Word from Dreadcentral.com is that Henry Saine's cinematic contribution to Lovecraftiana, The Last Lovecraft: The Relic of Cthulhu, will see wide scale distribution later this year. The humorous story follows a group of Lovecraft "geeks" as they attempt to use an ancient relic and the Lovecraft bloodline to keep various Mythos horrors at bay. The movie has already premiered at several film festivals. In fourth quarter 2010, it will reportedly enjoy a limited theatrical release, and then a DVD distribution.
What causes the unwelcome body modifications inflicted by nature? Are they wanton mutations or badges of honor indicating a level of blasphemous enlightenment unknown by their recipient? Whatever the case, the fantastic distortions of living, sentient forms don't often show up this prodigiously. Having this happen in an Asian backwater is not surprising. The horned lady's case is reminiscent of the sorts of peasant-driven folklore that used to haunt cultures all around world.
One wonders why a rural origin is so common in these tales. A number of reasonable factors can be rattled off: poverty, austere diet, strange diseases, possible inbreeding, contaminated waters, etc. These are the scientific conjectures. Those who lean toward a supernatural origin will speculate about possession of one kind or another. Maybe welding these explanations together will clear things up. Bodily possession--at face value--need not be supernatural, and a perfectly natural manifestation of strangeness like this skirts the borders of the supernatural in our own minds.
Several years ago, word first began to circulate about Thomas Ligotti working on a philosophical treatise. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, which takes its name from a fictional book by a character in his story "The Shadow, the Darkness," then remained mysteriously out of reach, save for an early draft published at Thomas Ligotti Online. In the meantime, it underwent an unknowable battery of revisions, additions, and alterations of all sorts. Finally, the titular work is undergoing the final stages of preparation by Hippocampus Press for a release in April, 2010.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horroris many things, but it is definitely well worth the wait. It emanates a black power longtime readers of Ligotti's fiction will recognize, yet it is not an old comforting horror story. Instead, the book is a history, a philosophy, and a V.I.P. pass to the backstage of Ligotti's many talented puppet shows. On the way to get behind the curtain, though, you find yourself trapped in a dimly lit elevator. Rather than the fireside chat with Thomas Ligotti you expected, you end up listening to his dark observations about this universe and about your existence--many of which make you want to scream and cry and laugh at once--as they pour in over a piercing intercom.
In Conspiracy, Thomas Ligotti successfully balances the multiple authorial roles integral to the book. There is Ligotti, the literary historian and tour guide, who provides a competent overview of pessimistic philosophers many readers without a formal philosophy education will not have heard of. Obscure figures like Zapffe, Michelstaedter, and Mainlander, to name a few, have their bleak and unusual ideas presented in clear terms almost anyone can understand, alongside the equally heady thoughts of more recognizable actors like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Each of these thinkers has relevant information extracted and pruned for supporting evidence in Ligotti's case against life. Ligotti, the argumentative pessimist, does not relent from his overall belief that everything, particularly human existence, is MALIGNANTLY USELESS. But his attacks are not constantly overwhelming, they die down enough, when appropriate, to allow the pessimistic historian his say, as well as the cultural critic. Ligotti as analyst effectively incorporates a selection of grim movies and literary works into his narrative. Familiar horror media is particularly drawn on to underscore the terrible condition he believes we find ourselves in. Then, not surprisingly, there is Ligotti the storyteller. While there is nothing that blossoms into a full blown original vignette, the creative flourishes this Ligotti utilizes keep the pages turning, and impress the text with his inimitable stamp. Conspiracy offers a gigantic portion of what may be Thomas Ligotti's special plan for this world, but it comes with cherished side dishes his admirers have tasted before in Death Poems, Clown Puppet nonsense, and the lectures of Professor Nobody.
The existential conspiracy of the book's title is easy to understand. Ligotti's main divergence from most other writers, thinkers, and people is his disagreement with the idea that "being alive is alright." To rip apart this concept, one held sacrosanct by most individuals and civilizations, he uses the framework established by the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe in his essay, "The Last Messiah." Zapffe believed humanity's existence is a terrible mistake, an error mitigated and hidden by a bag of tricks employed to get by in daily life, but made all the worse by human reproduction. The exceedingly complicated mental hoops jumped through to convince ourselves that existence is not so bad, and will be even better for our children, is the grand conspiracy. To Ligotti, it is an insufferable situation, especially since humanity itself is the chief conspirator.
