Preorder from Amazon or Hippocampus Press To Rouse Leviathan is now officially scheduled for publication in August. More specifically, the listed date is August 20, which just happens to be Lovecraft’s birthday. I don’t know if Hippocampus Press planned that, but I certainly took note of it myself. Here’s the official publisher’s description: Since the…
Category: Columns
Subversive Superhero: The American Dream of Captain America
Captain America is a far more subversive character than people tend to realize. Since his revival by Stan Lee in the ’60s he has often been used as a vehicle for critiquing American society.
Magical Thinking, Part 1
Why do we, as a species, create things? What is it to “create”? What is the purpose of such activity? Other questions of interest to humanity — and to creators, especially in our science-driven, technologically dependent age — present themselves upon analysis: What is the fundamental nature of reality? Why are we alive? Are we alone in the universe? When does consciousness become non-artificial?
Fearless Artist: Remembering Giger
Jason V. Brock reflects on Giger’s legacy and relates his personal meeting with Giger at the artist’s home in Switzerland.
Weird Fiction: The Passing of the Generational Torch
EDITOR’S NOTE: Last year, in the wake of the NecronomiCon Providence convention, I posted a video of S. T. Joshi’s keynote address in which he focused on the long and winding history of H. P. Lovecraft’s literary reputation. These many months later, a video of much higher quality, with multiple camera angles and nice production…
Make Mine a Double: On Being a Pod Person
“STUART” SAYS: Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the first film I remember seeing that actually terrified me. I was so young — I saw it when I was still just a highly impressionable child — and the concept driving the film was utterly, perfectly terrifying: What if your loved ones were replaced by emotionless…
Womb of the Black Goddess: Horror as Dark Transcendence
During the recent NecronomiCon 2013 — a conference of all-things Lovecraftian held in HPL’s beloved Providence — I participated in a panel on weird fiction. During the lively and interesting discussion, the opinion was expressed that much weird or horrific fiction seems to be written from a “bleak existentialist perspective.” While that may well be…
Nightmares: Dark Crossroads of Creativity and Vulnerability
From the perspective of cognitive psychology and clinical neuroscience, when it comes to treatment, a good nightmare is a dead nightmare. Since the days of Freud, we have been hell-bent on eliminating all varieties of bad dreams equally without discrimination and as a result, we know surprisingly little about ordinary nightmares. That’s a problem that…
Fandom & Fantasy: Exploring the Anomalous at Dragon Con
A living person is forgiven everything, except for being present among the dying ones of this world. “Oh, holiest sacrifice of the (children) of the unique one.” — Louis Cattiaux It is odd to step out of my personal reality and into a fantasy world much more mundane than the mere act of making…
Magick, Madness, and Outsider Art: The Lovecraftian Path to Happiness
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part Four NOTE: This is the final part of a four-part series in which Stu Young explores the works and influence of H. P. Lovecraft in an attempt to tease out themes of heroism and optimism among the more familiar themes of horror, gloom, and despair. Although…