The Museum of London has listed a number of opportunities for Arthur Machen fans to follow in this weird master's footsteps in April, 2011. Robert Kingham, who previously hosted walks on Britain's ley lines, is scheduled to host the event, "A Walk into the Grey Soul of London." Dates and details can be seen here.
This should be a real treat for UK readers. At least one previous Machen walk took place back in 2007. These jaunts through visionary London are possibly inspired by the irregular Lovecraft walks held in Providence, Rhode Island, for the past couple decades. Whatever their origin, it's gratifying to see the weirdness reign. With any luck, the Machen walks will be one more event in a long chain that celebrates the lives and works of strange artists across continents.
As Machen readers know, London held a strange and mystical charm in his stories, an urban labyrinth filled with awe and horror. To brush up on many of Machen's urban horrors in one affordable volume, check out The Three Impostors and Other Stories.
There's been some recent chatter online about what, if anything, H.P. Lovecraft thought about Oliver Onions' spectral work. The quick answer is: not much. Aside from a few passing mentions indicating an intent to read Onions, Lovecraft never had much to say about this weird fiction colleague.
The recent questions about Lovecraft's view on Onions stem from a citation on the back cover of Dover's 2004 Onions reprint, The Beckoning Fair One. The promotional summary states, "Acclaimed by such masters of the genre as Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft as one of the best ghost stories in the English language, 'The Beckoning Fair One' is Oliver Onions' most fascinating and eminently readable story." Regrettably, it appears Dover failed to pull up an exact Lovecraft quote. If they had tried, they would have found that Lovecraft had little to say at all about Onions' ghost stories. It's not even completely clear if Lovecraft read enough tales by Onions to make a positive or negative judgment.
This is a case where Lovecraft's rocketing popularity is being used to nudge more obscure weird fiction writers higher. While it's easy to understand the marketing merits of doing this, it can have unintended consequences if not thoroughly researched, least of which is belittling fantastic supernatural works that are more than capable of standing on their own strengths. Oliver Onions is one such writer who shouldn't need praise from others, even the likes of HPL, to appear intriguing.
Mercifully, Wordsworth's new paperback, The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions, which nearly collects Onions' full oeuvre, doesn't resort to erroneous recommendations by Lovecraft. It also contains a universe more than Dover's reprint, and is cheaper to boot.
The 2009 documentary by Wyrd, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, is now available for free viewing via sharing on Snag. The film attracted favorable reviews, and collected an enormous number of Lovecraftian experts in one place. Even borderline household names in horror like Neil Gaiman and Guillermo del Toro came to speak up for Lovecraft.
Like most free lunches, there's nothing wrong with ordering the same dish to support its creators. Especially when this one is replete with cosmic blasphemy on a terrifying scale.
Please keep your decadent exuberance on hold. While it appears that Canada's Goldstream River momentarily turned into an absinthe filled artery, as with most strange occurrences, the real world explanation is far less extraordinary. It seems some pranksters slipped dye into the river, resulting in a fleeting glimpse of the bizarre and miraculous.
Is it really possible to measure the exact influence exerted by H.P. Lovecraft upon writers he collaborated with during his lifetime, and those who carried on his dark tradition after death? There will probably never be a precise science for doing this, but the My Elves Are Different blog has compiled an interesting table, beginning with the original "Lovecraft Circle" of HPL's collaborators, friends, and clients:
0. H. P. Lovecraft
1. R. H. Barlow (The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast) Zealia Bishop (The Curse of Yig) Adolphe de Castro (The Electric Executioner) Sonia Greene (The Invisible Monster) Harry Houdini (Imprisoned with the Pharaohs) Robert E. Howard (The Challenge from Beyond) Frank Belknap Long (The Challenge from Beyond) William Lumley (The Diary of Alonzo Typer) A. Merritt (The Challenge from Beyond) Duane W. Rimel (The Tree on the Hill) Henry S. Whitehead (The Trap)
In my observation, this system, which was derived from an earlier method of tracking Isaac Asimov disciples, does an excellent job at tracking those touched by the living Lovecraft. Unfortunately, it becomes much harder to extend after that. This is partially due to today's many sub-genres filled with writers claiming Lovecraftian heritage. Weird fiction may seem the most legitimate heir to H.P. Lovecraft in style and purpose, but various types of fantasy and science fiction have also staked their claims.
