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The entire run of Britain’s first underground/alternative newspaper. Incredible. IT was never as flashy as Oz but ran for longer and arguably had the better contributors, among them William Burroughs. One notable feature was an avant garde comic strip, The Adventures of Jerry Cornelius, written by Michael Moorcock and M John Harrison with artwork by [...]

Panther Books paperback edition, 1968; cover painting: The Eye of Silence by Max Ernst.
If I can’t remember when I first encountered JG Ballard’s work, it’s not because I was reading him at a very early age, more that a childhood enthusiasm for science fiction made his books as omnipresent in my early life as any [...]

Island Universe (2008).
Island Universe is a new work by American artist Josiah McElheny at London’s White Cube gallery. McElheny’s recurrent use of glass and mirrors would be enough to capture my attention anyway—I particularly like the Modernity piece below—but Island Universe also features a specially-commissioned sound accompaniment by one of my favourite musicians, Paul Schütze.

Modernity [...]

From the Hollywood Gothic series (1984).
Jeff VanderMeer has a great post about artist/illustrator Ian Miller at io9 which prompts me to write a few words about his work myself, something I’ve intended for a while.
Miller is indelibly linked for me with HP Lovecraft on account of his covers for the Panther Horror editions of the [...]

The Singing Citadel (1970).
Michael Moorcock’s Elric books are being prepared for republication by Del Rey in the US next year. I’ve assisted with some minor parts of this preparation, including sourcing pictures from Savoy’s edition of Monsieur Zenith the Albino. (Anthony Skene’s albino anti-hero is a precursor of Moorcock’s albino anti-hero.)
Discussion of the [...]

The Stalker’s dream from Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979).
The innocuously-titled Roadside Picnic is a Russian science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, first published in 1972.
“Aliens have visited the Earth, and departed, leaving behind a number of artefacts of their incomprehensibly advanced technology. The places where such artefacts were left behind are areas of great danger, [...]

The always excellent M John Harrison has a new sf novel out soon, Nova Swing, set in the same future as his masterful Light. You can read a sample of it on his website.
Harrison, along with Moorcock, Ballard, Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair, is one of Britain’s finest living writers. He’s the creator of one [...]

listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go
e.e.cummings
WHEN CONSIDERING THE CANON of inventive, intelligent works of fantasy it’s probably fair to say that if Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent it. Imaginary worlds are as old as the human imagination itself and will be with us [...]