What Kipling was doing in “With the Night Mail”… “had never been done before. There is no such subtlety in the contemporary proto-SF of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. I think we may safely credit him with inventing the style of exposition that was to become modern SF’s most important device for managing and conveying information about imaginary futures”. — “Rudyard Kipling Invented SF!”, by Eric S. Raymond.

“With The Night Mail”… “anticipated the style and expository mechanics of Campbellian hard science fiction fourteen years before Hugo Gernsback’s invention of the ‘scientifiction’ genre and twenty-seven years before Heinlein’s first publication.” Eric S. Raymond, A Political History of SF (2000).

“With The Night Mail” is… “an amazing tour-de-force of inspired genius […] the sort of thing that Verne or Wells would never have dreamed of doing […] Kipling, in 1905, is doing things that science fiction as a genre wouldn’t achieve until Robert Heinlein arrived in the late 1940s.” — Bruce Sterling.

Kipling… “is for everyone who responds to vividness, word magic, sheer storytelling.” — Poul Anderson.

Kipling was… “a master of our art.” — Gordon R. Dickson.

“He was a superb and painstaking craftsman, the most completely well-equipped writer of short stories ever to tackle that form in the richest of languages.” … “”With the Night Mail” is an astounding vision … his influence on 20th century SF writers was probably greater than anyone else’s, except Wells … he was a master at making the fantastic seem credible”. — John Brunner.

“When you read Kipling, you’re there, [he] builds a total sensory impression that surpasses the language” [which is partly why he will never be taught in schools] — C.J. Cherryh.

“what a good writer he was … the work is superb and he could make words sing. [On looking into the leftist political claims that had dissuaded me from reading him,] I found that most of his supposed sins had been vastly overstated.” — George R.R. Martin.

At SF conventions… “I found that so many SF writers could see his sterling merit that I felt vindicated” [in my early love of Kipling, despite my mundane Eng. Lit. teachers who ignored him] — Anne McCaffrey.

Heinlein was also strongly influenced by the “Night Mail” style and viewpoint, but I can as yet find no quote from him on this point.

The 1980s anthology Heads to the Storm (ed. David Drake) features stories by later SF and fantasy authors, all inspired by Kipling, along with many tributes.

News from Germany

03 Saturday Sep 2022

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The Deutsche Lovecraft Gesellschaft have a report on August activity.

They saw a large increase in formal members, and together had a “very lively” 109-person celebration of Lovecraft’s birthday. That was from August 18th to 21st, at “the Miskatonic University in Duderstadt”, Germany…

“After the years of social deprivation caused by the pandemic, this gathering of like-minded and great people was really energizing. It can go on like this!”

Congratulations. Sounds like an unusual mix of “students and lecturers” and “numerous rounds of games” (RPGs). They have the 2023 dates for the next one already, 27th-30th July 2023. Registrations open 15th September 2022.

The English translation of their fully open-source Lovecraft RPG has slowed over the summer, but now seems to be back on track again and some new helpers.

Also noted is that… “The Festa publishing house is taking its Conan series out of the program. This is due to expiring contracts.” Festa appears to offer chunky German Conan paperbacks, and I think I also saw a Kull…

Lovecraft was right, part 796

02 Friday Sep 2022

Posted by in Historical context, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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Or, at least, he might not have been wrong when he held to the idea…

That the human race started on some plateau in central Asia is almost certain” (Selected Letters III, p. 412)

Lovecraft was not alone in this. I note that in the 1920s Roy Chapman Andrews (the model for Indiana Jones) took an expedition to Mongolia, intending to find there the first traces of the human race. Also, the discovery of proto Indo-European (c. 4000 B.C.) had put the origins of the European languages mostly in a massive ancient migration to the Caucasus from the western Eurasian steppe, which would then place Mongolia as a theoretical lost origin-point further east. Apparently some linguists still see evidence for a distant Mongolian relationship for proto Indo-European, circa 12,000 B.C. So by the standards of his time, Lovecraft seems to have been thinking along the right lines.

Somewhere in the bleak steppes of Mongolia, under vast layers of sand & earth & other fossils, we shall probably find in the future the skeletal vestiges of the immensely remoter dawn-men who really were our lineal forbears.” — Lovecraft to Toldridge, July 1929.

But after Lovecraft’s death the consensus on human origins later shifted to Africa, based on the new post-war fossils, even though “consensus” should be a dirty word in rational science. Now comes a hint from this week’s New Scientist magazine (“The Search for Ancestor X”) that ideas may be changing based on new evidence…

The problem is that we appear to have fundamentally misunderstood the way human evolution works. “The idea humans originated from a small region [of Africa] doesn’t make much sense,” says Lounes Chikhi at the University of Toulouse, France. Chikhi says the genetic signals in living humans imply that H. sapiens emerged as a “metapopulation” spread over a wide geographical area where several “subpopulations” were interconnected by genetic exchange [presumably by early trade?]. Each of these subpopulations was characterised by a subtly distinct genetic signature — and potentially a subtly distinct look. [The article concludes that, on present evidence,] Ancestor X could have lived almost anywhere within a truly vast geographical region. … “it could have been in west Asia. It could even have been in east Asia. We just don’t know yet.” [the latter quote is from Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London].

