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Quantum Entanglement by Duda Lanna. • An hour-long electronica mix (with the Düül rocking out at the end) by Chris Carter for Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel Radio Show. • “…a clothes-optional Rosicrucian jamboree.”: Strange Flowers on the paintings of Elisàr von Kupffer. • A Paste review of volume 2 of The Graphic Canon has some [...]

Jarek Piotrowski is a Polish-born Canadian artist whose exhibition of hand-cut PVC mats at Galerie8, London, borrows a title and inspiration from William Burroughs’ The Soft Machine. From the usual slab of gallery-speak: Drawing on the subversive William S. Burroughs novel The Soft Machine (1961), Piotrowski’s work explores themes of the human body under siege, [...]

Calder & Boyars, 1972. Design by John Sewell. This must be the first space novel, the first serious piece of science fiction—the others are entertainment. Mary McCarthy defending The Naked Lunch in the New York Review of Books, June, 1963. Mary McCarthy’s view—echoed a year later by Michael Moorcock and JG Ballard in the pages [...]

Seven (1973) by Soft Machine. Design by Roslav Szaybo. You’re the great, grey man whose daughter licks policemen’s buttons clean, You’re the man who squats behind the man who works the soft machine. Mick Jagger, Memo From Turner (1968) By coincidence this month I’d been re-reading some William Burroughs when I picked up a nice [...]

A 1973 Ballantine edition of William Burroughs’ novel with a cover illustration from Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) by Salvador Dalí. Via the Burroughs Book Covers archive. The Sel Publishing House, Turkey, published a new translation of The Soft Machine by William Burroughs in January, an edition which is now under investigation by the Istanbul Prosecutor’s [...]

left: The Soft Machine Turns On (1967); right: UFO Coming (1967). This was a bitter blow coming at a time when I’ve been working on something inspired in part by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, the 1960s design duo comprised of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth. The two artists, together with associate Martin Sharp, are [...]

Today is Outer Alliance Pride Day so let’s begin with a statement: As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work. Various members of [...]

Ballard-for-kids from Lion (1970). I was never a great hoarder of comics when I was a child, I usually read them then threw them away, so for years I’ve had peculiar half-memories of stories that thrilled me when I was 10-years old but whose titles I’ve invariably forgotten. The web, of course, serves to immediately [...]

A NOTICE TO OUR PUBLIC………… It’s now a shade over twenty years since Rolling Stone was launched, complete with a brave new broadside on its interests and purposes. So we too now announce our aims and prejudices and strive to clear a path laying bare our hopes and inspirations. Strange Things will deal from the [...]