Tales of the Cthulhu Quarter

Last month, the Tales of the... blog hosted a series of artistic presentations called "Tales of the Cthulhu Quarter." Now, following several weeks of H.P. Lovecraft inspired content, the online sideshow has just wrapped up. What's left is an eclectic mixture of podcasting, commentary, and visual art. The Cthulhu exhibit is actually the unifying theme for this blog's launch, complete with a uniquely regional focus by showcasing artists and bloggers from Northern Ireland.

While the self-contained stories told through Lovecraftian media don't deviate greatly from established Cthulhu Mythos norms, the presentation is new. This breed of multimedia powered storytelling may preview the way certain future weird tales could be told. Though it will never replace the novel and the short story collection (and that's a very good thing), thematic blogging may find a fruitful place in the world of Lovecraftiana, where monthly and quarterly print digests devoted to it are quickly falling by the wayside due to technological change and recessionary upheaval. Also, projects like "Tales of the Cthulhu Quarter" can easily incorporate video and audio content in concert with traditional literary and visual art--a potentially decisive advantage over the PDF contained e-zines floating around for the past decade or so.

I'm hardly the only commentator to muse on this change in online publishing, though. Rather than listening to echo chamber observations here, head over to Tales of the... to take in some effective Lovecraftian art and see a possible blueprint of the future.

-Grim Blogger