More intellectually challenging are the ideas he presents to blast the good (or at least tolerable) life espoused by his optimist foes (generally, those who believe "being alive is alright"). The horror of conscious existence, an evolutionary oops of nightmare proportions, is the most convincing evidence Ligotti deploys. Consciousness is a curse, and the conspiracy's sustenance. To Ligotti, conscious awareness results in an illusion of selfhood, a really wild suggestion, until one considers the bizarre theories of Thomas Metzinger and neuroscience highlighted by the author.
"Nobody is Anybody," Ligotti once said on a musical CD called The Unholy City, and he just might be right. His assertion and its support is convincing, fascinating, and frightening. However, if it is true, then the illusion is brutally potent--as readers will see when they react to this news with enthusiastic agreement or sickened dismay, responses pre-scripted by their personalities. With the exception of a few ego-dead savants discussed by Ligotti, the web of persona is almost ironclad, as the author himself notes, perhaps to his own horror and frustration.
The deterministic conundrum of biology and mental self-trickery is not the only monstrous entrapment to be found in Conspiracy. Even if Ligotti fails to change anyone's mind about the human condition, part of his adeptness is in his ability to force a reader into deciding which side of the optimist-pessimist divide they are on while reading. A minefield of observations about life lurks within each chapter, intellectual explosives that will gradually hurl readers into pessimism or away from it, or at least leave them dazed on the battlefield. For instance, Ligotti points out the tremendously important role of pleasure as a driver of human activity, contrasting its limited rewards with the bountiful suffering available to all. Sexual activity and feasting are playfully scorned in ways that oscillate between intensely amusing and freakishly disturbing.
Then there are the times when Ligotti confronts the mammoth in the room: Death. His commentary on the subject is sharp, secretly didactic, and purposeful. As a horror writer, Ligotti already knows how painful it is to be stalked through life by the shadow of death. But his aim is to get us to feel the distant chill of our deaths, even if it is only while thumbing through his book's pages. His crystallizing focus, in fact, mirrors death's advance in many ways, until its whole bulk is pressing down on readers at the nauseating end (where else?) of Conspiracy.
A less abrasive but no less important segment of Ligotti's dark tome explores an entertaining byproduct of consciousness familiar to those likely to pick up this book: the development of the supernatural. A treasury of insight and knowledge about the macabre that only an accomplished horror writer could access is tapped. Ligotti produces original and intelligent observations about the evolution of supernatural atmosphere in literature. He expertly examines weird fiction writers and more "mainstream" literary figures schooled in darkness and demons of one sort or another. In some ways, the book starts to resemble an embryonic draft for an updated, modernized version of H.P. Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature, but Ligotti wisely reigns this in before it veers away too far. He does not allow readers to forget why supernatural fiction and media exists in the first place: it is a reflection and an outgrowth of the sad state our race is condemned to by existing as conscious creatures, things which are practically supernatural by nature's standards.
Outside a lengthier discussion of the supernatural, Ligotti seasons the entire book with relevant quotations from and observations on all types of horrific media. John Carpenter's eerie films, Lovecraft's dark entities, and the violent machinations in Sweeney Todd are just a few of the diverse examples Ligotti illuminates as supplemental sideshows to the main attraction. All together, these works provide some context for attacking the entrenched fortresses Ligotti seeks to bruise. Where else can existence be seen as pure nightmare, or selfhood as eggshell frail, but in horror?
Although it is non-fiction, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race bristles with Ligotti's sardonic and sometimes hilarious tone, and his well received command of language. The dark comedy, fearful scenarios, and engaging paradoxes on display constitute a sweetener in an otherwise bitter medicine. Just enough to make the book sufficiently readable and even enjoyable for staunch optimists who will not be swayed by Ligotti's tirade against existence. Since this is a work by Ligotti, it would almost be a let down not to see puppets. Luckily, puppet imagery is abundant here, rolled out in eerie and believable comparisons that go beyond their traditional Ligottian roles as harbingers of darkly surreal atmosphere. But the ultimate deterministic puppets, in the author's estimation, may be something all too familiar--and what it is becomes strikingly clear in the frequent, colorful mockery and probing of human existence.
