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
Joseph S Pulver Announces New Book: The Orphan Palace
Last week, weird horror writer-turned-editor Joseph S. Pulver made a tantalizing announcement. He's begun work piecing together two new tribute anthologies due to be published by Miskatonic River Press in 2012. The Grimscribe's Puppets will feature a selection of stories that are a homage to Thomas Ligotti. It will be the first book by multiple authors dedicated to the Ligottian aesthetic, and will join only a handful of others that pay respect to a living writer of weird fiction.
A Season in Carcosa will collect new tales inspired by Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow. Tributes to Carcosa's mad sovereign have been done before, but only on an extremely limited basis (see Rehearsals for Oblivion by Elder Signs Press for a recent example). There's more than enough untapped horror to help build up a Yellow universe - possibly even an incipient Mythos based around the blasphemous play.
Since its earnest resurrection over a year ago, Miskatonic River Press has rolled out several new works. Their new Lovecraftian anthology, Dead But Dreaming II, can be expected later this year as well. The book is a follow up to the hyper-rare and well received Dead But Dreaming, which I previously reviewed here.
-Grim Blogger
Miskatonic River Press to Release Ligotti, King in Yellow Anthologies in 2012
We're not even into mid-December yet, and it's not too late to participate in Hasturcember. A member of Yog-Sothoth forums came up with the idea, and it seems like an interesting one:
"HASTURCEMBER: Replace your user picture with a Yellow Sign and copy this as your status. The goal is to see nothing but Yellow Signs on Facebook, and usher in the return of the King in Yellow. Ia, Ia, Hastur!! Hastur kufayak!! Bulgtom fugtragurn bulgtom. Ai, ai, Hastur!"
It's difficult to remember a mass image switching campaign of this sort in previous epochs of internet Lovecraftiana. The practice has been popular on social networking websites for the last couple years, often to help promote new media or for political causes. A Hasturcember campaign is also unique in its ability to encompass much more than the Lovecraftian. For some time now, Hastur has been irreversibly tied to Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow, and occasionally Algernon Blackwood's Wendigo.
Some will understandably want to keep weird fiction personalities concealed in the cozy bosom offered by a cult sized genre. But the creations of Chambers and Blackwood are too little known, tragically underrated to a nearly criminal degree. Hasturdecember offers hope for giving these writers and others a shove out of the literary doldrums. So, give your Facebook profile an eldritch touch, tweet the word, and stock up on books like The King in Yellow and Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories(contains "The Wendigo") for gifts. Let's illuminate the natural strangeness that swirls around the holiday season in a way that will frighten and awe, channeling screams and cheers all the way to Carcosa.
Just for fun, I thought I would share this atmospheric tribute to Robert W. Chambers' most eerily numinous creation. Usually, these sort of image montages with background music are common and hardly unique in Youtube's community. There's something compelling about this one, though. It could be the nicely selected slide show of imagery from Carcosa, its terrible sovereign, and other cosmic blasphemy that makes this stand apart. Or it might be the ambient music in the background. But regardless, this tribute stands alongside a large array of videos (many of them bands or music related) inspired by Chambers' weird fiction.
A post by AudioBoo's user "mattins" contains a nicely read fragment from Robert W. Chambers' weird cycle, The King in Yellow. The piece is from the book's most notable story, "The Yellow Sign." In it, our artist narrator and his model come upon the maddening tome. The beauty of Chambers' prose is reflected in this passage, alongside his adeptness at building the tense support structures of weird atmosphere.
Unfortunately, this passionate reader's selection is short lived. For a less emotive, but full version of this story and others from The King in Yellow, listen to these readings on Librivox. The MP3 files will probably need to be downloaded, as they're in the range of several dozen megabytes or more. While the Librivox version of Chambers' tales could use a little more stylistic "umph," there is plenty of room for competition. Robert W. Chambers, like Lovecraft, is an author who has most (if not all) of his weird tales in the public domain.
An exceptionally revealing quote on Robert W. Chambers from a contemporary publication turned up online recently. Here, one can easily peer into the Renaissance Man lifestyle of this weird writer, who is largely overlooked, with the exception of his King in Yellow cycle. Chambers' wide array of interests gives insight into how he crafted his small, but notable body of weird stories. It also shows how he was able to churn out the less forgivable romance stories for money, effectively ending his literary career.
"What impresses one most about Mr. Robert W. Chambers is his amazing versatility. In addition to being a popular novelist, he is an expert on rare rugs; an artist, and so well qualified a judge of fine art that he can talk intelligently to the curators and directors of museums about the old masters on exhibition there; equipped with an understanding of Chinese and Japanese antiques so that he can detect forgeries in that art; an authority on mediaeval armor; a lover of outdoors, of horses, dogs, and an ardent collector of butterflies; and, in addition, a thorough man of the world, who knows Paris and Petrograd, and many of the out-of-the-way corners of the earth. These are the qualities that come to mind readily, but the list is far from complete. The longer one knows Mr. Chambers, the more varied the knowledge he finds in him."
