‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Prospect Terrace

22 Friday Jul 2022

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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.

Jaunt

19 Tuesday Jul 2022

Posted by in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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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”.

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft – Chatham

15 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by in Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

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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.

Voluminous: Elizabeth and the New York Boys

14 Thursday Jul 2022

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A new Voluminous podcast, ‘Elizabeth and the New York Boys’. Elizabeth referring to the two respite visits he took, via two ferries from New York City, to reach the more sedate Elizabeth. Which he called Elizabethtown…

Elizabethtown is a balm, a sedative, & a tonic to the old-fashion’d soul rackt with modernity.

Also a purgative of a sort, as due to…

the memory of weird things I had seen at twilight in Elizabethtown

… he quickly wrote his first story in a long while. He also later dreamed of the place, visiting it in a dream with Benjamin Franklin.

The rest of the letter is a whirlwind of people and places, including writing “The Shunned House”. All of which is hard not to see as effectively displacement activity which served to mask the impending collapse of his short marriage to Sonia. This circumstance and timing also helps to illuminate the final “elbow” in “The Shunned House”.

Creative Writing Machines and kittees

12 Tuesday Jul 2022

Posted by in AI, Kittee Tuesday, Podcasts etc.

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The latest Stuff To Blow Your Mind podcast surveys the history and current state of attempts at making viable Creative Writing Machines…

educational technologist Mike Sharples discusses the book Story Machines: How Computers Have Become Creative Writers.

Don’t be put off by the faintly huckster-ish “educational technologist” label. He was at the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University here in the UK, is “Academic Lead for online-learning service FutureLearn” (it’s a big one) and is “author of over 300 papers”.

MP3 download here. Interview starts at 2:20. Two long ad-sections.

As for the book it appears, from a long review, to be pitched mostly at the ‘history and theory of the field’ level. Rather than the level of practical $50 desktop software available now. Though that’s only the first third of the podcast, as the second and third sections are more practical. For instance, an accompanying website for the book is mentioned, titled Story Machines. This has a free public AI demo which is rather fab. I experimentally used it to expand an H.P. Lovecraft dream into a story form:

“Dream of the Black Cat City” (AI assisted demo)