Grim Reviews

An Interview With Mark Valentine About Book Collecting

2011-12-05T10:30:00.020-06:00

Tartarus Press continues its excellent series of videos about bibliophilia in this interview with Mark Valentine about book collecting. In it, the longtime scholar, editor, and fiction author discusses his own appreciation for this literary past time, as well as several names that should ring familiar to any weird fiction fanatic. The video seemingly coincides with new efforts by the publisher to expand its influence in the online realm.

It's not just social media or Youtube either. Tartarus' line of ebooks continues to swell. Just recently, ebook forms of Valentine's own The Collected Connoisseur appeared, along with an electronic re-issue of Mark Samuels' well regarded collection, The White Hands.

-Grim Blogger

Review: Historical Lovecraft

2011-11-28T10:00:00.021-06:00

By any measure, H.P. Lovecraft functioned well as an amateur historian, or at least as a great admirer of the past. Innsmouth Free Press' new anthology, Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time, does a superb job of reviving the Lovecraftian appreciation for bygone epochs. Unlike alternate anthologies based around a specific time, place, or theme, Historical Lovecraft places original horrors all across the map.

Horrors New and Old

Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles have used their editorial talents to great effect with this volume. The book is a balanced collection of tales from all eras: ancient, medieval, and modern. Rather than centering around HPL's own colonial New England or familiar European locales, we are introduced to the antiquated natives of cultures all across the world, and experience fear through their unique perspectives.

The impressive and diverse lineup of Historical Lovecraft begins in the paleolithic era with Andrew G. Dombalagian's tale, “The God Lurking in Stone.” A mentally retarded man haunts his sister as he communes with gods far older than mankind. More familiar ancient places come alive in the succeeding millenia.

In “If Only to Taste Her Again,” E. Catherine Tobler brings a horror from the Nile to the court of Egyptian ruler Hatshepsut, while Daniel Mills' “Silently, Without Cease” pulls back the curtains on a portrait of dying Byzantine Emperor Justinian as he bargains with a personification of the ravaging plague. Both authors excel at authentically duplicating the historic scenery and infamous personages that have ascended into the ranks of legend. Toler and Mills effectively twist the already nightmarish mysteries of the past into contorted abominations reflected back through a decidedly Lovecraftian prism.

Moving on, a Spanish Inquisitor attempts to interrogate a blasphemous horror from the New World in William Meikle's brilliant tale, “Inquisitor.” This story nicely illustrates the cross cultural potency concealed in many of these tales, which inject real terror into history's crucial transforming times and places. Inquisitors are certainly interesting on their own, but the hapless churchman who encounters something worse than a demon in this story also experiences a fate a hundred times more entertaining than a re-hash about the evils of extreme Catholicism with a Lovecraftian edge.

Strange, Far Places

The major driver behind the success of the stories in Historical Lovecraft is the editors' commitment to bringing together a truly global sampling of Lovecraftian horrors. For instance, Sarah Hans' “Shadows of the Darkest Jade” follows two Buddhist monks who encounter a far away village seething with evil. Hans shoves us into ancient madness without turning back.

“An Uninterrupted Sacrifice” brings forth the unusual offerings inspired by religious practices in ancient South America. H.P. Lovecraft would probably find it difficult to imagine a story based on his work without a Westerner in sight. This story proves that good Lovecraftiana can arise from authentically alien sources, and places like ancient Peru actually serve to enhance the exotic feeling.

Travis Heermann's “An Idol for Emiko” returns us to Asia, this time during the rise of Japan's Tokugawa Shogunate. More than mere samurai and oriental wonders are on display here. Lovecraft's infamous deep ones make an appearance, filling a small coastal village with predictable horrors, but getting to the gruesome end has never been stranger through early modern Japanese eyes.

In more modern times, “Red Star, Yellow Sign” by Leigh Kimmel infuses Lovecraftian themes into a relatively obscure historical event: the murder of Leningrad Mayor Kirov during the Stalinist era. The incredible mystery and myriad conspiracies surrounding Kirov's demise are made stranger still by introducing R'lyeh into the equation. Kimmel thoroughly captures the paranoia and totalitarian horror intrinsic in Soviet society, and her firm historical knowledge and knack for horror makes this a candidate for best story in the book, amid strong competition.

It seems that history and Lovecraftian horror will always walk hand in hand, since it has been that way from the beginning of the Cthulhu Mythos. Fortunately, the historic backdrops only grow richer and curiouser as time passes. Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time furthers that evolution along its natural track, and for this reason, it's not to be missed.

-Grim Blogger

LORE: A Quaint and Curious Volume of Selected Stories

2011-11-25T14:45:00.015-06:00

It's not everyday that bygone weird fiction journals from the past couple decades are resuscitated, but LORE: A Quaint and Curious Volume of Selected Stories does exactly that. The 1980s and 1990s experienced a tremendous flowering of brilliance in the broad field of literary horror, and Lovecraftian fiction specifically. In fact, the pioneering efforts of these unforgettable 'zines and journals arguably led to the strong position this genre enjoys today online.

LORE was one such effort that garnered a small, but devoted following in the late 1990s. Now, editors Rod Heather and Sean O'Leary have pieced together the finest samples from the magazine's history. Lovecraftian readers and weird fiction fans will find plenty to admire in these pages.

Tales by recognizable names such as Harlan Ellison, Jeffrey Thomas, Brian Lumley, and Robert M. Price abound, rare items that haven't seen the light of day again since the 'zine closed its doors. This latest incarnation of LORE: A Quaint and Curious Volume of Selected Stories brings back several award winning tales, and some experimental efforts that are too interesting to pass up. “The Challenge from Below” by Robert M. Price, Peter Cannon, Donald R. Burleson, and Brian McNaughton is particularly creative, conceived as a Lovecraftian round robin story by several veteran observers in the field.

Best of all, it seems this volume is merely the debut for a resurgent publishing imprint called The LORE Firm. This new enterprise aims to build on the little acknowledged success of the old publication by bringing out new content in both print and online media. What better way to build interest than by reminding readers of the predecessor's wonders?

LORE: A Quaint and Curious Volume of Selected Stories is a treasure trove of hidden Lovecraftiana and weirdism. Hopefully, it constitutes a firm starting point for new explorations that will prove just as impressive.

-Grim Blogger

The Orphan Palace by Joseph S Pulver

2011-11-14T10:00:00.018-06:00

Following closely on the heels of Joseph S. Pulver's unsettling short story collection, Sin & Ashes, his latest effort has appeared in the form of The Orphan Palace. This new Chomu Press novel melds the nightmarish fantasies originated by authors like H.P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers with Pulver's unmistakeable mind tripping. Fire, terror, and fringe characters come together maniacally in this genre bending storm.

Horror is exactly what most Pulver fans are after, and rightfully so, since he is a trustworthy master of it. His latest novel gives his devotees exactly what they are looking for – whether they know it or not. Like a blood stained Santa Clause, he knows how to gift words that are concealed knives, balancing a multi-verse of hells for maximum impact.

This book brings together otherworldly threats with the all too real underworlds of seedy orphanages, arson, and murder. Pulver makes us question realities, and wonder whether a parcel of our non-fiction world bears a resemblance to his madhouse built on pillars of untarnished horrors.

The Orphan Palace is a strong and swift descent into jarring lunacy, with hell spawned characters who are guaranteed to haunt the mind long after the pages go untouched. Pick up a copy, if you want to surrender to the entanglements of dark illusion and visceral frights.

-Grim Blogger

Understanding Ghost Stories: Books by ST Joshi and Andrew Smith

2011-11-03T10:00:00.030-05:00

Reading ghost stories provides a familiar chill to many readers, but only a select few want to delve deeper, burrowing into a thorough understanding of what drives the spectral tale. Today, with weird fiction scholarship more vibrant than ever before, that journey doesn't have to happen alone. Two outstanding study aids published in recent years head up a multiplying field. Look to S.T. Joshi's Warnings to the Curious and Andrew Smith's The Ghost Story 1840-1920: A Cultural History for proof of ghostly energies in literature.

S.T. Joshi Shines the Light on Jamesian Demons

Warnings to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M.R. James recalls the glory days when most scholarship focusing on literary horror occurred in obscure journals. Aside from H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James enjoyed zealous attention to his supernatural works. Ghosts and Scholars was a long running publication devoted to unveiling the many mysteries he left behind, headed by Rosemary Pardoe, who joins Joshi in editing this volume. The two wizened Jamesian observers have assembled a diverse array of discourse on M.R. James' most celebrated stories.

Unlike Ghosts and Scholars, which occasionally delved into minutiae that was only decipherable by absolute Jamesian fanatics, Joshi's scholarly collection is much more accessible. Occult, historic, and erotic tensions are explored as deep and relevant influences behind James' work. In many ways, gaining added insight into the forbidden knowledge fearfully communicated by M.R. James does nothing to dispel his demons.

Instead, Warnings to the Curious peels back the layers of beautiful illusion responsible for obscuring pure horror in James' tales. The demons, ghosts, and less definable terrors are then revealed in all of their alien glory. This book collects the most well thought and illuminating studies of James' fiction to date, and it should remain master for some time.

Andrew Smith Uproots Ghostly Terrors

By the time The Ghost Story 1840-1920 ends, M.R. James' ascent to the spectral throne of literary horror is just nearing its peak. This fat volume by Andrew Smith attempts to pierce the historic origins of the ghost story in the United Kingdom and beyond. More importantly, Smith lets loose an important bridge rarely completed in scholarship that's strictly centered around the weird.

Smith's haunted history talks about not merely James and Sheridan Le Fanu, but household names such as Charles Dickens and Henry James. Whatever other conclusions this book draws, no one can ignore its ability to place spectral fiction in the forefront of art and society. Smith's revelations are always tied back to the mainstream literary scene, political events, and economic turmoils that influenced the rise of the British ghost story, perhaps the same elements that were influenced in turn by a new and fearful aesthetic.

For a product of academia, The Ghost Story 1840-1920 is pleasantly readable to the average horror fan. Smith capably connects crucial figures and events back to phantoms, without droning on like an absent minded professor.

Understanding ghost stories isn't easy. It's conceivable that the most devoted weird horror readers could spend a lifetime contemplating the nuances of uncanny play between the dead and the living. Thanks to study props like these, at least they won't have to ponder in isolation.

-Grim Blogger

Escape to Hell by Muammar Gaddafi

2011-10-24T09:00:00.048-05:00

Last week, many were shocked to see the violent demise of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. There were plenty of notable events in his obituary, but buried in the depths of his many undertakings is his brief career as a fiction writer. Escape to Hell and Other Stories is Gaddafi's sole speculative fiction collection, originally penned in his native language, and then translated into English. Curiously, the book reportedly includes a wide variety of surrealist, horrific, and science fiction elements.

Earlier this year, I mused on the possibility of a despot like Kim Jong Il writing a collection of weird horror stories. Imagine my surprise to find out about this Gaddafi collection. It also begs the question of what's so terribly compelling about artwork created by such powerful and controversial figures? Obviously, it must be some exotic quality. Weird fiction authors such as Reggie Oliver have used the idea to great effect in stories like "The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler."

Perhaps it's a melding of real life horror with literature, and the rare ability to see such men (and women) exposed and unguarded in the way that only creative fiction can provide. Although Gaddafi's alternative career choices will probably always overshadow his literary merits, it may not be surprising if Escape to Hell garners wider attention in the coming years. The iron fisted are hastily condemned, while their motivations and mindsets remain enigmatic, however warped they may seem.

If it were possible to strip away the political context and examine figures like Gaddafi as artists, truly bizarre insights might emerge. Yet, divorcing such works from their lives is impossible, particularly at this stage. Nevertheless, the stories and other types of artwork they leave behind are sure to provoke thoughts and chills in equal measure for anyone who dares to pick up their work.

-Grim Blogger

The Shadow of the Unknown Lovecraftian Anthology

2011-10-19T10:00:00.040-05:00

The Shadow of the Unknown is the latest anthology to emerge from a real grassroots level in the Lovecraftian arena. Though some of the names aren't yet quite as well known as more established writers, one never knows when they are looking at the next generation of successors to the two or three Lovecraftian waves who have issued out of the literary leaves since Lovecraft exited this earthly plane. This latest book collects nearly thirty tales inspired by the modern weird and its finest attendants.

Going into untested waters isn't always easy, particularly when Lovecraftian fiction is one sub-genre with a history marred by crude pastiches. Still, the endorsement of important rising authors like Jeffrey Thomas indicates that The Shadow of the Unknown is one more effort that's helping re-polish Lovecraft's legacy up to a glowing aura. Consider picking up this anthology for a look at genuine home grown horror with an HPL inspired bent.

-Grim Blogger

The Political Immortality of Cthulhu and the Federal Reserve

2011-10-14T20:30:00.040-05:00

About one hundred years ago in the United States, the creation of the Federal Reserve took center stage as a major issue, when Great Cthulhu was barely a speck in H.P. Lovecraft's brain (or so we're told). Now, nearly a century later, the Fed is back in the limelight, and so is the Cthulhu like symbolism around it. Right now, Presidential candidates from Obama to Ron Paul and Rick Perry alternatively defend and deride the Fed, espousing alternating perceptions of it as a benevolent financial overseer or a conspiratorial monster. Who does that remind you of?

The incredible longevity of Cthulhuvian forms in relation to the banking system is interesting and certainly noteworthy. It seems to reinforce something inherently loathsome about chilling creatures with tentacles who lurk in the depths, and the dreadful parasitism in modern finance. The dark, the unknown, and the alien nature of the Cthulhu like octopus is weird and frightening, making it a suitable representative of institutions with little public trust or comprehension.

There are enough conspiracies and nefarious occurrences swirling around the Fed to make a Cthulhu cultist blush. Books like The Creature from Jekyll Island provide plenty of real life nightmare fuel. Regardless of what one thinks about the Fed, in an election year, political ire is so high toward Ben Bernanke and his system that more direct Cthulhu comparisons may be coming.

One final curiosity: H.P. Lovecraft shared his state with Senator Nelson Aldrich, the powerful Rhode Island politician behind bringing the Federal Reserve into existence. At one point, Lovecraft and Aldrich both lived in Foster, Rhode Island, just outside of Providence. Today, both are buried in Swan Point Cemetery. Further shadows of a conspiracy? You decide.

-Grim Blogger

Bibliomania Meets Weird Horror Fiction

2011-10-07T10:00:00.047-05:00

Many thanks to Tartarus Press owner and author Ray Russell for this fine mini-documentary on his book collection. Bibliomania strikes when least expected, even though it has become more expected in weird horror than in many other genres. Undoubtedly a product of limited print runs and deluxe editions, the average literary horror devotee is also a lover of well made books and obscure tomes.

Russell's video is the first known video record of this phenomenon. His intense collecting interest in Arthur Machen and other writers is discussed at length, while handsome shots of the books in question materialize. Rare volumes by Thomas Ligotti, Mark Valentine, and Edgar Allan Poe with Harry Clark's celebrated illustrations sit not far from the Machen books. An impressive collection, without question.

It's little wonder that Tartarus has always carried a strong sense of identity. The rich history behind their operation seems to be standing the test of time, especially if the latest developments are any indication. Just recently, Tartarus issued the latest short story collection by Reggie Oliver, Mrs. Midnight and Other Stories, which met out-of-print status at a breakneck pace.

-Grim Blogger

The Thinking Cthulhu Idol

2011-10-02T10:00:00.017-05:00

For Cthulhu cultists bored with traditional busts and idols, the Cthulhu Thinker statue is a fine way to mix it up. Etsy artist Thorssoli has crafted this alternate vision of the Greatest Old One, which doubles as a book end. Statues depicting H.P. Lovecraft's most recognizable creation have exploded in recent years.

From high end Cthinkers to Wacky Cthulhu Bobble Heads for the masses, Lovecraftian decor is no longer out of reach for anyone. Check out the Cthulhu Thinker if you need an unorthodox guardian for your ominous tomes.

-Grim Blogger

Review: Link Arms With Toads! by Rhys Hughes

2011-09-28T08:00:00.019-05:00

Rhys Hughes is a prolific writer, but his matching unfettered imagination is an even more impressive quality. His latest collection from Chomu Press, Link Arms With Toads!, reveals the limitless probing by Hughes into spheres few other authors would venture into. You can never quite know what to expect after the title of each tale washes over you. Hughes’ stories are a diverse stage, where whimsy, horror, and rich fantasy take the center in equal measure.

The Unimagined and the Re-Imagined

In his dedication, Rhys Hughes describes his latest collection as “a showcase of Romanti-Cynical stories.” Such a label isn’t far off the mark, but it entails so much more than mere Romanticism and Cynicism, perhaps hidden in the deceptive, hyphenated voids between these genres. Many of these yarns twist otherwise mundane settings into otherworldly vistas vaguely reminiscent of sci-fi and fantasy landscapes.

“The Taste of the Moon” is a perfect example. For Hughes, sending his dimension crossing explorers to chart the mysteries of time and space is too simple, and perhaps overdone. These Khormanauts explore the recesses of Indian restaurants, bent on unraveling the inexplicable business expansionism of these curry houses, equipped with yogurt-filled tanks for survival.

