From Beyond

March 29, 2011 6:35 AM

Following the success of The Haunter of The Dark, the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcasts presents two new readings, From Beyond and The Picture in The House, by Andrew Leman and Bruce Green. Both recordings are available "In 3D". Alternatively if you like your Lovecraft with both pictures AND sound, the HP Lovecraft Historical Society version of The Whisperer in Darkness is complete and being shown at worldwide film festivals - it's a talkie! (The HPLHS are now also offering a rather handsome "official membership" pack.) Want something more interactive? Cthulhu Dark offers a complete Lovecraftian tabletop RPG system that fits on two sides of a sheet of paper. Please note: "If you fight any creature you meet, you will die. Thus, in these core rules, there are no combat rules or health levels. Instead, roll to hide or escape."
posted by Artw (21 comments total)

Shouldn't Cthulhu dice be non-Euclidian?
posted by rahnefan at 6:53 AM on March 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

No, because non-Euclidian dice keep rolling through the table.
posted by Artw at 6:55 AM on March 29, 2011 [7 favorites]

I purchased the now-apparently discontinued Holiday Tentacle for my brother in law, which is a holiday tentacle suitable for hanging like a holiday stocking, containing A Very Scary Solstice and An Even Scarier Solstice.

The actual order that arrived contained not only the products but was an object intended to be perceived as coming from the 1920s, with faux-typewritten labels and amusing interior documents from the HPLHS. The Society produces a selection of props and replicas that appear to be as spectacularly detailed as the ephemera in my order.
posted by mwhybark at 7:32 AM on March 29, 2011

Nice. I love HPLLP, especially when Andrew Lehman is doing the readings. I've finally caught up to the current episodes, which kind of sucks because now I have to wait a week or so for the new eps to come out.
posted by electroboy at 7:38 AM on March 29, 2011

These are really nice. I had forgotten what fun The Picture in the House is, even if the ending is (IMHO) a little bit of a cop-out.

I remembered the HPLLP just the other day when looking for something to listen to, but I forgot that the regular episodes are discussions, not straight readings... in the proper mood I'm sure listening to a minute discussion of each story would be very interesting and entertaining, but when you just want to listen it's maddening to listen to one paragraph at a time, just long enough to get into the mood and atmosphere, only to be interrupted by the guys talking about the previous paragraph for a couple of minutes.

Thankfully, there are some more plain old readings of Lovecraft stories at Librivox.
posted by usonian at 9:40 AM on March 29, 2011

(;,;)

cthulu emoticons (apologies if these have already made the rounds)
posted by Vibrissa at 10:27 AM on March 29, 2011

These are really nice. I had forgotten what fun The Picture in the House is, even if the ending is (IMHO) a little bit of a cop-out.

CLEANSING BLAST!
posted by Artw at 10:41 AM on March 29, 2011

There really should be an HP Lovecraft tropes entry on wiki. Cleansing bolt of lightning, fainting at the climax of action, etc etc.
posted by electroboy at 10:43 AM on March 29, 2011

Curiously over informative bas reliefs...
posted by Artw at 10:53 AM on March 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

The assembling of a team of professors and local politicians to go kill some monster...
posted by electroboy at 11:20 AM on March 29, 2011

Every time I see the Lovecraft Lit Podcast mentioned I think 'I really should get around to listening to that'... then I see how many episodes I'd have to catch up... and look at enormous backlog of stuff to listen already sitting on my harddrive... and put it off again until the Stars Are Right.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:10 PM on March 29, 2011

FWIW they've just come off a run of bad collaborations* and are about to get into some awesome stuff.

Though I'm sort of fond of The Mound, as I think of the underground race of super advanced fascist perverts as being sort of like Melnibonéans .
posted by Artw at 12:15 PM on March 29, 2011

Yeah, they really hated the Mound (and pretty much all of the collaborations). I liked it alright. I thought the desert southwest settings for The Mound and the Curse of Yig both worked well.
posted by electroboy at 12:46 PM on March 29, 2011

To be fair, there *is* a lot to dislike in the collaborations, and good on them for reading something like The Electric Executioner so other people don't have to.
posted by Artw at 12:48 PM on March 29, 2011

Oh sure, they're mostly not good at all. I originally read Horror in the Museum thinking it was a tribute, or inspired by Lovecraft and remember thinking "Meh, not great, but not completely terrible". I didn't actually find out they were partly his until listening to HPLLP.

Two Black Bottles is probably the best of the lot, in my opinion.
posted by electroboy at 12:55 PM on March 29, 2011

Alternatively if you like your Lovecraft with both pictures AND sound, the HP Lovecraft Historical Society version of The Whisperer in Darkness is complete and being shown at worldwide film festivals - it's a talkie!

These are the same guys who did the silent Call of Cthulhu, right? This should be great. Night of Horror film fest in Sydney is doing a Lovecraft program this Sunday but I'm not sure if they have this yet.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 2:23 PM on March 29, 2011

This month the movie will premiere at the SFF-Rated Film Festival in Athens Greece (I leave for Athens Monday). The next screening after that will be in Belfast, Northern Ireland at the Belfast Film Festival on April 1st. In April we have screenings lined up at the Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam and the CPH PIX festival in Copenhagen, Denmark. Yes, we'll be screening it here in the USA too, but as these festivals were the first ones to leap on it, they lined up the first screenings. Naturally, we're very excited to share the movie with an audience.

No Sydney mentioned. And yes, it's the silent Call of Cthulhu folks.
posted by Artw at 2:39 PM on March 29, 2011

Sweet! It'll probably screen next year.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 3:29 PM on March 29, 2011

Lovecraft is all over MeFi this week.
posted by republican at 9:19 PM on March 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

A self-study course in Lovecraft (I'd advise doing this with the Penguin collections to get Joshi's notes.)
posted by Zed at 4:00 PM on March 30, 2011

For story-by-story notes on Lovecraft I can thoroughly recommend Kenneth Hite's Tour De Lovecraft.
posted by Artw at 4:10 PM on March 30, 2011 [1 favorite]