25 Monday Jul 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
A new free very low-poly 3D figure, likely to interest noir / crime-pulp and Lovecraftian RPG artists. At under 3,000 polygons, suitable for populating scenes with ‘extra’ background figures. Head can be changed to different characters. Works with the Poser 11 software, which can now be had for just $52 at Renderosity.
24 Sunday Jul 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
New on Archive.org and possibly of interest to some. Who’s Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction (1978), which seems useful for getting biographies of authors who are now neglected or forgotten. And The Pulps : fifty years of American pop culture (1976). This latter appears from the contents-page to be a sampler rather than a history.
23 Saturday Jul 2022
Posted in Picture postals
An update on this week’s ‘Picture Postals’. I now discover that Stupid Blog Software™ has re-sized the picture, and refuses not the scale down and re-name the original. So here is a .ZIP with the providence-prospect-1877.jpg at the full 4,500 x 1,800 pixels at 300 dpi.
That’s one nice benefit of having a rental server, being able to offer .ZIP files.
23 Saturday Jul 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
S.T. Joshi’s blog brings news of Jason C. Eckhardt’s first fiction collection. Well known as a Lovecraftian artist, here he offers what Joshi terms… “a modest but powerful array of weird fiction, ranging from Lovecraftian tales to sword-and-sorcery to ghost stories”. The tales can be had now for a modest price as a Kindle ebook.
22 Friday Jul 2022
Posted in Picture postals
This week, ‘Picture Postals’ celebrates NecronomiCon returning to Providence. With an 1877 view from Prospect Terrace, Providence. Later photographs suggest this was much as Lovecraft knew and loved it 20 years later circa 1897.
In Photoshop I’ve given the heavy colour-cast a thorough work-over, with a focus on restoring the sunset glow on one side. Also repaired various flaws, and shrunk it to a manageable 4,500 x 1,800 pixels at 300 dpi. Even so there’s lots of luscious detail to zoom in on. You may need to save it locally, to get the full zoom.
The starting point for my fix and re-colouring…
Creative Commons Attribution, for my new version of the picture. Use it how you like.
Update: Stupid Blog Software™ has re-sized the picture, and refuses not the scale down the original. Here is a .zip with the providence-prospect-1877.jpg.
21 Thursday Jul 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
20 Wednesday Jul 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings
NecronomiCon Providence 2022 Tickets, for 18th-21st August 2022. Gold and Silver Key passes sold out, but with one month to go until the event the “general passes and single-day passes” are available.
Note also the bit that says… “Special event tickets will be on sale starting ~20 July.”
19 Tuesday Jul 2022
Posted in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
The silly-season for news is here, and things are getting a bit slack while scholars are at the beach. So here’s an off-topic post that may still interest some Tentaclii readers, though I recognise that 1970s British TV sci-fi is an acquired taste. My mega-re-watch of the best of Doctor Who is ongoing, and as such I was interested to learn of a book-length guide to one of its competitor TV series called The Tomorrow People. I fondly but rather vaguely recall this from my youth, though haven’t seen it in many decades.
The book guide for the series is titled Jaunt: A Viewer’s Guide to The Tomorrow People. First issued in 2013, and now in July 2022 just re-issued in a new “revised and expanded edition” including detailed coverage of the original comic-strip adventures that were run in Look-In.
The cover is a faux emulation of a 1970s second-hand Penguin paperback.
I was also interested to hear of… “the return of the Tomorrow People in a lavish 1990s international co-production”, a TV reboot news of which had completely passed me by. There’s also said to be a modern third series, but it sounds both politically correct and radically changed, being set in a dystopian… “world far removed” from “the original series’ vision”.
18 Monday Jul 2022
Posted in Historical context, REH, Scholarly works
The opening 20-minute paper in the Glenn Lord Symposium 2022, now online at YouTube, is an illuminating one covering the first phase of topics under discussion in the R.E. Howard / Lovecraft letters. Starts at 3:50 mins. More video recordings are appearing on the same channel.
Also, a new related text article on “Robert E. Howard’s Philosophy of History”.
17 Sunday Jul 2022
Posted in Scholarly works
A new Alphabetic listing of Fanzines on Fanac.org. More than 17,000 issues.
16 Saturday Jul 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
15 Friday Jul 2022
Posted in Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals
In Selected Letters Vol. V we encounter Lovecraft writing a late letter to Kleiner. Lovecraft recalls a “Chatham” as a key landmark from early in his New York City years…
the quaint familiar landmarks (Scotch Bakery – Chatham – 78 Columbia Heights, etc.)
This is not footnoted in the first edition of the Kleiner letters. No other reference to a “Chatham” occurs in Letters I have access to.
However the 1925 Diary comes to the rescue with… “Ph. Sug. Ho. Chatham Sq.” and one other mention of “Chatham”. The mention of “Sq.” led me to Chatham Square. This was a very major NYC transport intersection, with the Elevated railway there having fine views of the city skyline… along with less welcome chilly gusts.
Here we see one platform of the Chatham Square’s Elevated twin-platform station in the 1930s, as superbly photographed by Arnold Eagle. Presumably “Chatham” was where Lovecraft frequently met up with some of his Circle who were coming in on the Elevated, before they headed elsewhere.
And here we see a Chatham Square platform in the 1940s, and some of the rainy street below.
