30 Saturday Nov 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
≈ Comments Off on Creatio Fantastica
Creatio Fantastica, a Polish scholarly journal in public open-access. Also appears to be completely under Creative Commons Attribution.
A 2016 issue was a Lovecraft special with a Joshi translation as the lead article. A 2017 issue was on Tolkien, with a Thomas Honegger lead article.
Usefully available in .EPUB and .MOBI ebook formats, as well as .PDF files. The Creative Commons status presumably means that translations and digest summaries can be freely made.
29 Friday Nov 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
≈ Comments Off on Blambot
Blambot will be having a 30%-off sale, starting Monday 2nd December. They specialise in digital comic-book lettering fonts, production quality but at a much lower cost than the $80-ers over at ComicCraft. Probably about a dozen are well-suited to the summoning of eldritch comics.
Those looking for digital comics production software for the desktop may also be interested to know that Poser Pro 11 is down to a bargain $164 this weekend, and that Clip Studio Paint EX (Manga Studio) is 50% off at $109.
However, at Black Friday prices, getting Poser + Comic Life 3 would be the alternative and about $70 cheaper. Thus enabling you to spend the saved $70 on two or three workhorse lettering fonts from Blambot. Comic Life is the way to go if you want panel/page layout, lettering and balloons to be as simple as possible, but still have nice slick output. Could be augmented with the free Krita, for additional over-inking work. Krita’s brushes have improved enormously with the latest 4.x version.
All the above use perpetual licences, so there’s none of that ‘subscription/rental’ malarkey.
29 Friday Nov 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
≈ Comments Off on Tentacular Tolkien
“One Squid to Rule Them All”, Journal of Geek Studies Vol. 5 No. 1, 2018. A biology-heavy survey of the tentacular ones in Tolkien.
28 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
≈ Comments Off on The Alchemist, 1941
The Alchemist, a 1941 fanzine, new on Archive.org. It opens with a sweet Gestetner-duplicated ad from Derleth for Lovecraft…
Also Forrest J. Ackerman on Weird Tales cover artist Margaret Bundage, and a humourous squit from Ray Bradbury on why he’s not Robert Bloch. On the back is a Hannes Bok design, which would probably make someone a fine tattoo these days.
27 Wednesday Nov 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings, Podcasts etc.
≈ Comments Off on Conan in free audio - links updated
I’ve updated the links on my 2014 post on R.E. Howard audio books. That post put Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories in story-world chronological order, and linked to free audio which had reasonably good narrators.
Currently missing:
“Black Colossus”.
“The Pool Of The Black One”.
“The Black Stranger”, aka “Treasure of Tranicos” after de Camp’s reworking.
27 Wednesday Nov 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
≈ Comments Off on Pulpourri
Another scholarly book title that’s new to me, Pulpourri…
a miscellaneous collection of well-written, impeccably researched essays on pulp fiction and how it influenced American popular culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
I’m not sure if it’s going to be in series like a journal or is a one-off.
26 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
≈ Comments Off on Added to Open Lovecraft
* C. de Souza and R. Giroldo, “Um chamado que ecoa? A representacao dos mitos no jogo Call of Cthulhu, Revell, Revista de Estudos Litererios da UEMS, Vol. 2, No. 22, 2019. (In Portuguese. Analysis of the 2018 videogame Call of Cthulhu, based on the Chaosium RPGs).
* C. de Souza and R. Giroldo, “O intruso”, de H. P. Lovecraft: o unheimlich no espelho., Abusoes, No. 10, 2019. (In Portuguese. Reads “The Outsider” figure via the unheimlich, as filtered through later critics. Also explores how Lovecraft’s atmosphere interacts with this effect. Part of a special issue on the idea of the unheimlich).
25 Monday Nov 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
≈ Comments Off on Call: The Pulpster
PulpFest’s annual journal The Pulpster calls for your ideas and proposals for well-researched articles. Also artwork. 2020’s event will centre around Ray Bradbury in the pulps, the Black Mask title, and the cover-art of Margaret Brundage.
You can drop editor Bill Lampkin an email at [email protected] and the sooner he hears from you, the better. He has to plan space for articles and start collecting artwork and illustrations.
Ad space is also available.
24 Sunday Nov 2019
Posted in Historical context, New books, Scholarly works
≈ Comments Off on New book: Challenging Moskowitz
The early years of science-fiction fandom in the USA are fairly well documented by now. Or are they? A new 124-page book usefully expands the easily-available source material for the history, and provides a new and questioning preface. Challenging Moskowitz.
“Sam Moskowitz’s The Immortal Storm is regarded by many as the definitive history of US fandom in the 1930s, but several contemporary fans either presented alternative versions of events or took issue with the book’s selectivity (New York-centrism in particular) and partisanship. Rob Hansen has compiled and introduced this collection of relevant fanwriting by Allen Glasser, Charles D. Hornig, Damon Knight, Jack Speer, Harry Warner Jr, Donald A. Wollheim and T. Bruce Yerke.”
Free in various digital formats, but donations are encouraged.
23 Saturday Nov 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
≈ Comments Off on Story Attic
The Heart of the Hollow World, a complete 2017 graphic novel adventure in the Journey to the Centre of the Earth / Edgar Rice Burroughs / pulp adventure style, with a learned protagonist from Rhode Island. It’s free online.
Originally a showcase for Doug Lefler‘s Scrollon comics reading app for iPhones and iPad, and now also available via a Web browser in a player. It uses a gutter-less format, akin to a scroll-painting.
His new Story Attic looks like an interesting outlet for those who can tell old-school adventure stories in this new visual form. The storytelling is top-notch.