In “Lunarhampton,” Hughes explores the absurdity of Birmingham city establishing a lunar colony, with woefully outmoded technologies and bureaucratic dreams. Readers inevitably find equal measures of comedy and bleakness mixed together. Link Arms With Toads! routinely showcases maddening, humorous paradoxes, without becoming ridiculous. The same theme of meaningful absurdism established in “Lunarhampton” continues in tales like “333 and a Third,” where a man hops across various planes of existence, always ending up in living quarters that are too cramped. The more things change, the more they stay the same. However, in Hughes worlds, even these damning similarities are stunning to observe.

Top Tier Horror Parodies, Re-Spun

Though it’s not a pure collection of the macabre, Link Arms With Toads! serves generous pools of uncanny blackness unlikely to disappoint weird horror fans. Rhys Hughes is a master of parodying some of the greatest names in literary horror. His pastiches are serious, but they carry an equally sardonic tone, alongside inimitably Hughesian ideas that sweep familiar terrors into stranger territory.

“Pity and Pendulum” harkens back to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous ode to psychological and physical torture. Hughes arguably illuminates greater horrors lurking in the dungeons than Poe did, and then he establishes an effective sequel to this classic tale, revealing the unlikely fate of the infamous pit. In “Number 13 ½,” readers receive a convincingly written ghost story in the tradition of M.R. James. Worldly spooks and mysticism about unlikely numbers are brought into a parallel universe, where the slight, but significant differences unveil a horrific conclusion on an authentically Jamesian scale. As if that’s not enough, Hughes introduces a universe tipping reversal in “Oh Ho!” Here, it’s the specter who becomes haunted, rather than his victims.

At the end of the day, consider Rhys Hughes one of the more effective serial killers of traditional genres. The dead bodies of science fiction, fantasy, and melancholy horror will never be found on his property because they are melted down and resurrected as the most magnificent Frankenstein like monsters. Link Arms With Toads! demands a certain level of open mindedness to achieve its maximum effect, and those who give it what it deserves will be richly rewarded with a savory course of wholly original fiction.

-Grim Blogger

The Earth Rejects Him by Jared Skolnick

2011-09-25T10:00:00.017-05:00

An eerily minimalist trailer for The Earth Rejects Him has been uploaded by Lovecraftian film producer Jared Skolnick. Details about this new production are scant, but the inspiration is unsettling enough:

A young boy discovers a corpse while biking in the woods, then faces unexpected and macabre consequences when he tries to bury it.

Jared Skolnick previously created an excellent adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's tale, "The Music of Erich Zann." Look for this latest Lovecraft driven effort to appear sometime in the next year. Although HPL is likely the artistic tip of the spear for this movie, Skolnick states it also takes its cue from the films of Guillermo del Toro and Werner Herzog.

-Grim Blogger

The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath Comic

2011-09-22T08:00:00.026-05:00

Lovecraftian artist Jason B. Thompson is at it again. The man who was once crazy enough to help bring H.P. Lovecraft's epic tale, “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” to film is pitching a new mega graphic novel that will span all of HPL's dream stories. This ultimate dream cycle collection will translate several Lovecraft tales into ink that are rarely seen in comics: “Celephais,” “The White Ship,” “The Strange High House in the Mist,” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” Needless to say, the focus on unifying H.P. Lovecraft's dream cycle in the comics is unique.

According to Thompson, all four stories that make it into the book will be heavily revised from his original designs, expanded, and made into full color productions. Originally, his well drawn Lovecraft adaptations only saw a limited circulation. His last graphic editions of these tales appeared when HPL was just becoming truly hip to the power of online media, a time when Lovecraftian graphic novels were few and far between.

Jason B. Thompson is also the latest Lovecraftian producer to utilize Kickstarter.com as a method of raising capital for his endeavor. To date, the power fund set up to launch this project is doing surprisingly well. Kickstarter is rapidly becoming a new way for innovators involved with the weird to harness the power of web fundraising as a means to make their nightmares into realities.

Thompson's artistic prowess and appreciation for Lovecraft's fiction is certainly deserving of support. Pick up The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath on DVD to see what he has to offer. Despite being sold out for years, second hand copies continue to circulate on sites like Amazon. Better yet, chip in to his Kickstart fund, which has already raised over $6,000 at the time of this writing. Like many other fundraisers, his includes special prizes for heavy contributors.

-Grim Blogger

Stefan Grabinski Gets an Ebook

2011-09-17T10:00:00.007-05:00

Weird fiction's migration to the electronic medium is quickening. Polish author Stefan Grabinski is the latest to join the likes of contemporaries and grand masters from literary horror's past on e-book shelves everywhere. Or, more appropriately, the marketplace of Amazon's Kindle, which currently dominates the e-publishing world.

Grabinski's debut in e-book form arrives with a definitive edition of his collection, The Motion Demon. This edition includes all the contents of the increasingly expensive and out-of-print hardcover published by Ash-Tree Press. Fortunately, unlike some e-book efforts, this is no mere bundle of stories cobbled together by an amateur.

The Motion Demon is edited by Miroslaw Lipinski, the world's foremost authority on Grabinski translation and scholarly analysis. He has arguably done for the "Polish Poe" what S.T. Joshi managed to do for Lovecraft. Meanwhile, the most affordable English paperback which nicely introduces his strange stories remains The Dark Domain by Dedalus European Classics.

The curious transition of Stefan Grabinski is just the latest one to round out 2011, as the weird fiction community begins invading e-publishing. This year has also seen small presses like Tartarus dipping into e-books, and a large blast of new titles related to H.P. Lovecraft on Kindle.

-Grim Blogger

HP Lovecraft Books: Three Ways to Complete Your Collection

2011-09-14T09:00:00.046-05:00

Buying H.P. Lovecraft books to complete a collection is a previously unimaginable experience, thanks to the diverse options now available. From the humble days when HPL’s fiction was tightly controlled by Arkham House, to the explosion of Lovecraft at the publishing presses ever since his work passed into public domain, offering have expanded at a stunning rate. Still, there are only three quick and easy ways to complete a Lovecraftian collection, or at least come extremely close to it. Use these books to complete your personal collection of Lovecraft’s dark fantasies in a cost effective way.

Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

Two fat volumes from Gollancz represent the cheapest way to bring together the Providence author’s best known and most obscure writings. Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft binds together his most well respected efforts, from the fragmentary “Night Gaunts” to late, complex novellas such as “At the Mountains of Madness.” This nearly nine hundred page tome is one heavy paperback, but it is sturdily constructed and nicely illustrated.

With the arrival of Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre, Gollancz has created a high quality companion volume that taps Lovecraft’s lesser known pieces. In this book, HPL’s juvenile pieces, poetry, and important non-fiction tie ins like “Supernatural Horror in Literature” and “The History of the Necronomicon” cross paths. An excellent sampling of his collaborative and ghost written stories are thrown in for good measure.

Both gigantic volumes are edited by Stephen Jones and illustrated by Les Edwards. Together, they represent the quickest and cheapest path to collecting all of Lovecraft with the fewest books possible.

The Del Rey Lovecraft Collections

Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Del Rey’s H.P. Lovecraft books represented a widely acceptable way to obtain his tales in a mass market form. Though these collections are extraordinarily cheap on the mass market, you’ll need four Del Rey books to complete a Lovecraft collection. The big themed collections begin with The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, a book clearly designed to draw in newcomers.

Under the Del Rey imprint, the saga continues with The Road to Madness and Dreams of Terror and Death: The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft. These H.P. Lovecraft books constitute themed volumes built around his early fiction and dream addled tales, respectively. They chart an affordable path to a comprehensive collection, and the cover art by Michael Whelan remains nothing short of iconic.

Most recently, Del Rey’s fourth book came out, granting readers access to Lovecraft’s collaborations and ghost written pieces. The Horror in the Museum does what a only more expensive Arkham House book was previously able to do. If you’re willing to throw bibliophilic preferences to the wind, snapping up this volume with the other three Del Rey collections is a great way to get all Lovecraft essentials onto your shelves.

H.P. Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale

Centipede Press is the Lamborghini quality publisher of the horror world, and that extends to their gigantic tome, H.P. Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale. Don’t think of this 1200 page Cyclopean terror as just a very expensive hardcover. It herds together all Lovecraftian necessities into a slipped case deluxe edition, and pairs it with a separate book of rare HPL photography unavailable elsewhere.

The only downfall of H.P. Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale is that it may only be a high end avenue to getting nearly all H.P. Lovecraft books in one for a limited time. Centipede Press has limited this museum of a book to three hundred copies. Unless that changes, this miniature Lovecraft library will probably slide into the hands of a few hundred lucky collectors, and live on only as legend. At least, until the next deluxe press dares to place Lovecraft’s fiction into an equally outstanding presentation.

H.P. Lovecraft books will undoubtedly continue to multiply as the years pass. However, shortcuts that let you complete your collection will probably remain modest, well kept secrets, available only to true Lovecraft fanatics.

-Grim Blogger

Dance of the Damned by Alan Bligh Expands Arkham Horror Franchise

2011-09-10T21:30:00.037-05:00

There are rare times when Lovecraftiana comes full circle. It happened with Chaosium, where the company manufactured H.P. Lovecraft's febrile horrors into a popular franchise of role playing games, only to turn their sights back to the text realm with books. Many of their collections subsequently collected scenarios into full blown stories in the older Cthulhu Mythos tradition.

Now, Fantasy Flight Games, the entity behind the Arkham Horror board games, appears to be set on doing the same. Their first book, Arkham Horror: Dance of the Damned, is slated for a December release. It follows the adventures of a Miskatonic University librarian and bounty hunter as they fight to unravel a supernatural mystery in Lovecraftian Kingsport. This is due to kick off a more comprehensive trilogy called "The Lord of Nightmares."

Alan Bligh is a writer behind several other books serialized from gaming series. However, he seems to be a newcomer to the circles of Lovecraftian and weird fiction. Hopefully, this will result in a surprise win for Arkham Horror's foray into book form. Lovecraft purists and weird fiction literary fanatics shouldn't expect groundbreaking experiments in supernatural literature with Dance of the Damned, but it's likely to offer gamers and adventurous Lovecraftians a fun ride.

-Grim Blogger

The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham

2011-09-05T10:00:00.062-05:00

As the Cthulhu Mythos ages, it must probe its tentacles into successively stranger territory to achieve favorable responses from readers. As a result, we get books like The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham, written by Nick Mamatas and Brian Keene. Curiously, the volume mashes, inverts, and reconstructs parody not just from H.P. Lovecraft, but from Hunter S. Thompson's infamous drug fueled journey across Las Vegas.

Like Thompson's living nightmare masquerading as atmospheric mind alteration and social commentary, Keene and Mamatas set out to make Lovecraft's Arkham even tripper than it is by default. The Damned Highway actually journeys through multiple Cthulhu hot spots, including Innsmouth and the bewitched hills of New England. The narrative is notable for throwing politics into mix, since few modern Mythos tomes dare to tread in that direction, even if the monstrous corruption exposed is primarily that of the Nixon years.

There's something oddly humorous and chilling about throwing Nixon and his underlings into an environment seething with cultists. After all, the President is one of the few on record who discussed observing the ritualistic hijinks in Bohemian Grove.

As far as literary style goes, Keene and Mamatas break their usual boundaries with this book, and that's a good thing. This is a frontal assault on convention. The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham snaps the chains around familiar Lovecraftiana, and pushes both authors into uncharted territory. While any Lovecraft fan hopes the Cthulhu Mythos won't devolve into parody-upon-parody, well executed and imaginative tales like this one can play a pivotal role that innovates and entertains.

-Grim Blogger

The Spoken Word: Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood on Tape

2011-09-01T10:00:00.030-05:00

Ever wondered what some of weird fiction's finest writers sounded like? Wonder no more. A newer CD collection of voice recordings called, The Spoken Word: British Writers, carries the ghostly whispers of Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen. Literary horror masters from the UK and abroad are known to have produced limited recordings, but they are usually confined to family estates, as in the case of Robert Aickman. This CD captures what is believed to be Machen's only voice imprint left for posterity, and one of the handful produced by Blackwood that's still easily accessible.

Interesting enough, The Spoken Word puts Machen and Blackwood in potent literary territory. They share the stage with Kipling, Conan Doyle, Tolkien, and many other household names. Frankly, products like these do a service to British and world literature. They place weird writers with exceptional talent squarely where they belong - next to literary idols who chose to keep their use of the supernatural comparatively sparse.

-Grim Blogger

Mrs Midnight Collection by Reggie Oliver Nears Release

2011-08-28T10:00:00.038-05:00

Tartarus Press has announced that the latest short story collection by Reggie Oliver is nearing completion. It should arrive this September, re-introducing Oliver to the short story scene, after he briefly turned his attention to the first novel of The Dracula Papers: The Scholar's Tale (read the full Dracula Papers review here). His latest collection, Mrs. Midnight and Other Stories, indicates that Oliver shows no sign of letting up in the weird short fiction realm, a form that introduced him to eager readers.

As with other Oliver stories, the titles can suggest almost anything, but why not let the imagination run wild in the meantime? Here's the line up reported by Tartarus for the new volume: "Mrs Midnight", "Countess Otho", "Meeting with Mike", "The Dancer in the Dark", "Mr Pigsny", "The Brighton Redemption", "You Have Nothing to Fear", "The Philosophy of the Damned", "The Mortlake Manuscript", "The Look", "The Giacometti Crucifixion","A Piece of Elsewhere", "Minos or Rhadamanthus."

-Grim Blogger

Review: Weirdtongue by DF Lewis

2011-08-25T10:00:00.015-05:00

The name D.F. Lewis may prompt plenty of critical and courteous remarks. Indeed, there’s a lot to say, given his extensive experience in writing strange fiction for several decades, and in providing an outlet for the works of others as editor of the Nemonymous series. Fortunately, his novella by InkerMen Press, Weirdtongue: A Glistenberry Romance, lends a powerful distillate of what can be expected from Lewis’ work – a sampling that would otherwise be difficult to obtain by surveying the fifteen hundred plus stories he’s estimated to have written. The slim volume offers a journey like no other in weird fiction or outside of it. It is a destroyer of boundaries in every sense, chiseling away the confines of time, space, identity, and conventional literature.

A Nemophile’s Manifesto

This novella is impossible to define in simple terms, but if it were possible to cross a dream scrambled travelogue with a philosophical tract, you might end up with a similar artifact. While many inevitably focus on its notable wordplay and narrative spider webs, the story’s true power emanates from its heady ideas. The recurring references to Nemophiles as well as the shifting, unstable identities of many characters creates plenty of intellectual fodder.

In Weirdtongue, nothing is certain, a notion which is reinforced in each and every character, each of whom uses the book as a bridge from Lewis head into our own. For instance, the narrative opens from the perspective of Gregory Mummerset, a sufferer of dream sickness who is repeatedly visited by the word slinging apparition known as the Weirdmonger. Later, D.F. Lewis’ famous time traveling, globe trekking cat meats seller, Blasphemy Fitzworth, morphs from a Victorian merchant into a meat cart, becoming the very commodity instrument that constitutes his livelihood.

Beyond the surface of these bizarre occurrences is an unmistakable uncertainty principle at work in every way imaginable. Is the entire storyline the product of Mummerset’s febrile dreams, which he never really escapes from? Or perhaps Padgett Weggs, a wandering vagrant, is responsible for the events on display here. Maybe the entirety of the plot is some ghostly echo of the Glistenberry festival itself, shrieking its imaginary history down through the ages, using D.F. Lewis and his novella as an unknowing tour guide.

In the end, no one can say with any conviction. D.F. Lewis captures the same uncertainty principle wielded by weird fiction masters like Robert Aickman, and uncanny media personalities such as Rod Serling. Yet, it isn’t really fair to liken his work to either gentleman, since Lewis arguably outdoes both in stacking weird layer upon layer, forcing a freakish Tower of Babel into existence for any who care to probe its mysteries.

Recovering in the Narrative Hospital

In some way, every reader who enters the pages of Weirdtongue is invited to undergo a form of literary therapy that just might cure a sickness they may not have known was there. Lewis, like the cat meats seller of his tale, hacks apart the gristly elements of what may have once been independent narratives, arranging together the choicest cuts for our feasting. Still, this volume is not one to gorge on in short order.

The often experimental style that roils its pages is the greatest challenge to bringing the Weirdtongue’s alien ideas into coherence. Lewis isn’t afraid to curl words, insert footnotes, or twist names and places as it suits him. Widespread wordplay punctures the narrative as well, such as the curious references to cell phones, which begin to make sense when understanding the closeness nomophobia (fear of losing mobile phone contact) shares with other terms the author is fond of.

This type of almost mandated meta-fictional interaction between the book and the “real” world will disinterest some readers and delight others. The same applies to Lewis’ half-parodying self-criticism, introduced most notably through Simplon, who shows up with truncated speech patterns to attack Lewis’ flamboyant, unorthodox, and complicated styles. Should a book that sardonically jeers at itself be taken seriously? Opinions may differ, but there is so much else alive in Weirdtongue that the answer is yes.

The reading experience needed to get the most out of this novella is a slow, intent one that’s willing to ride the philosophic and word rich waves issued by D.F. Lewis. Perhaps the author knowingly crafted his story with the intent that it would only appeal to a limited, but energetic fan base. However, Weirdtongue: A GlistenberryRomance is ripe for more niche defying and genre traversing readers than may initially be expected. Its emphasis on bold, unsettling concepts unveiled through a rich cast of strange characters and diverse prose makes it a fine candidate for weird horror regulars and beyond. With patience, the jaunt through this particular world of Lewis’ design is an intellectually lucrative one, and so are repeated visits to the ghostly word-chambers of this narrative hospital.

