Before I begin with my discussion of the events following Friday's festivities, I should point out two glaring omissions from my travelogue.

First of all, I forgot to mention that both Daniel Harms and I were verbally attacked by C.J. Henderson while we approached the Marriott hotel for the first time. Mr. Harms had made the glaring mistake of wearing a Miskatonic University T-shirt and thus alerted the diabolical C.J. Henderson that here were two victims for his evil plans. As we walked through the parking lot we found ourselves cut off from the front door of the hotel by an enormous sport utility vehicle which skidded to a stop before us, rolled the passenger window down and then a voice roared from its darkened interior, "Hey! We don't want you conventioneers here! Go back home were your kind belong!"

Thankfully, Mr. Harms stayed my hand before it could reach for the gutting knife hidden in my boot and C.J. Henderson eventually tired of our silence and drove off. I only mention the incident because I feel it to be my obligation to warn others of C.J. Henderson's manic personality.

Secondly, Robert M. Price gave forth an interesting theory during the "Lovecraft as a Fictional Character" panel on the noticeable lack of females in the Mythos arena. One of the aspects to Lovecraft's appearances in fiction is to act as a symbol for the dislike of change and a hope for the preservation of the future. It was after this observation that Price articulated the idea that men had a natural tendency towards preserving the past through tradition and order. Women, on the other hand, tend to look forward towards the future due to their role as childbearers and educators. So when the typically Lovecraftian or Mythosian story has as its premises that an ancient evil, once safely kept locked up or asleep, begins to emerge and cause death and destruction, it tends to play upon men in a different way than it does for women. For the man, the horror results from the uprooted values and falsified preconceptions that come as a result of the story's main incident. However, this horrific appeal to the male psyche doesn't effect the female psyche in the same way.

There is plenty of criticism that could be leveled at this view, and to be fair, Price didn't suggest it as anything more than an interesting way of looking at the gender difference phenomena. Though it does make me wonder what, if one wants to take this theory as being a valid explanation, a female-centered Mythos story would look like in terms of its plot. If the male-centered format has change as its catalyst for horror, then it stands to reason that a female-centered format would have stagnation and permanence as its catalyst. Thus a Feminine Mythos Story would not learn of the eminent release of an ancient monstrosity, but instead would be the knowledge that the natural order of life (the seasons, the cycle of birth and death, etc.) is itself detrimental to humanity and the crux of the horror would be found in the fact that this natural order could never change, but would continue on for generations feeding upon our children as surely as it has fed upon our ancestors. It would be important, I suspect, for the narrator to not have one of those infamous moments where they realize the "Truth," but instead would merely consist of the narrator acknowledging their role and accepting it as inevitable. The horror would not occur to the narrator, but instead would be left up to the reader to evoke the response themselves. An almost perfect example of this would be Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," where the "normal" practice of being bedridden after giving birth becomes a permanent situation wherein the narrator accepts her status and it is only the reader that sees the madness evolving.

And that's all I'll say on that topic.

Saturday, August 21, 1999

Saturday is the biggest day of the Con. From 9 am to 10 pm, something somewhere is going on related to Lovecraft, the Mythos or both. For our group, however, exhaustion from our late night festivities basically eliminated everything before noon. This isn't to say that there wasn't anything scheduled that we wouldn't have enjoyed attending. And there was a short moment where we all woke up stared at the ceiling for a few moments and then decided that sleeping enough to be capable of distinguishing colors was more important than attending a panel.

From what Steven Kaye told us later, he himself had been capable of movement in the wee hours that day and had been able to attend the Gaming panel conducted by David S. Hammann. While I had not been there, Kaye seemed to have nothing but praise for the way the panel had been conducted. I'm not only sorry to have missed it, but to have missed sitting down with Mr. Hammann for an hour or some such length of time.

