Countdown to Cthulhu: U Got the (Innsmouth) Look

August 12th 2011 at 11:22 am

“Some of ‘em have queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes that never seem to shut, and their skin ain’t quite right.”
–H. P. Lovecraft, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”

I recently posed a question to a few friends in the Pulped Culture Facebook group: Which celebrities have the Innsmouth look? Here are a few of the suggestions that came back:

Jack Black

Christina Ricci

Steve Buscemi

Don Knotts

Gloria Swanson

Peter Lorrie

Edward G. Robinson

Dave Grohl

Michael Berryman

Laura Bush

Clint Howard

Amanda Seyfried

Jimmy Page (lately. It sets in with age…)

Boris Karloff

Tor Johnson

Hopfrog.

(Thanks to Aeion Solar, David W. Fenderson, Jack Dawkins, and Joe Pulver for their suggestions.)

Can you think of others?

“Here we are folks, the dream we all dream of…”
Listen for the Eldritch shriek at 3:15:

Prince Sheena Easton U Got the Look by docfromcpt
(Can’t see the video? Click here.)

The Book of Cthulhu, now available for pre-order from better independent booksellers everywhere, and online through Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble.

Countdown to Cthulhu: Brought to you by the letter D

August 7th 2011 at 3:53 pm

Today’s installment has been brought to you by the letter D. D for Dagon.

I recently re-watched Stuart Gordon’s 2001 film Dagon, an inspired, if problematic, adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth. Thematically more faithful to its source than Gordon’s Re-Animator or From Beyond, Dagon relocates Innsmouth from New England to Imboca, Spain, preserving Lovecraft’s atmosphere of dread and aesthetic of manifested moral decay, but adding to it Gordon’s trademark titillation and gore.

Dagon suffers from an uncharismatic male lead and a number of CGI effects that don’t quite work. But really, that doesn’t matter, because Dagon is all about Macarena Gómez‘s gleefully-demented performance as Uxía Cambarro, the golden-tiara-wearing Deep One hybrid priestess of the Esotérica Orden de Dagón:

(Spoiler warning) She also rather resembles the Starbucks logo:

Sexy. Just the kind of girl you’d like to ask out for coffee and fish flakes, right?

“Coffee? I’d love to.”

So if you’ve got a touch of the Innsmouth look, or you find batrachian girls kind of hot (you know who you are), Dagon comes recommended. As does this T-shirt.

Here’s Lovecraftian surf-punk band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, with their hit song, “The Innsmouth Look” (it charted–with a bullet–in Imboca). Sing along!

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The Book of Cthulhu is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and better independent booksellers everywhere.

Countdown to Cthulhu: Cephalopodcasts

August 5th 2011 at 10:22 am

I live about forty-five miles north of San Francisco, so on the days I drive in to the office, I’ve got a long commute. Fortunately, in this era of four-buck-a-gallon gas, I drive a hybrid. And I’ve got the perfect co-pilot in Maddie, who watches out for giant squids as we cross the Golden Gate Bridge.

And we listen to podcasts. Lots of podcasts.

One of my favorites, and frequently the high point of my Thursday morning drive is The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast with Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer, who explore the deeper themes, origins, and influences behind Lovecraft’s fiction on a story-by-story basis–with a good dose of humor. Lately, they have been examining “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” in a multi-part show. The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast have also produced full-length readings of Lovecraft’s stories “From Beyond,” “The Picture in the House,” “The Haunter of the Dark,” “Cool Air,” and “The Cats of Ulthar.” They are currently collecting donations which will allow them to produce a reading of “The Call of Cthulhu.”

Two of the stories included in The Book of Cthulhu originally appeared as podcasts:

“Jihad over Innsmouth,” by Edward Morris, first appeared at Pseudopod.

“Cinderlands,” by Tim Pratt, first appeared at The Drabblecast.

Moreover, Elizabeth Bear‘s Hugo-winning novelette “Shoggoths in Bloom,” which first appeared in Asimov’s, and is being reprinted in The Book of Cthulhu, received a podcast adaptation at StarShipSofa.

And while it’s not a podcast, here’s an audiobook sample from the Brilliance Audio adaptation of The Book of Cthulhu contributor John Hornor Jacobs’ debut novel, Southern Gods, of which the BN Mystery Blog says, “flat-out one of the scariest books I’ve read in a long time; a sweaty, sultry trek through the secret geographical and spiritual places of the American South fueled by a delta blues soundtrack so transcendent and graphically conjured you’ll not be able to shake reverberations of the spectral tunes you’ve never actually heard for weeks (and the dreams they’ll conjure will keep your local mediums, pharmacists and psychoanalysts in the manner they’re accustomed to for years).”

So if you want a preview of The Book of Cthulhu, all you have to do is click and listen. Because what’s cooler than having someone read you a story?

And this was too good not to hotlink from the Girl Gone Geek Blog:

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The Book of Cthulhu is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and better independent booksellers everywhere.

