{"id":66910,"date":"2026-09-12T12:56:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T12:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/?p=66910"},"modified":"2026-09-12T13:16:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:16:32","slug":"hplinks-101-microfiction-contest-lovecrafts-weird-atheism-book-narration-in-games-red-hook-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2026\/09\/12\/hplinks-101-microfiction-contest-lovecrafts-weird-atheism-book-narration-in-games-red-hook-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"HPLinks #101 – Microfiction contest, Lovecraft’s Weird Atheism book, narration in games, Red Hook and more…"},"content":{"rendered":"

HPLinks<\/a> #101. <\/p>\n

* A Lovecraftian microfiction contest<\/a>, with an 11th September deadline. <\/p>\n

* Announced from prolific UK non-fiction publisher Bloomsbury, the philosophy book H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Atheism<\/a><\/em> (due in April 2027). The book…<\/p>\n

serves as a major reinterpretation of the themes with which Lovecraft concerned himself, including the meaning and value of humanity in a hostile cosmos, the role of aesthetics in the good life, and the fear and allure of monstrosity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* “But Pa, it’s healthy for me!” New in the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health<\/em>, “From Play to Praxis: Translating Tabletop Role-Playing Games into Evidence-Based Clinical Interventions”<\/a> (2026, $ paywall)…<\/p>\n

Tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and Call of Cthulhu, are increasingly being adapted for clinical use, yet the field remains limited by inconsistent terminology, variable intervention models, and a nascent empirical literature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* The new edition of the Journal of Fandom Studies<\/em> has “Towards a Global History of Fandom: A network analysis of science fiction fans, 1926\u201347”<\/a> (2026, $ paywall). Examines…<\/p>\n

1926 and 1947 through three intersecting lenses: a global network of letters published in [the pulp magazine] Amazing Stories, a semantic analysis of these letters to determine a common conversation held between fans, and a close reading of letters from isolated locales.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* Bud Plant’s Summer 2026 Incredible Catalog<\/a><\/em> gets ready for Halloween already, with his latest cover. <\/p>\n

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Of possible special interest to Tentaclii<\/em> readers are: a graphic novel autobiography of Edgar Rice Burroughs (‘first time in print’ for the 1929 text of 20,000 words); a collection of Steve Ditko’s horror work for Creepy<\/em> magazine; and Cryptology<\/em> magazine issue 10, a special on the work of Neal Adams as found in horror comics and also an article on his 1970s Batman ‘Man-bat’.<\/p>\n

* The latest Doctor Strange<\/em> nightmare-adventure is a Lovecraftian one. Available now. Daily Dead<\/em> interviews the creator<\/a> (has some spoilers)…<\/p>\n

I was heavily into the Lovecraft mythos and cosmic horror, and when Marvel and Abrams asked me to do a Marvel graphic novel, I wanted to turn my imagination to Dr. Strange and a nightmarish, Lovecraftian story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More of a double-issue than a graphic novel, though, at just 64 pages in total. But it sounds interesting.<\/p>\n

* In October 2026, Chaosium will release a new hardback edition of The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana: the definitive guide to the Cthulhu Mythos<\/a><\/em>…<\/p>\n

Chaosium\u2019s new fourth edition features updated text and is presented in a new full color, hardback format with interior art, and cover art by John Sumro.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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How extensively the text was updated, the page doesn’t say.<\/p>\n

* On YouTube, a 95 minute recording of Narration in Lovecraftian Games – Expert Panel<\/a> at NeconomiCon 2026.<\/p>\n

* Here in the UK, the Welsh borders have a major retrospective exhibition of the paperback cover-art of Bob Fowkes<\/a>… <\/p>\n

A new exhibition is celebrating some of science fiction\u2019s most iconic 1970s paperback covers. Hosted at Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, the display features original sci-fi and fantasy cover art by Bob Fowke, whose illustrations appeared on the works of Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, and other genre legends. The exhibition is on now until 22nd September 2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* In France, a live-theatre \/ puppet show in the run-up to Halloween 2026, Sorcier Lovecraft<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Mitsi, a scatterbrained young girl, meets a rat, and together they embark on an adventure in the dark forest. Ralzeimer the rat doesn’t eat her, and together they search for the kingdom of Celephais, but to get there they must confront the cats of Ulthar and the terrible Cthulhu. Prepare to be shivered by this epic tale directly inspired by Lovecraft’s stories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* And finally, a rare image of the waterfront at Red Hook, New York City, from eBay. I’ve never seen this card before. Of possible use as a visual prompt item for RPG gamers, and as a reference image for Mythos writers. I’ve given it an AI makeover.<\/p>\n

