First Stone by Gary Ballard

Ballard fuses the viscerality of serial killer investigation with the mentality of Lovecraftian cosmology to create a gestalt that captures the shattering of mind and body without becoming tedious rubbery spatterpunk or abstract statements of indescribability. Forensic psychologist Jack Carter awakens in a mental hospital suffering from amnesia and prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance. …

Twelve Rules for Life in an Uncaring Cosmos

Like many others in the United Kingdom, I hope our new overlords’ actions do bring great benefits to the entire nation. However, as I have mentioned previously, we cannot sit back and expect others to do everything for us. Thus, I thought I would reshare a relevant article on how we might each better prepare ourselves for the future:

Davetopia

All who bear the burden of unholy knowledge know that Yog-Sothoth, the gate and the key, is perceived in congruence, and that the reasoned half of the mind is our protection from horrific truths. Thus, when I encountered a headline about a forthcoming Lovecraftian project and read the producer not as Jordan Peele but as Jordan Peterson, I both quailed at the blasphemous congruence and felt compelled to explore this intersection. I was ill-prepared for the underlying truths revealed in Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life!

1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back: Many unspeakable abominations are hunched, lack shoulders, or even bilateral symmetry. An upright posture that highlights your arms will therefore signal to others that you are likely to be human. Also, focusing on your posture will distract you from your surroundings, reducing the risk of perceiving the incomprehensible.

2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping:

View original post 772 more words

Cirsova: Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 5, ed. P. Alexander

Alexander gathers a series of tales that suggest what might happen if people of violence and cunning rather than book-learning faced Lovecraftian threats. This edition contains eight short stories, one novelette, and one poem, The majority of the prose works are set in the Eldritch Earth, an alternate prehistoric era that blends classic swords-and-sorcery with …

The Tidings of Ravens

While I make no claim to those high peaks conquered by Lovecraft, I have not—as is considered modern—foregone correspondence entirely in favour of texts and apps. And it is fortunate I have not, for otherwise I might not have received tidings anent a strange and unusual thing. This weekend past, I received a letter from …

Toxic Politics

Earlier today a scholar of cosmicism, one of we few who strive to see the world without the comfortable lies so warning of true threats might be given, proposed the laggard and insipid action on climate change was the result of a secret war against the Deep Ones. While none but a fool would suggest …

Cosmic Head Scratch

One of the common themes of Lovecraft's oeuvre and cosmic dread in general is that the threat comes not from some moral imperfection or defined antagonism but from mutual incomprehension, from a universe filled with intelligences so different from humans in outlook and scale that we are irrelevant. The analogy of humans seeming as ants …

Love Beyond Death Kickstarter

My short story "Nor Left Behind" will appear in Love Beyond Death, an anthology of unusual perspectives on love that transcends mortality, funding now via Kickstarter. Drawing on both British police dramas and cosmic horror, “Nor Left Behind” tells the tale of a police detective who sees an opportunity to do a good deed and …

Darkness of Heart

As any who have dared to throw aside even a corner of that blanket of comfortable illusion that men call sanity might know, Lovecraft tells us that Azathoth is "nuclear chaos". To the modern mind already laden with the dread echoes of science wrought scouring destroyer, this conjures—as some followers of Providence have stated—Azathoth as …

Exquisite Corpse

As many of you will know, I incline strongly toward visions of Yog-Sothothery where humanity is doomed by incomprehensible forces rather than the visible, opposable monsters of Gordon/Yuzna et al. However, Maarten Verhoeven's interpretation of a dried out eldritch monstrosity somehow captures the cosmic in plain sight. If you enjoyed this, I heartily recommend an …

Twelve Rules for Life in an Uncaring Cosmos

All who bear the burden of unholy knowledge know that Yog-Sothoth, the gate and the key, is perceived in congruence, and that the reasoned half of the mind is our protection from horrific truths. Thus, when I encountered a headline about a forthcoming Lovecraftian project and read the producer not as Jordan Peele but as …