Friday ‘picture postals’ from Lovecraft: Purgatory and Paradise

02 Friday Sep 2022

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In the last weeks of summer, a trip to the beach with Lovecraft.

The old coastal town of Newport was one of H.P Lovecraft’s favourite places, and the place hosted him for one of the last local trips ever made in his life. It was near to Providence, but was still somewhat costly to reach in summer. It became more affordable to him during the Great Depression, and we know from the Cole letters that he often took the cheap and juddering older boat “Sagamore” from the Providence waterfront to Newport, sometimes in the company of cattle on the lower deck (Galpin letters, p. 62). Lovecraft tells us she had been “re-modelled” for the Providence – Newport – Block Island run which she started in 1928. On the lower and presumably widened decks of this formerly sleek little boat Lovecraft encountered “freight and cattle”. We know it was juddering because Lovecraft tells us he could not write on board, due to the vibration.

In the depths of the Great Depression this offered a fare as low as 15-cents for a day’s round-trip, and on one occasion he went for three days in a row. This was the route of the “Newport boat” which features in the famous “The Call of Cthulhu”. This could have been, at the time of “Cthulhu”, the “New Shoreham” passenger boat. As seen below, along with its Providence dockside.

The “Newport boat” landing and departure point, Providence.

Though in 1932 he mentioned to Cole that the upmarket 75-cent “Mount Hope” boat was competing with the far cheaper “Sagamore” (the cattle-carrying boat). With at least one guest, for instance Helen Sully in July 1933, he and his guest would take the better of the two Newport boats. So the Sully trip was very likely on the “Mount Hope”, which was warmer. The cheaper boat came back later and was thus colder on the way back, and there was also the risk of encountering cattle on deck. As can be seen here, the “Mount Hope” was a far more substantial passenger proposition than the small “Sagamore”…

Possibly there were even three services at the time of “Cthulhu”, since the “Mount Hope” seems to have made the run as early as the mid 1900s and was still being photographed on the same run in 1934. So the “Newport boat” at the time “Cthulhu” was written could have been either “Mount Hope” or the “New Shoreham”.

Anyway, enough of untangling the boats. Let’s get to the beach. Emerging from hibernation in spring, Lovecraft would take one or other Newport boat and then might hike out from the town “into the Bishop Berkeley country … some four miles beyond Newport beach on the road to Middletown”, through green fields of what he termed “sportive lambkins”. He enjoyed the coastline, beaches and rocks that lay behind and away from the town and the tourists.

Here we see James A. Suydam’s establishing view of this especially favoured place at the back of Newport, the “Paradise Rocks”. The “Hanging Rock” end of these gives a wide firm cleft for sitting and also views to nearby places named by locals “Paradise” and “Purgatory”. The end rock reminds one of the “sizeable table-like rock” in “The Dunwich Horror”.

A detail from a further painting shows the rock’s relation to the wide beaches and ocean, complete with one of Lovecraft’s “sportive lambkins”…

I once had a blog post on these two places, but sadly it was one of the few to perish when the blog blew up. However, I find that I can now recover the sketch-view from that post. This apparently shows “Paradise” (below the artist) and “Purgatory” (a deep cleft, down in the high headland seen across the beach/salt-grass).

Lovecraft visited many times, but also had at least three extended visits with his rock-appreciating geologist friend Morton. There was a Lovecraft-Morton visit in late June 1930, and again in the hot late August of 1932 when they explored the rocky cliffs and knoll and…

discussed the cosmos with Dean Berkeley’s shade

This being a reference to the British philosopher Bishop George Berkeley, a thinker who had especially enjoyed Newport’s “Hanging Rock” two hundred years earlier in circa 1728-32. Berkeley believed, among other things that “reality isn’t separate from perception” and he was a deep thinker on language who was later compared to Wittgenstein. The “Hanging Rock” being where, as Lovecraft put it…

Berkeley used to sit reading, writing, or meditating

In Selected Letters II Lovecraft gives a correspondent precise directions on how to find the place, once out of the town. One then has to assume that the area was not much signposted, and there would be no-one from whom to ask directions.

Here a detail of the “lip” at the “head” of the rocks, where one might perilously picnic or perhaps write competitive poems (Lovecraft recalls such a contest here, with the ocean-loving Wandrei)…

A rough study in oils by the local macabre and stained-glass artist John La Farge (1835–1910) also usefully indicates the highest-point elevation, of the sort on which Lovecraft might have “discussed the cosmos”…

we looked down from our exalted perch — a perch which 200 years ago was a favourite of Dean (later Bishop) Berkeley as he composed his famous Alciphron … We had splendidly hot weather all along — thermometer around 90˚.