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— End-quote —<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI took several walks of exploration around the [Red Hook] waterfront rookeries, and acquired a very fair pictorial and oral image of the whole blight even in its extremist phases” — Lovecraft to Dwyer, March 1927. The Dwyer letters are to be found in the back of Letters to Maurice W. Moe and Others<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“I came to know that squalid world [of a lodging house on the edge of Red Hook] as few white men have ever known it. The sounds in the hall! The faces glimpsed on the stairs! The mice in the partitions! The fleeting touches of intangible horror from spheres and cycles outside time …. once a Syrian had the room next to mine and played eldritch and whining monotones on a strange bagpipe which made me dream ghoulish and incredible things of crypts under Bagdad and limitless corridors of Eblis beneath the moon-cursed ruins of Istakhar. […] And what scraps of old papers with Arabic lettering did one find about the house! Sometimes, going out at sunset, I would vow to myself that gold minarets glistened against the flaming skyline where the church-towers were! […] The keynote of the whole setting\u2014house, neighbourhood, and shop, was that of loathsome and insidious decay; masked just enough by the reliques of former splendour and beauty to add terror and mystery and the fascination of crawling motion to a deadness and dinginess otherwise static and prosaic. I conceived the idea that the great brownstone house was a malignly sentient thing — a dead, vampire creature which sucked something out of those within it and implanted in them the seeds of some horrible and immaterial psychic growth. Every closed door seemed to hide some brooding crime — or blasphemy too deep to form a crime in the crude and superficial calendar of earth. I never quite learned the exact topography of that rambling and enormous house […] there were wings and corridors I never traversed; doors to rear and abutting halls and stairways that I never saw opened. I know there were rooms above ground without windows, and was at liberty to guess what might lie below ground. There lay a pall of darkness and secrecy upon that house — it subtly discouraged from first to last one\u2019s inclination to speak aloud, and at times one felt a faint miasmal tangibility in the circumambient air. The great high rooms had something of the mausoleum in their crumbling stateliness, and in the halls at night one always had to be sure the great, white flamboyant Corinthian pilasters never moved just the least bit. Something unwholesome — something furtive — something vast lying subterrenely in obnoxious slumber — that was the soul of 160 Clinton St. at the edge of Red Hook, and in my great northwest corner room.” — Lovecraft to Dwyer, March 1927.<\/p>\n

[My friend Everett McNeil] dwelt in the frightful slum of Hell’s Kitchen — where Manhattan’s forties slope gradually down to the Hudson [river]. This was and is the toughest slum in New York — toughest in an active sense, being full of fighting Irish […] policemen in Hell’s Kitchen go in pairs, and report a high casualty list. High in a squalid tenement house amidst this welter lived good old Mac — his little flat an oasis of neatness and wholesomeness with its quaint, homely pictures, rows of simple books, and curious mechanical devices which his ingenuity concocted to aid his work-lap boards, files, etc., etc. He lived on meagre rations of canned soup and crackers, and did not whimper at his lot. We all used to shudder at having to wade through such a neighbourhood to get to his place, but when he entertained a [Kalems] meeting his shy hospitality atoned for all.” — Lovecraft to Zelia Bishop, January 1930. <\/p>\n

“I shall never forget my experience on the 31st day of May, when, at a point not far from Northern Boulevard [the then edge of New York City], and at the very edge of a depressing line of flimsy stucco\u2019d rookeries, I beheld a peaceful antient farmhouse with barns, byres, orchards, and plough\u2019d fields about it; dreaming in compleat changelessness amidst so much of change. Westward, in fantastical outline against a glamorous sunset, tower\u2019d the grotesque spires of Manhattan like a mirage of doom.” — Lovecraft, “Observations on Several Parts of America”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HPLinks #101. * A Lovecraftian microfiction contest, with an 11th September deadline. * Announced from prolific UK non-fiction publisher Bloomsbury, …<\/p>\n

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