Dracula VS Cthulhu
A discussion of the relationship between Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" and Bram Stoker's classic "Dracula." Both stories are told through diary entries, news articles, letters, and interviews with other people, but there's more to it than that. Lovecraft wrote on the cusp between literary movements. With one foot in the Gothic past and one foot in the post-war future to come, Lovecraft created a unique blend between the Gothic literary tradition of the 1800s and the monster tradition of the modern era. This panel discusses his work within the literary framework of Gothic, while at the same time, examining the groundwork he laid for modern authors.
Leslie S. Klinger is the New York Times-best-selling editor of the Edgar®-winning The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, The New Annotated Dracula, and most recently, The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft for Liveright/W. W. Norton, as well as the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated Annotated Sandman (Vertigo/DC Entertainment). He also co-edited, with Laurie R. King, the anthologies A Study in Sherlock (Random House) and In the Company of Sherlock Holmes (Pegasus Books). In October 2015, Pegasus will publish Klinger’s In the Company of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Horror Fiction, 1816-1914. He is currently working on The New Annotated Frankenstein for Liveright, to be published in October 2017. Klinger serves as the Treasurer of the Horror Writers Association and practices law in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, dog, and 3 cats.
Kenneth Hite has designed, written, or co-authored over 80 roleplaying games and supplements, including GURPS Horror, The Day After Ragnarok, Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London, Qelong, The Dracula Dossier, The Delta Green RPG and Night’s Black Agents. Outside gaming, his works include Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales, Cthulhu 101, The Nazi Occult and The Cthulhu Wars for Osprey Publishing, and a series of Lovecraftian children’s books. He has several published Cthulhu Mythos short stories, writes the “Lost in Lovecraft” column for Weird Tales, and covered the High Strangeness for ten years in his “Suppressed Transmission” column in Pyramid. Half the podcasting team behind Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff and an Artistic Associate at Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre, he lives in Chicago with two Lovecraftian cats and his non-Lovecraftian wife, Sheila.
Robin D. Laws designed the GUMSHOE rules for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu roleplaying game, and such beloved supplements for it as The Armitage Files, Dreamhounds of Paris, and The Book of Ants. He is the author of the short story anthology New Tales of the Yellow Sign and the editor of Shotguns v. Cthulhu. Other fiction of interest to Cthulhucon PDX attendees includes short story contributions to Letters to Lovecraft and Madness on the Orient Express. Ghouls, byakhee and Nyarlathotep get frequent namechecks on "Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff," the weekly podcast of gaming, culture, and weirdness he co-hosts with fellow writer and game designer Kenneth Hite.
Sean Hoade is a fiction coach and the author of 17 books. He has written thrillers, literary novels, horror, and Penny Dreadful novelettes. He taught creative writing at the university level for almost a decade before he even realized what was going on. He lives in Las Vegas. Sean is always eager to hear from readers and other writers, or just people who want to talk about cool stuff. He is easily locatable and friend-able as hoadewriter on Facebook; always saying strange things on Twitter (@SeanHoade); On Instagram, he’s seanhoadewriter; and on Pinterest, somewhat lazily, he’s once again seanhoadewriter.
Rhiannon Louve is a freelance writer. Professionally, she writes short stories, video game dialogue, table-top role-playing books, and privately commissioned fiction. She hopes to soon add novels to the list. With her MA in Applied Theology, Rhiannon has taught World Religions at the college level, and published Pagan thea/ology essays. Rhiannon's published short fiction is mostly steampunk so far, while her current video game gig is with State of Decay 2, about surviving post zombie apocalypse. Most of Rhiannon's table-top RPG work is in traditional fantasy, though not without horror and Lovecraftian elements, such as her contribution to the award-winning Elder Evils D&D 3.5 sourcebook. Rhiannon has a strong interest in Lovecraftian fiction, but comes at it from a weird fantasy or dark fantasy perspective, fascinated most by the mythos itself and the psychology of such a world. Outside work, Rhiannon mostly games (table top, analog), including a Bleach-inspired shinigami game, using her own homebrew version of Exalted. Her other hobbies include scholarly study of primate behavior (including humans), and learning languages (she speaks French, some Spanish, and minute amounts of Japanese and Irish). Rhiannon rarely watches television in English, and has written scholarly papers on manga and anime. Do ask her about anime and Lovecraft!