Countdown to Cthulhu: Why Cthulhu hates the universe now more than ever…

July 31st 2011 at 11:48 am

Funnies for your Sunday from John Kovalic’s webcomic Dork Tower: Why Cthulhu hates the universe now more than ever…

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Here’s someone attempting to crowdsource funding for an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”

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And happy birthday to The Book of Cthulhu contributor Michael Shea, author of The Extra, The Color Out of Time, and the Centipede Press collection, The Autopsy and Other Tales.

I’ve long taken Shea’s picaresque fantasy hero Nifft the Lean to be named for Nith, the lean notary, in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Cats of Ulthar.” If you like heroic fantasy with a horrific twist, The Incomplete Nifft is a great place to start.

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The Book of Cthulhu is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and better independent booksellers everywhere.

Countdown to Cthulhu: Cthulhupunk?

July 30th 2011 at 10:43 am

One of those inevitable questions that I know I’m going to have to answer sooner or later about The Book of Cthulhu is, “Is Cthulhu steampunk?” Thing is, I’m not sure I can answer that question in an unbiased manner. On one level, it’s an easy no; Cthulhu Mythos fiction doesn’t lend itself towards the edisonades, airships, and difference engines typically associated with the steampunk subgenre. And while there are numerous strange inventions within Mythos ficiton–Doctor Muñoz’s air conditioner in “Cool Air” comes to mind immediately–if anything, those devices are more within the realm of early 20th century dieselpunk, with an art deco aesthetic, rather than the pseudo-Victorian affectations of top hats and goggles commonly associated with the steampunk movement.

But if it’s going to make you want to buy the book, then sure, you can call Cthulhu steampunk. You can even call it “Cthulupunk” (Ctheampunk?) if you’d like… so long as you’re buying.

Googling “Cthulhupunk” yields a few interesting results, including an abandoned early 90s attempt to create a Cthulhupunk subgenre, a a mash-up of cyberpunk and tentacles. Here are some of the more notable ones:

1) A GURPS sourcebook (“Ancient Horror Crawls into the Dark Future”), the cover of which seems to depict Locutus of Borg about to be eaten by one of the Hounds of Tindalos. Watch out for the bolts, pup.

2) Also on a role-playing front, there’s this Delta Green Cthulhupunk campaign, The Fairfield Project: “I spliced William Gibson’s and HP Lovecraft’s DNA and all I got was this lousy campaign setting”

3) Here’s a short short called “Cthulhupunk” by Finnish author Kaj Sotala, which seems to lose a little in translation.

4) How about an article on Why Cthulhupunk Failed as a Sci-Fi Sub-Genre.

5) And then there’s this, which is as enigmatic as it is awesome:

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Speaking of Steampunk, happy birthday to The Book of Cthulhu contributor Cherie Priest, author of the wildly-entertaining Clockwork Century novels Boneshaker (Steampunk with zombies!), Clementine, Dreadnought, and Ganymede. Now that’s some serious steampunk!

Cherie’s short story included in The Book of Cthulhu is “Bad Sushi”, which originally appeared in Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #10. “Bad Sushi” was one of the first handful of stories on my list when I pitched The Book of Cthulhu to Night Shade Books, so I’m very happy to have been able to include it in the anthology, and I’m sure you’re going to enjoy it.

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The Book of Cthulhu is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and better independent booksellers everywhere.

Countdown to Cthulhu: The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be…

July 28th 2011 at 8:38 am

This week, The Book of Cthulhu contributor W. H. Pugmire takes on H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” in a pair of vlogs, proving that there’s more to YouTube than cats and teenage girls…

Part One:

(Can’t see the video? Click here.)

Part Two:

(Can’t see the video? Click here.)

Wilum Pugmire’s story in The Book of Cthulhu is “Some Buried Memory,” a ghoulish tale that first appeared in his Centipede Press collection, The Tangled Muse, a beautiful, lavishly illustrated volume with a terribly limited print run (~125 signed, numbered copies, as I recall. I own #10.).

Distinctly Lovecrafitan in style, but with a rare understanding of the Decadents’ and Aesthetes’ influence on H.P.L., Pugmire’s fiction tends to be set in a fitional Pacific Northwest locale called Sesqua Valley, and is often intrinsically linked. “Some Buried Memory,” however, is a bit different. When I first contacted Wilum about reprinting the story, he described it as “the first story that [he] set in Gershom, [his] city of exiles.” Hopefully, by bringing “Some Buried Memory” to a larger audience, we will soon get to see more of Gershom.

The Dunwich Horror is no stranger to adaptation. For my personal recommendations, look no further than the 1970 film adaptation with Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, and Ed Begley…

Or the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaptation…

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Available everywhere September 1, The Book of Cthulhu is now available for preorder at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and better booksellers everywhere.

Countdown to Cthulhu: Someday Something’s Coming

July 26th 2011 at 11:10 pm

Weird… I lost a week.

I can’t seem to remember much of what’s gone on in the week since my last Countdown to Cthulhu post. I do feel well-rested. And I recall accomplishing quite a bit of reading. Writing, even. And there were ferns, lots of ferns. Was I on vacation or something?