As if the dour argument of Conspiracy were not controversial enough, Ligotti goes one step further by boldly taking optimistic ideas to task. Readers feel the presence of a merciless gardener, who rummages through the soil of humanity's collective beliefs and tears apart anything not conducive to his pessimistic crop. All major religions, except perhaps Buddhism, are sliced, scorched, and tossed aside as delusion making weeds. The same fate awaits transhumanism, a utopian current without any relevance for Ligotti, except its potential to produce a superman one day that might recognize existential futility. Nature-worshiping environmentalism does not escape either. It seems that "Mother Nature" is a sort of demon to Ligotti, a blind and clumsy force responsible for humanity's highbrow suffering as well as the idiotic pain of lesser beings. In short, nothing that celebrates life, tries to make living worthwhile, or mitigates death's horror receives a pardon from Judge Thomas Ligotti.
This includes his vision of a better world where man has concluded that being alive is not alright. It is an unlikely portrait of something approaching a Ligottian utopia for humanity, a planet with a diminishing population as more and more people opt not to reproduce. Yet, it is an idea that crashes on the runway under the heavy weight of impracticality, at least in our own era and any in the near future, as Ligotti himself acknowledges. His frustration bleeds out the pages when he parodies the maniacal attitude of the world at large to the pessimist minority. Ligotti's paradox is our own as an agonized species moving through a world with no exit, or none accessible to readers at this moment in the early twenty first century. What, then, is mankind to do in the face of a conspiracy identified, but unthwarted? What is the role of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race when its anti-natal solution appears too distant today?
Like every notable work before it, the real fate of this volume and its ideas will be determined in due time by a large jury of readers and critics. However, Conspiracy is so rich, so strange, and so thoughtful that each main component of its inner-workings deserves a full evaluation. It is a hyper-effective philosophical tract that demands answers from readers to a few questions, not the lazy consideration of many questions raised by most other philosophic material. It is literary and artistic criticism with an agenda, focusing on its chosen works with a laser beam precision that is rare, and rarer still when it comes from a weird fiction writer. Its engaging prose is solid enough to drive readers of all mindsets onward, from cover to cover, almost making it feel like "being alive is alright" while the book is in one's hands. Almost.
The writing is also proof that Ligotti has lost none of his literary muscle tone, and may have gained some new forcefulness by venturing into non-fiction. Certain words, phrases, and metaphors are familiar, but they have never been this serious before. Moreover, Conspiracy may have one final use its author never intended: a primary resource for scholars studying his fiction. As a clear, vibrant expression of the ideas in his oeuvre swirling around beneath their storytelling framework, the book brushes on an additional layer of black gloss to every Ligotti tale. Any confusion about where Ligotti stands on existence is forever dispelled. This may blow open new mineshafts in his stories, allowing longtime devotees to dig deeper and extract new, strange, and precious intellectual gemstones.
So, perhaps the overarching worth of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race is in its function as a sort of literary Silver Key. It promises to unlock doors unique to whoever picks it up. Unsuspecting newcomers may step through an entrance to a library that holds black truths about their lives they never suspected. Faithful Ligotti readers may find themselves lost in a meta-fictional reverie always dead with darkness to outsiders, but always alive with literary lights for them. And everyone, everyone, will have to answer to a Supreme Court of pessimist philosophers regarding their role as co-conspirators. The shadowy faces of Zapffe, Lovecraft, Schopenhauer, and Ligotti might be indistinct as they glare down from the bench, but the crime itself is not. In the end, everyone will know the self-inflicted conspiracy as fact, not mere theory, and as Pandora's Box rather than Jack-in-the-Box.
-Grim Blogger
Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race Reviewed
A new version of the mythic Necronomicon has been produced by an outfit called Warlock Asylum. It's a self-published book through Lulu.com called The Atlantean Necronomicon: Veils of Negative Existence, a somewhat odd, but perhaps fitting mirriage of alien mythologies with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Based on this description, it seems to be a stew of original Lovecraftian mysticism with suggestions on using the infamous Simon Necronomicon in new ways:
The information in this book is extremely rare, if not obsolete for some. It is a valuable resource for Gate-Walkers and occultists worldwide.
The book has several interviews appearing in its appendix section. I would like to thank Dan Harms, Aion 131, and Adept Edunpanna, for allowing me permission to print their thoughts. Also Dan Harmas, and a variety of other people will be happy to know that I found the origin of KUTULU, with historical data to support this.
All the deities in the Urilia Text are explained, as well as, a thorough history of Lammashta, Lady Shakuguku, and many others. Included in this tome is the rare Veils of Negative Existence. These writings are centuries old, but Itried to do my best in revising the account that was part of Ahmad al-Buni’s records concerning Queen Sheba. It is a magical work, which includes essay and valuable information, amking it an integral part of the Necronomicon Tradition.