-Grim Blogger

Eddie: The Lost Youth of Edgar Allan Poe by Scott Gustafson

2011-08-22T10:00:00.041-05:00

Books employing Edgar Allan Poe as a character must always veer off into fantasy. Somehow, this is a modest disappointment, since his real life was so tragic, so real, and so bizarre that it makes excellent fodder for the imagination. Eddie: The Lost Youth of Edgar Allan Poe by Scott Gustafson must go one step further, for better or worse.

As a children's volume, the book seeks to present a heroic Poe. It begins well before Poe's troubles like alcoholism set in, effectively masking the more controversial elements of his life from young minds. This allows the author to reinvent the horror master as he pleases. Surprisingly, though, Gustafson's story does not shirk from horror. His version of the youthful Poe is one who deals in intrigue and the macabre equally.

As a cultural artifact, it's interesting that Eddie: The Lost Youth of Edgar Allan Poe is aimed at children. Too often, Poe is introduced, and then quickly left behind. If there's any conspiracy in American English classrooms today, it's a tendency to avoid dwelling on the bleak prose of scribes like Poe in favor of global diversity with a message that is, in some way, uplifting.

This is a shame, since Poe's brutal realism and morose imagery is truly different, and far more enlivening than many modern contemporaries. Although Gustafson's contribution won't necessarily lead kids to pessimistic, strange horror, it will certainly introduce or re-introduce Poe, and possibly lead to a greater exploration filled with literary darkness.

-Grim Blogger

Rare HP Lovecraft Photographs: New Uncanny Pics

2011-08-20T10:00:00.060-05:00

Today may be the anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft's birth, but the gent writer from Providence is the one who keeps on giving. Thanks to a broadening fan base and easy access over the web, several previously rare photographs have surfaced. The Tentaclii blog deserves credit for sharing the first two images.

A weathered looking H.P. Lovecraft stands next to Maurice Winter Moe, a fellow poet, in this little known picture from 1936. Perhaps it's a mere camera trick, but HPL looks exceptionally gaunt and upright in this pose. Since it was taken just a year before his death, one wonders if the ultimately fatal intestinal distress wasn't already playing on Lovecraft's health. However, this seems a little early, before serious symptoms began to rage, according to sources like S.T. Joshi's exhaustive biography, I am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft.

Meanwhile, a dated photo of New York City's Double-R Coffeehouse appears. In the 1920s, this cafe was a sanctuary for H.P. Lovecraft and his circle. He's not present in this snapshot, but it gives a good indication of this hangout's environment during its heyday. Given his miserable time in the Big Apple, it must have constituted a rare escape from the frightful phobias and disappointing modernity that plagued Lovecraft at every turn. At one point, he penned a poem to it, "On the Double-R Coffeehouse."

Finally, an unknown photo of a true rarity: Lovecraft without a suit and tie on. This jacketed outfit proves beyond any doubt that the Providence author was capable of expanding his wardrobe and mixing it up, whenever the occasion was right. Only odd instances frozen in time, like his visit to see Robert H. Barlow, captured HPL without his coveted formal wear, as I noted in another post about rare Lovecraft photos. It's always interesting to see the human side of this man, even if it raises the risk of detracting from the mystique.

-Grim Blogger

Further Woes Hit Baltimore Poe House

2011-08-19T10:00:00.020-05:00

The money strapped Poe House in Baltimore is once again picking up some national attention. In a recent article, the New York Times sheds light on the painful history of the illustrious building. Though not an opinion piece, it does nothing to suggest a way forward for the house.

However, there is a nugget of fundraising potential mentioned in the article. As many know, Baltimore's football team, the Ravens, take their namesake from Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem. Perhaps it's time for professional sports to step up and help save horror and history. With a small promotional boost from a team like the Ravens, there's a decent chance that the Poe House would have no trouble getting together what it needs to keep operating.

-Grim Blogger

Cliffourd the Big Red God by Kenneth Hite

2011-08-16T10:00:00.047-05:00

Capitalizing on the success of humor in the Cthulhu Mythos, Kenneth Hite's new tome, Cliffourd the Big Red God, is one more illustrated oddity to add to a Lovecraftian collection. The book takes its name from the popular children's character, a big red dog, and adeptly parodies the concept. Humor and horror fall into the mix equally. The book is not quite as in depth or original as Hite's earlier work, Where the Deep Ones Are, but Lovecraft fans with a kick for Mythos laughs won't be disappointed.

The faux children's volume is right in line with the Cutethulhu phenomena too. For years, Kenneth Hite has been a leading observer and arguably an instigator of the Lovecraftian parody that tries to soften the Great Old Ones into Great Cartoons. With the popularity of similar art and fiction online, the Cutethulhu movement shows no signs of slowing.

Consider Cliffourd the Big Red God as the latest installment in Lovecraftiana's curious transition. Fortunately, these comedies turn out better when they are in capable hands like Hite's, and there's certainly more to appreciate in this book than in LOLthulhu like web memes.

-Grim Blogger

The Great Old Ones: Pinpointing Cthulhu on the Kardashev Scale

2011-08-13T10:00:00.021-05:00

The Kardashev Scale is a famous projection of a civilization's development. Analyzing H.P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, including Cthulhu, requires unorthodox means. Since Kardashev's estimates include wonders from a lowly industrial age up to godhood level, perhaps his futurist fantasies deserve a closer look in the Lovecraftian arena.

The Kardashev Scale: Power Ranking Civilizations

Generally, the Kardashev Scale endorses four civilization types based on how much energy an advanced society harnesses. Type I civilizations can successfully utilize the power of an entire planet. For our purposes, this scale is the most tangible from where humans sit today. Its beginnings are best observed in the fevered dreams of utopian media, like William Gazecki's film, Future by Design.

Type II beings have tapped into the energy offered by an entire solar system, presumably through advanced cosmic engineering constructs backed by even headier principles. Type III is greater yet, wielding almost unimaginable power on a galactic scale. Finally, the scale tops out at Type IV, where an all consuming power controls all the energy available in the whole universe. Think about the near omnipotent architects in Michael Moorcock's The Dancers at the End of Time series.

Pinpointing the Powers of the Great Old Ones

So, where does Cthulhu and the nefarious cabal he belongs to fit in? Presumably, Cthulhu's power is nearly unlimited. The ability to move through and manipulate multiple dimensions, soar through the cosmos, and use energy on a wide scale for warfare with other extraterrestrials makes him seem godly in comparison to mankind. Particularly, the meek post-Great War civilizations of Lovecraft's own day, which hadn't yet split the atom.

Not that nuclear power does much for humanity. Even a tripling of nuclear power plant input wouldn't put us anywhere close to a Type I society on the Kardashev Scale. It's not an effective defense against Cthulhu either, based on the imaginings of many writers. The Greatest Old One (or at least the best known) is hit by a nuke in August Derleth's The Trail of Cthulhu, and manages to survive without a breaking a runny green sweat.

However, is Cthulhu actually all he's cracked up to be? Clearly, Cthulhu may not be a Type IV being, let alone something greater, since he is subject to well known limitations. Virtually imprisoned in R'lyeh until the stars are right, Cthulhu was on the losing side of an ancient battle with alien forces that were seemingly even more powerful than he is. Multi-dimensional or not, it's hard to imagine any real Type III or Type IV power getting bested. Even Azathoth, who often appears superior to Great Cthulhu, seems little more than a stunted Type II being or less.

Then again, it's worth remembering that the Kardashev Scale is meant to measure civilizations, not individuals. If Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones are merely high ranking members of an immense civilization that spans several universes, they may well be in the Type III-Type IV range. A better estimation will remain elusive, and only based on the unapproved works by subsequent Mythos writers. Lovecraft's lasting gifts are horror and mystery, despite his frequent forays into sci-fi territory, not detailed scientific histories that give away the secrets of his most famous terrors, as S.T. Joshi notes in The Weird Tale.

In the end, the Kardashev Scale is an amusing thought experiment, but doesn't say much about the Great Old Ones. Not without liberal boundaries and much imagination, anyway. Trying to apply these measurements to Lovecraft's most nightmarish beings seems impossible for boosting any serious artistic or literary analysis, but the clumsiest efforts to classify them are still fun.

-Grim Blogger

Weird News: Mysterious Orange Goo Lands in Alaska

2011-08-11T10:00:00.037-05:00

Alaska is once again home to uncanny strangeness. During the past week, a curious orange goo began washing ashore in a remote village. So far, the substance matches no known natural or man made records. As any H.P. Lovecraft fan knows, mysterious slime heaved up from the sea plays an important role in several tales. "Dagon," "The Call of Cthulhu," and others echo the Providence writer's distaste and horror at what lurks beneath the waves.

Alaska's unique place in weird-dom continues to generate horror. Not unlike its surrounding wastes bordering the Arctic and Pacific territories. It's easy to see why lingering terrors from the sea in the great north continue to populate works by the likes of Laird Barron and Simon Strantzas. We are forcibly reminded, just once in awhile, that far greater monstrosities may lurk in the depths - often out of site, but never out of mind. We look to putrid, untraceable goo and shudder, with nearly the same intensity experienced when reading books such as Occultation and Beneath the Surface.

Remote, unknown regions are certain to provoke unspeakable chills. The human mind is already capable of conjuring the most vivid nightmares based on speculation and blackness alone. Still, imagine the greater horrors that will result in the coming years, a product of an Alaskan village and its token orange gift from hidden quarters.

Orange Goo Baffles Remote Alaskan Village

-Grim Blogger

The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Unwelcome Tenants by Ramsey Campbell

2011-08-08T10:00:00.046-05:00

Ramsey Campbell's best known volume of Lovecraftian stories is back in a new edition from PS Publishing, following a lengthy absence on the weird fiction market. The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Unwelcome Tenants collects the notable UK horror author's early efforts at producing stories in the Cthulhu Mythos tradition. The new version constitutes a limited print run of signed hardcovers, with a classically Lovecraftian illustration by Randy Broecker.

Campbell's work is well known in the weird horror community today. He is one of the few writers to use Lovecraft as a launching pad to a full blown career in horror fiction. Campbell's relationship with Lovecraft's work has been famously volatile. He vigorously rejected any aping of Lovecraft during the 1970s, almost to the point of denouncing HPL's craftsmanship. Later, Campbell rehabilitated his Mythos based stories as he reached a much more balanced and mature view, and he has continued to produce new stories in a weirdly Lovecraftina spirit since.

Readers who are new to Campbell or on the fence about picking up The Inhabitant of the Lake should treat themselves to his mammoth paperback collection, Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell 1961-1991. Love him or hate him, this British author is sure to remain entrenched on the weird and Lovecraftian scene for decades to come. This newest reprinting of his old Arkham House collection only confirms that.

-Grim Blogger

Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery by Graphic Classics

2011-08-05T10:00:00.034-05:00

Eureka Productions is scheduled to release another installment of their famous Graphic Classics series shortly. Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery brings together several new illustrated stories previously unseen in their series. It's a full color volume that seeks to breathe new life into Poe's old stories - an increasingly challenging order for artists to fulfill. The decision to ink each story, rather than leave it in black and white, is sure to add a new impressive layer to their well established franchise.

Fortunately, their previous volumes with tales by Poe have been among the better visual art homages to this titan of weird horror. The new book contains over a dozen works, including "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," "The Man in the Crowd," "The Murders in Rue Morgue," and "MS Found in a Bottle." Although it mixes mystery as well as weird horror, there's plenty of strangeness to make the graphic novel worth the price of admission for literary horror fans.

Look for Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery by late August. It should ship arrive in brick-and-mortar stores and embark from online retailers like Amazon in due course.

-Grim Blogger

On HP Lovecraft and Ice Cream: Honoring Lovecraft's Birthday

2011-08-02T11:00:00.108-05:00

It's that time of year again. H.P. Lovecraft's birthday is just around the corner on August 20. While some will dismiss the merits of honoring a dead man who has been in the ground for more years than he enjoyed in the sun, others seek to mark the occasion. Lovecraftian birthday rites are more important for those of us who remain here, as a way to measure the impact his work has had upon our lives.

How to Celebrate H.P. Lovecraft's Birthday

How, then, to honor the occasion of Lovecraft's birth every year it ticks by? Parties, conventions, readings, and tours in Providence have rightly taken place over the years, but the right culinary mood is often overlooked. What's a celebration without the right fare for guests? Only a handful of serious Lovecraftians patch together formal birthday gatherings each year, but for those who do, it's worth examining foods that make an appropriate centerpiece.

Birthday purists will inevitably research what foods Howard Phillips Lovecraft himself enjoyed. HPL was a notoriously cheap and flippant eater, in a time when dietary concerns for obesity and other physiological disorders was barely acknowledged. While it would be unwise, not to mention undesirable, to duplicate his eating habits all year around, celebrating Lovecraft's birthday is one time where his tradition looks tasty and reasonable.

Why Ice Cream?

His enormous sweet tooth is the stuff of legend, forever lifted from his personal correspondence, and enshrined in official biographies like S.T. Joshi's I am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft. While Lovecraft was extraordinarily partial to sugar saturated coffee, Hershey's chocolate bars, and pie, there's one rich delicacy that really stands out: ice cream. Throughout the roaring twenties and into the austere thirties, he frequented gourmet ice cream parlors as a favorite treat. In a 1931 letter to J. Vernon Shea, Lovecraft writes, "But I more often take ice cream, of which my favourite flavours are vanilla & coffee (the latter hard to get outside New England) & my least relished common flavour is strawberry."

Fortunately, ice cream is neither scarce nor hard to store today, which makes it a perfect way to toast HPL's legacy. The explosion of widely accessible flavors and other ice cream based dessert concoctions means it's highly adaptable, and there's almost certainly something for everyone in this frozen arena. Besides, Lovecraftians who wish to take matters a notch higher will realize it goes well with pie, another sweet temptation of the Providence writer.

Several other factors make ice cream a prime choice as well. In many regions where Lovecraft is best known, the icy dessert is at its popular zenith during the warmest months. Additionally, it can be easily passed out at parties, and makes irresistible bait for organizers hoping to set up an ice cream social based on Lovecraft's work. Finally, bold Lovecraftian cooks have stepped forward in recent years to create Cthulhuvian cakes and other outlandish confections. Ice cream, though, is just as malleable, and offers the ultimate challenge to culinary artists seeking to sculpt unspeakable Cthulhu Mythos horrors.

It's not entirely unreasonable to imagine H.P. Lovecraft sparking a tiny culinary following in the years to come. After all, who can resist the draw of blasphemously delicious Sundaes that double as evil idols?

-Grim Blogger

Forever Azathoth by Peter Cannon

2011-07-31T13:15:00.042-05:00

Peter Cannon's well received book of Lovecraftian parodies is scheduled to make a return this August. Forever Azathoth has been out of print for years, after originally being released by Tartarus Press. Subterranean Press has taken the liberty of publishing the new edition. Cannon's sixteen story collection exemplifies well done Lovecraftian humor.

In fact, he seems to have made it a hallmark of his literary career in the Lovecraftian arena. Not long ago, Cannon published The Lovecraft Chronicles, an alternate history biography where HPL lives until the 1960s. Rather than resorting to campy pastiche, Cannon wields his extensive knowledge of Lovecraft and other writers to craft weird fiction that's thought provoking and funny.

Forever Azathoth contains several prime examples where Lovecraftian themes are successfully merged with those by other authors. Cannon's parodies are nearly as much a homage to Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, William Faulkner, and more classic writers as they are a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. With any luck, the collection will gain renewed attention as its new signed, limited edition begins hitting readers. Cannon's work is just the literary medicine needed to help flesh out Lovecraftian humor into a lively and meaningful practice, rather than a vapid one whose jokes rely upon face value observations and word play.

-Grim Blogger

The Thing: 2011 Official Trailer

2011-07-28T10:00:00.021-05:00

The first trailer for the follow up film to John Carpenter's Lovecraftian hit, The Thing, has surfaced. In this prequel, which is also titled The Thing (the franchise could stand to learn some originality with names), a Norwegian science team discovers an extraterrestrial entity in the Antarctic. This Shoggoth like monstrosity relies upon imitating terrestrial creatures, and is later responsible for the horrifying events in Carpenter's film.

It's difficult to gauge whether or not this prequel will live up to its predecessor. Still, it's good to see a touch of the Lovecraftian back in the Antarctic, especially after Guillermo del Toro was forced to cancel his At the Mountains of Madness project earlier this year. Look for 2011's rendition of The Thing to appear in theaters this October.

-Grim Blogger

Stained Glass Cthulhu

2011-07-25T10:00:00.033-05:00

Stained Glass "Jeebus Cthulhu" by Future-Vintage

Art based on H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional nightmares is very often oriented toward two dimensional works. Great paintings, charcoal sketches, and awesome graphic designs have arisen over the years to pay homage to Cthulhu and other monstrosities, giving Lovecraft’s stories an obscene illustrated life. As a result, we have books like The Art of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, and Centipede Press’ legendary tome, A Lovecraft Retrospective:Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. While stunning two dimensional products by Lovecraftian professionals is well worth the attention, it causes interesting three dimensional pieces to be overlooked.