- The Editorial Staff of the Mentor Association. (The Mentor, Vol 6, No. 14. Copyright 1918.
A number of vague online mentions are claiming that Japanese writer Miyuki Miyabe's new book The Book of Heroes contains a villain from classic weird fiction. Namely, Robert W. Chambers' creation, the King in Yellow, is said to haunt the pages of this fantasy novel. How this weird icon is put to use in Miyabe's story is anyone's guess, but this description from the publisher's site suggests it may be a path not regularly seen in traditional weird fiction:
When her brother Hiroki disappears after a violent altercation with school bullies, the young Yuriko finds a magical book in his room. The book leads her to another world where she learns that Hiroki has been possessed by a spirit from the Book of Heroes. She visits the magical Nameless Land, where she is told how to save her brother, and is sent back to Earth with a young monk named Sora and the magical book...
When this book makes its scheduled appearance next year, it should be of definite interest to chroniclers of weird fiction. The use of a relatively obscure weird figure in fantasy--from a foreign source, no less--is an unexpected development. It's also worth noting since it could support the idea that Carcosa's King is enjoying wider popularity, spreading his maddening taint to new nests of pages.
The internet is abuzz with some stirring new art projects featuring Robert W. Chambers' ever bizarre King in Yellow. As with Lovecraftian creations, they range from humorous to deadly serious. Lost Carcosa's chief sovereign of toxic nonsense is alive and well across the web, and perhaps gaining popularity through images like these, which could raise the profile of Chambers in weird fiction and beyond. This is accompanied by a rise in spin off fiction about Carcosa, such as Rehearsals for Oblivion by Elder Signs Press.
This painting culled from Deviant Art was fashioned by the artist as part of a Call of Cthulhu card game. It takes a pretty traditional view of the King, but with an added flair that seems almost Oriental. The rich colors suggest the majesty in the madness that is part of the King in Yellow's draw for readers.
This one was done as fan art for the H.P. Lovecraft driven "Vault of Unspeakable Doom" web comic. The stylistic similarity to its source of inspiration is obvious. Given the enduring horror of Burger King's plastic headed mascot, it's fairly predictable that some fan of the weird would knit together the two Kings in a freakish union. Still, there's a lot of laughs gained from this lighthearted take on Carcosa's reign of terror.
The golden sculpture featured here is perhaps the most impressive piece of Yellow fan art I've ever seen. Chambers now joins the ranks of Lovecraft in the hall of weird writers whose fiction has inspired diverse artistic mediums. The creator should consider producing more of these, since the burgeoning popularity of Chambers' monarch implies a market for weird consumers who would relish putting a plaque like this near their library of strange stories.
The blog "Unfilmable" has posted a number of pages from the upcoming new issue of "Planet Lovecraft." This is a compact, but appetizing preview that gives a good taste of the type of personalities and talents lurking in this newish Lovecraftian horror magazine.
"Planet Lovecraft" is a bold new art and comic magazine containing original illustrated tales often reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft's universe. It's worth mentioning, however, that several of the sample pages for the next issue depict a couple stories inspired by Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow cycle of weird fiction. It's unclear yet how purist the Chambers selections will be, but they may mark a first in adapting his works to comics, instead of being embedded in an exclusively Lovecraftian storyline. Already nearing the release of its fourth installment, "Planet Lovecraft" looks set to provide a promising new and independent outlet for publishing Lovecraftian tales and works of weird fiction in comic form.
Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow...in audiobook form? Believe it, for it exists here, courtesy of archive.org. It appears to be in its entirety, and amazingly, flows fairly authentically in the transition from text to sound. Chambers' shocking collection of weird tales is startling in new and different ways when listened to. For instance, the descent into madness that characterizes the first tale, "The Repairer of Reputations," is fragmented even when narrated. This production is one of the best finds possible for the lover of audiobooks and the strange.
Since its appearance in 1895, Robert W. Chambers’The King in Yellow has drawn the dark affections of many weird fiction admirers. A favorite of H.P. Lovecraft and subsequent giants in supernatural literature, the book is a collection of short stories revolving around a mysterious play called “The King in Yellow." Upon encountering this text, most characters in Chambers’ stories experience a swift dive into lunacy, with disturbing visions of beings not of this Earth and dire real-world consequences of interacting with them. The two stories within the set, “The Repairer of Reputations” and “The Yellow Sign” are most well known, and the most effective at illustrating these motifs.
The role of the color yellow in these tales is often blatantly ominous, with connotations of insanity, death, and decay that were commonly associated with it in the late 19th century. Chambers, who started his artistic career as a painter, maintains that powerful sense of evocative imagery by giving haunting quotations of “The King in Yellow” play that is the focus of these stories. Coupled with bizarre references to great monarchs and things from Carcosa—an otherworldly place whose name is taken from the work of Ambrose Bierce—Chambers masterfully sketched haunting yarns that have stood for decades as some of the greatest works in all of horror fiction.
