I didn't mention it at the time, because I didn't do a whole lot of anything related to blogging this week, but this past Tuesday, August 21, was H.P. Lovecraft's 117th birthday (or it would be, were he still alive).

"[Games] are, in their superior forms, simply by-products of excess intellectuality, which I haven't the honour to possess. In their inferior forms they are of course simply avenues of escape for persons with too poorly proportioned and correlated a perspective to distinguish betwixt the frivolous and the relevant ... " - H.P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, February 3, 1932

The Escapist has a good article about Lovecraft's influence on modern gaming, from the text-based and now quaint The Lurking Horror to the recently-released Call of Cthulhu:  Dark Corners of the Earth.

Lovecraft has sparked the imaginations of countless horror enthusiasts since his death. The time you spent dreading the shadows on the wall after reading "The Call of Cthulhu" shouldn't embarrass you. You were affected, changed, by the words of a writer who knew that the shadows were more than they seemed. That night, touched by his words, you saw that there were things you didn't know and were shaken.  In a way, your love of gaming today may be because of a writer from
Providence. After all, the fun part of gaming is the mastery of the unknown, the conquering of the darkness; the stock and trade of Howard Philips Lovecraft.

At Fractalus.

One time someone asked me who I thought would win in a fight:  Azathoth or Toschi the Deathless.  I said Azathoth.  I was right.

Yes, these are the kinds of discussions that come about when two fantasy/sci-fi/folklore nerds get together and don't have anything better to do.

From Unspeakable Vault (Of Doom).

See the whole process at Power Word Fold.

UNSPEAKABLE VAULT (Of Doom) is a collection of comics featuring such characters as Cthulhoo, Shubby, and Nyarly.

Very humorous if you're into that sort of thing.  Here's an early one:



Check it out if you're in the mood for some Lovecraftian humor...er, humour.

See the whole set at Q-workshop.com.

Via Yog-Sothoth.com.

Found somewhere.

I had an easy day at work today.  I have been threatening for some time to try and write something again.  I discovered I had some extra time, and although I prefer to write late at night with a pipe and silence, I managed to churn out something without a pipe, in the daytime, with the surrounding noise of two young children.

I don't know how I did it.

And another blogger who I read regularly did some creative writing.  So I had to quit procrastinating and do something.

I've added a new section to my other blog project called "Fragmentary Fiction."  It's for fragments and works in progress.  Nothing under that section should be considered permanent--it's all subject to major revision or even complete scrapping.

For a long time I have wanted to try to write either a series of connected short stories or perhaps a novella sort of thing set in a world similar to the Old West but incorporated with elements of fantasy and horror.  So here's a link and a teaser.

Prelude: The Weird

The stranger had come through last autumn. He had passed not far from her house, a pair of mules hitched to a peddler’s wagon, traveling in silence. She felt him coming when the sun was still low in the morning sky, and by noon she had walked out to meet him as he rode past. He said nothing, merely looked at her. His glance had sent prickles up the back of her neck, and she had shivered in the noonday sun. She did not try even to speak to him, only strode as quickly back to her cabin as her old bones would move, shuttering the single window and staring into the shadows. Listening to the world move, and seeing what creaked. It was something her own grandmother had taught her, when both she and the world seemed young.

Why now? There had once been a time when she could conjure fire with little more than a snap of her fingers and a wisp of her own red hair. Now her hair was as gray as the morning fog, and she could kindle a flame far more easily with flint and tinder. The powers she had once aspired to as a young girl, had even commanded for a time, had long since faded behind the passing years.

Muslihoon explains:

Contrary to popular perception, “Abdul” is not a word or name in Arabic. In Arabic, “Abdul” is completely nonsensical.

How did I know that?  It was covered in the Call of Cthulhu game book that I have.  Lovecraft didn't really know what he was doing when he made up the name "Abdul Alhazred."  But then he was only a kid at the time.

Read the whole thing, if you find languages interesting.  And there is a combination of word names that can come out sounding like "Abdul" to our western ears.

Yes, you can learn things by playing games.  When I got into playing Aces of the Pacific, I learned more about World War II than I had ever been taught in school.