HP Lovecraft in stained glass by Spectral Creations

The fledgling stained glass industry is one such underground beast. It’s difficult to know what ever inspired artists to freeze Cthulhu’s image in mystic glass. The occult wisdom of such a move notwithstanding, its success makes Lovecraft the only weird fiction author to date with stained glass made in his image.

A traditional Cthulhu glass design by Chantal's Stained Glass Patterns

Glass designs thus far have been extremely traditional. The saint-like iconography of everyone’s favorite Great Old One brings an eerily realistic edge to this art. Meanwhile, Lovecraft’s profile takes on a sacrosanct position. The cultural memory surrounding stained glass certainly makes these odd works seem like valuable relics.

A Santa Cthulhu sun catcher ornament by Seward Street Studios

Unsurprisingly, the more menacing and serene depictions of Cthulhu and his creator in glass are followed by the humorous. Glassworks like Santa Cthulhu as Christmas tree ornaments show the Cutethulhu phenomenon’s unwavering hold over the minds of artists. In fact, the split of seemingly serious to light hearted Lovecraftian stained glass is about 50-50. Humor, then, is as much an impetus as horror for those who choose to bring Lovecraft to this art form.

One day, it’s possible that Lovecraftiana captured in stained glass will grow into a respectable mini-niche. When that happens, it’s only a matter of time until it begins showing up in future volumes celebrating the highly talented and nearly esoteric quality of Lovecraftian art.

-Grim Blogger

Automatic Monk From Medieval Times

2011-07-23T10:00:00.017-05:00

This automated monk from the Medieval era begs many questions, many of them right in line with the weird. Consider it a freakish construct, where Ligottian puppet nonsense collides with Lovecraftian Cosmicism, and the devout faith embodied in writers like Arthur Machen. Would an artificial monk have an artificial faith? Or is it a vicious, mocking reflection of a monastery universe?

-Grim Blogger

The Merkabah Rider by Edward M Erdelac

2011-07-21T10:30:00.050-05:00

Cthulhu Mythos and heroic adventure tales writer, Robert E. Howard, pioneered the sub-genre of the weird western. Curiously, while many have followed up on Howard's epic barbarian and Cthulhuvian stories, his westerns have been neglected. That is, until now. Edward M. Erdelac has revived the spirit of Howard's wild and unusual western heroes with the Merkabah Rider series.

These tales place the Rider, a Jewish mystic and gunslinger, into an alternate American Southwest. Demons and other blasphemies reminiscent of the Cthulhu Mythos show up along the way. Not content to stand on Robert E. Howard alone, Erdelac introduces H.P. Lovecraft's familiar entity, Shub-Niggurath as a major plot device. Magic and inter-dimensional horrors surface along the way, balancing adventure and the supernatural with excellence.

Better yet, it's set to comprise an ongoing series. There have been two books released to date. The story begins in Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter, and continues in the latest installment, Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name. Erdelac has wisely made his titles available in both paperback and Kindle format, making it easy for fans of Howard's work and the strange to access these new bizarre chronicles.

-Grim Blogger

Weird News: Medieval Codex Calixtinus Manuscript Vanishes

2011-07-19T10:30:00.000-05:00

There are some books that are legally forbidden to bibliophiles, but that still doesn't stop some from trying. The recent theft of the Codex Calixtinus from a Spanish Cathedral is a fine example. Unlike one of Lovecraft's book thieving villains, who is after occult knowledge, profit is a more likely motive behind this crime. However, the disappearance of this archaic travel guide is still reminiscent of weird fiction's most chilling storylines involving captured books.

Codex Calixtinus Manuscript Stolen from Santiago de Compostela

-Grim Blogger

Strange Universe: The Ritual in Bohemian Grove

2011-07-17T11:00:00.175-05:00

This weekend begins the annual rites of a secret society that has attracted much speculation in recent years: the famous Bohemian Club in California. Since the society began in the late 19th century, its high powered members have descended to a wooded area outside Monte Rio, and engaged in curious revelry that looks nefarious to some and childish to others. Whatever the case, no one can deny that the Bohemian Grove is strange, and exudes a surreal atmosphere closely related to weird art and literature.

What Happens at the Grove

The annual meeting of the Bohemian Club generally lasts about two weeks through mid July. During this time, household names from government, business, and media kick back in the woods. Whatever else it is, the event seems designed to take these overstressed individuals out of their every day responsibilities. Many observers contend that the Bohemians end up drinking too much, which causes their exclusive festivities to degenerate into a drunken tirade reminiscent of frat house parties.

Meanwhile, fearful observers from across the political spectrum believe far more nefarious undertakings are occurring in Bohemian Grove. Allegations of orgies, illegal drugs, prostitution, and even sacrificial murder have surfaced in recent years. While left wing conspiracy believers rage against policy decisions they believe are being set by arms of a military-industrial complex, right wing dissidents accuse the Bohemian members of Satanism. Books like Mike Hanson's Bohemian Grove: Cult of Conspiracy round up the most nightmarish aspects of the meeting. No hard proof has ever emerged of the worst claims going on at the Grove, but something strange is taking place.

The big question that distinguishes whether the Bohemian Club is an elaborate joy ride or a closed door policy session is whether deals are being cut under the table. For decades, the summer site has been a gathering point for Presidents, countless bureaucrats, and titans of industry. Scientific, military, and artistic personalities show up as well. It's believed that the Manhattan Project's major components, leading to the Atomic bomb, were partly conceived during a Bohemian Club meeting in 1942. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Although Grove attendees seem intent on engaging in pleasure seeking, it's difficult to imagine that so many rich and powerful individuals gathered in one place never knock around ideas or make deals off the record.

Ritualistic Horror: The Cremation of Care

The most bizarre moment in the Bohemian Club's annual gathering usually occurs on Saturday, when members gather before a gigantic stone owl and perform a play entitled The Cremation of Care. During this event, a mock sacrifice occurs. A gangly human effigy is sacrificed and burned. Ostensibly, this occurrence symbolizes the destruction of the earthly ties that normally bind Grove members, also implied in their slogan, "Weaving spiders come not here."

Unsurprisingly, this faux cremation is the source of many unsettling legends. It's easy to believe the power elite are devils, when they are howling along to occult rituals. There's certainly a wild and immature element to the whoops and hollers captured in scenes from the Cremation of Care, recorded when a notable conspiracy theorist named Alex Jones infiltrated the group in 2000. The full elusive taping was later made into the film Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove, but the Cremation of Care ceremony is undeniably the creepiest part.

Conspiracy or not, we have the makings of a weirdly Lovecraftian performance occurring in the real world. The cultists, rather than being inbred goons from the Louisiana Bayou, are global leaders. It's one thing to listen to drunken nobodies gibbering as though they were at Great Cthulhu's talons, rather than a giant owl's, but hearing it come from society's supposed cream-of-the-crop is exceptionally eerie.

Bohemian Grove and the Weird

The Cremation of Care ceremony isn't the only Bohemian Club aspect related to supernatural literature. The entire event glows with an uncanny atmosphere best received in the pages of Lovecraft, Poe, or Machen. It's ultimately the Grove's lingering mysteriousness that causes it to look and feel so strange. Secrecy also breeds monsters, even very human ones, and perceptions of malevolence.

Atmosphere aside, the Bohemian Club's exclusive products share a similarity with weird fiction books too. Anyone acquainted with the literary horror genre knows how pricey and scarce certain story collections and novels can be. Likewise for limited edition plays, yearbooks, and other publications issued by the Club to its members. Don't be surprised to see rare copies of these items floating around E-bay and booksellers for thousands of dollars.

What really happens at the Bohemian Grove every July is only known to the attendees, and very few of them are talking. The annual gathering is a blessing and a curse for seekers after real world weirdness. The rituals and the covert shadows prove that highly unusual and creepy happenings arrive in this world. However, their unknown nature drives fear and closet admiration for lovers of the strange aesthetic.

-Grim Blogger

Cthulhu Tales Omnibus Delirium by Boom Studios

2011-07-15T10:00:00.044-05:00

Boom! Studios has decided to release the first definitive collection of their Lovecraftian comics in September, 2011. Fans of seeing Lovecraft in graphic novel format will rejoice when Cthulhu Tales Omnibus: Delirium appears. This 224 page monstrosity is one of the largest graphic collections ever released in the Cthulhu Mythos. It compiles the bizarre plot lines and impressive artwork from the first three volumes of Cthulhu Tales, all pioneered by Boom's many illustrators who have worked on the project over the years.

The stories on display in Cthulhu Tales Omnibus: Delirium are heavily responsible for the Lovecraftian renaissance in comics. Although Lovecraftian art has never been weak or uninspired, its history in comic territory was spotty until the early 2000s. Since then, H.P. Lovecraft's horrors seem here to stay in illustrated storytelling, and it may not have happened without Cthulhu Tales.

-Grim Blogger

The Book of Cthulhu Edited by Ross E Lockhart

2011-07-13T10:00:00.041-05:00

Mammoth anthologies that collect the most outstanding tales from Lovecraftian fiction over the past several decades are becoming rather. Fortunately, The Book of Cthulhu is changing this trend. This four hundred page trade paperback is due to be published by Night Shade Books in the fall of 2011.

The anthology collects many of the best samples by authors who can do Lovecraft justice, without being boring or pastiche. Editor Ross E. Lockhart has pieced together works by the illuminati of modern Lovecraftiana: Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Kline, Thomas Ligotti, Laird Barron, and many more familiar names. Volumes like The Book of Cthulhu are useful not just as enjoyable reading, but as literary snapshots of what weird fiction readers and authorities consider modern triumphs in the Cthulhu Mythos. If you found yourself stranded on a desolate island with just a small library of books by the contributors to this anthology, you might be able to keep your sanity.

The impressive lineup for the anthology is as follows:

Caitlin R. Kiernan - Andromeda among the Stones
Ramsey Campbell - The Tugging
Charles Stross - A Colder War
Bruce Sterling - The Unthinkable
Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Flash Frame
W. H. Pugmire - Some Buried Memory
Molly Tanzer - The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins
Michael Shea - Fat Face
Elizabeth Bear - Shoggoths in Bloom
T. E. D. Klein - Black Man With A Horn
David Drake - Than Curse the Darkness
Charles R. Saunders - Jeroboam Henley's Debt
Thomas Ligotti - Nethescurial
Kage Baker - Calamari Curls
Edward Morris - Jihad over Innsmouth
Cherie Priest - Bad Sushi
John Hornor Jacobs - The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife
Brian McNaughton - The Doom that Came to Innsmouth
Ann K. Schwader - Lost Stars
Steve Duffy - The Oram County Whoosit
Joe R. Lansdale - The Crawling Sky
Brian Lumley - The Fairground Horror
Tim Pratt - Cinderlands
Gene Wolfe - Lord of the Land
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. - To Live and Die in Arkham
John Langan - The Shallows
Laird Barron - The Men from Porlock

-Grim Blogger

The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein by Thomas Ligotti on Pre-Order

2011-07-11T10:00:00.076-05:00

With far less pomp than it deserves, Centipede Press' new edition of The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales went up for pre-order last week. Until now, this book of unusual vignettes, sequels, and horror tributes to famous horror icons by Thomas Ligotti was his rarest title on the second hand market, and certainly one of the most expensive. Fortunately, the Centipede reprint revives the book's greatest wonders and unleashes some new ones.

Just like his other definitive collections currently being published by Subterranean Press, Ligotti has revised The Agonizing Resurrection, aiming to make the stories more like they were always intended to be. Longtime fans will notice that Harry O. Morris has provided the illustrations for the volume's own not-so-agonized resurrection. Many will rejoice, since Morris played a crucial role throughout Ligotti's career, as publisher and illustrator of Nyctalops, as well as the first edition of Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and several other works.

According to reports, orders are rapidly pouring into Centipede's database. Fans, dealers, and cynical investors are wasting no time with this title, and for good reason. The handsome looking hardcover is limited to five hundred copies. In a move that mirrors the exceedingly rare red leather edition of its predecessor, Centipede is producing fifteen deluxe copies for $1750 each. While only a few lucky collectors will seize this edition, there's still a chance to move on the far more affordable trade hardcover. Get your order in now.

The Agonizing Resurrection is the third book by Thomas Ligotti released in 2011, and almost certainly the finest. It's due to ship out by late September. Until then, look for Subterranean Press' revised edition of Grimscribe: His Lives and Works, and the new paperback edition of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.

-Grim Blogger

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson in Art

2011-07-09T10:00:00.051-05:00

Since William Hope Hodgson's strange novel, The House on the Borderland, first appeared, artists have sought to capture the demented, liminal spirit of the hellish house. Here, it's worth collecting a few of these efforts for comparison. Hodgson's otherworldly house was a product of pure imagination, which earned it praise from weird fiction contemporaries like H.P. Lovecraft.

Depictions of the eponymous house veer toward the decrepit profile given in the novel. Recently, illustrator Richard Corben translated Hodgson's work to the visual medium in his House on the Borderland graphic novel. Corben's house follows the book pretty literally, but also takes the liberty of making the house look exceptionally crooked. Corben's artwork zeroes in on an essential feature of illustrating Hodgson: the house, as a reality spanning nightmare, must reflect its warped realm more than the cliff it seems to occupy.

It's the house and its surroundings, after all, where the supernatural events of the novel unfold. Although visual artists have sought to capture far stranger aspects of Hodgson's story than its house, many images hinge on effectively generating the eeriness and surrealism in the house. The house is ultimately the lever for artistic weirdism that's worthy of the novel, and these are just a few images that come close to that level of justice.

-Grim Blogger

Current 93, Thomas Ligotti, and Jan Svankmajer Combined

2011-07-07T11:00:00.023-05:00

Imagery that accurately reflects the grim and surreal vision offered by Thomas Ligotti is difficult to find. However, Youtube user aluminiumface recently posted a video that combines a lengthy excerpt from "I Have a Special Plan for this World" with scenes from Jan Svankmajer's short film, The Ossuary. With little modification, the dark audio collaboration by Ligotti and Current 93's David Tibet really comes alive.

These scenes, produced by the Czech Republic's "militant surrealist," lend sight to dark incantations that could previously only manifest inside our minds. Although many will doubtlessly continue to prefer the natural route, this short production effectively shows the flexibility of Ligotti's hallucinatory words in the visual medium.

-Grim Blogger

Weird News: Haunted Manor Endangered Without Bail Out

2011-07-05T10:00:00.043-05:00

The United Kingdom has always been at the forefront of supernatural horror in literature and beyond. A uniquely British dedication to the strange is manifesting itself once again in the recent debate over the fate of Wymering Manor. Reportedly, without major repairs, this "most haunted" locale is structurally endangered.

This is why advocacy groups are beginning a push to save the manor with a combination of contributions from charities and local governments. The nearly thousand year old building is one of the few spectral places in the world that continues to have a fighting chance at immortality. Perhaps there are more than human actors at work. In a land of modern ghostly traditions begun by M.R. James with Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, and continued by powerhouses of otherworldly horror like Reggie Oliver, the haunted may reign forever.

Decay Fears for Portsmouth 'Haunted House'

-Grim Blogger

Review: The Great Lover by Michael Cisco

2011-07-03T10:00:00.025-05:00

When you step inside Michael Cisco’s world, don’t just expect the unexpected. Rather, brace yourself. Cisco’s themes, ideas, and imagery are so thoroughly exotic that they verge on posing an existential danger. Nowhere is this clearer than in his most recent release, The Great Lover, a lengthy novel published by the enterprising Chomu Press. Wedged between an atmosphere of rich dereliction and an uncanny style is a treatise on the modern, the vampiric, death, and the élan vital. Uncovering these nuggets of pure thought requires effort, but the psychic mining is worthwhile.

In previous novels like The Tyrant, Michael Cisco’s ideological and stylistic ancestry reflects Franz Kafka, as well as masters of strangeness such as Thomas Ligotti, H.P. Lovecraft, and David Lynch. This aesthetic heritage is even more evident in his short story collection, Secret Hours. However, the new work is a different organism altogether. It seems that Cisco’s Great Lover is more than a deranged anti-hero. He is a representation of the author’s own progression, breaking free from the orbit of the greats, and soaring off into truly original territory.

Prosthetic Libido, Prosthetic Characters, and Prosthetic Styles

Whatever criticism or praise may be leveled about The Great Lover, everyone must recognize its abundant originality. Cisco’s diverse characters strike a fantastic chord from the beginning. We are introduced to the Great Lover, the novel’s titular character, who is a strange entity never before seen in any horror fiction or outside of it. He is one part sewer dwelling tramp, and the other part intellectual invader. The Great Lover dwells in the mind, in the coffin, and in the other people’s dreams. Does he breach boundaries between worlds, or serve as proof that disparate realities are actually the same? Cisco doesn’t provide a definitive answer, but the awesome mystery posed by the Great Lover’s existence is just one of the book’s mighty offerings.

Curiously, Michael Cisco takes a turn toward Frankenstein and science fiction with the Prosthetic Libido. This strange and lustful being is an android designed to quarantine a work obsessed scientist’s lust, on the surface. However, throughout the narrative, the Prosthetic Libido seems like so much more. After human lust is introduced into a dead, blank human facsimile, Cisco presents the ultimate dichotomy. The Prosthetic Libido is an effective walking philosophical quandary, eradicating the boundaries between inanimate deadness and the chief driving force behind most organic beings.

