2017

10) Have fun. Proudly walk the streets of Providence knowing we are everywhere, secure in our status of Cosmic Insignificance–those other poor fools just don’t know it yet!

9) Attend the Hail & Farewell panel. Nobody really wants to say goodbye at this point, so can we have a big hello to…*2019*? Any convention, for better or worse, is part of a big continuing whole. Be somebody contributing to that better part of Things to Come.

8) …but take something for those back home, either a cultist who couldn’t make it this year or a budding recruit who might’ve wondered where the Hyades you went for the better part of a week & why.

7) Bring an empty totebag. Or make room in that suitcase by getting rid of all that mundanewear and sport nothing but Arkham Bazaar apparel or sech. You can also ship boxes to yourself for easier passage on that return flight while deluding yourself as to all the spare room on the bookcases at home.

6) Sample Providence cuisine. Enjoy the great restaurants, bars, and food trucks (The legendary Haven Bros.–Stuart Gordon approved!) in the area. Get with The New York System and wash that down with a tall cold glass of Autocrat moo.

5) Don’t miss visiting…Lovecraft Square; The bust at The Athenaeum; Our art show. And pay ye respects to the family markers at Swan Point Cemetery.

4) Get OUT of the hotel. Step AWAY from the hotel. It is a myth a HPL was a recluse and in fact he liked to go on walks. LONG walks. Howard said he was Providence. Go and meet every cobblestone and gambrel-roofed architectural nook & cranny of him. And each other. And YOURSELF–*We Are Providence.* And!

3) Bring something to share. It’s not just about just loading up on arcane commodities and/or having others’ words at panels envelop you like a freight train. Okay, it is to a point. But be part of the shoggoth not just one consumed by it.  Put back something into The Community of Lovecraftians whether it’s a small zine (yeah, they still make ’em–just ask Michael Bukowski) or helping someone out this weekend in some small but guaranteed appreciated way.

2) Introduce yourself. Don’t be afraid to strike up a meatspace conversation with that person you saw ask a great question at that last panel you were at and continue that conversation. Finally–

1) Take a good look at the schedule. Then realize there is no way to do everything but that maybe you can do a little of most. Remember that some of the most worthwhile experiences at cons come randomly and unexpected. Put down thet damn’d phone and… take a picture with your heart.

Because we already have your brain safely stored in a cannister for our trip back.

Ars Necronomica 2017

Our biennial exhibition is both an independent entity and part of a tradition begun in 2013 with the revitalization of NecronomiCon Providence. Each installment is a chapter in a larger story — our curatorial perception of not just a Lovecraftian aesthetic, but how we see weird art itself.

In this iconographiam, we present a focused range of these perceptions, intending to present a glimpse beyond expected aesthetic horizons, including Amy Borezo’s Wilmarth Farm blasted to minimalism while boasting a visual lineage akin to Max Ernst; Peter Ferguson’s traditionally delineated environment harboring the anomalous, Sara Bardi’s playful Bok-like felinity, and Kurt Komoda’s logical encounter amidst the Dreamlands.

We invite you to witness this conversation made up of different visual languages. Spoken by many hands that grant license to invent, reinvent, and synthesize the questions of what we want, need, and have yet to dream of The Visible Weird.

John Jude Palencar has been a guest in Middle Earth, the world of The Dark Tower, and now…Providence.

The light and shadow of his art has illuminated a full range of fantasy and horror literature, including the work of Tolkien, Ursula LeGuin, Edgar Allan Poe, Octavia Butler and H. P. Lovecraft. Among his first exposures to RI’s Eldritch Son was the adaptation of “Pickman’s Model” on Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: “The paintings that appeared on that television series were inspirational as well.” One can see some of that ghoulish physiognomy looking out from the cover of this Souvenir Book…

A lot of people see Palencar’s work and compare it to that of (one of his admitted influences) Andrew Wyeth. This writer also ascribes similarities to the paintings of Odd Nerdrum and the photography of Joel-Peter Witkin. The Goya-esque “Graceful Witch” or Brueghelian Hellscape in the study for “Terror in The Year 11 A.D.” show other hues at the darker edge of that palette. The latter was used as a cover for one of the Lovecraftian collections John has composed without resorting to specific Mythos tropes: “I could revisit his [HPL’s] work time and time again and still create a variety of entirely different artistic interpretations of his writing.” Palencar’s oeuvre therefore is not as ‘commercial’ as might be thought at first given his high-profile work for Stephen King and others. He does the work of a Master, but not one of the obvious.