The price listed seems reasonable enough: a little over twenty dollars for a 211 page paperback, or more for a hardcover version. A few preview pages are also available on its Lulu page. Judging by those alone, the book's quality does not appear to suffer the tremendous derailment that sometimes afflicts self-published ventures.
A poster on Yog-Sothoth forums recently shared images of this outre idol that was uncovered in the Nørrebro section of Copenhagen, Denmark. One will immediately notice the striking likeness to Cthulhu. The octopid statue is a mass of tentacles perched on a rock, staring at passers-by with its uniform eyes.
Being a port city, it's not that strange to find symbols of the sea and its denizens posted around town. However, this particular statue seems a little out of place. Maybe some European readers would like to seek out the origins of this piece? Click the review submissions link in the upper left with any investigative tips about this oddity, and I'll post them here.
This sensational clip is a short, but creepy scene from an Italian produced adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla." The eponymous creature is depicted with a weird and menacing elegance rarely seen elsewhere. Of course, given that Maupassant's Horla was an invisible being, one wonders how well the film follows its source material. Unfortunately, little else (to my knowledge) has surfaced on the web about this movie.
A brief rundown of production stats from its production website shows that it's a short 35 minute movie. If other parts are as imaginative and eerie as this brief scene, then we can only hope it will surface online or on DVD in the near future.
The SENE Film, Music, and Arts Festival in Providence, Rhode Island, will showcase a new film adaptation inspired by the city's literary giant of weird fiction. Jared Skolnick's version of "The Music of Erich Zann" is scheduled to appear at the festival when it starts up in early April. This will be a major venue for a Lovecraftian film, and also helps reinforce HPL's position as a serious artistic contender in his homeland.
More information about "The Musich of Erich Zann" itself can be found on its Facebook page. A description, some photos, and a list of other minor film festivals it will visit in 2010 are posted.
-Grim Blogger
"Erich Zann" Film to Show at Providence Film Festival
For those who haven't seen it yet, the growing empire of Ex Occidente Press has broadened its website to include previews of their forthcoming books. The first 10-15 pages of many 2010 titles are available for viewing, and it's a fantastic lineup at that: Mark Samuels, Reggie Oliver, and other weird writers are scheduled to have new books put out by the publisher in the coming months. Ex Occidente has barely been on the small press scene for a year and a half, but they have already cemented their place as a major player in the field of niche horror publishing.
Last year, the Romanian press was somewhat hampered by difficulties with overseas shipping and web security. However, it appears that these growing pains are receding. The addition of these previews seems to mark a renewed effort at keeping their readers informed, while whetting longtime readers' appetites for new works by the rising and risen stars of the modern weird.
The UK's famous police organization recent discussed the supernatural. They wonder if witchcraft is responsible for their inability to catch African based slave traders--one link in a chain of horrors, if true. But perhaps a greater and more tangible horror is Nigeria itself these days. Is the whole country a mere puppet for an unknown veiled evil? Not that I'm aiming to run any nation down. Yet, when the prime news focuses on marauding armies of slave runners, internet spammers, and possible demons, one has to wonder...
The Cimmerian blog's Al Harron published a superb profile of Algernon Blackwood earlier this week--on the weird author's 141st birthday, no less. In it, Harron ruminates on Blackwood's literary power by looking at its effect on his psyche. Through the personalized camping trip terrors of two stories, "The Willows" and "The Wendigo," Harron identifies a critical segment of Blackwood's weirdness.
The strongest kind of fear labeled by H.P. Lovecraft and many others--fear of the unknown--is herded out into daylight here. This is the secret ingredient in Blackwood's potent cocktails. But, as Harron has found, knowing that this is the case does nothing to resolve or dilute the frightful powers chronicled by the British writer. The motives of his distorted, almighty Nature remain a perpetual mystery in the best of his tales, and thus retain the fullness of their horror.
Harron fleshes out his article with well selected passages from Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Blackwood himself. Though a lot more could be said about the subject than the blogger ventures, posts like this are critical to stimulating the type of thought that will help unravel the greats of weird literature, and help illuminate the trajectory of subsequent authors.
Anyone who has enjoyed Reggie Oliver's work knows there's something really haunting about old theaters. However, Oliver's fiction mostly utilizes live performance theaters as functional, distorted, and autobiographical backdrops to weird terrors. The eeriness of the old theater seems amplified when the stages are crumbling away. And they need not always be venues for traditional performance arts. Water damaged movie theaters and sound stages for bygone musicians are just as haunting as their ancient counterparts.