News from France

01 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by in Lovecraft as character, Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works

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My thanks to Gregory for letting me know that the French magazine Actuality: The Universe of Books has a new article “Lovecraft, Cthulhu and the Old Ones enter the Pleiades”. Here “Pleiades” is a play on the name of the famous French publishing house, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. Who have now revealed (I translate)…

We are currently preparing an edition of the works of H.P. Lovecraft”, confirms La Pleiade. … “The work is in progress”.

This is not to be confused with the sumptious Mnemos multi-volume edition of Lovecraft now emerging…

Mnemos will soon publish the 4th volume of a gigantic translation, at the end of September [2022] … accompanied by the required scholarly apparatus.

The final third of the article turns into a short interview with the main translator for Mnemos, David Pathe-Camus…

I challenge you to read a text such as “Nyarlathotep” and not think about our own time. It reads like it was written just for us. Lovecraft had a keen awareness of the human condition. [In a way, his work] foreshadows the currents that will come after it — such as existentialism or the absurd.

The same article also notes A Bestiary of the Twilight (Le Bestiaire du Crepuscule, June 2022), a French ‘BD’ (i.e. oversized graphic novel, often in hardcover) which…

takes HPL as the main character

Update: Le Bestiaire du Crepuscule has been re-titled as The Monstrous Dreams of Mr. Providence for the English edition, and since summer 2022 can now be enjoyed by English readers.

August on Tentaclii

31 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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The nice summer weather continues here, for now.

However, I find I am increasingly likely to be in need of a regular $300+ income a month, and within the next two months. If anyone can use my talents in a reliably paid way, please contact me. I’m very accomplished in information — discovering, evaluating, comparing, and packaging it into a readable form. Along with suitably sourced pictures. Elsewhere I’m currently a part-time magazine editor-writer. If you’ve always wanted a monthly magazine or substantial newsletter for your own special niche interest, or you need a researcher for a historical book or project, then now’s the time to shout. Please also mention me to others, such as editors, who might have some regular paid home-work to offer.

In August Tentaclii did not have a great deal of activity, because I was off the ‘daily posting’ schedule. But I did manage the first part of my “Notes on the Wandrei letters”. For which I found and colorised two good vintage photos of the Roman sculpture gallery at the New York Met, a place so enjoyed by Lovecraft and Loveman. Lovecraft’s comment on this place also seemed to indicate he was aware of Loveman’s homosexuality, which was quite a find. Also found in these letters were new names for Lovecraft’s favoured Providence book shops, “Gregory’s, Tyson’s”.

In scholarship, I released my copiously annotated and corrected edition of Kipling’s seminal science-fiction story “With The Night Mail”. Also a PDF with the Letters of E. Hoffman Price to H.P. Lovecraft, for HPL’s Birthday — though the latter was far more about simple image-processing and assemblage than scholarship. I also looked into an interesting question from my Patreon patron, “Did HPL read Sherlock Holmes?” and assembled the relevant facts for him here at Tentaclii.

My ‘Open Lovecraft’ page had a little updating this month, linking to open-access scholarship. I reviewed The Lovecraft Annual 2021 at length, and along the way made many new discoveries about Lovecraft’s Red Hook house-mate (I almost typed mouse-mate) Alexander D. Messayeh. I discovered he hailed from Babylon, and made a living dealing in the rarest antiquities of the ancient world. Make of that what you will, Mythos writers.

Two big summer conventions, the Pulpfest and NecronomiCon, came and went. In journals, the annual Pulpster #31 journal was released at Pulpfest. Possibly the Lovecraft Annual also shipped in time for the Armitage Symposium wing of the NecronomiCon to discuss over breakfast. But I’m not yet aware of any convention report from that side of NecronomiCon which might mention that. If I’d been there you’d have a 15,000-word report by now.

New books this month included H.P. Lovecraft: An Introduction to His Life and Writings; and Pulp Power: The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Art of the Street & Smith Universe. I was pleased to find I can now access the Hippocampus Press website from the UK, without needing a VPN.

In Lovecraftian arts, I was delighted to feature the incredible “Welcome to Arkham — the (HO) Model City”, a labour-of-love in miniature. There is also much Lovecraftian art activity over in the red-hot new ‘industry’ of art-generating AIs.

In screen media, S.T. Joshi’s blog brought news of a forthcoming Dunsany documentary, being made in Providence no less. Guillermo del Toro’s forthcoming horror TV show Cabinet of Curiosities revealed which Lovecraft tales had been filmed. In 3D, I gave a makeover to the old Meshbox 3D HPL figure, which is used in the Poser software. There was the usual level of activity in videogames and RPGs, but those are rarely noted on Tentaclii.

Elsewhere, a “Battle” issue of Digital Art Live magazine has been finished, which should appeal to the Conan crowd when it appears in a few days. And yes, I noted the calls at Howard Days, to help promote the new Image Books Conan (now that Marvel are done with him).

I also updated my book of a few years ago, on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and North Staffordshire, and released it as a temporary holiday-reading freebie (until 28th August).

That’s it for August. As always, please consider becoming my Patreon patron if you’re not already. Even a dollar or two helps in the current precarious circumstances.