First there were the pictures from the 03-Sep-1978, “What if Lovecraft had Lived into the 1960’s?” panel at the 36th World Science Fiction Convention in Phoenix that I posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cthulhuwho1/sets/72157624663867000/.
But I promised more than just the pictures; and this week, in celebration of H. P. Lovecraft’s 120th birthday, and in celebration of my own personal 20th anniversary of visiting his graveside on his 100th birthday, I’m releasing the mp3 audio files of this amazing event. And the six files, representing the six sides of the cassettes I used to make the recording, add up to 163 minutes with Professor Dirk W. Mosig, Professor Donald R. Burleson, J. Vernon Shea, Fritz Leiber, Jr., and S.T. Joshi. I ripped the tapes to wav files, cleaned them up (removing several instances of ground-hum), raised the volume to the maximum level, and converted the stereo tracks to mono 44100Hz 160kbps mp3 files; which actually sounds far better than the original stereo because you have every panelist coming out of both speakers, instead of just the side their microphone was on.
I promise you will treasure these files if you are a Lovecraftian.
Thirty two years ago. No VCRs. No DVDs. No CDs. No Cable. No Satellite. No Cell Phones. No Personal Computers. No Internet. So what did we as fans do? We read books. We went to the actual movie theaters. We got together in our homes. We got together at conventions to hang out, watch movies, attend panels, produced fanzines, wrote letters, and more. And some of us made audio recordings of the silliest things too.
If there is enough interest in these files, I’ll try to release some of the behind-the-scenes audio moments from the night before the panel, and also the evening after the panel. Truly funny stuff; including (if he gives permission for me to release it) Donald R. Burleson reading his story, “The Last Supper;” which is the story that Dirk Mosig refers to at the very end of the panel.
Will Hart
aka CthulhuWho1 (Can you tell I’m both a Lovecraft & Dr. Who Fan?)
aka California Cthulhu (Based upon the License Plates on my car)
Curator of the California Cthulhu Collections on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cthulhuwho1/collections/
NOTE: If you do a normal click on the MP3 file links in this post, WordPress will play them for you.
If you’d like to download and save the files for yourself, and you are using a PC, right-click, to bring up the right-click menu and use the “Save Link As” function to save the MP3 files to your hard drive.
If you’d like to download and save the files for yourself, and you are using a Mac, I believe that would be Ctrl + Click to bring up the right click menu, and use the “Download Linked File” function to save the MP3 files to your hard drive. I don’t own a Mac so please correct me if I am wrong!
1 The HPL IguanaCon Panel 03-Sep-1978 Part1
2 The HPL IguanaCon Panel 03-Sep-1978 Part2
3 The HPL IguanaCon Panel 03-Sep-1978 Part3
4 The HPL IguanaCon Panel 03-Sep-1978 Part4
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Absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much for bringing us this audio, Will.
Thanks so much for making these available! Lovely to hear Fritz Leiber, especially.
Very cool. It’s a real treasure to hear these legendary voices; thanks for sharing this!
Gawd, I love this. S. T. sounds exactly as he does now, yet he was so young. I used to talk to Vernon on the phone lots and lots, and spoke to him some days before he died, calling him to tell him of the recent death of Harold Munn. Vernon and I had such scandalous conversations (I had just come out as queer), and he was such a great friend. Hearing his voice here is a poignant experience for me. This was such a great time in the history of Lovecraft studies, and this is an amazing and an excellent panel. Thanks!!! Yog-Sothoth!!!
Many, many thanks for making these wonderful recording available online. It was fascinating, especially to hear the great Fritz Leiber discussing his involvement with Lovecraft.
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