The war zone like damages to the theaters pictured here is bad enough. But then, one needs to consider the stage itself. Curiously, tales of the haunted theater--allegedly real and fictional--position their spirits elsewhere in the establishment than on stage. Why is this? Do ghosts experience pre-performance jitters like living bodies? Or are the disembodied essences themselves frightened away from the bigger, meaner spirit of the abandoned stage, a place where Ligottian truths too terrible to name are acted out (in our minds or elsewhere) amid the rubble?
There's the high probability that supernatural infestation of the theater outside of fiction is pure bunk. Even so, the total removal of the ghostly component needn't lessen our trembling fascination with these places. Fear and fascination often go hand in hand, and with these sites, they are the ones on stage.
A group of student animators posted this Lovecraftian short animation to Youtube a few days ago. Le Changement de la Garde (which I take to mean "The Changing of the Guard") is based on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann," with a different twist. The French tenement in this version seems far more sinister than in Lovecraft's story. There's no discernible Erich Zann, but the strange phenomena has the potential to make many Zanns by means of supernatural possession or enslavement.
Interestingly, Le Changement de la Garde is told from the perspective of the landlord, an almost invisible minor character in HPL's work. This villainous fellow takes on a life of his own, making the animation a very original outgrowth of its source.
The webpage for the long running Graphic Classics series informs us that a new edition of illustrated Edgar Allan Poe adaptations will be appearing in June, 2010. This will be the fourth version of the Poe book, and as is the case with many of their re-releases, it will add 40 pages of new material. "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "William Wilson" will be appearing in ink for the first time here.
These Poe adaptations continue to be a prime driver for Graphic Classics. So, it shouldn't be surprising that this title is nearly at the vanguard of re-releases. Owners of previous editions may hesitate over purchasing this expanded book--particularly if the future holds a fifth, sixth, or seventh edition, each adding new content. But newcomers will be able to get this enhanced collection at a better rate per page than any other.
Incidentally, the Bookgasm blog has an extensive preview up for view. Selections from the new stories sit next to samples from established artwork, and it's a great way to see the sheer diversity of drawing styles enclosed in this volume.
It appears H.P. Lovecraft has attained another pinnacle of success: having a horror press stamped with his name. The burgeoning Lovecraft Press is a digital and print publisher that has lined up some rising stars of horror. Many of their authors do not occupy (or at least work solely within) the high weird niche seen in today's other small presses. However, several of these authors, such as Brian Keene, have written material clearly indebted to H.P. Lovecraft's breed of cosmic horror. More information about the company is given in this press release:
Lovecraft Press is a digital publishing company who digitally formats books for the Kindle, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, among all other ebook readers. They distribute each release for all of the devices.
With releases lined up already from Bram Stoker Award winning author Keane Patrick Burke, along with upcoming releases from Nate Southard, Mark Zirbel and John Grover, along with many upcoming announcements with household names, Lovecraft Press is quickly becoming the Leader in digital book publishing.
They are currently building an impressive roster, as well as contracts with many publishers in the Fiction/Horror/
Fantasy genres as the digital co-publisher for their titles.
You can visit their website at http://www.lovecraftpress.com
Publishers: Contact Robert E. Willis at Lovecraft Press at lovecraftpress@gmail.com
It is a pleasant turn of events to see HPL's name painted on this new explorer of high-tech horror fiction.
Strange creatures have adorned weird literature from its outset. In some cases, it can be the most enchanting aspect of a strange story (but works best as an atmospheric component, in my opinion). So, no surprise that the hobby/science/farce of Cryptozoology holds a similar power in real life, and a curious intersection with religion.
Poe Ghostal of toy collecting blog fame recently posted his exchange with Accoutrements, a novelty company responsible for action figures of Edgar Allan Poe, Albert Einstein, and many others. Ghostal recommends the toy maker consider adding H.P. Lovecraft's likeness to their line of plastic creations. Despite the somewhat odd response from Accoutrements, Ghostal raises a fun and potentially lucrative suggestion.
Allow me to second this call for a H.P. Lovecraft figure, doll, statue, or other likeness. Not because I'm a toy collector, but because it would be another strong signal of HPL's growing place in pop-culture. Accoutrement's line of figures run a gamut that includes Sigmund Freud, Jesus, and several popular writers, among others. Lovecraft would join the ranks of Poe, Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde by having his visage resurrected in poseable form.
