HPLHS News & Events Autumn 2017

Live Events!

From time to time the HPLHS hosts live events at its global headquarters in Glendale, California. Click THIS LINK or the image above to see the current list of upcoming events.

Featured Member

• November 3, 2017

Our Member of the Month for November 2017 is Paul Helfrich of Dayton, Ohio.

Paul says: "My first introduction to H.P. Lovecraft came via my purchase, at age 11, of this 1971 Ballantine edition of The Shuttered Room. Without question, it was the cover art that attracted me:

Ironically, of course, not a single tale in that volume is actually by Lovecraft! But I loved it, and I went on to purchase all the remaining Ballantine editions – plus others I discovered at used book sales, including this one: ..and I still have both, over 40 years later.

Like many Lovecraftians, I’m an avid reader of all sorts of things; while I put Lovecraft at the top of my list, I’m also a big fan of the work of Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Tolkien, and George R.R. Martin. My favorite Lovecraft story is "The Haunter of the Dark"; I’m also very fond of "The Whisperer in Darkness", "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", "The Shadow Out of Time", and "The Thing on the Doorstep", the latter a bit underappreciated, in my view. I also especially enjoy two of Lovecraft’s non-Mythos stories, "The Picture in the House"" (that outrageous dialect!) and "Cool Air". My most vivid experience with Lovecraft was reading "The Dreams in the Witch House" at probably age 12-13; scared the crap out of me!

If anything I am growing in my Lovecraft fandom as I get older; I’ve been an HPLHS member since 2011 and feel very fortunate to have been able to attend Necronomicon Providence in 2015 and 2017. My (Ohio) license plate is HP LCRFT.

For me, Lovecraft’s cosmicism is not depressing, but rather I find it liberating and enervating. It’s a constant reminder that whatever the trials of daily life, things could be - probably really are, but we’ve got that whole “placid island of ignorance” thing going for us – far, far, worse.

When not faltering down black cobwebbed steps and lingering around sinister monoliths, I’m a performing arts administrator in Dayton, Ohio, where I live with my wife and two children. I’m a lifelong musician and particular fan of all the various flavors of metal and prog rock, as well as symphonic music, so for me, the rock opera version of The Dreams in the Witch House is like the greatest thing ever! I’m also a big fan of the D.A.R.T productions, which I most heartily recommend to all fans of HPL.

Pulp Cthulhu

• November 14, 2017

Intrepid players gathered recently at the global headquarters of the HPLHS to play Pulp Cthulhu with keeper Sean Branney. They had a wonderful time and the game earned a 5-star review in our reviews section!

Holiday/Solstice Hours

• November 4, 2017

For the convenience of those who might wish to do some holiday shopping in person at the HPLHS store, we will have Solstice hours from 11am to 5pm on Saturdays until December 18. Card-carrying members can get a 10% discount on purchases made in person at the store, and all are welcome to drop by. We'd be delighted to see you there!

Extra Life Game-a-thon

• November 6, 2017

On Nov. 17 beginning at 6 PM EST the New England Gamers will be starting a 24-hour RPG-a-thon live on Twitch TV. All this gaming goodness is in support of Extra Life which gives the money directly to hospitals in the Children's Miracle Network. That’s right: playing games to help save children’s lives. Their goal is to raise $5000, and they need you to help! Donors can win fabulous prizes from Frog God Games, Kobold Press, Chaosium, and the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. The HPLHS is helping to sponsor a midnight (EST) Call of Cthulhu game from the "Down Darker Trails" book. Donations made to Team NEG between midnight and 6 AM on Nov. 18 can make you eligible to win a prize from us, including downloads of episodes of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre and The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft audibook. The crew will be on the Twitch chat the entire night. Please help them make it through the night with your donations and chatter.

Visit the New England Gamers team page or search at Extra Life for Team NEG. See them last year here.

DART at the Huntington

• October 31, 2017

The HPLHS performed a special Dark Adventure Radio Theatre episode as part of the Premier Members Fall Quarterly Event at The Huntington, an amazing library, art museum and botanical garden in San Marino, California.

A private, nonprofit institution, The Huntington was founded in 1919 by Henry E. Huntington, an exceptional business leader and a man of vision. During his lifetime, Huntington amassed the core of one of the finest research libraries in the world, established an impressive art collection, and created an array of botanical gardens with plants from around the globe. Today The Huntington is host to more than 750,000 visitors and 1,700 scholars each year.

On Halloween night they had an event exclusively for their members, and the HPLHS participated with three performances of a special, never-before-heard short episode of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, performed for very enthusiastic audiences in front of the amazing Orbit Pavilion. Thanks so much to Leslie Baldwin and Kevin Stidham for taking part, and to Glenn Alfonso for snapping the photo above. It was a grand time.

New Bonus Stamp!

• October 17, 2017

Thanks to the outstanding participation and/or acquisitiveness of some very enthusiastic members, we are pleased to announce the creation of a new bonus stamp, the "Double X".

This stamp may be awarded to any card-carrying HPLHS member who has earned at least 20 previous bonus stamps, not including "Five" stamps or the Member of the Month stamp. The new XX stamp is good for $35 of credit in our online store, which will be redeemable via a custom discount code that will come with the stamp.

If you think you qualify for the new XX stamp, please write to us.

Featured Member

• October 2, 2017

Our Member of the Month for October 2017 is Ezriel Joshua of London.

