This is a day-by-day account of Necronomicon 1999, held in Providence, Rhode Island, in August 1999. Originally this was a set of entries in my diary for August 1999.
Thu Aug 19 1999: Left work at 5PM sharp in order to go home, feed Duncan, pick up my bag, and get to Union Station to catch the 8:20PM train for Providence. My thinking behind taking the 9-hour train ride was to arrive early in the morning (5AM according to the schedule), and besides, I like train rides, so it shouldn't be too bad, right?
Wrong, as it turned out. Taking the train was a huge mistake; it wasn't comfortable, it was difficult to get any sleep because of the lights and the impossibility of getting my 6-foot frame into any comfortable position on the narrow seats. I got even more aggravated by the half hour pauses in New York, New Haven, and other forgotten towns along the way; I don't know why they're necessary, but they made the trip at least an hour and a half longer than it could have been. Next time I'll make sure to arrange things much earlier, and book a flight instead, with enough lead time to keep the price reasonable.. (The 3 hour time to New York, however, wasn't too bad a stretch; I'll have to keep it in mind and make a weekend trip to NY this fall to visit the Cloisters or something.)
On arriving in Providence, it was a few blocks to the hotel. Despite being really tired, the walk was really cheering; on those (very) infrequent days when I get up early, I always enjoy the sunrise and the stillness. Amazingly, when I checked in at 6AM, the hotel actually had a room free, giving me a place to crash.
Fri Aug 20 1999: Necronomicon, day 1, and H.P.
Lovecraft's 109th birthday:
Woke up around 9, after two hours of sleep which helped a lot.
Dragged myself into the shower, and then hopped downstairs to
register. After getting the schedule, I was horrified to find that
there was nothing happening before noon, and not much on Friday as
a whole; a 9 or 10 AM flight from DC would have gotten me to the
convention with plenty of time to spare, and the whole tortuous
train ride was unnecessary. Argh!
Wanting some breakfast, I decided to head into downtown Providence. Along the way I passed floods of people headed for an immense shopping mall; I later found out this was the mall's opening day. The downtown section is fairly small, about 30-40 blocks large. It felt somewhat like a commercial district without skyscrapers, something like the Westmount/Atwater area of Montréal. The town seemed older and more dignified than DC, yet with a strangely rural feel even in the middle of the city; it was like you knew the city wasn't large and that its borders weren't very far away.
After breakfast at a little café, back to the hotel; the first day was really slow, with only a walking tour, a few panels, the dealer's room, and the video room. I wasn't pleased with the scheduling at Necronomicon; there was a panel at 1PM, nothing at 2PM, and two interesting things -- the walking tour and a reading by Brian McNaughton -- happening at 3 PM. I would have liked to attend the reading, but opted for the tour instead.
The 1PM panel was "Why Write Mythos Fiction?", with panelists Brian McNaughton, Will Murray, and Joseph Pulver, Sr. They've all written Mythos fiction, though I can't recall having read anything by them (because there are lots of bad Lovecraftian pastiches, I don't read much of it and prefer to stick to original HPL). I was most impressed by Pulver, who was an HPL fan unaware of the activity surrounding Mythos fiction and wanted more to read, so he sat down and wrote a novel over a 10-month span, having never written anything before. along the way he found out about Necronomicon Press, and sent the manuscript to Robert M. Price, who loved the novel and recommended it to Chaosium; it's been published by them as Nightmare's Disciple. Will Murray has written a few Mythos stories, but mostly writes Doc Savage novels, a decent fellow but not someone who writes for art's sake, and McNaughton, neatly dressed in a grey suit, seemed like an English professor. (Later I read a favorable review of McNaughton's Throne of Bones in Necrofile which commented that he's written over 200 pornographic novels. <boggle> He certainly didn't seem the type.) But Pulver was the most impressive, seeming a sincere man who really, really cared about his work; I'm probably going to buy his novel just to encourage him.