Staying caged within stylistic traditions doesn’t appeal to Michael Cisco very much either. The Great Lover is his literary escape pod. He disregards traditional narrative structures with courage and recklessness, and the results are mixed. At times, Cisco’s weaving between tenses, points of view, and first and third person is disorienting. Yet, many readers will adjust due to the novel’s length, as Cisco temporarily rewires our brains to perceive his story as he does. It’s as though we are all prosthetic puppets artfully crafted to adapt to Cisco’s experimental style, serving as vessels for his alien scripture. Like all little puppets, some will cooperate happily, while others will resist the author’s extra-literary influence.

Cisco’s Horrors of the Mind

Somewhere, deep in a landscape dotted with art museums and literary laboratories, the real purpose of The Great Lover takes shape. Cisco’s book explores bizarre, often opposed themes fearlessly. Like a barely charted jungle, well defined paths and crumbling shrines within the novel are too numerous and hidden to define with precision. Instead, Cisco’s novel leaves a distinct aftertaste of lush contrasts.

Defying life and death, epitomized by the Great Lover, the Prosthetic Libido, and a host of other offbeat characters, stands out most clearly. Perhaps, in a tradition coursing through weird fiction and found in academic philosophy’s gutters, Michael Cisco wishes to tear off our neat glasses and shatter them on the ground. By wrecking the distinctions between living and dead beings, macabre vermin ridden sewers and subway cults, the Prosthetic and the natural, we see the nature of reality as it actually is, however blurry. Though this novel could fit neatly in a course on Modernism and Post-Modernism as required reading, walking away with bland numbness rather than existential, uncanny chills isn’t possible.

Book by book, tale by tale, Michael Cisco is quickly becoming an intellectual godfather of weird fiction. He isn’t H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, or Franz Kafka. Just like the supernatural cloud cover and heady ideas overflowing from The Great Lover, it’s impossible to neatly describe Cisco’s literary career. However, he shows no sign of slowing as he advances toward his unknown destination, and by gaining Cyclopean mass, his wake may pull all of us into the ether with him.

-Grim Blogger

July Films by The Outer Church

2011-07-01T10:30:00.037-05:00

A poster for The Outer Church by James R. Moore

Despite a renaissance in weird fiction and ongoing experimental cinema niches with disturbing sights, events that capture a truly uncanny atmosphere remain rare. However, Brighton, England is set to host an event by The Outer Church later this month which follows in the haunting footsteps of Lovecraft and other weird fiction artists. Here's what The Outer Church's curator has to say:

For its July 2011 edition, The Outer Church explores the derelict spaces of urban folklore with the first UK screening of contemporary uncanny masterpiece Marble Hornets (Season One). The most accomplished and acclaimed product of the Slender Man mythos, this immersive DIY phenomenon has spawned several imitations and attracted praise from revered film critic, Roger Ebert. The musical segment of the event promises to be equally compelling. As Sinneslöschen, Astrud Steehouder aka Paper Dollhouse (newly signed to Bird/Finders Keepers) and Bound Toy of Old Apparatus (DEEP MEDi) present a live collaboration taking in dryad psychedelia, desolate drone and electromagnetic interference, conjuring nightmares from thin air.

Venue:
Komedia Brighton
Date/time:
14th July 2011, 7.30pm

UK residents in range shouldn't miss this opportunity to enjoy these weird screenings. For more details, check out The Outer Church's blog, or visit Komedia for ticket information.

-Grim Blogger

Dead But Dreaming 2 by Miskatonic River Press

2011-06-29T10:30:00.042-05:00

Miskatonic River Press has finally published its long awaited follow up to one of the best Lovecraftian anthologies in recent memory. Dead But Dreaming 2 picks up where the first book left off, plunging readers into territory where the traditional Cthulhu Mythos rarely tread. Like its predecessor, editor Kevin Ross has managed to line up some of Lovecraftiana's best writers. Readers can look forward to stories by Scott David Aniolowski, David Annandale, Donald R. Burleson, John Goodrich, Cody Goodfellow, T.E. Grau, Rick Hautala, Walt Jarvis, Erik T. Johnson, William Meikle, Will Murray, Daniel W. Powell, Wilum Pugmire, Joseph S. Pulver Sr, Pete Rawlik, Kevin Ross, Brian Sammons, Darrell Schweitzer, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Michael Tice, and Don Webb.

In many ways, Dead But Dreaming 2 promises to match or outshine the first Dead But Dreaming, which I previously reviewed. The book serves as an excellent reminder of the literary work Miskatonic River Press continues to do, aside from its extensive publications in Lovecraftian gaming. Next year, books featuring new stories devoted to Thomas Ligotti and Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow are set to appear.

Weird fiction has always been a narrow field, but the big players in publishing are identified by their quality. Consider Miskatonic River Press one of the foremost purveyors carrying on a richly Lovecraftian and strange tradition in these times. The ongoing horror manifest in volumes like Dead But Dreaming 2 is proof of that.

-Grim Blogger

Tartarus Press Goes Digital With New Sarban E-books

2011-06-27T11:00:00.059-05:00

Tartarus Press is the latest weird fiction publisher to break into the digital market, following a small minority, most notably spearheaded by Chomu Press. They have decided to release several books by Sarban as electronic e-books for the Kindle. Tartarus' foray into e-publishing is a wise experiment that also introduces one of modern supernatural literature's more obscure figures to a broad new market.

Sarban's three best known works are hitting the Kindle circuits right now. The Sound of His Horn, an alternate history novel, is the most affordable and offers the widest appeal outside the weird. His two fantasy collections, Ringstones and The Doll Maker join the novel, completing a multi-tiered blast of Sarban works unseen since...probably ever.

All three e-books don't stretch the wallet, as each title is significantly cheaper than a good paperback. It also presents the previously unthinkable opportunity to own all of Sarban's work on a dime. This development may well increase Sarban's following, bringing the fantasist in from the cold and into wider appeal. Sometimes, boosting accessibility is all it takes, and churning out electronic volumes of his work is a definite path to wider notoriety.

Tartarus' move is an interesting one that will be closely monitored in the weird fiction niche. Seeing classic names in supernatural literature available for a few dollars could permanently change literary horror forever. As any reader and entrepreneur might guess, this poses obvious perils as well as opportunities. Moreover, e-books stand to help reduce the lengthy waiting times that have characterized some publication cycles in recent years. Unlike traditional books, an e-book's publication is virtually instantaneous, posing another interesting change in the industry.

-Grim Blogger

Cthulhu Slippers

2011-06-25T10:30:00.036-05:00

Today, Lovecraftiana has become so immense that its new products never fail to amaze. This is the case with Cthulhu slippers, a wearable derivative of the infamous plush Cthulhu dolls. There's something weirdly primitive about sliding one's feet into Cthulhu's likeness. Perhaps an eldritch and hidden history has come full circle at long last.

Strange eons ago, the first cultists disguised themselves in the images of their malevolent gods, believing they might inherit a small dose of their power. Mankind warred against itself, emboldened by the fierce iconography of the Great Old Ones, and against extinct monstrosities from Earth and beyond. Now, warrior descendents can enjoy the same comfort and otherworldly style with Cthulhu slippers. Side effects may include gibbering at the stars, and an inexplicable impulse toward sacrificial rituals...

-Grim Blogger

Virginia Terminates Miskatonic Institute

2011-06-23T10:00:00.037-05:00

John J. Miller kindly shared this recent document, where the state of Virginia terminated an earlier corporation of his that was re-named the Miskatonic Institute for Advanced Cthulhu Studies. But was it just a name change, or one more episode in the infamous university's history, chronicled by Lovecraft and his successors in anthologies like Robert Weinberg's Miskatonic University? Decide for yourself. The full details are as follows:

Last year, I incorporated a small non-profit organization in Virginia. Shortly after setting it up, I learned that I had made a small mistake in the paperwork. The easiest course was to start over. Yet I wanted to keep the organization's name, so the first step was to change the name of the original organization--i.e., to give it a dummy name and than incorporate again with the name I wanted. So changed the first group's name to "Miskatonic Institute for Advanced Cthulhu Studies." The state of Virginia now informs me that the Miskatonic Institute is being terminated for failing to pay its annual registration fees.

It seems the state of Virginia is not as lenient as New England for institutes devoted to unraveling Lovecraftian mysteries. Not unless Cthulhu cultists pay promptly, that is. Visit John Miller's website here.

-Grim Blogger

Lovecraft Art by Graffiti

2011-06-21T10:00:00.043-05:00

The Great Old Ones have hit the streets, their eldritch silhouettes peeping out from back alleys and railway graveyards. These are several mad visions from Lovecraftian devotees who dared to bring Cthulhu artwork out as public graffiti. That humming sound you hear from the bricks? Just a little inter-dimensional indigestion.

There's no need to strike out with a real Necronomicon when painted visages of the Old Ones are just as good for summoning them. Lovecraftian nightmares know no boundaries, and neither do their disciples in art.

The Lovecraftian graffiti obsession is, like all true movements in terror art, a global phenomena. Here, a French artist has transported Cthulhu by stencil to the bricks of Saint-Etienne, France.

Not surprisingly, public restrooms offer no respite from the Old One's indomitable spirit. As the stars align and madness overtakes the world, don't be surprised if Lovecraft based graffiti art becomes as familiar in stalls as Bible verses and vulgarity.

Not strictly Lovecraft based as such, but worthy of honorable mention. All roads lead to Cthulhu.

-Grim Blogger

At the Mountains of Madness Animated Film

2011-06-19T10:00:00.019-05:00

In the wake of Guillermo del Toro's inability to produce a Hollywood version of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness," others will inevitably step forward and try. Cthulhu Films is one contender. This half hour animated adaptation of Lovecraft's infamous story mixes 3-D and 2-D effects to recall the ill fated Antarctic expedition. The dialogue is in Italian, so English listeners need to turn on the subtitles.

Animated representations of this story have been on the rise in recent years, probably due to the extreme difficulty of faithfully reproducing the harsh environment and strange beings in live action. This film's aesthetic is reminiscent of Ian Culbard's handsome At the Mountains of Madness graphic novel.

-Grim Blogger

Weird News: Ugly Tree, Evil Tree

2011-06-17T10:00:00.023-05:00

An exceptionally nightmarish tree found in Britain marks another grotesque intrusion of the weird into reality. The Stowlangtoft Hall resident is like an inverted version of Algernon Blackwood's majestic, pseudo-conscious plants in "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" (see Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories). For further terror fuel, imagine this thing inhabited by M.R. James' supernatural pests from "The Ash-Tree."

Is this the Scariest Tree in Britain?

-Grim Blogger

Colorful Cthulhus

2011-06-15T11:00:00.038-05:00

Since artists first began putting Cthulhu to canvass, clay, and other mediums, green has been the default color. This likely comes from H.P. Lovecraft's description in "The Call of Cthulhu," where the Providence author wrote:

Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.

So, understandably, delvers into strange visions have sought to faithfully uphold Lovecraft's reptilian color scheme. The average Cthulhu seen in paintings, statues, and Squishable toys is green. Sometimes, though, deviations from the norm are just as interesting, if not more so. Here are a few Cthulhus that shimmer with other colors of the rainbow:

A black Cthulhu figurine by SOTA, from the Nightmares of Lovecraft Cthulhu collection.

A Cthulhu painting rendered in reddish hues. Perhaps a lesser known work by Richard Upton Pickman?

Three views of a purple Cthulhu idol.

A blue Cthulhu plush toy, seen in his natural inebriated state.

The horror of horrors! A rainbow Cthulhu that can be purchased in the online game, Second Life.

-Grim Blogger

Joseph S Pulver Announces New Book: The Orphan Palace

2011-06-13T10:00:00.000-05:00

No sooner than I reviewed his most recent collection, Sin & Ashes, Joseph S. Pulver announced a new book. The Orphan Palace is set to be released by Chomu Press sometime later this year. The new book is a novel, rather than a short story collection like Sin & Ashes. Pulver, along with Reggie Oliver and Wilum H. Pugmire, has a real knack for churning out prolific quantities of strange fiction.

Actually, the image above is a rare sighting of weird fiction's machine guns together at the grave of Robert W. Chambers. Pulver, Pugmire, and S.T. Joshi, the hardest working scholar in horror. Undoubtedly, Chambers' King in Yellow was there in spirit too.

-Grim Blogger

The Whisperer in Darkness at the Southside Film Festival

2011-06-11T11:00:00.014-05:00

Lovecraftians and weird movie goers near Pennsylvania will have a rare chance to see one of the first showings in the U.S. of The Whisperer in Darkness. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, the folks previously behind The Call of Cthulhu film, have decided to bring it to Bethlehem's Southside Film Festival. Here are the specifics on where it will screen:

Filmed in Mythoscope, Whisperer is the kind of cinematic thrill audiences haven't felt since the Hoover administration.

Screening Times @ Broughal Auditorium
9:15PM Thursday, June 16
3:00PM Saturday, June 18

Look to the Southside Film Festival's Whisperer page for more information. Surely, it's only a matter of time until the production makes its a way little further north, into the wilds of Vermont, home to the eldritch settings of Lovecraft's tale.

-Grim Blogger

HP Lovecraft Film Festival 2011 in Los Angeles

2011-06-09T10:00:00.041-05:00

More details have emerged about 2011's H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, due to be held this September in San Pedro (part of Los Angeles, California). The event is currently in the process of weeding through submissions and revving up for the weekend long screenings. Much like the Portland festival, which is reportedly taking a break this year, this Lovecraftian extravaganza will run feature films and shorts. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's new movie, The Whisperer in Darkness, is scheduled to show as one of the most notable full length feature films.

Guillermo del Toro of Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy fame will be on hand this year as a judge. This is an encouraging sign that his commitment to the Lovecraftian remains strong, despite the bureaucratic failure of his At the Mountains of Madness cinematic project earlier this year.

A new poster for popularizing the event is out too. This time, the full horrors of Cthulhu unchained are pictured, with the interdimensional dreamer himself appearing in a role similar to King Kong. Follow the official HPL Film Festival site for full details.

-Grim Blogger

Is Lovecraft Famous?

2011-06-07T11:00:00.019-05:00

With H.P. Lovecraft's expansive franchise, which today includes books, games, and films galore, many wonder if he has achieved posthumous fame. As anyone knows, there are varying degrees of celebrity or infamy, whatever the case may be. Lovecraft's case offers no easy answers. Since it would be foolhardy to pit his name against Hitler, George Washington, Jesus, or Lady Gaga, let's confine the question to horror for now.

Carving out a vision of HPL's celebrity in horror is a far more focused and relevant quest than any other. After all, who really cares where Lovecraft ranks against Presidents or great commanders? Lovecraft's legacy in civilization will ultimately be decided by how formidable his position is in the horror genre.

Assertions to the contrary, it won't be his philosophy that resonates, held up by the likes of Michel Houellebecq in H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. It won't be his letters that secure him a place among visionaries either (sorry, S.T. Joshi). The Lovecraft name begins and ends in the minds of men with strangeness and terror.

Evaluating Lovecraft against other notable authors is one way to shed light on the issue. Fortunately, the web lends us powerful tools like Google Insights for determining fame as a function of search volume. So, how does Lovecraft perform against Stephen King, the most widely known juggernaut in modern horror fiction? Quite poorly. HPL barely registers against King's sizable media empire, as shown by the graph above.

On the other end, when measured against his contemporaries, H.P. Lovecraft dominates almost as much as King does against other horror authors. M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and Arthur Machen are clearly bested, as indicated by Google Insights. This is particularly ironic, since all of these British men arguably enjoyed better literary careers, greater fiction output, and longer lifespans than the Providence writer.

The facts presented here probably don't contain a lot of surprises. So, why judge whether or not H.P. Lovecraft is famous at all? The exercise is useful because it allows observers to take Lovecraftiana's pulse without getting blinded by Cthulhu Mythos or literary horror fandom. Measuring Lovecraft's growth curve and numeric conquest over other authors is important too. It helps illustrate how quickly the following is spreading, and how it happens.

Does Lovecraft easily knock his nineteenth and early twentieth century competitors flat? Absolutely, and he'll continue to do so, remaining second only to Edgar Allan Poe in name recognition from this period in horror. But, at the same time, don't expect massive story collections like, Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, to start overtaking Stephen King's stand alone novels in the near future.

-Grim Blogger

The Changing Face of Stefan Grabinski Readership

2011-06-05T10:00:00.000-05:00

Interest in the "Polish Poe," Stefan Grabinski, appears to be on the upswing in his homeland. Agharta Press has just released a new anthology called Tragedy on the Tower. The book collects previously unseen stories from Grabinski, as well as works by fellow writer Jan Huskowski.

Oddly enough, Grabinski's following in Poland is small and possibly less passionate than abroad. Translated books like The Dark Domain in English have been the main purveyors of weird Grabinskian ideas and style to literary horror lovers in recent times. Now, with Agharta's new release, a flicker of change could be starting.

It's well deserved, since reading Grabinski in his native tongue undoubtedly yields additional curiosities not carried over well in translation. Look for the devoted Grabinski cult to remain small in the near term. However, thanks to renewed interest in Europe and beyond, it's likely that Grabinski's readership may soon undergo a more international transformation.

