No doubt I shoulda/woulda done a post yesterday for the anniversary of Hammett’s death in 1961, but I got a request close to the last minute to join a podcast about August Derleth and the Cthulhu Mythos for The Lovecraft eZine.
No problem yakking about The Augman for an hour or so, but juggling some kind of media hookup to sit in on it was more involved. If I’d known the image I was seeing would be reversed for the final product — and that the boxes for other panelists would be screen right instead of screen left like I was seeing them live — then I would have moved the Gahan Wilson statue of Lovecraft to the other side so a bit more of it might be seen peeking up. Still, not bad — The Old Gent fronting me with The Innsmouth Look.
And the podcast kind of continues the whole Lovecraft/Robert E. Howard thing this year has started off with, so why not? I do a quick history of my role in Lovecraft/weird fiction fandom, kind of shock the other panelists with the info that Derleth was bi-sexual (apparently general fandom today doesn’t know it, but everyone of my generation knows it). And so forth.
They also wanted John D. Haefele in on the talk, but it was too last minute and he was otherwise engaged. But of course he was hovering over the proceedings as much as did the Ghost of Derleth, since his A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos is the place to go if you want the background on Derleth, the Mythos, and — as I hope I made clear for the eZine — Lovecraft.
The Derleth and Mythos stuff in the book is all good, but the info on Lovecraft is great.
I promised the eZine guys that I’d work on Haefele to get him roped in on some future panel. The deal hitting the Internet pumped the eBook of Derleth Mythos up to no.5 on the Amazon Horror Litcrit lists, so it is obvious to me that it would be in his best interests.
And Lovecraft fandom deserves a chance to hear from someone who has been on the scene since the 1960s — like Haefele. Or me.
