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Genesia (2011) by Bette Burgoyne. • “…so I started buying these old gay porn novels, just for the covers and kept on collecting them.” Maitland McDonagh on the underexamined world of gay pulp. McDonagh’s 120 Days Books is reprinting some of these scarce titles. More gay erotica: Plans are afoot to republish Des Grieux, the […]

A drawing by Lucille Clerc. • The usual imbalance of heat versus light this week but Kenan Malik and Teju Cole had some worthwhile things to say. Related: Atlantic illustrators respond to the events of Wednesday. And some history: covers of Charlie Hebdo‘s parent magazine, Hara-Kiri, whose legacy of bad taste and confrontation was overlooked […]

The title of this 10-minute film translates as Maximiliana or the Illegal Practice of Astronomy which is also the name of an art book created by Max Ernst in 1964. The film was a collaboration between Ernst and filmmaker Peter Schamoni, the subject being German astronomer and lithographer Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel (1821–1889). Tempel’s astronomy was […]

Design by Julian House. Always good to hear of a new release on the Ghost Box label, and a new album by The Advisory Circle (due on 5th December) is especially welcome. From Out Here is described thus: “Exploring darker territory than 2012’s more pastoral As The Crow Flies, The Advisory Circle hint at a […]

Step Up (2014) by Angelica Paez. • Lots of attention this week for Kevin Martin whose latest album as The Bug, Angels And Devils, is out now on Ninja Tune. The previous Bug release, London Zoo (2008), was a fierce collection that stood apart from the Grime pack not only for its guest vocalists but […]

Untitled painting by Aleksandra Waliszewska. • Ben Wheatley’s forthcoming film of High-Rise by JG Ballard now has its own Tumblr. This will no doubt be spoilerific so I won’t keep on visiting but it’s there if you require it. More Ballardianism: “Worshipping the Crash” at BLDGBLOG. • “Aickman wandered through the sixties fantasy landscape like […]

Julian House artwork for Other Voices, a new singles series on the Ghost Box label. Other Voices 01 is a collaboration between Sean O’Hagan of the High Llamas and Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle. Last week I linked to a copy Zadie Smith’s new introduction for Crash by JG Ballard. That piece could only […]

A few more extensions of the idea, not all of which have much to do with Hinton’s concepts beyond the name. Salvador Dalí with hypercube (1952). Photo by Francesc Català-Roca. Hypercubic Metropolis (2002) by Peter Gric. HyperCube (2012) is an installation by artist Jaap van den Elzen and sound composer Augusto Meijer which combines the mirror […]

Illustration from The Fourth Dimension (1906) by Charles Howard Hinton. A slight return to the worlds of Borges. I happened to be re-reading some of the stories in The Book of Sand (1975), one of the later collections which includes the story Borges dedicated to HP Lovecraft, There are more things. Borges’ writings are nothing […]

Pages from the Official Souvenir Program for the Seattle World’s Fair, 1962. Very typical corporate design by RT Matthiesen and Associates but not bad for all that. The pages give an overview of the exposition, punctuated by ads from its sponsors, while the text sets forth the purpose of the event to give a taste […]

Planète was a French magazine of “Fantastic realism” which ran throughout the 1960s. I’ve never seen a copy but sight of the immediately recognisable covers has always fascinated because this was the magazine established in the wake of the huge success of The Morning of the Magicians (1960), a unique “Introduction to Fantastic Realism” by […]

Untitled painting (c. 1920–1933) by Ethel le Rossignol depicting “the Sphere of the Spirit”. An exhibition of  Ethel le Rossignol’s channelled paintings takes place at the Horse Hospital, London, next month. • “It’s always disconcerting to discover a favourite writer was kind of a jerk. How does this realization effect our understanding of Walter Benjamin’s […]

Untitled glass sculpture by Richard Roberts. • Lord Horror: Reverbstorm, my collaboration with David Britton, makes The Quietus list of Literary Highlights of 2013. At the same site there’s Russell Cuzner talking to English Heretic. “His methodology takes in magick, psychogeography and horror film geekdom, along with firm roots in Britain’s industrial music culture of […]

Wound Man from Feldbuch der Wundarzney (Field Book of Surgery, 1517). For years I wondered about the precise appearance of Wound Man after reading the following in Red Dragon (1981) by Thomas Harris: “It was a coincidence,” Graham said. “The sixth victim was killed in his workshop. He had woodworking equipment and he kept his […]

A Problem Glyph by Eliza Gauger. Problem Glyphs are “symbolic illustrations … drawn in response to problems sent in by tumblr users”. • Kosmische Night takes place at the Museum of Bath at Work, Bath, Somerset, on January 25th (Rescheduled to February 22nd).  “…a celebration of all things Teutonic for anyone who enjoys Neu!, Can, […]

“Chloromgonfus detectis, a dragonfly that can detect volatile pollutants.” A speculative insect by artist Vincent Fournier. • “…a modern taxonomist straddling a Wellsian time machine with the purpose of exploring the Cenozoic era…” Butterflies tied together Vladimir Nabokov’s home, science, and writing, says Mary Ellen Hannibal. • More ghosts: Kira Cochrane on the Victorian tradition of […]

Two cover designs from Eliash Strongowski’s 30 Days—30 Covers project. My thanks once again to Dennis Cooper for placing this blog on his end-of-year lists. Meanwhile. one of the albums I designed earlier this year, Cold Mission by Logos, made the 30 Best Album Covers of 2013 list at FACT. • “Many of their more […]

Delia Derbyshire (2007) by Iker Spozio. Whatever you think of Doctor Who, Delia Derbyshire’s recording of Ron Grainer’s theme tune is a landmark piece of electronic music. Those glassy electronic tones still sound unique today, not least for their having been created using rudimentary oscillators and much laborious tape editing. In Radiophonic Workshop: the shadowy […]

Gevatter Tod (Godfather Death, 1905) by Heinrich Lefler. Via Beautiful Century. An inevitable hangover from Halloween this week. At 50 Watts: A Modern Dance of Death (c. 1894) by Joseph Sattler, Harry Clarke Revisited, and more Ex Libris Mr Reaper | At Design Observer: Keith Eggener on When Buildings Kill: Sentient Houses in Fiction and […]

La table qui tourne (1943) by Robert Doisneau. In [Gödel, Escher, Bach], Hofstadter was calling for an approach to AI concerned less with solving human problems intelligently than with understanding human intelligence—at precisely the moment that such an approach, having borne so little fruit, was being abandoned. His star faded quickly. He would increasingly find […]