As expected, The King in Yellow flaunted a universe too enticing to resist for horror artists following Chambers. From subtle hints of Chambers’ creations dropped in subsequent tales of the strange, a la Lovecraft, to full fledged sequels directly involving the accursed play, the King’s fictional realm is alive and well. Lovecraft himself probably began this recycling of Chambers’ forms in new ways, with his references to things like the Yellow Sign and the Lake of Hali in several tales (“The Whisperer in Darkness,” for one). Among its more remarkable attributes, several small press publishers have put out entire collections, both magazines and paperbacks, focusing on new stories wholly set in the Yellow universe. The British publisher Rainfall Books is responsible for one of these editions, and among their more interesting creations, a limited release CD mimicking the elusive scenes from the play. Additionally, Tom Ryng has written his own imaginative account of the play’s text. Perhaps at the vanguard of the rest of the pack, increasingly popular Elder Signs Press recently published Rehearsals for Oblivion, a fine selection of Yellow-related tales from some of horror’s most imaginative contemporaries. Its appearance as “Act I” is also encouraging, since it may well mean future collections by Elder Signs are planned.
Other prominent horror writers have also tackled Chambers’ world. Brian Keene, currently of zombie novel fame, wrote a short story several years ago called “’The King,’ in: Yellow.” Incredibly, the altered punctuation makes a world of difference. It tells of a couple who go to see the play “Yellow,” and meet with disturbing results. The dark humor of various celebrities like Elvis, for instance, starring as the King, is overshadowed by the dark conclusion and sanity-uprooting imagery. It is by far one of the cleverest stories to date, good enough to be republished in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16, and even a graphic novel adaptation in Brian Keene’s Fear.
And still, the incredible odyssey of Chambers’ King hasn’t ended there. The taint of Yellow has crept even onto film in recent years. Some observers saw overtones of Chambers in Masters of Horror’s season one episode, Cigarette Burns. Produced by John Carpenter, this miniature film involves a collector’s search for an incredibly rare film of early 20th century notoriety, responsible for inducing insanity and violence among its viewers. Lurker Films presently sells a number of amateur Yellow films collected onto DVD. Aaron Vanek, who produced several other excellent shorts based on Lovecraft’s tales, has a prize winning adaptation of “The Yellow Sign” on this disc. Also noteworthy, places and things from the Yellow universe occasionally pop up in various quests and campaigns for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu role playing game.
Clearly, the explosion of diverse ephemera reveals a growing interest in the Yellow universe, and proves it fertile ground for other artists. The question must be asked: is Chambers’ creation forming a belated mythos, not unlike Lovecraftians’ vast Cthulhu mythos? To gain insight, it is fair to examine the swarm of interest around Yellow artistry using the lens provided by Lovecraft’s offspring.
The Cthulhu mythos (which Lovecraft himself called “Yog-Sothery) was encouraged from the start by HPL, who headed a talented circle of writers like Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. Lovecraft encouraged his fellow writers to use his creations as they pleased, and the Providence author did the same with their own gods and fantastic places on more than one occasion. From there, the mythos developed on its own, with many early pastiches of Lovecraft’s worlds, up to the present day stories of a (mostly) superior, liberated quality.
The Yellow mythos, if it can be called that, isn’t nearly as vast or visited (yet) as that of Cthulhu’s. Serious tales directly involving Chambers’ universe, rather than mere mention of selected entities, are still quite new. Moreover, Yellow mythos tales, like those of the Cthulhu mythos, remain rooted firmly in the small press, and even then among just a few selective publishers. For this reason, Chambers’ work has not seeped a great deal into the popular consciousness, as can be said for at least a few of Lovecraft’s creations. The phenomenal growth and health of the Cthulhu mythos is crowned by a few mass market mythos story collections by large publishers like Del Rey. Innumerable parodies of Cthulhu online, in addition to several video games in recent years drawing both subtly and directly from Lovecraft’s mythos only underscores this success.
While Chambers’ King in Yellow can be said to be analogous to something like Cthulhu (in that both are the best known entities of each author), the King still falls short of Cthulhu’s popular recognition. Thus, it may be years before Chambers’ great contribution to weird fiction is as acclaimed as Lovecraft’s. On the other hand, the Yellow universe is beginning to thrive in a manner unique, but not wholly different from the Cthulhu mythos’ evolutionary path.
In the final analysis, if there is a Yellow mythos developing, then it will only come slowly and likely won’t reach the heights obtained by Lovecraft’s horrors. Nevertheless, Chambers’ creations enjoy an increasingly small, but vibrant, diverse existence in the smaller circles of artistic horror. This may prove beneficial, since the Yellow universe can avoid the inferior pastiches that hampered the evolution of the Cthulhu mythos (and still pop up periodically). If the worlds of great weird fiction are to remain more than mere fan fiction, consistently high quality, along with innovation, is vitally important. And that goes for any stage of development.