Eventually, however, we did wake up and make our way to the Marriott. We stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts (an establishment which seems to have slowly taken over the New England area) and had, what we thought at the time, an attack by an anti-Semite. As we got into our car after ordering & receiving our donuts, a strange man began shouting at our car with what sounded, through the medium of windshield glass, like, "Are you an original Jew?" The look of fear and confusion that must have played on our faces probably confused him as well since after he gave up on us, an employee came running out to give us the bottle of orange juice we had forgotten. It was then that we realized the man had been shouting, "You forgot your orange juice." It certainly explained the hand gestures the man had been making.

When we arrived at the Con just before noon, Daniel and Monika went their own direction while my wife and I went another. Our destination was . . .

Panel: "Mathematics and the Mythos"
with Jody Trout

Supurb! It was like taking a college class on the mathematical references of Lovecraft's works. Heck, what am I saying, it was a college class on the subject! Computer animation, music by the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, direct quotes from "Dreams in the Witch-House," "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath," and "Call of Cthulhu," all added up to a wonderful presentation by a well informed and experienced speaker. His explanation of the phrase "the angles were wrong" and the implications of such angels appearing in our world was worth the entire drive to Providence. If anyone here on the newsgroup [alt.horror.cthulhu -- ed.] is lurking and attending Dartmouth College, I urge you to make Mr. Trout's acquaintance.

Then it was lunch time. Daniel, being the perfectionist he is, decided to stick around the hotel and do some further research into the tour he was leading later that day. My wife and I took Steven Kaye over to Friendly's to have our lunch. It was then that I learned the awful truth that Chaosium wasn't going to be there.

SMH: "But Steven! Surely you lie!"

SKaye: "Nay, tis the truth right enough. The good people of Chaosium have neglected and, I fear, have abandoned the Convention to its own devices."

SMH: "Zounds!"

SKaye: "Aye."

Why we were talking like complete fools, I cannot remember, but the message was clear enough and vastly disappointing.

When we returned to the hotel, we took a trip through the Dealer's room and then joined the Lovecraft tour with Daniel Harms.

Apparently very few people journey through Providence in groups of six or more people since the entire time we found ourselves being asked, "Who are you guys?" As if the mere suggestion that people might be interested in looking at old houses is a suspicious one. One man actually stopped his car next to the group and asked, "What are you guys doing?" to which we wittily replied, "Walking!" But by the end of the tortuous journey, we found ourselves forced due to construction work to head back to the hotel via an apartment complex and some of us felt a certain responsibility to explain why an enormous group of people had decided on that day to go past their sliding glass doors. "Who are you guys?" "We're a tour group from the NecronomiCon over at the Marriott." "What's the NecronomiCon?" "It's a convention based around H.P Lovecraft." "Who's H.P. Lovecraft?" "Umm, we have to go."

It was during this tour that Monika (Daniel's personal assistant) learned that with a black and yellow umbrella, one can control traffic without much effort. I also happened to see an independent filmmaker go up to the Shunned House, touch the doors to its dreaded basement and fall to the ground in a swoon.

Daniel did a wonderful job considering the circumstances of an unforgiving misty rain and uncaring city road construction. Though with the amount of work he put into it, it shouldn't be surprising.

We arrived back at the hotel for the 4 o'clock panels and I headed for . . .

Next panel: "If Lovecraft had Lived: The Writings"
with Peter Cannon, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Will Murray & Robert M. Price

An interesting speculative panel that came up with the following thoughts --

If Lovecraft had lived, the next year would have seen the appearance of such pulps as Strange Stories that were interested in printing Weird Fiction and reprints while actually giving the writers money! It would have been perfect for Lovecraft for he could have had his earlier stories reprinted and have a paying publisher for his newer work. Though the life of the pulp was short, it would have certainly acted as an impetus for Lovecraft to continue writing and expanding his horizons. During the 40's, the pulps died and Lovecraft would have found himself without a ready outlet, but given that Lovecraft's works had been gradually increasing in size over his life, it stood to reason that by time the 40's arrived, Lovecraft would be writing full length novels. And this would work right into what his friend Donald Wollheim was doing, publishing Ace paperbacks. With such a connection, it seems reasonable that Lovecraft would have had his novels published. During the mid-50's, there was a boom in sci-fi and a mild boom in fantasy which would have rewarded Lovecraft if he had been able to stick in there.