Changes may be in order for Grabinski scholarship too, where Miroslaw Lipinski has dominated the field for several decades. Here, new voices are joining the fray. Check out Marek Wilczynski's new electronic article, "Secret Passages Through Poe: The Transatlantic Affinities of H.P. Lovecraft and Stefan Grabinski" for a fresh look at Stefan Grabinski within a broader weird fiction context.

-Grim Blogger

Review: Sin & Ashes by Joseph S Pulver

2011-06-03T10:00:00.072-05:00

There are few weird horror collections that can vacillate between subtle terrors and visceral apocalypses without becoming wildly unbalanced. Now, though, the horror community is joined by Joseph S. Pulver's latest collection, Sin & Ashes, a sizable nightmare gallery published by Hippocampus Press that accomplishes this rare feat. By some indeterminate black magic, Pulver successfully dishes out the grotesque, the chilling, and intellectual dreads by short story and poetry, without losing his foothold on readers' unsettled reptile brains.

The book's real power lays in its ability to stitch seemingly disconnected horrors together, resulting in a Frankenstein collection capable of getting off the table and roaring like the legendary monster. But Jospeh S. Pulver's creation attacks all the unguarded senses, unlike Mary Shelley's fiend. Tales like “Love Her Madly” depict grisly crimes orchestrated by violent psychotics. Others, such as “Last Year in Carcosa” and “Long-Stemmed Ghost Words” carry the same tinge of ultra-violence, but introduce otherworldly incursions by Robert W. Chambers' infamous King in Yellow. Amid stories that read like murder cases and the more familiar weird yarns are unimagined hybrids, linking grim earthly happenings to the oddly supernatural.

Although Pulver's stylistic powers contribute much to the musty, haunted flavor of Sin & Ashes, it also owes a debt to atmosphere. The author's chosen scenery and settings for many tales provide a thoroughly hellish backdrop to demonic happenings. Run down hotels, blinding deserts, fallen cities, and re-imagined weird outposts from Carcosa and Lovecraft's Arkham are all displayed. As a result, a shadow land somewhere between the gritty and the ethereal prevails, animated by the music of the Doors. Pulver's haunts are dark, broken places that almost seem like they are waiting to be fed on blood, and this lends a mighty uniqueness to the collection.

This banquet of blood, ash, and ghostly shards is overshadowed by Joseph Pulver's style, which mostly spurns traditional narrative structures. Instead, he opts for idea rich prose that hits the mind like fiery bullets. Unconventional punctuation and sentence structure are paired with rich imagery and visionary moments that seem like incantations rather than prose. The effect isn't a universal hit in each of the dozens of pieces within Sin & Ashes. However, this experimental approach frequently yields a lyrical harvest that's applause inducing in its strangeness and literary strength.

Just as Pulver's bad dreams come flailing out of the pages in imaginative forms that are gore covered and elegant, he flicks his staff and contorts his monstrous beings and concepts again as the collection progresses from short story to poetry. His experimental scripts, which are reminiscent of William S. Burroughs and other masters, appear in force in both poems and stories. When digesting the collection as a whole, this makes for a pleasing mental texture. Just when it seems certain poetry pieces are mere desserts to soul blackening stories, they turn out to be gateway drugs to new echelons of Pulver's special hell instead.

Overall, Sin & Ashes is a black collection sure to appeal to sensibilities that reach deeper than many readers initially think. Pulver's enchantments are murderous and strange, calling to a literate love of the macabre many readers are familiar with, but also reaching down to the psyche's less acknowledged, primal basement. Although old symbols from the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers appear, they serve as phantasmal introductions to Joseph Pulver's original voice. And it's a shrieking sound likely to resonate with many in the coming years.

-Grim Blogger

Weird News: CDC Warns of Zombie Apocalypse

2011-06-01T11:00:00.001-05:00

In a creative twist, the Centers for Disease Control recently referenced the possibility of a zombie apocalypse as a means to interest people in preparing for disasters. No, it isn't the makings of a scenario from World War Z. However, this odd attempt at using horror to raise public awareness is the first of its kind.

Perhaps we will one day see stranger horrors used to illustrate very real dangers. Lovecraft, for instance, contains plenty of warnings about cultists and nefarious old books. Algernon Blackwood's works might encourage travelers to stay away from isolated areas along the Danube, or the arctic wastes of Canada. In more recent times, the resounding lesson from authors like Thomas Ligotti and Robert Aickman is that nothing is as it seems.

Of course, if we ever see these warnings from any government, the body politic will have changed dramatically. Rather than worrying about bleak, dreamy realities or airborne monsters, folks in the immediate future will be far more bothered by visceral destruction. And who can blame them? At least horror is being put toward a good cause.

CDC Warns Public to Prepare for 'Zombie Apocalypse'

-Grim Blogger

HP Lovecraft Video Promo

2011-05-30T10:00:00.023-05:00

Youtube's directors have offered up many strange tributes to H.P. Lovecraft over the years. Most videos, however, are really an appeal to those who are already into his fiction. If you've ever wanted to find a video that amounts to Lovecraftian propaganda, then this is it. By splicing together clips from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's 2005 Call of Cthulhu, Stuart Gordon's Dagon, and others, a visual summary of Lovecraftian themes has been created.

As digital media's tendrils lengthen, this is just the type of video that can be used for reaching new audiences. Soon, Lovecraft and other weird writers may owe more to well crafted Youtube videos than to literary journals, rave reviews, or social networking.

-Grim Blogger

Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre

2011-05-28T10:00:00.029-05:00

Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre is a new illustrated collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories set to appear later this year. Longtime horror anthology editor Stephen Jones is behind it, and Les Edwards is providing the artwork. The book is actually a followup to 2008's Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft. This title gave Lovecraftian devotees and newcomers a handsome bundle of his best known stories.

The new volume promises to pick up where Necronomicon left off. It's due to offer an affordable set of Lovecraft's lesser known tales, miscellaneous writings, and poetry selections, such as the "Fungi from Yuggoth" sonnets in their entirety. These contents make it the cheapest way for Lovecraft completists to get their hands on the more obscure works. Eldritch Tales will hit retailers as a hardcover, oversize paperback, and e-book for the Kindle. Look for it around Fall, 2011.

-Grim Blogger

HP Lovecraft: No Privacy for the Dead

2011-05-26T10:00:00.084-05:00

Many admirers and scholars correctly point out that H.P. Lovecraft's life is one of the best preserved of any figure in the 20th century. His voluminous letters, essays, and manuscripts have left general impressions about his life at any given stage, if not specific details about where he was and what he was doing on specific dates. This has allowed Lovecraft students like S.T. Joshi to write a book like I am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft, a biography as thick and detailed as one about any President or adventurer. However, besides being a literary mummy, H.P. Lovecraft is one of the finest illustrations that the dead have no right to privacy.

But why should they have this liberty? It seems a constant throughout the West, conscious or otherwise, that the dead forfeit all right to conceal their old lives. We allow them the privilege of having their moldering bodies tucked away from public view, but that's more for our benefit than their own. Like walking time capsules, it seems everything about us will be uncorked after the brainwaves cease, and even the obscure fame enjoyed by someone like Lovecraft at the time of his death means every word will be preserved as a precious relic.

Books like Lord of a Visible World and the Selected Letters series from Arkham House shed enormous light on Lovecraft's worldview, literary opinions, writing habits, reactions to events in his day, and diet. Other sources have commented on his sickly constitution, racism, and sexuality, all of which are recorded and available for ongoing awkward discussions until the last Lovecraft aficionado joins the author in the great beyond. With so much known about his life, it's actually remarkable that his biography and fiction remains as debatable as it is.

Lovecraft's posthumous record also stands as a cautionary tale to living authors, particularly those in the weird horror community, who think (or hope) they will inspire a cult following beyond the grave: burn every unsavory detail you would rather consign to the secrets of eternity, or it will come out. Unless writers and artists start censoring their lives beforehand, or entrust a family member or friend to do it upon death, then literary agents, auctioneers, and fans will come looking for the juicy stuff. Of course, disappearing the life of tomorrow's great writers would be a loss to scholars and admirers, but it's still within the rights of the living. There are times when mystery instead of concrete knowledge is just as fascinating as well.

-Grim Blogger

The Man Who Collected Machen's Mysterious Cover

2011-05-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

Last week, the upstanding Chomu Press and Mark Samuels gifted the weird fiction community with a lingering mystery. Chomu recently held a contest that challenged observers to uncover the hidden meaning within the cover art for The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales. Blogger Brendan Moody was declared the winner, due to his especially herculean effort at unraveling the cover's message, and the strange aftershocks it left him.

Still, the mystery remains. Is it possible that Chomu, Samuels, and the cover artist have conspired to give weird fiction one of its most intriguing meta-fictional quests in recent times? I hope so! If this is the case, it's brilliant marketing - exactly the kind that should be appreciated in a genre that often overlooks strange mechanics operating outside the horror stories.

While the book cover will never approach the notoriety of something like the infamous Voynich Manuscript, it's nevertheless a fittingly Samuels-esque bonus to an excellent collection. Care to take a stab at the cryptogram yourself? Read my review from earlier this year, and then consider picking up The Man Who Collected Machen.

-Grim Blogger

Robert Aickman Treasure Trove Goes on Sale

2011-05-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

If you have a spare $65,000 sitting around, you can now purchase over two hundred rare letters written by Robert Aickman to his literary associates. The horde reveals some startling details about Aickman's career from around 1967 to 1981. For instance, at one point, Aickman toyed with the idea of having a story collection issued by August Derleth's famous Arkham House, but ultimately decided the publisher was unable to provide the compensation he sought. Here's a few gems from the official description:

It starts in 1967 with a gracious reply from RA to a fan letter from KM (American literary agent Kirby McCauley), whose combination of warm praise and critical acuity represented ‘the exact amalgam that every artist wants, needs, and, lacking, dies …’ (30 Sep 1967) Their friendship grew slowly and patiently over the next few years before there was any discussion of business between them. The early letters in particular document the discovery of each other’s taste in literature, film, politics, etc. and they are richly detailed. Aickman’s own skill as a critic emerges clearly.

As he points out, he had worked as a film and theater critic, as well as editor of the first eight volumes of the annual Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories. Aickman belongs in the same tradition of author-critic (before these roles bifurcated in modern times) that includes Johnson, Coleridge and T.S. Eliot, and he strikes one as very well-read indeed, especially in regard to continental writers. Among 20th century author-critics of supernatural fiction, Aickman was probably the most cultured and critically acute. What’s almost more impressive is the apparent ease with which KM followed suit.

These letters show no trace of condescension from RA. His judgments are always interesting and often surprising. Graham Greene is ‘the confused product of a hysterical and decadent epoch.’ (25 Oct 1971) The much-touted 1968 film ‘Belle du Jour’ was ‘quite simply, one of the worst films I have ever seen.’ (21 May 1968) He admired Bierce for his authentically American voice. He cites Thomas Mann as a major influence on his style, as well as E.T.A. Hoffman and many others (though curiously had not read Gustave Meyrink). He loathed the tendency towards sadistic violence in modern horror literature. And, while hating her politics, admired the artistry of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Of August Strindberg in particular, and of ground-breaking artists in general, he made the remark, ‘Often it seems to me that life needs the individual heretic but seldom the ensuing heresy.’ (6 May 1969)

Like many Brits his knowledge of American writers was somewhat parochial. KM keeps trying out Lovecraft Circle authors on him -- with little success generally. On the other hand, he scored a direct hit with Russell Kirk, whose collection, THE SURLY SULLEN BELL, was, in Aickman’s words, ‘quite simply, the best collection of new stories by a single writer that I have read for at least twenty years, and perhaps much more.’ (10 June 1969) Aickman and McCauley (and Kirk, too, for that matter) shared a political and cultural conservatism, with Aickman confessing more than once that he was not very fond of the present age. He was skeptical about democracy. ‘I think that television and the automobile and the flying machine are all worse dangers to man than the atomic bomb.’ (8 July 1967) (In many of his views, he reminds one of H.P. Lovecraft, who was probably his stylistic opposite when it came to writing weird tales.)

In the course of their getting to know and trust each other, it became apparent that the American representative of Herbert van Thal (RA’s English agent, whom he liked very much) was not up to his task, and in the early 1970s, Kirby began making some modest sales for RA in the US magazine market. Soon there were negotiations with August Derleth for an Arkham House collection. After this point much of the correspondence is taken up with details of literary agency, showing us another side of Aickman as a careful and prudent businessman. Aickman acknowledged Kirby’s salesmanship skills as graciously as he acknowledged his critical acumen. He finally turned down Derleth’s offer. ‘I can well believe that Derleth is in no position to pay more, but that of course does but further reduce the attractions of being linked with him commercially.’ (19 April 1971)

KM eventually landed better deals with Scribners. But the next ten years’ worth of letters are still loaded with nuggets of substantive literary interest and tidbits of gossip. Of L. P. Hartley, Aickman writes, ‘His literary talent is of a high order. It is just that he has a rather nasty mind.’ (27 Jan 1969) He tells how famous editor Max Perkins made Elizabeth Jane Howard (Aickman’s collaborator in his first collection, WE ARE FOR THE DARK) re-write the ending to her novel (THE BEAUTIFUL VISIT), ‘revising the enigmatic British conclusion (not completely successful, perhaps, as I acknowledge) into an entirely conventional, and entirely unconvincing, ‘happy ending’; with the ironical consequence that the book was reviewed merely as a conventional romance, which it is far from being, and hardly sold at all.’ (9 April 1973) Aickman’s critical observations cover dozens of writers, film directors and actors, composers, styles and movements.

Wherever these letters end up, one hopes it will be in the hands of a seasoned scholar. They offer rare insights about Aickman's literary advancement, as well as interesting connections across the Atlantic between weird fiction representatives and agencies in the late 20th century. Those on a limited budget just discovering Aickman should check out Dark Entries and Sub Rosa, two handsome hardcover collections recently reissued by Tartarus Press. Older editions of Cold Hand in Mine and Painted Devils are still affordable too.

Affluent buyers can head over to the L.W. Currey listing and pick up the letters, if desired. While a golden library like this harbors priceless content, I wouldn't be surprised to see the collection broken up or lowered in price to turn a quicker sale.

-Grim Blogger

Tito's Eldritch Monuments

2011-05-20T10:30:00.047-05:00

Billed as World War II monuments built decades ago, these structures built by Josip Broz Tito throughout Yugoslavia look far more sinister than mere war memorials. Today, these avant-garde abominations scattered across Serbia and other former Yugoslav republics proudly sport their non-Euclidean geometries. The oddest of the pack look like sample homes from Lovecraft's Dreamlands, or perhaps relics from the King in Yellow's rotting Carcosa.

I have collected the stranger pics here, but the full series of over a dozen futuristic monuments is worth a glance over at the Crack Two blog.

-Grim Blogger

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti Returns in Paperback

2011-05-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

Thomas Ligotti's forceful case against life, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, has recently re-launched in paperback, thanks to high demand and a decision from Hippocampus Press. After darkening the minds of countless readers and disappearing off the shelves, the hardcover book remained elusive and out-of-print for several months. Look for the affordable new edition to pop up in oppressive coffeehouses and ride along in mysterious backpacks.

Whether you see the glass as half full, or vacant and encrusted with mud, Conspiracy is a thought provoking read from an author who continues to command a serious following in contemporary weird fiction. If the odd copy ever makes it into a second hand bookstore, I suspect it will form one of the strangest philosophic Trojan Horses that an unsuspecting reader could ever encounter.

This paperback edition will surely introduce new readers to Ligotti, and serves as field notes for those who are already positioned against life or wedded to bleak, strange fiction. Read my extended review from 2010, or check out The Conspiracy Against the Human Race on Amazon.

-Grim Blogger

The Whisperer in Darkness Movie Set for Los Angeles

2011-05-16T10:00:00.083-05:00

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's long awaited film adaptation of "The Whisperer in Darkness" is finally beginning to see screenings in the United States. One notable viewing is due later this week at Los Angeles' Bigfoot Crest theater. After successfully launching The Call of Cthulhu back in 2005, The Whisperer in Darkness is set to be a major Lovecraftian undertaking that outshines its 1920s style predecessor. The movie may also bolster morale among Lovecraft fans eager for a major motion picture, after Guillermo del Toro scrapped the Mountains of Madness project earlier this year.

The screening is set to begin May 19, 2011 around 9:00 PM. Here's a rundown of other details:

Bigfoot Crest Theater
1262 Westwood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90024-4801
(just south of Wilshire Blvd. in Westwood)

Box Office Phone: (310) 474-7824
Recorded Program Info: (310) 474-7866

Ticket Prices:
$11 General Admission
$8 Seniors and Students with valid student I.D.

California residents should seize the moment and enjoy this latest foray into putting Lovecraft on the big screen.

-Grim Blogger

Weird News: House Calls Police for Help

2011-05-14T09:00:00.018-05:00

Self-conscious structures have been recurring figures in horror and science fiction alike. The famous haunted house often seems creepier when it's possessed by its own alien intelligence, rather than deceased spirits. Now, a leaky Massachussets house has dialed police in a voiceless call that helped authorities undercover its decrepit condition.

I'm also reminded of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. Anyone who has battled their way through this unconventional novel knows the bizarre house exhibits an uncanny sentience. Perhaps something like a real world Navidson Record isn't far off.