Although experiments in "literary geology" are fascinating, their usefulness in serious Lovecraftian scholarship is dubious. But no more so than the way most are exposed to Lovecraft's literary descendants, in anthologies like Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos and The New Lovecraft Circle, which try to group "Lovecraftian" writers from different eras. This is particularly troublesome with books like The New Lovecraft Circle, where writers as distinct as Thomas Ligotti, Brian Lumley, and Ramsey Campbell are placed under one Lovecraftian umbrella. These are all Lovecraftian writers of a sort, true. However, no anthology grouping or degree chart can measure the character of Lovecraft's literary influence on these authors. And in the end, isn't that what really matters?
-Grim Blogger
Measuring HP Lovecraft's Influence on Other Writers
A new eZine hoping to carry on Lovecraftian fiction's fine history has launched. The Lovecraft eZine is a paying market that will reportedly be free to readers. It's run by Mike Davis, a longtime fan of HPL's work.
eZines are rising players in the world of electronic publishing. They hold the potential to give niche writers more exposure than they would otherwise get (short of a full short story collection), and can also pay their writers more easily than many print magazines, by keeping their operating costs low while generating funds through donations or advertising. However, eZines that attempt to carry on the weird horror tradition have, thus far, not gained the notoriety or success of print publications. Perhaps it's because a large number of weird fiction readers are bibliophiles as well, or because all too many eZines are painfully short lived.
Time will reveal the fate of the Lovecraft eZine. Like most ventures in e-publishing that link newer technology with established genres, it will face many perils and promises. Best of luck.
MythosCon, the great Lovecraftian meet up in Phoenix, Arizona, and the largest since the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and NecronomiCons, has come and gone. The convention reportedly attracted around a couple hundred Lovecraft devotees from January 6-9. Many of the best authors, scholars, and artists in today's Lovecraftian arena were among the attendees. Several intriguing write-ups and photo galleries have appeared since the event's conclusion, but one of the best is Gary Needles' descriptive report.
With few qualms, it sounds as though MythosCon was a small, but lively success. Hopefully, the favorable response means another gathering will follow in 2012 - especially with the Portland HPL Film Festival's demise. If so, details about planning and promotion should begin to trickle out by the middle of this year. As always, Grim Reviews will be on top of it.
Kris Kuksi, the stunningly talented maker of intricate, grotesque sculptures released his first art book last month. Divination and Delusion weighs in at nearly 150 pages, each collecting the artist's beautifully rendered nightmares and detailing his inspiration. As I previously discussed here, Kuksi remains a highly original craftsman with an aptitude for sharing what torments him like no one else can. His sculptures are windows into a secretive world filled with awe, horror, and all manner of nasty little secrets: a devastating miniaturization of our own dark environments.
Death lurks around every corner in these works, planting its conquering standard on every soaring temple and industrial theme park created by Kuksi. Like hideous dioramas mapping long bygone civilizations (or those still to come?), his sculptures are charts of interstitial places we rarely see connected. The industrial-spiritual, for instance, frequently haunts Kuksi's cityscapes. If Hieronymous Bosch had lived several centuries later, complete with the same hellish visions, and traveled to India or Tibet to observe oriental mysteries, then he might have painted something akin to these works.
Kuksi, however, one ups even this alternate history version of Bosch. His meticulously carved and positioned terrors are born in three life stopping dimensions. Not two, although the book shows specimens of Kuksi delving in this lesser dimension as well. Leering skulls with mechanized augments peering down upon factory Popes give the impression they may look at you next. Emotionally charged re-imaginations of real and ahistoric emperors, from Rome to Napoleonic Europe, burst from their musty sepulchers, arriving in more post-industrial rococo splendor than their lost worshipers gave them.