Peter Cannon made the interesting observation that most writers, once they have developed a style, rarely change that style throughout their lives. So while it is apparent that Lovecraft would have change his themes (which he did do over his lifetime), he still would have been constricted by his style and the genres where his style would have been acceptable.

The next panel to go to was:

Next Panel: "HPL & Y2K"
with Jason Eckhardt, W. Paul Ganley, Robert H. Knox, Jody Trout

I didn't expect much from the panel, as it pretty much admitted to being something of a joke. But I was curious as to how a topic-less panel would be handled. It actually wasn't too bad. There was some annoying silliness from the audience when the panel foolishly opened the floor to comments. But the gist of the panel should have been the following -- for centuries, humanity has been obsessed with the idea of the end of the world. Whether through the Christian perspective of the return of Christ or even just the extreme apocalyptic vision of the Y2K bug, people have held on to beliefs that destruction and chaos lie right around the temporal corner. Lovecraft himself uses this motif in his classic "The Call of Cthulhu," where ancient prophecy begins to come true. Yet what is it about these beliefs that make them so readily accepted by people? To place the blame on "millennial fever" or to claim some conspiracy of manipulative corporations or religious institutions is intellectual laziness. The more interesting aspect to this phenomena is the fact that such beliefs do not appear to contain an element of self-interest. Or do they? In fact, they do. What is it about "The Call of Cthulhu" that makes us actually secretly hope that the events described really happened? Why do people secretly hope for riots and lack of food and/or money after Y2K hits knowing full well that such a world would be dangerous and unwished for? The only answer that seems possible is that apocalyptic events provide tangible proof for faith-held beliefs. Tangible and extreme. To claim that the world will end or disease will run rampant and then be proven right (regardless of the result to oneself) to deal with metaphysical truths in a down-to-earth physical form. It is interesting to suggest that Lovecraft knew about this psychological aspect of people and played the concept for his own fictional benefit.

This isn't actually the direction the panel went. In fact, the conclusions of the panel was that if Lovecraft were alive today, he'd have a web page on astronomy being maintained by a dropout freshman from Brown on a lime green IMac.

Then it was dinner.

We drove over to Subway, after getting lost. Can I say something about the streets in Providence? I realize that the city is built upon the structures and rationales of an earlier time. But what possible advantage could there be in the designing of roads that initially head West only to, at some bizarre point, branch off towards the South and then gradually shift back to the East? Throughout our time in Providence I continually found myself accused of "having the directional sense of a blind and dead sheep." But my directional sense wasn't the problem, it was those blasted roads! I'd know that our destination was on the eastern or northern side of town, but getting there proved difficult since every road seemed to conspire against me. That is my excuse, anyhow.

Daniel and Monika wanted to go to the film competition so we came back early (at least as early as the mall traffic allowed us to be) and camped out in Steven Kaye's room. Apparently, during the day, an RPG booth had been hastily set up and were selling Beyond the Mountains of Madness like mad. Even Mr. Kaye had bought up a copy and I quickly devoured as much of this massive tome as time allowed.

When 8 pm rolled around, Steven Kaye and I made our way down to the readings by Robert Price and Fred Chappell. Price read Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann" and Chappell read his unpublished "In the rue D'auseil." Chappell's story was very good and the added resonance of Chappell's voice gave the narration a tone I shall never forget. For those interested in the Mythos Lore presented in Chappell's story (which will be published soon in Chaosium's Song of Cthulhu collection), you will find it interesting that Chappell explains the inability of the map searcher to find Lovecraft's favorite Parisian street. Apparently, during the restoration of the monarchy after Napoleon, streets were given new street signs and the workers on the sign for the Rue Douleur misunderstood the name as being D'auseil and wrote the street sign that way. So that even though the correct spelling was on the map, on the ground the road's name had been changed. Eventually, the mistake was caught and the corrected name exists on both the map and the street signs today. Secondly, the great Zann was never buried, but instead his skin was sealed in wax and his playing of his instrument continues to this day.