Leaking Massachussetes House Dials 911 for Help

-Grim Blogger

Poe and Phillips Lovecraft Team Up in Graphic Novel

2011-05-12T10:00:00.064-05:00

Poe and Phillips is a recent graphic novel by Jaime Collado and Miguel Cedillo from Arcana Studios that throws Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft into the midst of a horror-adventure quest. Don't expect an authentic drama with highly refined weird fiction elements. Instead, you'll see improbable fun and heroic slayers coursing through this tale. Who cares if Poe and Lovecraft didn't murder a thief, let alone a supernatural being? They've never looked tougher with heavy arms.

Space-time constraints are kicked to the curb as well, allowing this unlikely pair to link up and dust monsters. Here's what Acrcana's Poe and Phillips summary has to say:

Edgar Allen Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft were born and raised in different eras. But during each of their times they were both investigators of paranormal affairs and once had a case where they worked together. Searching for the power of a mysterious coin, the unlikely duo find themselves against an ancient emperor who wants to use the coins to conquer the world... throughout all times!

Expect alternate history horror fantasies like Poe and Phillips to spawn more variants in the coming years. As works by Lovecraft and other weird fiction masters enjoy a renaissance, their tie to digital media means the authors themselves are due to become mythologized more than they already are. Besides, seeing artists like H.P. Lovecraft and E.A. Poe as hardened killers is a lot more interesting than the sensitive, troubled personas they truly exhibited while alive.

-Grim Blogger

Buy HP Lovecraft's Shunned House

2011-05-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

If you've got about a million dollars to spare for real estate, then consider haunting the historic Providence home that largely inspired Lovecraft's tale, "The Shunned House." The house at Benefit Street on the city's east side is currently on the market for a cool $925,000. It seems Providence hasn't suffered as much under the collapsing bubble as other areas, but it still sounds like a bargain.

Especially when compared with the Halsey house, which inspired "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," and was priced at nearly three million in 2007. Besides, how often do shunned houses really make the rounds on the market?

Donald Grant catalogued many of these outstanding Lovecraftian sites in his book, Lovecraft's Providence and Adjacent Parts. Perhaps a weird realty guide should be written as a follow up. Whatever else might be said about him, Lovecraft had a keen eye for luxurious homes. The Benefit Street home is no less imposing today than it was in his era. Visit the house's realty page, while it's still up.

-Grim Blogger

Late Bloomer by Thom Little

2011-05-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

Though Thom Little's Sundance Film Festival short has made the rounds elsewhere online, it seems remiss if it wasn't shared here. "Late Bloomer" is a well made, humorous, and tense exploration of human sexuality through Lovecraftian horror.

The film is an obvious jab at HPL's own puritanical habits. Media like this runs the risk of encouraging too much probing into Lovecraft's personal life for insight into his fiction, overshadowing far more important factors like the ideological principles he embodied. With that said, the film's overtone, if not viewed humorously (I know - it's not easy), highlights the strangeness of biology. Perhaps Lovecraft's own odd habits, best documented by S.T. Joshi in I am Providence: The Life and Times of HP Lovecraft, were more justified than they initially seem, unveiling the terrible grip of nature that's inescapable for most of us.

-Grim Blogger

The Light is the Darkness by Laird Barron

2011-05-06T10:00:00.050-05:00

Infernal House is due to release Laird Barron's first ultra-luxurious book, The Light is the Darkness, before the end of June. This illustrated hardcover follows the horrific trek of a modern gladiator seeking his missing sister. If it's anything like Barron's past efforts, then readers can expect a thrilling tour through underworld terror with richly imaginative prose and a mildly Lovecraftian, but original seasoning.

The Light is the Darkness continues Barron's ascent as a major force in the literary horror genre. The novel also indicates that he has generated enough demand for upscale limited editions, as well as paperbacks. At $175 and a 174 copy print run, it's set to appeal most to longtime Barron followers and collectors.

However, those with lower budgets have nothing to fear. Word is that the unconventional author is hard at work on another novel, The Croning, as well as a third short story collection. If you've been under a rock, then pick up his first two affordable books, The Imago Sequence and Occultation, immediately. Even newcomers might find themselves rushing to purchase The Light is the Darkness shortly after reading these previous collections. After all, an exposure with Laird Barron's fiction is unforgettable and highly addicting.

-Grim Blogger

The Signature of MR James

2011-05-04T08:00:00.048-05:00

In an age where electronic text holds dominion, the art of handwriting is slipping away. Still, practically everyone uses a written signature, and can appreciate this lingering inky calling card in others. Montague Rhodes James' unique autograph is no exception.

This faint impression attached to a photo records a shard from the man nearly eight decades after his death. Like James, it appears reserved, studious, and outwardly unassuming. But look closer. Is there something more?

Everyone will see a different Jamesian hallmark in the same signature. Literary horror is always delivered through one's own inimitable mental topography. The spectral tales within Ghost Stories of an Antiquary may be the same in every volume, but not in every mind. This inescapable subjective net extends to perceptions of the weird authors themselves. Much like James' novel horrors, it's the uncertainty filling our heads that creates the mystique.

-Grim Blogger

Review: The Life of Polycrates by Brendan Connell

2011-05-02T10:00:00.015-05:00

Single layers of degeneracy and strangeness are familiar in weird fiction. Just enough to satisfy one's appetite for weirdness, but not so decadent that readers can't walk away relatively unscathed. This isn't the case with Brendan Connell's new collection from Chomu Press, The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children. Connell's recipe draws together elements that are all certified with strangeness of the highest grade. Bizarre plots, legendary characters, and experimental narrative structures compose a towering wedding cake that joins the unconventional in unholy matrimony.

At one level, the book may be enjoyed as eleven demented histories and legends. The most authentically historic piece is the titular story, “The Life of Polycrates,” which retells the life of Samos' tyrant with rich details making it impossible to see where history ends and fiction begins. Polycrates' elegant court, unlikely triumphs, and torturous death are related in a format very similar to classical literature. “Brother of the Holy Ghost” effectively discloses another terrible downfall, this time of a mystic and one-time Pope in the Middle Ages who is defeated by his own faith and outside conspiratorial machinations. A colorful and mildly unsettling tale awaits in “The Search for Savino,” where a late 19^th century artist who paints eyelids is uncovered in several haunting documents. Meanwhile, “The Chymical Wedding of Des Esseintes” turns Joris-Karl Huysmans' decadent aesthetic upside down, in a nearly Aickmanesque horror tale sure to enthrall lovers of decadent literature.

While Connell is often successful in establishing atmospheric conditions in his stories that are eerie, unusual, and (by some infernal logic) believable, his outrageous and frequently damaged characters are a greater success. The Life of Polycrates features an offbeat cast so mentally deformed and curious that few authors would be capable of matching it. “The Life of Captain Gareth Caernarvon” takes the pompous, globe trekking hunter of the last century and builds him into something more: a brutal caricature groomed for a demonic role in hell itself.

“Maledict Michela” and “Collapsing Claude” are compatriot stories allowing us to see the awkward sexual depravity of the story's eponymous characters. Michela surrenders herself in middle age to a bloated beast of a man, while Claude submits to a domineering and repulsive woman who embodies an inverse attractiveness. Connell balances heavy unease with just enough fascinating voyeurism to keep readers from slamming the book shut out of embarrassment. These tales also represent recurring self-destructive tendencies usually stemming from erotic habits.

The Life of Polycrates' abundant self-immolation continues in stories like “The Slug,” when a fairly comfortable young man decides to relinquish his easy life and utterly destroy himself. This meat grinder alteration in identity isn't always clear in each story, but does become easier to speculate about when the collection as a whole is digested. “Molten Rage” shows us the slow motion destruction of a blue collar worker after he is led astray by a radical left-wing pied piper. Brendan Connell grants no reprieve in “The Dancing Billionaire” and “Peter Payne” either. Here, an exceedingly wealthy gentleman and a biker dare devil are imprisoned, just on the verge of suffocating, by their past as much as their present. The author incorporates fate's heavy fist in these pieces, as their demise is predictable, but nonetheless interesting enough to see it through, as though the book's self-fulfilling prophecy traps readers as well.

Connell fires many of his stories off with a vast, diverse arsenal of experimental techniques. Though his boldness and talented craftsmanship must be admired, the effect is not always successful. For instance, “Brother of the Holy Ghost” flits between a traditional structure and stream-of-consciousness at uneven intervals to the point where it becomes difficult to recognize what is going on. “The Life of Polycrates,” though wonderful in its imagery and historic realism, is perhaps too successful in imitating antiquated narrative forms. In a world where few readers receive a classical education, the finer points of Connell's tragedy may be lost on many.

However, these rare imperfections should not dissuade readers from picking up The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children. Brendan Connell is a rare mind who can confidently mold unique narrative styles into forceful distillates of the surreal and the strange. One day, his unhinged themes and experimental methods may enjoy much wider recognition in the weird literary community and beyond.

-Grim Blogger

The Red Room by David Hughes

2011-04-30T09:00:00.048-05:00

Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale, "The Masque of the Red Death," is enjoying a spike in new interpretations mixing theater with terror. The Red Room by David Hughes, for instance, is one of these. The performance continues to make its way across the UK, immersing viewers in a lively drama that re-enacts Poe's horrific subversion from a different angle. "The Masque of the Red Death" has been adapted to media as diverse as film (such as Vincent Price's classic version) and music (see Diamanda Galas' Masque of the Red Death), but shows encompassing dance and music like The Red Room are rare.

The Berwick Advertiser recently gave the show a promising review. Despite its success, it's unclear when or where The Red Room will show up next. Check out its page on David Hughes' website for some spectacular photos and other details. With any luck, more well executed Poe dramas like these will surface in the coming years, signaling renewed interest in Poe's fiction and the macabre aesthetic as a whole.

-Grim Blogger

Aklo Press

2011-04-28T10:00:00.062-05:00

A new publisher of literary horror is poised to stand with Chomu, Tartarus, Hippocampus, and others. Aklo Press is a start up that aims to combine the best in weird art and fiction into one product. Actually, this illustrated anthology or journal format is reminiscent of the heady days when great strangeness appeared in places like Dagon, Tekeli-li, and Crypt of Cthulhu.

The project is titled Aklonomicon and it should appear later this year. Its prospective lineup is impressive, including many weird horror writers who have been busy this past year: Simon Strantzas (Beneath the Surface), Livia Llewellyn (Engines of Desire), Laird Barron (Occultation), Joseph S. Pulver (Sin and Ashes), Richard Gavin (Charnel Wine), and many more. Likewise for visual artists, where Michael Zigerlig, Eric York, Andrea Bonazzi, and others are due to flood the production with their dark output.

This is an age where digital media has severely crippled the illustrated anthology and horror 'zine of old. Curiously, e-zines built on weird fiction are rarely successful. Probably because few are willing to be chained to a computer to enjoy otherworldly art and literature. Until such publications are Kindle worthy (and even then their success may be a tall order), we should all hope to see more Aklonomicons. These are atmospheric extravaganzas that work. Visit Aklo Press for further details.

-Grim Blogger

Mannequin Horror in China's Ghost Malls

2011-04-26T10:00:00.000-05:00

Fans of the mannequin and corporate horror pioneered by Thomas Ligotti and his successors should experience a familiar chill in these scenes from China's stillborn shopping centers. Though lacking in the derelict aesthetic seen in corporate horror from collections like Teatro Grottesco, these spectral commerce palaces capture the same haunting, sometimes oppressive feel. In places, it almost seems certain stores were built solely for their mannequin residents.

Once again, mannequin horror enjoys a bizarre uptick in reality mirroring its expansion in books like Mark Samuels' The White Hands and Simon Strantzas' Beneath the Surface. Is life merely imitating art behind the wall of coincidence? Or is it a far more sinister phenomenon?

-Grim Blogger

WH Pugmire Announces New Book

2011-04-24T10:00:00.030-05:00

Wilum Pugmire continues to be a one man powerhouse of Lovecraftian stories. He recently announced a new and as yet unnamed story collection that should be out this summer from Dark Regions Press.

This development follows an exceptionally busy and successful year for Pugmire's work. Centipede Press published a mammoth collection of his fiction, The Tangled Muse, and several new short stories burst onto the scene in anthologies. Meanwhile, his other collections like Weird Inhabitants of Sesqua Valley are gaining attention in the weird community.

Pugmire continues to fire out quality Lovecraftian fiction at a fast clip, perhaps quicker than any other contemporary weird horror writer. And it doesn't look like there's any sign of him slowing down. This is great news for readers, since Pugmire's efforts are sure to continue enhancing his own literary portfolio, and the wider stature of Lovecraft's modern legacy.

-Grim Blogger

Lovecraftian Science Fiction

2011-04-22T09:00:00.122-05:00

Many have tried to blend H.P. Lovecraft's unique cosmic horror with traditional science fiction, but arguably, only a few have succeeded. The best Lovecraftian sci-fi tales go beyond Mythos name dropping with futuristic elements. These scant wins are usually blended into the pages of anthologies like Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and The New Lovecraft Circle.

Other writers, such as Livia Llewellyn and Mark Samuels, add Lovecraftian elements to their black science fiction. The Engines of Desire and The Man Who Collected Machen are two recent publications with stories cross-breeding the Lovecraftian with darkly imagined futures. Now, as Innsmouth Free Press is soliciting submissions for an anthology called Future Lovecraft, it's worth pondering what good Lovecraftian science fiction is.

The divide between H.P. Lovecraft the science fiction author and the horror writer is a historic and deep one. Today, many remain most drawn to his horrors, his bleak view of an indifferent universe, and his powerful wordsmithing. Weird fiction purists regularly argue that Lovecraft's more ambiguous, dream-like stories such as "The Music of Erich Zann" and "The Colour Out of Space" represent his greatest talents. But there's little denying the draw of his scientific horrors.

In fact, "At the Mountains of Madness," considered by S.T. Joshi and other scholars to be Lovecraft's finest use of scientific realism, came dangerously close to being a major Hollywood film. This story's prehistoric Antarctic horrors are very tangible, as much as the mental time travel seen in "The Shadow Out of Time," or the occult mathematics from "The Dreams in the Witch House." The magnetic draw of these stories for fans, as well as the fact that they represent late Lovecraft's writing abilities at their height, proves there is a real demand for sci-fi with a Cthulhu or cosmic component.

H.P. Lovecraft was never averse to using fantastic science fiction elements like extraterrestrials and time travel when it suited him. He always aimed to provoke a sense of frightful awe at existence, frequently accompanied by the realization of mankind's puny place inside a machine filled with indifferent or hostile natural phenomena. So, it seems to stand that Lovecraftian science fiction must echo a sense of terrible marvel. This atmospheric aspect may even make or break a good tale, and probably can't be overtaken with incredible gadgets, Mythos monsters, or exotic locales, however imaginative.

Curiously, the Lovecraftian sci-fi aesthetic pulses just as strongly outside literature, possibly more so. Games like Cthulhutech and films such as Ridley Scott's Alien warp already dystopian futures into starkly nightmarish realities by drawing on Lovecraft's work. Innsmouth Free Press' prospective anthology, Future Lovecraft, promises to give literary horror junkies a cohesive sampling of Lovecraftian sci-fi to pour over. Unintentionally, perhaps, this book may shed new light on what it really means to bring H.P. Lovecraft's vision into the stars, across time, or onto strange worlds.

-Grim Blogger

Weird News: Spiders Mummify Trees in Pakistan

2011-04-20T10:00:00.026-05:00

Flood waters in Pakistan are responsible for this eerie set of photos. It seems they were taken after several million spiders fled the surging tide and ended up roosting in trees for an extended period. A mummified, otherworldly appearance is the result.

Aside from stirring up anxious prongs of arachnophobia, the sight is deeply reminiscent of weird horror. These scenes form a natural counterpart to "The Ash-Tree" by M.R. James (best enjoyed in S.T. Joshi's annotated edition, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories). Had someone set the plants on fire, a hideous legend may have been born.

Spiderweb Trees of Pakistan

-Grim Blogger

HP Lovecraft's Pickman's Model in Art by Joshua Hoffine

2011-04-19T10:00:00.000-05:00

Joshua Hoffine recently unleashed a series of high resolution photos based on H.P. Lovecraft's story, "Pickman's Model." The photo set captures the catastrophic moment when Pickman's artistic horrors are fully unveiled. Hoffine wisely keeps the macabre paintings relatively obscured. This ambiguity lends itself well to the imagination, much like another successful take on "Pickman's Model" not long ago, the film Pickman's Muse. It's also more faithful to the original story, since the best Lovecraftian horrors remain murky in all but the mind.

Hoffine's photographic abominations are painfully realistic, and stunning in their gruesome crispness. One hopes this won't be the last time he visits Lovecraft. Check out the full set and more at Hoffine's blog.

-Grim Blogger

Video Review: The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu

2011-04-17T10:00:00.007-05:00

Not by me. But I felt this duo's whimsical take on The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu says all that's important to say about this horror comedy. Skip to the 1:00 mark to get to the heart of the review.

-Grim Blogger

New Tell-Tale Heart Graphic Novel Illustrated by Gris Grimly

2011-04-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

The explosion in popularity for graphic novels means that more folks than ever before are getting introduced to classic masters this way. Weird fiction is no exception, and modern literary horror's founder, Edgar Allan Poe, is seeing a steady uptick in comic adaptations of his stories. The latest is The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories illustrated by Gris Grimly, which just went on pre-order.

