Monday, Monday, aka The Day After SofaCON

[eldritchhobbit]

Wow. Wow. Tremendous thanks to everyone who made SofaCON such a brilliant success yesterday. What a day! I had a fantastic time, and I hope all of the other participants did, as well.

A few quick items worth mention:

• From today's Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Professor Who Declared, 'It's J.K. Rowling.'" (This article is free for non-subscribers for 24 hours.)


• From SFFAudio: First published in The Cavalier, January 11, 1913, "Fishhead" (aka "Blood-Brother Of The Swamp Cats") is something of an ancestor to H.P. Lovecraft’s "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." There's a new (and free!) audio version of this story Lovecraft praised ("very few short stories of equal merit have been published anywhere during recent years") here.


• Speaking of Lovecraft, it looks like one of my favorite stories of his is about to get the adaptation treatment: "Hardware Director to adapt H.P. Lovecraft’s 'The Colour out of Space.'"


• A classic gothic film I've been trying to track down for years will soon be available on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection: The Uninvited is back!


• I recently learned a friend/colleague of mine is co-producing an informative and cleverly funny new site that's well worth a look if you are or aspire to be a savvy globe-trotter: Heels First: The Travels and Tribulations of Two Twenty-Something Frequent Flyers Jumping Into the World of Travel.


• The 2013 Prometheus Award winners have been announced! Congratulations to Cory Doctorow for Pirate Cinema (Best Novel) and Neal Stephenson for Cryptonomicon (Hall of Fame). Read more from the LFS press release here.

Last of all, happy birthday, Alexis de Tocqueville (29 July, 1805 – 16 April, 1859).

“It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Do you know Arthur Machen's work?

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Two thumbs up for Machen! I don't know him nearly as well as Lovecraft, but I've read him (and Lovecraft's writing about him).

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

We went to his birthplace of Caerleon a few weeks ago :-)

[morfin.livejournal.com]

Glad to see another fan of "The Uninvited." Martha and I caught it once on TV and loved it. It's a pity that they don't make moody, stylish horror/mystery films anymore. They all seem to go for graphic gore and shock rather than subtle creepiness.

[witchcat07.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Uninvited is so creepy, very much like the 1963 Haunting. Agree with Morfin above: it's not what you see but what you don't see that is the scariest.

[ankh-hpl.livejournal.com]

Love that concluding quote. But then, I'm rereading 1984 just now . . .

[alivion.livejournal.com]

How does one do The Colour of of Space in colour?
The preview looks pretty good, but I'm not sure you can pull off a plot based on a new and scary colour using only the extant colours which can be put on film.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

It might almost do better in b&w, with the color out of space being just—color. Kind of like a creepy variation on Pleasantville.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Lovecraft, it looks like one of my favorite stories of his is about to get the adaptation treatment: "Hardware Director to adapt H.P. Lovecraft’s 'The Colour out of Space.'"

Yea! I love that story. I just hope they do it justice.

[sittingduck1313.livejournal.com]

I'm skeptical that The Colour Out of Space can be successfully adapted to a visual medium (though the suggestion made by whswhs is certainly viable). There are two previous adaptations I'm aware of (Die Monster Die and The Curse), and they are widely regarded as Gawdawful.

On the subject of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, this thought has been rattling around in my head. In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Deep One Hybrids are produced by human males voluntarily inseminating female Deep Ones. In more modern takes of the concept, male Deep Ones inseminate female humans, typically through rape. Make of that what you will.

[alivion.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that could work really well.
Another variation I thought of would be to have the whole thing saturated with vivid colour, and the the colour out of space can be a deed, dead black, so dark it reduces things to featureless shapes. That might make parts of the movie difficult to see and understand, though.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Me, too!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

and they are widely regarded as Gawdawful.

Very true. It does make one wary. *wrings hands nervously*

That is a very disconcerting and accurate point re: The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Wow. I hadn't really thought of that before. Um, ick. There's a paper in that somewhere, surely...

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

How AWESOME is that? I hope it was appropriately spooky!?!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I've had it recommended to me by oodles of people, and I'm just dying to see it! It definitely sounds like "they don't make 'em like that anymore" goodness.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I can't wait to see it! You and sittingduck1313 and several others have all recommended it to me, and I've been so frustrated to be unable to find it, even on TV around Halloween time. Now at last, it can be mine! I do love the suggested/psychological horror, implied but never seen.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

*nods vigorously* I'm just finishing up my summer graduate course on dystopias this week (including, of course, 1984), and it did seem uncannily relevant.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

You put your finger on a very key and worrisome issue... *frets*

[witchcat07.livejournal.com]

Admittedly you do get to see the ghost toward the end, but by that time the tension is so high it's terrifying! At least I thought so; had trouble sleeping for a week. I think you'll like it. ;~)

[witchcat07.livejournal.com]

There's something interesting going on that you might be interested in. A group of girls who regularly make funny videos reviewing movies, have decided to ironically write a YA romance in the Twilight style, and in this case, the supernatural love interest is Cthulhu. If this doesn't make you scream and run in horror, I can scare up the link and share.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Maybe not spooky, exactly, but certainly atmospheric. ETA: Although what we were chiefly doing was squeeing over the Roman museum. And the Roman baths. And the Roman ditch and wall. And the Roman barrack blocks. And the Roman amphitheatre, which is incredibly well-preserved.

[sittingduck1313.livejournal.com]

Well, I ain't no academic. So if such a paper is written, it's not likely to come from me. Of course, I imagine you could crank out something, so knock yourself out. I'm guessing part of it is Lovecraft's indifference to towards sex which is completely at odds with the attitudes of more modern writers.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Maybe not spooky, exactly, but certainly atmospheric.

That's perfect!

Although what we were chiefly doing was squeeing over the Roman museum. And the Roman baths. And the Roman ditch and wall. And the Roman barrack blocks. And the Roman amphitheatre, which is incredibly well-preserved.

Oh wow, that sounds absolutely amazing!!!