After this, we then found ourselves attending Daniel Harms' "The Necronomicon" panel. I'm partial to the man, so my saying that the panel was a smashing success will strike some as a biased view. So be it! All questions answered and all hoaxes exposed made the panel an excellent example of how such things should be done.

Thanks to the fact that Daniel's panel was the last one of the day, its post-panel time was composed of various luminaries socializing with the audience. For example, I myself finally came face to face with E.P. Berglund. I found myself intimidated by the man, given my debt to him (more than likely, aside from a few others, he's responsible for keeping the Cthulhu Mythos active and growing) and also given that I owed him several long-overdue essays for his ezine Nightscapes. Aside from my initial fear, Berglund calmed me easily with a western (California, Oregon, Washington) and northern (Wisconsin and Minnesota) charm, combined with a nifty little southern hospitality (North Carolina) thrown in for good measure. His down to earth manner (U.S. Marine Corps) also helped as I found myself forced to perform thirty push-ups for penance. I don't know how he feels about me, but after speaking with him that night, I felt as if this was the kind of guy I'd like to meet again and again with ever increasing expensive gifts at each visit. A reaction I'm sure that Mr. Berglund supports wholeheartedly.

Afterwards, the gang of Steven Kaye, Daniel Harms, Monika, my wife and I removed ourselves to Steven Kaye's room. Along in tow was the indomitable Dan Clore who seemed to be considering a career change from Brian McNaughton to Fred Chappell's shill.

(It was during this visit to the hotel room that I discovered a Book of Mormon along side the Bible in the bedside night table. I pleaded with Steven Kaye to let me have the book given the increasing amount of Mythos/Mormon connectivity over the past few years. Thanks mainly to Robert M. Price's "The Shunpike" in Triad Entertainment's Return to Lovecraft Country. Steven Kaye, I'm glad to say, took said book and gave it to me the next day. It was a generous gesture since I'm sure the moment it left the hotel room, its magnetic strip in the binding caused a small red light to flash in an underground military complex in Utah. "Sir, the Other Testament of Jesus Christ has just been removed from Room 217 at the Providence Marriott." "Name?" "Steven Kaye of New Jersey." "Excellent. Consult the genealogical division and send out a missionary team. We've got a live one.")

The group then decided to head down to the Blue Fin. We needed some form of artificial socializing to give us the chance to contrast ourselves from others. The live band was too loud and seemed to never need any breaks. The waitress gave us all a look as if she'd been stung by a scorpion hiding down her brassiere when we ordered hot tea and coffee instead of some alcoholic beverage. I can only blame Brian McNaughton for setting up this kind of expectation. We talked Steven Kaye into visiting the rest of New England's Lovecraft country with us (even though we honestly didn't have the room to fit everybody, but heck, friends are friends!) and we spoke on everything from male-female relations to the unequal amount of coffee vs. tea given to patrons. Blast it all, I want one of those coffee pots filled with hot water! Eventually we broke up the get together, with Dan Clore advising us to keep off the streets after 1 am since he felt the tugging of the moon that night. Whatever the hell that means!

But the excitement of the night was not over. When we arrived back at the motel, we discovered a message that had been left there by some nameless individual. The message read: "Call your mother." Panic set in as each of us tried to arrive at which mother had called through the use of deductive reasoning. No doubt we all were speculating at the tragedy that had occurred to cause such a message to be left for us. Eventually we learned that Monika's mother had called and for a rather benign purpose. This final stress of the day was enough to knock us out and we fell asleep looking forward to the next day.

Aside from a nightmare of Dan Clore scraping inhuman claws across our bedroom window, that was the end of Saturday.

Created: December 5, 1999; Updated: August 9, 2004