At 3 PM, I took a walking tour. Necronomicon Press has a small booklet on Lovecraftian sites in New England, written and illustrated by Jason Eckhardt; I got a copy, fuzzily thinking of a "macabre tourism" project. The tour guide today: Jason Eckhardt, of course. It was a great tour, and I may have fallen in love with Providence during it. We saw two houses where Lovecraft lived, a cemetery which appeared in "The Unnameable", the house which inspired "The Shunned House", a Georgian church that was a favorite of HPL's, some buildings referred to in "The Call of Cthulhu", and the John Hay Library. The tour ended up in a terrace not far away from Lovecraft's two homes on Federal Hill, with a splendid view of Providence.
At the library someone was setting up an exhibit of HPL-related papers that will be running for the rest of August, and we went in for a look. The star of the exhibit was the original manuscript of "The Shadow Out of Time", written in a small lined notebook browned with age. There were also contemporary sketches of buildings (such as the model for the sinister church in "The Haunter of the Dark"), a wedding announcement for HPL and Sonia Greene Davis, a recipt book from Weird Tales showing a payment to HPL, and some of Lovecraft's numerous letters. One 1927 letter began "Pardon the paper and handwriting, but I am writing this from the park..." It was deeply moving to thinking of HPL, sitting in the sunlight 72 years ago, holding this sheet of paper, writing this letter to a friend in his compressed handwriting.
The other tour attendees, and the other convention goers in general, are an interesting bunch. Necronomicon contains 3 very different strands: role-playing gamers, horror fans, and people with a specific historical/academic interest in HPL. The program features events like "The Origins of 'The King in Yellow'", "More Tips of CoC Keepers and Players", "The Independent Mythos Film", "Godzilla as a Metaphor for Cosmic Indifference", and "Television Horror". So some of them are black-clad tattooed 20-somethings, some are 50ish academics, and some are your canonical RPG geek. I like variety...
The rest of the day was unmemorable. The tour group walked back to the hotel, and I had dinner and checked out the reception. Lacking mingling skills, I was too shy to strike up a conversation or eavesdrop on those of other people, so after 10 minutes of standing around I went back to my room to catch up on my sleep deficit.
Sat Aug 21 1999: Necronomicon, day 2: The big day, with the most events.
10AM: "The Independent Mythos Film": Four people who've made Lovecraftian films discussed the state of Mythos films. A moderately interesting panel. The Blair Witch Project overshadowed the panel, since it's an example of an independent horror film that has made it big. Most of the panelists thought it might provide some extra leverage for their own projects ("It's just like The Blair Witch Project, except with Deep Ones!").
11AM: "Lovecraft and the French". I was unsure about whether this panel would be all that interesting, but went anyway and found it to be a surprise success; it may have been the best panel I attended. Christophe Thill did an excellent 40-minute summary of how Lovecraft has been treated by French translators and critics. Some translators have disliked the stories and essentially rewritten them, others have been pointlessly literal (translating one character's "so long", said as a good-bye, into "si longue"), and critical opinion has veered from Lovecraft the recluse to Lovecraft the racist to Lovecraft the neurotic. Esther Rochon's remarks, on being a Québéçoise Lovecraftian, were also interesting.
12AM: "If Lovecraft Had Lived: The Man": If Lovecraft hadn't died in 1937, how would he have changed over the 40s, 50s, and 60s? (He might even have lived into the 1970s.) An interesting, though saddening, speculative panel. It seems difficult to imagine HPL living longer; S.T. Joshi pointed out that he died just about when the last remnants of his family's capital reserves were spent, and it's unclear what he could have done. There are lots of "if only"'s; if only he'd stayed married to Sonia, who could at least earn money; if only he'd earned a degree; if only he hadn't pursued impossible dreams of being an astronomer, when he could readily have been something more humanistic like a historian. He would have been fascinated by the space race, hated television, and WWII probably would have eroded his racist views down to nothingness.