Divination and Delusion is sure to be a powerful flare shot from Kuksi's elegant and numinous underworld. It's a product of his past successes, but more importantly, a new engine certain to drive these frightful and thought provoking visions into new territory. So, go ahead, impale your eyeballs on Kris Kuksi's ornate, reaper tipped lances. You just may begin to see what he has seen.
-Grim Blogger
Divination and Delusion by Kris Kuksi Now Available
Tartarus Press appears to be exploring a new venue for promoting its books, one rarely seen with other weird horror publishers: Youtube. Short promos have appeared for the recent Robert Aickman reprint, Sub Rosa, as well as Angela Slatter's Sourdough and Other Stories, created by the author. Marketing by online videos has proven successful for many other products, but can it work for supernatural literature?
This is a tricky question that hides many others, much like one of those Russian nestling dolls. In the pro-Youtube column are facts about its ability to rank well in searches and the complete lack of content for many writers. The Sub Rosa video, in fact, is probably the most relevant Aickman item ever uploaded there. The site's ability to throw up "relevant" videos to viewers may also help lead a small, but significant percentage of mainstream horror fans to discover weird fiction for the first time.
On the other hand, Youtube can be particularly fickle. Giving a video the wrong tag or category may place it in a no man's land with few viewers, or worse, one with a high bounce rate (where viewers searching for the same term that has nothing to do with the video content end up clicking the back button once they realize their mistake). Youtube has cracked down in recent years on direct links due to spam-bots too. This makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to direct users to a website or online store where they can actually see more details about a book.
Though the list of pros and cons is long, Youtube and similar video websites have a chance to prove their worth to promoters of weird fiction. Right now, room for experimentation is enormous, and only more strange artists and publishers testing the black seas of digital media will learn whether or not they can be harnessed to their advantage.
From those archaic illustrations showing how to put on a tie properly comes this delicious parody. The Lovecraft style knot is sure to set a new height in class and comfort. Whoever said elegant, well mannered, and eldritch can't mix?
For a suitably eldritch design to practice on, check out this stylized necktie that looks like it sports an imprint from the fabled Necronomicon. More casual options, including a Cthulhu-Dr. Seuss shirt, are also ripe for showing pride in R'lyeh's dreaming overlord.
In the small and cozy field of weird fiction, luxurious books housing the supernatural abound. Until recently, expecting to pay $50 or more a pop for old classics, as well as debut works by new writers, was the norm. If strange literature ever becomes a wider niche, it will be due in part to strides made by two publishers: Wordsworth and Chomu Press. The exemplary work by the latter in bringing contemporary authors to the masses has already been noted here.
Wordsworth, however, has quietly re-released two rare collections for a steal. The Dead of Night collects Oliver Onions' spectral fiction in a lengthy paperback that will make the odd Onions' completist rattle with joy. Onions remains one of the more obscure names in weird horror, but mercifully one who can now be sampled by the uninitiated with zero risk to their bank accounts. His tenuous whirlwinds that breach the line between psychological and supernatural horror have earned him a cult following. Wordsmith's other notable release, The Drug and Other Stories, collects fiction written by a household name. Aleister Crowley is notorious for his occult practices, but his fiction has gained far less attention. The Drug and Other Stories, like the Onions volume, herds Crowley's fictional oeuvre in one convenient tome.
I can't ever recall seeing 600+ page collections from some of weird fiction's more shadowy corners available for the same cost as a cup of coffee. Don't miss these curiosities. Though Wordsworth's print runs are generous, chances are high that these short stories will not be seen in bargain paperbacks like this for another generation (and that's only if e-book readers haven't conquered the world by then). Affordability can rehabilitate writers who have become nearly as ghostly as their stories, and Wordsmith deserves thanks from the horror community for delivering a much needed pep shot to two weirdscribes, among others, whose fiction has teetered on the brink of total obscurity for too long.
