Lovecraft class, stopped hubris, and book revisions, oh my!

About a third through the latter, which should be enough to send to the editor, let her get started. The former was an informative look at various stories; it also was an opportunity for Ken Hite to convince me that there was not a living human capable of properly finishing THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, which means that he did his part for Western Civilization this day. If not just the entirety of humanity.

Early night for me, though. I am very tired, and my brain is full.

The @HPLHS is doing a BOGO sale on E-DARTs for HPL’s birthday.

Yeah, that’s a lot of acronyms. Unpacked: the HP Lovecraft Historical Society is doing a buy-one, get-one free sale on the electronic versions of its Dark Adventure Radio Theater shows. This is a good deal, even if I’m not going to do it: I already have them all (well, except for Masks of Nylarathotep, because if I had $250 to spare I’d spend it on publishing more short stories) in physical form, complete with the binders and everything. But if you just want the DARTs and don’t care about the props, this is an excellent deal. They’re very good radio plays.

Solstice Sale

The GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Trailer Teaser.


Word on the street is that a couple of the Cabinet of Curiosities are Lovecraft adaptations. Also note: Guillermo del Toro isn’t directing these himself, but that’s okay. Supposedly, ‘Dreams in the Witch House’ is one of the two Lovecraft works, and I’m happy to see that story get done with a decent budget.

Moe Lane

PS: Of course I want to see del Toro do IN THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, instead. I also want world peace, an excellent working relationship with a reputable literary advertising agency, and a pony. I’m just managing my expectations.

The HPL Historical Society fundraiser was successful! …Also, their account was hacked and @TwitterSupport is being useless.

Oh, hi, Twitter Support! Note that your website is still calling mine dangerous. Why are you doing that? How the heck do you expect to keep getting away with this level of not-talking-to-people when you finally monetize your subscribers? Is this really what y’all wanted to do with your lives?

…Anyway: the HPL Historical Society had a fundraiser to help buy up a bunch of Lovecraft’s letters and donate them to Brown University’s existing HPL collection. They have succeeded. This, at least, is good news.

Alan Moore’s PROVIDENCE Compendium to be reissued (already got mine).

(Via Facebook) Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I did not rush here to reveal the news that Alan Moore is rereleasing his epic PROVIDENCE Lovecraftian comic series. Nope. First I went and pre-ordered a copy, because the Damned Thing sells at mildly obscene prices and I suspect they’re gonna sell out this print run pretty fast. But, now that I’ve confirmed that I pre-ordered it, I can safely let everybody else know.

Sorry not-sorry about that.

Tweet of the Day, NICK CAGE WILL BE DOING A COLOUR OUT OF SPACE MOVIE edition.

This is exactly the kind of news that makes up for today’s disastrous license renewal debacle*.

Continue reading Tweet of the Day, NICK CAGE WILL BE DOING A COLOUR OUT OF SPACE MOVIE edition.

Interesting article on HP Lovecraft here.

As is now customary, the author has to grapple with this generation of writers’ great problem with HPL: he was and is an insanely persuasive influence on the horror genre, and we all know that he’d probably hate all of our guts. Well, in my case he’d just condescend to me massively and act surprised when it turned out that I didn’t believe in pookas. But you know what I mean.

There honestly is no good answer. Cosmic horror, for good or ill, is a prime mechanism where the post-WWII world strives to safely bleed off pressure and anxiety (which is what horror fiction is there to do, in my opinion); and H.P. Lovecraft cannot be removed from that genre. So I guess wee (‘we’ meaning ‘people who do creative work in this genre’) are all just going to be stuck with being uncomfortable with the man’s mindset for the rest of our lives. Or until we flee for the peace and safety of a new dark age, of course.

Moe Lane Continue reading Interesting article on HP Lovecraft here.

It’s remarkable how much the 1966 Batman film draws on HP Lovecraft.

The whole plot was more or less ripped off of from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, or at least the central conceit was.  Add to that the simultaneous profound betrayal felt by Batman at a crucial moment in the movie – one that pretty much called into question the very pillars of his emotional stability as Bruce Wayne – and the final moments that evoked so perfectly Ken Hite’s thesis in The Man Who Shot Joseph Curwen, and you have a surprisingly Lovecraft-inspired movie.  I say ‘surprisingly’ because the movie is in itself not actually all that horrific.

Continue reading It’s remarkable how much the 1966 Batman film draws on HP Lovecraft.