1PM: Bus trip to see Lovecraft's grave. It's located in Swan Point Cemetery, a lovely Victorian-era burial ground, green grass and white stones and all quiet. It was a grey overcast day, and one quite suitable for visiting a gravesite. The Phillips/Lovecraft family plot contains a central pillar, surrounded by smaller stones for individual members of the family. Lovecraft's stone is a bright new one, put there in 1990 for the centennial anniversary of his birth by various Lovecraftians such as Dirk W. Mosig. People have scrawled graffiti from the Necronomicon on the family monument ("That is not dead, which can eternal lie...") and left flowers, black feathers, and other tokens. On a hillside not far away from HPL's grave, there are 5 stones spanning 50 years; one of them bore the evocative motto "Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away". A fine place to visit, though it would have been better to have been alone, instead of with another 20 people. We only stayed for about 15-20 minutes, too, and that was too short; it would have been fun to explore. I've got to come back sometime...
2:30 PM: Cthulhu Live! workshop: I'm fascinated by the idea of a live-action Cthulhu role-playing game, and would love to play it some day. For about two hours, Robert McLaughlin, one of the authors of the Cthulhu Live! book, and some people from another gaming group called PST Productions, discussed how to arrange and present live-action games. The presentation was full of interesting gaming anecdotes, and at one point the PST Productions guys grabbed McLaughlin and started carving into his back with a razor blade as a demonstration; lively, no? Afterwards I bought a copy of the new edition of the book, and resolved to look into a Virginia gaming group that McLaughlin mentioned.
They have big plans for the 2001 convention, aiming to have a gaming session with 50-70 people (grouped into factions -- cultists, government agents, academics, who knows what else) that spans the whole convention. In the months leading up to the convention, you'd receive mysterious e-mails and packages, and your character would be based on your real-life persona to make it easier to stay in character for an entire weekend. You'd arrive in character, and intermix the usual convention activities -- panels, socializing, shopping, whatever -- with game-related matters. It sounds incredibly ambitious; they'll start planning in a few months, for an event that will happen in August 2001. I'm going to have to go to the 2001 conference for that game alone!
7:30PM: Film showing: There were 4 films in competition:
- "The Hound", dir. Anthony Reed: Interesting photography, but the film was essentially a reading of the story with moving pictures. The ambient/industrial soundtrack, which never let up from the opening titles to the final credit, was also far over the top; it would have been much more effective if it had been subtler.
- "To Oblivion", dir. Robert Capelletto. An interesting and moody little film. At the film panel, the director was rather hard on it, calling it rather dated (the film is 5 or 6 years old), but he was too harsh; some of the effects aren't that great, but it was quite likeable, though the ending was too enigmatic. (At least some of the mystery was forced upon the director; the lead actor became unavailable partway through filming, and the movie had to be finished without seeing the main character, except from a distance and in silhouette so you couldn't tell it wasn't the same actor.)
- "Babylon Park: Frightspace", dir. Christopher Russo, produced
by Brian Roe: I never saw the original 5-minute short that
introduced this mix of B5 and South Park, though there
was lots of talk about it some time ago. This is the first
full-length piece they've done with the idea. While it was amusing,
it wasn't as funny as I'd expected it to be, mostly because the
jokes were often rather obvious. (Something true of the real
South Park, too.) I was overjoyed to see MST3K-style
shadowrama over the closing credits, though again, it wasn't
written very well and wasn't funny.
Why was this showing at a Lovecraft convention? Because the plot, like the B5 movie Thirdspace, involved finding an ancient artifact that turns out to be the gateway to other dimensions. In this case, the artifact contains Nylarlathotep, who immediately summons up a bunch of familiar Old Ones. The animated Cthulhu was particularly neat-looking as he chomped up some pak'ma'ra.
- "Return to Innsmouth", dir. Aaron Vanek: I'm surprised this didn't win as the best film. ("To Oblivion" did.) The first 10 minutes are an incredibly condensed version of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and the rest of the film follows the protagonist as he helps his cousin escape from an asylum and attempts to return to Innsmouth to become a Deep One. Very well photographed and directed, though plotwise it was a bit thin, but definitely my favorite of the candidates.
