Forthcoming Lovecraftian Items

[Ningauble]

Originally Posted by Ningauble

If you like conspiracy fiction with a Lovecraftian twist, or if you like the Delta Green setting for Call of Cthulhu:

Through a Glass, Darkly: A new Delta Green novel by Arc Dream Publishing — Kickstarter

So far there have been two novels and two anthologies set in the DGverse, and they have been very, very good.

Only 19 days to go on this fundraiser -- don't miss it!

[Ningauble]

STJ has an anthology of essays on the Cthulhu Mythos coming from Miskatonic River Press:

http://www.miskatonicriverpress.com/products/dc.shtml

[j. d. worthington]

Any further news on this one, Martin? Have they set a publication date yet?

[Ningauble]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Any further news on this one, Martin? Have they set a publication date yet?

I don't know. According to http://stjoshi.org/forthcoming.html it's "Fall 2011".

[w h pugmire, esq.]

The Book of Cthulhu (Night Shade Books) and New Cthulhu--The Recent Weird (Prime Books) will be out this Fall. both are reprint anthologies. S. T.'s Black Wings will be out in Amerika and Britain in March, from Titan Books, with the ridiculous title change of Black Wings of Cthulhu. Everything gotta be Cthulhu. Think I'll change the titles of my three forthcoming books (all coming out in the next few months) to SOME UNKNOWN GULF OF CTHULHU, GATHERED CTHULHU AND OTHER TENTACLES, and BIG BLACK CTHULHU--TALES OF CTHULHU'S BRO, NYARLATHOTEP.

[j. d. worthington]

Yes, there are times when they really seem to think the readers can't put two and two together.....

I take it your avatar is the cover art for the new book? Looking good.....

[Ningauble]

It seems that Letters to James F. Morton has been delayed. Hippocampus Press' website says "August", but Joshi's website says "Fall/Winter 2011".

However, An Epicure in the Terrible has just been released.

And from Miskatonic Books, the following blog entry:

http://miskatonicbooks.wordpress.com...ing-on-friday/

Congratulations to Wilum!

[j. d. worthington]

Very glad to see that; I've been anxiously awaiting both. Now I've just got to manage to cobble together the money.....

[Ningauble]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Very glad to see that; I've been anxiously awaiting both. Now I've just got to manage to cobble together the money.....

And Lovecraft Annual 2011 is coming soon too.

[j. d. worthington]

Yes, I got the e-mail... seems yours truly is in heady company, here, too:

http://www.hippocampuspress.com/jour...441f63466d8fc4

Curious, as well, that R. Boerem has a piece on "The City", as I have one I was going to send in for consideration; I suppose I'll have to wait on that one... which is fine; I'd still like to see my piece on "Polaris" get out there first....

At any rate, I'll be very interested to see what he has to say about that poem. My own approach includes a look at Providence as the Lovecraftian equivalent of Dante's "Celestial City", but, of course, his becomes a much darker image....

[Ningauble]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Yes, I got the e-mail... seems yours truly is in heady company, here, too:

http://www.hippocampuspress.com/jour...441f63466d8fc4

So I noticed. Congratulations!

[j. d. worthington]

Thanks, Martin. The Lovecraft Annual, to me, has been of even more interest than Lovecraft Studies; some of the pieces in there are stunning bits of scholarship, and no few of them are very well written themselves; and, with the format it has, there is more "room to breathe" for such essays, as well....

Aside from my own work, this one looks to be of especial interest, as it has pieces which address some of the same things I've been looking at with HPL lately... and I am always interested in other views on such matters.....

[Terrible Old Man]

Now here's a thing. This is a story told to me a long time ago by a magician who is now dead, so I'm afraid I can't check the details. And when I say "magician", I mean "rabbits out of hats", not all that Harry Potter stuff. I don't know what the position is in other countries, but here in the UK, until very recently, there was a thing called the Magic Circle which had a total stranglehold on professional stage magicians. If they didn't give you a union card, your career was dead. And they'd permanently take it away for all sorts of reasons, including not being male. Which is now illegal (expelling people from things for being female, I mean - you're still allowed to be a man, otherwise 50% of us would be in no end of trouble!).

Anyway, the relevance of this story is that, because breaking any of the Magic Circle rules was until the last decade or so professional suicide, bribing a magician to do this was just about impossible. One of those rules concerned props. For the sake of convenience, these things were listed in catalogues which might end up in the hands of anybody. But to keep the secrets safe, these catalogues described the props only in cryptic terms which didn't make it clear what they were to to a non-magician. And of course, selling any of these props to a non-magician, or explaining precisely how they worked, got you expelled forever.

Well, one of these props was called The Necronomicon. I've never actually seen this thing, but I'm told that, because it has to look good on stage from quite a long way away, it's the most convincing-looking version of the book you'll ever encounter. Its actual content consists of pages from various medieval grimoires. And its "magic"? Well, it's a "forcing" prop. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, what that means is that if you try to open it at a random page, the page it in fact opens at is totally predictable.

The amusing bit is this. Various people discovered, in a muddled kind of way, that "real magicians" had a "secret" book called the Necronomicon which you absolutely couldn't buy from them, even for what appeared to be stupid amounts of money. Therefore, every so often, he'd get letters in green biro from people who cldnt spel 2 wel offering him surprising amounts of money, but a lot less than his entire career was worth, for a copy of this book which would clearly make them Masters Of The Universe! Presumably this still goes on. I just thought you'd like to know.

[j. d. worthington]

Not sure this is the proper thread for that post... but (assuming that you wee given the "straight goods"), it's one heck of an interesting note, isn't it....

[Ningauble]

Hilarious -- absolutely hilarious!