One of the sketches in this portfolio was drawn during John’s Artist in Residence stint at the Cill Rialaig Art Project. This is on The Skellig Islands World Heritage Site: “When I first visited the Skelligs back in 1999 I said if Lucas or Spielberg were ever to see this place today they’ll want to feature it [in one of their films].” Now imagine Rey meeting Luke for the first time in Star Wars: The Force Awakens near that hill in “Ireland Eclipse”…

Regardless, whether from A Galaxy Far Far Away or his birthplace in Ohio, The City of Roger Williams is honored to welcome our 2017 Artist Guest of Honor John Jude Palencar in all his attending light and shadows.–TjZ

Translated by Scott Nicolay. Carmichael, CA: Dim Shores (2017). Reviewed by The joey Zone.

Despite having been reprinted several times and available in translation online, this Dim Shores edition of J. H. Rosny’s novelette of man’s conflict with an inexplicable life force is the one to own.

The first apparent reason for that is the cover (with additional interior ‘anatomical’ drawings) depicting the title ‘Shapes’ by Michael Bukowski. Online views do not do this work justice—one must hold the printed book to see the subtle gradations in colour of sky, the aforementioned Xipehuz and surrounding landscape. Perhaps a larger version should grace the exhibition of some upcoming survey of The Visual Weird as an example of this illustrator’s best work.

A second reason is the inclusion of Scott Nicolay’s essay that first appeared in a slightly different form as an installment of his online blog Stories from The Borderland (on December 13, 2016). The revival of this work could be explained by his belief that “…all texts exist as part of larger assembles that include not only other texts and their authors, but readers and editors, publishers, artists, critics, agents and other agents.” [my italics]

That agency was given by Lila Garrott in her own blog Strange Horizons as a raison d’etre of a Rosny Revival. She mentions “…eager editors [who] are interested in the chase…liable to claim pressing importance.” (August 20th, 2012). This includes earlier translators Daniele Chatelaine and George Stosser who maintain Rosny tried “as hard as any writer who uses words and addresses a human audience to decenter humankind.” Man’s ‘cosmic insignificance’ appears as a leitmotif in later works by the author, La Morte de la Terre (1910) and Le Grande enigma (1920). While parallels to the work of, say, H. P. Lovecraft might be made, Scott maintains that an “excessive emphasis on Lovecraft in so much Weird Fiction scholarship has led us to associate The Weird with ugliness and grotesquerie” (one would ironically note Nicolay and other such writers as China Mieville’s emphasis on HPL in other Weird criticism sometimes when there is no need). The Xipehuz and Rosny are their own ultramundane genus.

A counter action to that ugliness is this new translation’s third and most important reason for acquisition—it’s sheer prose poetry: “The song of the sunset swelled and hovered, its harmonies swirling in eddies.” Nicolay’s version is also interesting in comparison to Jason Colavito’s recent online translation (jasoncolavito.com/the-xipeacutehuz1.html). “The death knell of the world’s end or perhaps the resignation of the red man of the Indian jungles” in the earlier becomes the Indian prairies in this printed edition. Which (continent/nationality) is it? This writer will now have to acquire the other translations of this. If the main purpose then of this publication is a thorough reread this author’s work, well, then mission accomplished!

All of Scott Nicolay’s Stories from The Borderland series does similar important work. It’s range is analogous to Lin Carter’s selections for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in the early 1970s. Another hinted at revival could be that of the oeuvre of Jean Ray (an accompanying depiction of ‘The Schoolmaster’ from Ray’s “The Mainz Psalter” by Michael Bukowski would no doubt be perfection….). “O Translators,” exhorts Lila Garrott, “given the pleasures and strengths of the excavations you’ve performed for us…may we have more of these marvelous stories?” To which we can only implore the translator of this Xipehuz with a Francophilic affectation: Oui, si’l vous plait!