-Grim Blogger
Wordsworth Brings New Affordability to Weird Fiction with Crowley and Onions
This sounds like a scene with real life apocalyptic imagery. Over a thousand dead birds plummeting from the sky over a small area in Arkansas may well qualify as 2011's first anti-miracle - an event that seems supernaturally crafted and darkly ominous. While the cause will probably turn out to an awesome quirk of nature or a man made accident, the story is sure to inspire anxious chills because it actually happened.
Passing somewhat under the radar (at least for many American fans of the weird) this Christmas is BBC television's latest M.R. James adaptation, Whistle and I'll Come to You. The program is closely inspired by James spectral tale with nearly the same name, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad!" (easily and cheaply accessed today in Penguin's collection, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories). Here's the synopsis from its web page:
A chilling new single drama, Whistle and I'll Come to You is the thoroughly modern re-working of the evocative Edwardian ghost story Oh, Whistle and I'll come to You, My Lad by MR James, adapted for BBC Two by Neil Cross. Cross's adaptation delves into themes of ageing, hubris and the supernatural, with a horrifying psychological twist in the tale.
James Parkin has just left his wife in the care of a nursing home. Pensive and emotional, he travels to their old favourite destination for rambling, an off-season British seaside town. There he encounters an apparition on a desolate beach, which begins to haunt him - with terrifying consequences.
Unfortunately, Jamesian film adaptations are fairly difficult to come by outside the UK. Sinister Cinema's A Warning to the Curious is a rare exception, as are a few other projects currently in the works for DVD release. Film may offer a new path to familiarizing newcomers with James' ghost stories, particularly in international markets. Hopefully, this latest BBC picture will see seasonal reappearances, and then make the leap to DVD and digital formats for download.
Cthulhu's extraterrestrial taint has long been mingled into Christianity, Islam, and other Western religious traditions by gifted artists and writers. But what about the East? Remarkably, there are a few spectacular artistic examples of what happens when Lovecraft's worlds collide with Eastern spirituality. The most common form, not surprisingly, parodies the Buddha statues commonly found in temples, restaurants, and kitsch stores. This seems a natural manifestation of Cthulhu, who is no stranger to appearing in horrific idols. Santani's Cthulhu (upper right) is a highly alien depiction, while the stone statue displays a more tradition look.
Buddhism isn't the only religion to host Cthulhu's nightmarish visage. In another unsettling example, we see Cthulhu as a stand in for Vishnu, the Hindu god often associated with destruction. There's no evidence the paned sculpture is explicitly Eastern or religious, but I decided to include it because it's reminiscent of the wildly detailed carvings seen inside temples in Southeastern Asia.
Blissfully, fiction is far more rife than art with Lovecraftian references and monstrosities colliding with Eastern mysticism. Check out Asamatsu Ken's exemplary series of Lovecraftian tales translated from Japanese, Lairs of the Hidden Gods, beginning with Night Voices, Night Journeys. There's more Cthulhuvian terror mixed with Eastern spiritual traditions than you dare imagine.
The cover art that adorns H.P. Lovecraft's stories has generated many inspired galleries and forum threads across the internet, but one thing seriously lacking is a collection of Lovecraft biography covers. Art on Lovecraft's biographies may form new sets of beautiful pictures. But, surprisingly, the images can reveal a bit more - such as changing perceptions about Lovecraft over time, and in different contexts.
There are many factors that go into selecting cover art. Biography art, as on most books, is meant to catch the eye and (ideally) provide an accurate visual portrayal of the contents. Everything from budget to stylistic and marketing preferences by publishers, writers, and artists determines what the cover looks like. In Lovecraft's case, the results are equally diverse and interesting, as these select examples show.
