Sydney’s sf specialist I would have loved to snap up!Danny successfully landed some stock of my
Spores from Sharnoth
, and ST Joshi’s
Emperor of Dreams
, withGalaxy, so hopefully that will add to the sales. I’ve been helping P’rea Press by selling the deluxe editionof
Emperors
on Ebay, and it’s been going rather well.Danny, who is hand-binding the deluxe editionsindividually, can hardly keep up with the demandfor the hardcover!! [Bibliographers and collectorsnote: the first 6 or eight copies of the deluxehardcover state of
Emperors of Dreams
were bound ingreen cloth; now Danny is on to
red
cloth, so therewill be at least two states of the deluxe edition)]I’ve seen quite a number of films over thelast few months but haven’t kept a record of them all.Those I can recollect include: THE MUMMY: TOMBOF THE DRAGON EMPEROR (amiable nonsense),THE TAKEN starring Liam Neeson (a decent actionthriller), DAYS OF HEAVEN (a drama I’d longwanted to catch up with), WHALES OF AUGUST(another drama, this one starring Vincent Price –gentle and touching in one of his last performances),THE TINGLER (Price again, seen at DannyLovecraft’s place), FAREWELL MY LOVELY (a mostenjoyable movie take on the Raymond Chandlernovel starring Robert Mitchum and CharlotteRampling – had seen it many years ago, but enjoyedit again). Rob Hood lent me a batch of J-horrormovies, since I was incredibly behind onappreciating Asian horror cinema; these includedKAENA, APPLESEED: EXMACHINA, THE REDSHOES, STACY, BATTLE ROYALE and PULSE. Iprobably enjoyed PULSE the most – a creepy exercisein ghostliness and ghastliness that had echoes of thehorrors of Hiroshima in the subtext.In family news, Margi celebrated her 52
nd
birthday on Feb 5. We had a great celebration andshe got lots of good presents. My stepson Rohancontinues living in Sydney, with various ins-and-outsabout finding a job, doing further technical computertraining etc. He’s come back to stay with us inWollongong with his girlfriend Shavae several timesin the last few months. Margi and Graham, togetherwith their guitarist friend Bruce, have formed a band,now called Fedora, and have been working hardputting together sets. They will go out to play liveprobably at mid-year. It’s sounding great, and I’menjoying being involved in live music again even ifI’m acting merely as a “vocal coach” and musicaladvisor on the sidelines…Oh, one other bit ofpublishing news. Here’s the coverimage for
Robert Bloch: The Manwho Collect Psychos
, edited by BenSzumskyj, out shortly fromMcFarland in the US. So glad I gota chance to jump on board thatproject.That’s all the newsthat’s fit to print. S.T. has askedme, from the EOD side, to keep my APAcontributions down to 15 pages, since the last
Mantichore
was of heroic proportions, so I will try notto overfill this issue. (I tired my hardest…stillrunning 16+ pages; and sorry for the small font size,which is the only way to fit everything into thisspace!) On to some hard content….I’d like to recordmy gratitude to my partner Margi Curtis for the title“ The Liminal Lovecraft” which will serve as theumbrella title for a series of essays on Lovecraft’sless-examined stories I will run here, starting thisissue with a piece on “The Transition of JuanRomero.” Thanks also to Eldritchard – (aka RichardL. Tierney) for his poem this issue.
Lines on Placing an Orderwith Arkham HouseBy Judy Reber
(reprinted from the 1965
Books from Arkham House
catalogue)Oh, send me an eldritch novel,Of a Thing come from Outer Space;Or loathly Hag in her hovel,With a ruined, blasphemous face.Let there be Ghouls without number,Eyes bestial and hellishly red;Give me the Dead that but slumberTill midnight, a coffin their bed.Give me a Werewolf, a Demon,A Shadow most foul on a Wall;A long-dead voluptuous leman,Returned now to hold men in thrall;A Druid with hair wildly streaming,‘Neath ancient and mistletoed oak;And Gods of the Eld who lie dreaming,Where once all was law when they spoke;An infamous Abbey with Rat Things,That leave human bones in their wake,Until a dread being with Bat WingsEats
them
for his hunger to slake;Doorways to other Dimensions;An attic in which Time was Not.Send me your grisly inventions –Or are they? Ah,
are
they..?God wot!
Books By My Bedside
I seem to be reading moreand more slowly these days,and my eyesight is graduallydeteriorating, which doesn’thelp. It took me nearly threeweeks (in between otherwork) to read Dan Simmons’excellent thriller
Darwin’sBlade
– admittedly a fat read, but one I would have
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