Grimly is one of visual horror's more unsettled contributors. His often crooked characters bring to mind an underground shadow land, and reflect psychological derangement in their warped bodies. Grimly's work is a fine accompaniment to Poe's fiction, and actually marks the third time the artist has applied his talents to depicting Poe's horrors. He previously illustrated Tales of Death and Dementia and Tales of Mystery and Madness.

Edgar Allan Poe by Gris Grimly

It's always nice to have more of a good thing - and a heaping portion of the Poe-Grimly blend may satisfy macabre hunger pangs for a little while. The third serving with The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories is due this August.

-Grim Blogger

Pulp Convention Hits Lombard, Illinois

2011-04-13T10:00:00.051-05:00

This weekend sees an enormous pulp convention landing in Lombard, Illinois. So, this isn't strictly weird horror related, but then again, twentieth century weird fiction got its start in the pulps. The event, which runs from April 15-17, is sure to feature discussions relevant to H.P. Lovecraft and the original Weird Tales circle. Not to mention a whole lot of rare collectibles.

Check out the event's full details, and Robert Weinberg's primer on the history of literary horror's flagship magazine, The Weird Tales Story.

-Grim Blogger

Review: The Dracula Papers Book I: The Scholar's Tale by Reggie Oliver

2011-04-11T09:00:00.017-05:00

Since Bram Stoker's Dracula appeared in 1897, the vampire legend has taken on a curious afterlife, with gory fangs penetrating deep into all literature's rich veins. Every year, the struggle to keep the vampire original, interesting, and frightening grows harder. Now, in an age when most writers are looking for ways to siphon away Dracula's monstrous blood and fill him with a human soul, or launch him into the stars, hardly anyone has wanted to look back at the legend's roots. Until now. Reggie Oliver's new book, The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale, published by Chomu Press, takes us back to Medieval Transylvania. Armed with a formidable knowledge of history and a talent for spinning quality drama, Oliver banishes cliches and seeks to unveil Dracula's beginnings.

This novel is a departure in size and scope from Reggie Oliver's previous efforts, which include four popular short story collections. To call it an expansion of last year's novella, The Wounds of Exile, would be obscene, though the entirety of that storyline plays a small part. Oliver has instead unchained an original and highly elegant take on the Dracula horror that pierces through genres. One part historical fiction, and another weird literature, mixes with a rich overlay of adventures, fearful visions, and wartime drama. It is hard to say where history ends and legends begin here, but this is what makes the work a coherent human drama, and an unsettling one.

The Dracula Papers unfolds through a forgotten autobiography by Martin Bellorious, a brilliant young scholar who is summoned to Transylvania as an instructor to King Xantho's two sons. Along the way, Bellorious links up with a courageous dwarf, an introverted alchemist, and a wide cast of larger-than-life characters who each play a role in the succeeding drama. Oliver's celebrated capacity for wit, intrigue, and brutally vibrant detail is well on display before his band reaches Wallachia and encounters the book's true protagonist.

Vlad, the younger prince, is an enigmatic shadow. Though anyone can guess that this withdrawn adolescent is to bear Dracula, the Impaler, and perhaps many other titles, his fate materializes only through severe episodes that remain shocking and engaging even as they occur. Reggie Oliver's mythic Prince is a wonder to behold in all his aspects. His unlikely victories in combat are matched by savage tragedies with his royal peers, just as his demonic rage is equaled by a surprising tenderness for a noble girl. Although subsequent books in this series will reveal further critical episodes contributing to Dracula's historic potency, Oliver's portrayal of his formative years in this novel is sufficiently powerful to make the mighty destination awaiting the young man believable.

But is there any weird horror? This question, inevitably asked by longtime Reggie Oliver followers, is an affirmative. Amid the painstaking historic details and glamor of exotic courtiers is a dark atmosphere that occasionally slams readers with visions, ghosts, and real world horrors equal to or greater than the frights in Oliver's short stories. Castle Dracula conceals many anxious secrets, such as the abandoned chambers of a former Queen, who cursed the place with a terrible secret in her black quest for youth. It is often Bellorious' superhuman brainpower alone, or joined with the courageous explorations of others, that uncovers and brings sense to these terrible mysteries.

Later, ghouls, prophesying corpses, and a decrepit old prisoner who can talk to rats adds to the horror in The Dracula Papers. Additional blows arrive when Transylvania goes to war with the Ottoman Turks. The grim atrocities on both sides are grotesque not just because they seem like macabre fantasies from Oliver's imagination, but rather like plausible incidents from the lawless middle ages. Take the catapulting of human heads, for instance, or several scenes where infernos roast prisoners alive.

Oliver's visions of hell and other religious manias are particularly effective at inducing a shudder. His purgatory is a place where genuine, dehumanizing torture occurs. Fire is just the beginning, and the true evil hides in the darkness, where millions of buzzing voices consume the shrieks of the damned forever. These anti-miracles are often directly related to Dracula's accursed history, and especially to a monastery filled with “black monks” working a terrible sorcery in the affair that will probably not be clear until future installments are published.

Where Reggie Oliver's talent really shines is in his narrative's iron clad realism, which carries through diverse settings. Sixteenth century Eastern Europe never seemed so barbarically convincing in its horror. But then, the author carries this over to the Orient, where readers enjoy a brief rest from Castle Dracula's musty confines in the Sultan's marvelous palace. The lavish indulgences feasted upon by the Ottoman tyrant are sickening in their own right, but Istanbul and the Mediterranean also form a last proving ground for the scholar, Prince Vlad, and their aides as they fight to return to Transylvania. Before the end is in sight, Bellorious' harrowing story gives way to an exquisite chaos aboard a pirate ship that must be experienced to be believed, and a final secret about the vampire Prince.

By the time The Dracula Papers concludes, one wonders if fiction is finally stranger than truth. This four hundred plus page tome should be exhausting with its indulgent horror, passions, wars, and mysteries. Yet, by some devilish energy, weariness never sets in. Only an unquenchable desire for the next novel remains. Reggie Oliver has succeeded at mining a hellishly engaging story from an old quarry that has yielded only trite, brittle material for so long. If subsequent books in this series prove as momentous as The Scholar's Tale, then Bram Stoker may have finally found a worthy heir.

-Grim Blogger

ST Joshi: New Lovecraft Works in Progress

2011-04-09T09:00:00.059-05:00

The tireless S.T. Joshi is presently working on several H.P. Lovecraft related projects, and some should materialize in the near future. Dissecting Cthulhu is a new series of essays edited by Joshi, due to be published by Miskatonic River Press. Like previous scholarly volumes he's put together, the book will collect observations from the greatest minds in Lovecraft research. The preliminary list of contributors includes the following: Richard L. Tierney, Dirk W. Mosig, David E. Schultz, Robert M. Price, Will Murray, Robert D. Marten, Steven J. Mariconda, and others.

Meanwhile, Black Wings II seems to be nearing completion for a release later in 2011. The anthology is a successor to its well received predecessor. This new collection of Lovecraftian horror is due to see return contributions from authors in the first Black Wings, and some new names as well.

Stranger are reports that Joshi is piecing together his own Lovecraftian novel. Its working title is The Assaults of Chaos, and the storyline aims to mix elements from Lovecraft's life with the supernatural. This could potentially be the most interesting novel using Lovecraft as a character since Peter Cannon's alternate history, The Lovecraft Chronicles. It should at least be the most accurate fictional representation of Lovecraft, since no one is more qualified to do it than S.T. Joshi, who remains enthroned as HPL's definitive biographer.

-Grim Blogger

Significant Lovecraftian Presence at Imagimovies Festival this Week

2011-04-07T10:00:00.085-05:00

Filmmaker Aaron Vanek notes a significant Lovecraftian presence is due at the Imagi-Movies Film Festival scheduled for later this week in Los Angeles. Unfilmable.com gives us Vanek's meticulous list of Lovecraft films that are on course to appear:

David Prior's AM1200
Andrew Leman's The Call of Cthulhu
Andrew Jones's Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer
Late Bloomer by Craig Macneil
Henry Saine's The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu
The Necronomicon by Joseph Nanni
Short films of Richard Corben (Dagon, The Canal, Recognition)

Several panels based around H.P. Lovecraft's fiction and adaptations on film are to be held as well. A panel based on The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu is particularly notable, since it will include representatives from the film's cast and crew. Full details about the Beverly Hills event, which runs from April 8-11, can be found on the ImagiMovies website.

-Grim Blogger

HP Lovecraft Goes to the Movies

2011-04-07T10:00:00.056-05:00

Like the contents inside the fearful Necronomicon, Fall River Press' latest book entitled, H.P. Lovecraft Goes to the Movies, is a mystery. At least, that's the way it stands now. Despite showing up for pre-order on quite a few book related search engines (Amazon, Borders, etc.), information is skeletal. The book is slated for an October, 2011 release, and it's too early to say who the author is. Much less what the book is actually about. At four hundred pages, though, it seems it will be a substantial tome. The Fall River Press label also released H.P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural several years ago, collecting favorite weird tales mentioned by HPL in his treatise, "Supernatural Horror in Literature."

One shouldn't judge a book by its title, but in this case, it's hard not to. Is it an unseen novel preparing to burst from the depths like Cthulhu's mighty tentacles? Or, more likely, a new book collecting info and observations about Lovecraftian films, much like the encyclopedic book, The Lurker in the Lobby: The Guide to Lovecraftian Cinema. The latter seems more probable. In fact, one wonders if H.P. Lovecraft Goes to the Movies could be an expanded re-issue of Lurker in the Lobby, since the latter is just a bit shorter.

Whatever the case, Lovecraftians may be able to look forward to a new dark treat at the hands of a sizable publishing imprint. Further updates will be coming, even as the Masques of Nyarlathotep roll on.

-Grim Blogger

HP Lovecraft and Coffee

2011-04-05T10:00:00.115-05:00

Any respectable H.P. Lovecraft biography mentions the Providence author's fondness for coffee. It's very possible the caffeinated brew fueled his daemonic muse to satisfaction, or rattled HPL's already deranged nightmares up another notch. He made no secret about his affinity (or addiction?). S.T. Joshi discusses Lovecraft's diet at length in H.P. Lovecraft: A Life (and again in I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft), and the horror writer's gushing over sugar loaded cups of coffee is well documented. In a 1931 letter to J. Vernon Shea, he confesses, "I like coffee exceedingly, but relish its imitation Postum just as much."

The connections between Lovecraft and coffee run deeper, though, and perhaps breach the boundaries between life and death. Today, he can stake a legit claim to being one of the few authors who has inspired notable coffee related endeavors. The most interesting experiment is the now defunct Cthulhu Coffee. For a couple years, this enterprising group served up their own Cthulhuvian coffee beverages at various conventions, and attempted to launch a short lived direct order coffee. Alas, the project never really got off the ground.

While a truly Lovecraftian coffee remains elusive, there are more eldritch logos and parodies than lesser wordsmiths could ever hope to inspire. Looking on any search engine for Lovecraft related coffee cups will bring up a glut of products. Coffee turns up again in the Role Playing Gamer community. The Propnomicon Blog posted this design for a Lovecraft brand coffee container a couple years ago:

Even Chaosium managed to get in on the action with their own horrifying logo, which also carries the "Cthulhu Coffee" title:

Finally, there's the bizarre synchronicity recently unveiled by a traveler to Providence. It seems a Starbucks now rests on the old site of Lovecraft's childhood home, the Angell Street Mansion he never really got over losing, after his family was forced to abandon it due to financial duress.

Coincidence or the result of certain stars aligning? You decide. Maybe over an afternoon cup in one of the better Lovecraftian mugs.

-Grim Blogger

Review: Beneath the Surface by Simon Strantzas

2011-04-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

All writers seek to plunge readers into their pages, gently coating them with a psychic grease that clings and drips its residue well after the books are re-shelved. Then there are authors like Simon Strantzas, whose stories are more like a suffocating tar, cocooning readers in a thick blackness certain to contaminate and continually affect the desiccated soul within. His first true debut, Cold to the Touch, already worked its black magic in this way. Now, Beneath the Surface, a previously rare short story collection, is poised to do the same thanks to a reprint by Dark Regions Press.

This book rounds up fourteen tales exploring familiar Strantzean underpinnings from new angles, but flails its tendrils differently than in Cold to the Touch. As in the other collection, these stories deal with bulging human dams who need only a slight provocation from the supernatural to unleash their melancholy contents. Here, however, the flavor of the gruesome sap that washes over us is infused with aftertastes owing more to H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti than to Robert Aickman. Cold to the Touch also saw stories set in far flung locales, while Beneath the Surface witnesses its terrible enlightenments occurring in strictly urban settings. Strantzas' city, possibly based on Toronto, is an epicenter for the gruesome, the degenerate, and the occult in this collection.

Take the book's opener, “A Shadow in God's Eye,” for instance. A faith seeker has his natural sight cruelly stripped away, only to gain insight into an unsuspected manifestation of the almighty holding dominion over this world. Strantzas' monstrosity is an original secret revealed, and effectively communicates the bleak despair within so much of his work. It is “The Constant Encroaching of a Tumultuous Sea,” though, that lays bare the urban terror aesthetic. It may take a saunter through a mass grave to convince the story's narrator that he has made a serious error by coming to the city, but what better way to reveal the unmistakable foulness of a metropolis functioning like a tomb for all its inhabitants?

“Off the Hook” is the finest example of the vicious knowledge concealed in assuming cities, and a serious contender for best story in Beneath the Surface. A librarian encounters a mysterious notebook, and then begins receiving strange phone calls from a garbled voice bringing some chilling news. This is serious philosophical horror. It posits quasi-theological possibilities truly unsettling to contemplate. The uncertainty clouding the story is as chilling as its outright conjectures. Another story, “The Autumnal City,” rests on dark ambiguity of another kind. A man in a tarnished city, oppressed with a borderline dystopian air and its eternal decay, seeks his salvation in a pale, wandering girl. Strantzas' prose excels in this piece, flexing his stylistic powers with imagery rooted in seasonal degeneration.

While urban horror writhes within nearly every story, several mix it with strong, unabashed Ligottian elements. In “You Are Here,” Strantzas guides readers into an underworld seething with dereliction and populated by mannequins. It quickly becomes apparent that the dolls have a bizarre connection with the urban explorer, sweeping him into fate's grasp. Mannequins crop up again in “Thoughtless,” where a woman undergoes a psychological experiment conducive to piercing reality's many disguises. Simon Strantzas seems to share Thomas Ligotti's obsession with a sham world, where the day to day splendors and terrors are mere trapping for an overwhelming existential blackness – the true form hiding beneath many costumes. “Behind Glass” echoes Ligotti's corporate horror. A wage slave finds much more to deal with than crabby co-workers and pompous supervisors after his company undergoes restructuring. Strantzas manages to put an original spin on a niche within weird fiction that's beginning to grow crowded. His shadowy office and aloof drones conceal a nastier secret, one on par with other workplace demons summoned by Thomas Ligotti and Mark Samuels.

Beneath the Surface is a predecessor to Cold to the Touch, and thus features labors born by Strantzas' earliest dark imaginings. Many tales are shorter than those found in the other collection. Most of the time, this causes no problem, as Strantzas is a gifted practitioner of the weird, with a proven ability to dispense his horrors dose-by-dose or in one painful blow. A couple stories, however, fail to satisfy with the three three dimensional depth seen in most works. “More to Learn” sees a researcher straining to free himself from a nauseating parasite. While capably written, it lacks the emotional and intellectual body slam Strantzas has rapidly become known for delivering. The same can be said for “Leather, Dark and Cold,” where an ominous tome haunts a college student into adulthood.

Fortunately, these stories are brief, minor imperfections in a collection filled with brilliant continuations of the horror enjoyed in Cold to the Touch. The most polished tales are often the more Lovecraftian as well. Just look at “A Thing of Love,” where an introverted writer tormented by his mother's death receives a curious package that transforms everything. This story's horror is also a dilemma: is it the writer's nightmarish transition that is the true horror, or is it the grotesque creature that has captured his heart? “In the Air” is a beautifully written rendezvous between the Lovecraftian and the Aickmanesque, skillfully married by Strantzas' drama about a wife and sister mourning a dead pilot.

Other tales seep unparalleled woe and wonderment tinged with cosmic horror. “The Wound So Deep” aptly completes the parasite stories contained in this book, as a bullied office worker is possessed by a tentacled growth that enables him to pursue his tarnished dreams by other means. A near apocalypse plays itself out in “Drowned Deep Inside of Me.” Another isolated misanthrope suffers through a blanket of suffocating blackness, inside and out, when the world inexplicably darkens at mid day and he is forced to comfort a neighbor and her young daughter. Both stories are symptomatic of the deeply human spirit embedded in Strantzas' oeuvre, and see a glimmer of hope, or at least relief, from strange quarters for the bitter parties involved.

Unlike many other books, where authors intentionally keep their secretive mystique tightly guarded like professional magicians, Beneath the Surface concludes with Strantzas' illuminating afterward. Rather than a full expose, the afterward is a road map to the fiction and an interesting look at his creative process. Anyone who has ever worshiped at the altars of Lovecraft and Ligotti should get their hands on this book. So should wild eyed seekers after cerebral weird horror. Sampling this affordable and accessible collection now is a fantastic introduction to Simon Strantzas, and a twisted bridge to his forthcoming collection, Nightingale Songs.

-Grim Blogger