In the end, it doesn't really matter if Accoutrements is up to the task, though they would be a natural choice. If not, another entrepreneur will be gearing up to make a miniature Lovecraft sooner or later.
A creative Youtuber uploaded a reworked video of Jean Painleve's Le Vampire this past summer. The refitted short utilizes unearthly music by Modest Mouse as an atmospheric supplement to old clips of the notorious vampire bat and other all-too-real parasites. While this Painleve work was the product of his biology studies, his attempt to blur science with art overlaps well with the weird aesthetic. At least, I find this retooled version of Le Vampire unsettling and hypnotic.
The question of Lovecraft and facial hair has only briefly been touched on, by my observation. It's a minute, but debatable issue that hasn't yet hit HPL scholarship strongly enough to produce a whole essay. Lovecraft's own opinion of beards is fairly well established--it was a low one, perhaps owing less to the social mores of the time than to his own hygienic struggle with ingrown hairs.
Yet, there are good questions to be raised about whether Lovecraft's disdain of facial hair might have had deeper psychological roots. One question comes to mind when looking at the scarce (or at least easily accessible) photos of his father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft, and seeing the thick mustache he is sporting. The photo above is from 1891, a couple years before the traveling merchant had his syphilis-inspired meltdown.
One wonders what Lovecraft thought of his father's image--one he may or may not have dredged up in later years through photographs and memories--and if he hoped to distance himself as much as possible. HPL's worries over hereditary madness and reputation may have carried over to concerns about style. To Lovecraft, the paternal whiskers may have been a visible taint of a past he desperately hoped to evade, even if he had the option of growing facial hair painlessly. His mother called him "hideous," and in this fraught environment, the last thing he would want to do is recall his father with his own features.
This is pure speculation on my part, but not completely off base, I hope. Scholars with the motivation to attack this question in depth might be well served by combing Lovecraft's stories for a recurring attitude on beards. There seems to be plenty of room for exploring possible psychological undercurrents in Lovecraft's life, though certain subjects may not be provable at a deep scholarly grade.
An article from the South County Independent about a local publisher spotlights C.M. Eddy, a Weird Tales magazine contributor and correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft. "Pulp-Era Horror is Resurrected in Book of Tales" showcases the work of Fenham Publishing, which recently brought out The Loved Dead and Other Tales, a new collection of about a dozen works by Eddy. This is the same outfit that published The Gentleman from Angell Street: Memories of H.P. Lovecraft, a book about personal accounts of H.P. Lovecraft by Eddy's family members.
This new Eddy collection appeared late last year. It's the second major collection of his stories to roll off the presses in modern times.
The South County Independent piece succinctly describes Lovecraft's relationship with Eddy. Some secondary quirks about Eddy's life, such as his musical compositions, are also discussed. Anyone interested in the finer points of HPL's life and members of the original "Lovecraft Circle" will want to bookmark this brief, but informative snapshot.
-Grim Blogger
South County Independent on C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft
Londoners still have a couple weeks left to catch a performance of Warnings, a reading of two M.R. James stories situated in a historic crypt. The stories are "A Warning to the Curious" and "Count Magnus." Since details on the official website are a bit sketchy, readers are better off consulting this short review and summary from The Londonist blog:
Until 13 March, Monday to Saturday 7.15pm, Saturday Matinee 13 March at 2.15pm. Tickets: £12-15. Runs 90 mins, no break.
Warnings is one of the more unique ideas for executing "live" weird fiction. Come to think of it, having dramatic readings of works by Poe or Lovecraft in a site like this wouldn't be such a bad idea--though the US is lacking in the sort of time beaten, spooky places that are easily accessible in Europe.
Burial alive was one of the extraordinary fears of previous centuries, best represented in weird fiction by Poe's febrile descriptions of this terror. Today, going into the ground before your pulse has stopped is a very unlikely outcome, particularly in Western nations where embalming is common. If you aren't dead by the time they cart you off to be prepared for the hungry ground, then the preservatives will finish you. This need not apply to the third world, where actual burial alive is (or should be) a very real fear.
Still, instances like these show how incredibly close some individuals come to being prematurely interned in modern times, and how horrifying these instances can be.
Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage is a game of Lovecraftian nightmares with a gritty look that should appeal to fans of weird horror and gaming. The first installment, Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder, also contained explicitly Lovecraftian content, but it appears this sequel will draw on even more HPL imagery. Thematically, it will be a mixture of adventures and puzzle solving. Look for it to appear sometime in the first half of 2010.