Ezriel says: "I started reading H.P. Lovecraft’s works when I was a teenager, in Brighton, England, in the 1970s. A man called John lent me a copy of At the Mountains of Madness. He told me he’d been on Christmas Island in 1957, serving in the British armed forces, when they tested a nuclear weapon. Like many nuclear test veterans, he experienced physical and psychological problems for the rest of his life. He told me that when the bomb exploded he could see, through the ‘protective’ goggles he’d been given, the bones in his hands, and that the mushroom cloud appeared to contain shadowy images of parts of various creatures - claws, tentacles, wings, and suchlike. John claimed that he had a copy of the Necronomicon in a brown leather satchel. When I said that I didn’t believe him, he took me – and the satchel – to a nearby church. We’d only been in the building a couple of minutes when a priest emerged from the vestry and shouted at us to leave immediately. I never asked John about the Necronomicon again, but sometimes I wish I had. When John passed, he left me a hand-written volume of prose and poetry fragments called The Book of the End. I treasured it for many years, but it mysteriously disappeared about 10 years ago. Today I read Lovecraft regularly, as well as related fiction such as Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country and Paul La Farge’s The Night Ocean. I also enjoy dipping into the essays in the volume The Age of Lovecraft, edited by Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. I am proud to hold Lifetime Membership in the HPLHS, and honoured to have been chosen by the Powers of Randomness to appear on the website.

Happy Equinox!

• September 22, 2017

Here's saying goodbye to a brutal summer of heat, hurricanes, earthquakes, and more, and hello to what we all hope will be days and nights that are cooler in every way. The HPLHS sends its very best wishes to all of its members, customers and friends, and to everyone who has been so hard hit in recent weeks by natural and man-made disasters of every kind.

Featured Member

• September 14, 2017

Our Member of the Month for September 2017 is Timothy Tellier of Pensacola, Florida. Tim says:

"My first exposure to Howard was age nine. Family was visiting my grandmother in Milwaukee, WI. There was a kid, David, who lived across the alley. He was an avid reader who exhorted me to read Lovecraft. That kid is now a professional stage magician.

Over the years I read Lovecraft when I could. Surprisingly, during my high-school years in Zion, IL, there was even a grade B rock band called HP Lovecraft that spurred myself and others to acquaint themselves with his work and others in the genre like August Derleth.

As I have aged (I am now 67), I've found his particular brand of terror philosophy increasingly panic-inducing...the destruction of reality and the reordering of consciousness is not comforting but it is entertaining in a macabre way. The Ancient Ones are incapable of any consideration of our existence."

Advice from HPL

• August 30, 2017

In the wake of this year’s NecronomiCon in Providence, a schism has manifested itself in the Lovecraft community. Lovecraft enthusiasts comprise quite a small slice of humanity, yet HPL’s growing popularity means our community features an increasingly broad range of perspectives. It’s only natural that differences of opinion will arise from time to time, but in a community this small, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society believes the best way forward is through open engagement and direct dialogue. Boycotts, blacklists and the creation of factions stifle debate and free thinking and rob us all of the chance to learn from each other, something that we feel HPL himself would not have wanted to see. The global Lovecraft community has never been larger nor more vocal, and many issues that surround Lovecraft are hot-button topics in modern society that are not easy to resolve. To disparage one’s perceived adversaries and retreat to the peace and safety of a new dark age yields us nothing. Let us rather embrace our differences, treat each other with patience, respect and charity, and find shared joy in celebrating the creations of a remarkable and complex man. Let us work together to grow the Lovecraft community, not cut it to pieces.

Lovecraft saw similar disputes and rancor arising in the National Amateur Press Association during his own lifetime. We could do well to read what he had to say about it in 1936.

"Good will and a rational attitude cannot be established by force or edict, but widespread pertinent comment can sometimes help to discourage their most senseless and persistent violations… Genuine criticism of literary and editorial work, or of official policies and performances, is one thing. It is a legitimate and valuable feature of associational life, and can be recognised by its impersonal approach and tone. Its object is not the injury or denigration of any person but the improvement of work considered faulty or the correction of policies considered bad. The zeal and emphasis of the real critic are directed solely toward the rectification of certain definite conditions, irrespective of the individuals connected with them. But it takes no very acute observer to perceive that the current floods of vitriol and billingsgate... have no conceivable relationship to such constructive processes. The sabotage, non-coöperation, legalistic harrying, published abuse, partly circulated attacks, and kindred phenomena which have lately cheapened the association and hampered its work are of an all too evident nature... It is impossible to discover any useful purpose behind any example of the recent bickering, notwithstanding the lofty and disinterested motives professed in certain cases... In the present epidemic we ruefully note a great deal of unmotivated savagery from prominent members who are not only capable of better things but who have accomplished and are accomplishing much for the association. That the N.A.P.A. can—or should—attempt to control the private ethics and individual taste of its various members is greatly to be doubted… What amateurdom may well attempt is simply to oppose the use of its own facilities and mechanism—as agents in the exercise of loutish personal rancour and gratuitous small-boy brutality.” —H.P. Lovecraft in an open letter to the National Amateur Press Association, 1936

NecronomiCon

• August 30, 2017

We had a wonderful time at NecronomiCon in Providence, with live on-stage performances of two Dark Adventure Radio Theatre episodes, "The Haunter of the Dark" and "The Brotherhood of the Beast", and another fun Innsmouth Sea Shanty Sing-Along night. It was great to meet so many members, fans and colleagues, and we regret we didn't have more time to take in some of the other fascinating programming and see more of the city.

Our deep thanks go out to our esteemed Shipping Shoggoth, Kevin Stidham, for his indefatigable cheerfulness and artistry, to Sarah Van der Pol for reprising her role as Jenny Alexander live on stage, among other parts, and to the other special guests who took part in our performances: Reber Clark, Darrell Tutchton, Mike Dalager, Courtney Gains, Umberto Lenzi, Greig Johnson, Chris Lackey, Chad Fifer and Heather Klinke.

Our deep thanks also to Niels Hobbs and his team for organizing such a monumental event, again!