Some of the earliest Lovecraft biographies adopted a bland, but very direct style for prospective readers. When books like L. Sprague de Camp's H.P. Lovecraft: A Biography and C.M. Eddy Jr's The Gentleman from Angell Street were published, Lovecraftian biographies were exceedingly rare. Although all competing Lovecraft biographies were widely overshadowed by S.T. Joshi's definitive H.P. Lovecraft: A Life in the late 1990s, online book shopping was still in its infancy by the time these titles were both on the scene. Both of these biographies utilize simple photos of their subject. Eddy's work hosts the ubiquitous Lovecraft portrait seen everywhere. The de Camp book's close-up, however, suggests an eerie angle - mirroring the author's focus on Lovecraft's eccentricity. It seems that Lovecraft's image was lodged very much between two poles - the boring, reclusive writer and the chilling freak, and it's little surprise his biographies at the time reflected this.
Moving on, HPL studies entered another artistic arena - one where stylized drawings stood in for real photographs. To me, the covers of S.T. Joshi's Lord of a Visible World and Willis Conover's Lovecraft at Last exemplify Lovecraft as legend. Both appeared in the early 2000s, and aside from A Life, they represented true efforts at presenting Lovecraft as authentically as possible, with generous quotations from his voluminous letters. There's certainly an effort to overcome past (and, at that time, enormously widespread) Lovecraftian myths, but Joshi, Conovers, and their publishers help bolster the Lovecraft as-larger-than-life image with their biographical cover art.
Whether it was intentional or not is irrelevant. These scholars were giving a wider readership than ever before its first inkling of Lovecraft's dead voice, and they wanted it to be heard at its loudest. It's entirely possible that Joshi and Conovers had little to no input in the cover art for these volumes. But the covers seemingly work toward the same ends as the authors, by giving H.P. Lovecraft stature as an epic authority worth listening to.
Finally, there's an interesting case study in S.T. Joshi's comprehensive and recently reissued biography, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life. The book has been re-released three times, and always with different cover art. Amusingly, the older editions are further reflections of prevailing trends in Lovecraftian book jackets.
The 1996 edition contains a scaled photo, which echoes the elder biographical cover style mentioned earlier. Similarly, the 2004 reprint shows a genteel author overlooking his imaginary creations. Lovecraft acts as a sort of god-king in this setting. By 2010, Joshi's gargantuan and expanded reprint, I am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft, again uses photographs as covers - this time, full size portraits on both volumes of the set. Time will show whether or not studies of H.P. Lovecraft's life are again using the Lovecraft photograph as herald, or if a new trend has arrived. However, it pays to keep an eye on I am Providence, as its reign as the Lovecraft biography is expected to be a long one, and the art of this tome may actually function as a reflection of Lovecraft's popular image or as an aesthetic trend setter.
Dark Sky Films has announced that their horror comedy The Last Lovecraft will be released to the world on February 15, 2011. The movie has been in the works for the last few years, and it made the rounds at a number of film festivals in 2010, picking up favorable reviews along the way. Dark Sky's latest production fully embraces Lovecraftian horror's funny side, beginning with an unlikely premise and a slapstick adventure:
Jeff, a down on his luck office worker finds out he is the last living relative of horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft. What he doesn't know is that Lovecraft's monsters are real and will soon threaten the very existence of mankind. Jeff and his best friend Charlie are forced to embark on a perilous adventure and they enlist the help of high school acquaintance, Paul, a self proclaimed Lovecraft specialist. Together the three unlikely heroes must protect an alien relic and prevent the release of an ancient evil, known as Cthulhu.
This is the latest in a series of plots that blend Lovecraft's infamous Mythos with realistic settings and characters. As a product of HPL's newer fan circles, it will surely appeal to that base, but its humor may also touch broader fandoms not necessarily into Lovecraft. The Last Lovecraft is already available for pre-order from Amazon. Reserve your DVD before stock runs dry and a second run is required.
