A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
View of Fuji from Miho Bay, May (1830) by Utagawa Kunisada. No weekend links this week, unfortunately. The past few days have been spent re-establishing some equilibrium following the technical upheavals of the previous weeks, including updating things on the old computer so it can be the main work machine until the new one is … Continue reading “May”
Illustration by Frank Utpatel from the 1947 Arkham House edition of Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder. “Presently I got hold of myself a bit, and marked out a pentacle hurriedly with chalk on the polished floor; and there I sat in it almost until dawn. And all the time, away up the corridor, the door of the … Continue reading “Hodgsonian vibrations”
Can Carnacki make any claim to be taken seriously as a detective? If he solves anything it is by force of will, rather than the application of deductive powers. He is no Sherlockian ironist, no high-domed mental traveller. He stands as close to Holmes as Mike Hammer does to Philip Marlowe. His methods are enthusiastic … Continue reading “The Horse of the Invisible”
If William Hope Hodgson’s The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ represents the Sublime of tentacular sea fiction then The Lost Continent, a 1968 Hammer film based on Dennis Wheatley’s 1938 novel Uncharted Seas, is the correspondingly Ridiculous end of the subgenre. The Lost Continent is an irritating film for Hodgson enthusiasts since it’s still the … Continue reading “Tentacles #2: The Lost Continent”
Famous Fantastic Mysteries, June 1945. Illustration by Lawrence (Sterne Stevens). Following last week’s revelation of Lovecraftian horror, I thought it might be worth demonstrating just how much the tentacle-menacing-a-ship scenario is owned by William Hope Hodgson. The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ (1907) is one of Hodgson’s lesser novels, overshadowed by the cosmic horrors of … Continue reading “Tentacles #1: The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’”