Whatever it was, I’m back now. According to my wife, a lean, dark, curiously foreign-looking man called in an automobile. He hauled in an curious device–she thought it was some sort of antique record player–looking like a queer mixture of rods, wheels, and mirrors…. And then, I was back!

Whoops, no… that wasn’t me, that was Peaslee.

I actually spent far too much of the week agonizing over the grim state of the book business, and lamenting the fact that The Book of Cthulhu will never be stocked by Borders (because Borders has been eaten by a dhole), which is why I spent the week feeling like Lovecraft in Brooklyn (c’mon, sing along)…

(Can’t see the video? Click here.)

I’m feeling much better today.

Why?

Because you can now take a peek inside The Book of Cthulhu at Amazon.com. Presumably, you will then feel inspired to track down a copy of the book at your local, independent bookseller once it hits the streets.

What’s more, The Book of Cthulhu ARCs are now officially in the wild. And digitally available to reviewers, librarians, and literary tastemakers through Netgalley.

And soon… September 1, 2011, the stars will be right…

Countdown to Cthulhu: Congratulations to Laird Barron

July 17th 2011 at 9:17 am

Congratulations to Laird Barron, who just won two Shirley Jackson Awards, for Best Novella (“Mysterium Tremendum”) and Best Collection (Occultation). Here’s a link to the official webpage:

The Shirley Jackson Awards Website

And via Aeron Alfrey, here are nearly a hundred awesome gruesome examples of 1970s monster art by British comic artist and writer Ken Reid. Click here or on the picture below to see more.

“The ‘Orrible Octopus”, by Ken Reid

Countdown to Cthulhu: Saturday Morning Cartoons

July 16th 2011 at 9:29 am

You know what I miss? Saturday Morning Cartoons. There’s just something magical about those colorful, toy-shilling entertainments of yesteryear… particularly on those rare occasions when they ventured beyond the box and into the realm of cosmic horror…

So pour yourself a nice, big bowl of Cthulhu Crunch or Myth*Os (they’re blasphemously delicious!), grab a spoon, and let’s take a trip back in time to October 27, 1987, with this classic episode of The Real Ghostbusters, “The Collect Call of Cthulhu”. And as Dr. Peter Venkman said, “Anything that looks like Godzilla wearing an octopus hat shouldn’t be hard to find.”

“The Collect Call of Cthulhu,” Part One:



(Can’t see the video? Click Here)

Commercial Break #1:



(Can’t see the video? Click Here)

Commercial Break #2:



(Can’t see the video? Click Here)

“The Collect Call of Cthulhu,” Part Two:



(Can’t see the video? Click Here)

Countdown to Cthulhu: Southern Gods, Badass Twins, and Dark Gods

July 15th 2011 at 9:23 am

“They heard the breeze through the trees singin’ weird, weird melodies…”

In The Book of Cthulhu contributor John Hornor Jacobs‘s debut novel Southern Gods (Available everywhere August 1), Southern Gothic meets a Lovecraftian Elder God… and gives birth to the blues.

(Can’t see the video? Click Here)

David Drake calls Southern Gods “scary, smart, and effective both as Lovecraftian fiction and as a Southern Regional novel set in 1951.” Laird Barron says “John Hornor Jacobs will turn heads with this debut.” W. H. Pugmire exclaims “Great Yuggoth, what a great debut novel!”

I was planning to post about Southern Gods a little closer to the book’s August 1 street date, but John’s giving away two signed copies on Monday, for the pittance of a comment on his blog, and since he’s recently featured “Why I’m Badass” interviews with authors such as Matthew C. Funk, Donna Moore, Weston Ochse, and fellow The Book of Cthulhu contributor Molly Tanzer, you have no excuse but to go comment. Quick, quick… we’ll wait right here.

Molly Tanzer recently blogged about writing her story “The Infernal History of The Ivybridge Twins,” a decadent, yet elegant, tale of eighteenth century incestuous twin necromancers, on The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf.

If you can’t wait until September 1 to read Molly Tanzer’s “The Infernal History of The Ivybridge Twins” in The Book of Cthulhu, you can find it in the Innsmouth Free Press anthology Historical Lovecraft, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (another contributor to The Book of Cthulhu) and Paula R. Stiles.

And Happy Birthday to The Book of Cthulhu contributor T. E. D. Klein, whose “Black Man with a Horn” gives me chills to this day. “Black Man with a Horn” was (as I mention in the introduction to The Book of Cthulhu) not just my first exposure to the larger Cthulhu Mythos cycle, but also my first taste of John Coltrane. Klein’s collection, Dark Gods , deserves a place on any self-respecting horror fan’s bookshelf (hmmmm… my copy appears to have wandered off), and his 1972 novella “The Events at Poroth Farm” (collected in Peter Straub’s Library of America anthology American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940′s Until Now) is a must-read. Less essential–but fun in its own gory, twisted way–is Dario Argento’s 1993 film Trauma, which Klein scripted.

(Can’t see the video? Click Here)