The competition films were followed by a selection of older films: a wonderful version of "The Music of Erich Zann" that was my favorite of the entire evening, Aaron Vanek's "The Outsider" and a little vignette titled "The Necronomicon", one called "McLaren" that had a chilling idea handicapped by poor acting from the two lead actors, and a decent version of "From Beyond". When "The Hound" started again, I decided to go to bed and catch up on my sleep.
Sun Aug 22 1999: Necronomicon, day 3:
Before breakfast, I popped down to the video room to see the legendary Mythos-related episodes of the Ghostbusters cartoon. They weren't as good as I'd been expecting, though "The Collect Call of Cathulhu" had cute in-jokes in the character names such as a professor named Alice Derleth. That was followed by much-needed breakfast. It was great fun to see the hotel events listing read: "Wilson family reunion breakfast, room 1. Something-else breakfast, room 2. Cthulhu Prayer Breakfast, room 3." Awards were handed out to the guests of honour and to the winner of the film contest ("To Oblivion" won, which surprised me greatly). Robert M. Price gave an appropriate sermon against liberal theology -- "It's not enough to just be for campus violence... Some of these liberals claim that Cthulhu is just a metaphor; I was disgusted..." He read a lengthy prayer and after every verse the audience recited an antiphonal response which ran something like "Nog and Yeb, great dragons black and red, / Come! Prepare thy father's table." With over a hundred people saying that, the group next door must have heard us; wonder what they thought was happening? After that recital, Price commented "Last time we tried that ritual was in Turkey" and got a mixture of laughter and hissing.
After breakfast, it was time to leave, so I walked to the train station to catch the train home. While waiting for it to arrive, I stood at one end of the platform and looked at Federal Hill, with all its trees and colonial homes; I can see why Lovecraft was so firmly bound to his home town, and it made me feel oddly comforted. I hate thinking of the unhappiness of people who've created things that I enjoy, and the image of Lovecraft as a lonely recluse is a common one. S.T. Joshi's biography explodes that picture, instead showing Lovecraft as someone with a wide circle of correspondents and who was rather likeable in a certain idiosyncratic way. Finding Providence so comfortable and pleasant reinforces this sense; I can understand his attachment to the place. During the walking tour on Friday, Jason Eckhardt mentioned that there's a fountain on Federal Hill, of which legend has it that drinking from the fountain guarantees that you'll return to Providence. No need for the fountain; I definitely want to visit again, perhaps this autumn.
The train arrived a bit past 1PM, and arrived at Union Station a bit before 9. The ride wasn't as hellish this time because I wasn't trying to sleep, although it was boring, particularly near the end. The train got emptier and emptier as we went along, so in the last few hours I changed seats a lot as the mood struck me. In one seat I found a Patricia Cornwell novel that someone had forgotten. Since I like forensic stuff, I've always meant to read one of Cornwell's books, and settled down to read it. Two chapters later I didn't want to read Cornwell any more. Very Republican:
"The Carrie Grethens, the John Hinckley Juniors, the Mark David Chapmans are patients, not inmates. They enjoy our same civil rights as they sit around in penitentiaries and forensic psychiatric centers and create pedophile bulletin boards on computers and sell serial killer tips through the mail."
"In crowds I saw dissipated men and women who were him, and I slept closer to my guns." The plural is a nice touch, isn't it?
"I had passed the midline of my life and would not legally share my earnings with anyone, including my lover and my family."
And the writing is lame: "Tears rose in my throat." On page 25 a Chinook helicopter is described as "the twin rotor Army helicopter named for an Indian tribe." Doubtless later Scarpetta goes to Washington, a city named for a historical president of the US. Depressing to think this is on the bestseller lists, while a superb writer like Iain Banks is little known in the US; ugh!
Home again, and back to work tomorrow...