Cover design by Marian Bantjes for a 2009 series of Nabokov reprints.
• “It is quite unlike the bland featurelessnesses of the current fiction in which dull creative writing students chat to dull creative writing students (there is today a generalised fear of imaginative invention and giving offence).” Jonathan Meades on late style and Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things.
• Cathi Unsworth remembers the late Roger K. Burton, founder of London’s unique exhibition and venue space, The Horse Hospital.
• New music: Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea by Pan American & Kramer; Glass Colored Lilly by Yuki Fujiwara.
• Mixes of the week: DreamScenes – August 2025 at Ambientblog, and Bleep Mix 307 by On-U Sound.
• At the BFI: Michael Brooke chooses 10 great Eastern European science-fiction films.
• At The Wire: David Toop and Ania Psenitsnikova on moving beyond music and dance.
• At Colossal: Weird Buildings celebrates architects who think outside the box.
• Verbal #12 includes new fiction by Michael Moorcock, among others.
• At Unquiet Things: Exquisite incantations in clay by Forest Rogers.
• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Experimo.
• Dale Cornish’s favourite albums.
• Tenth Letter of the Alphabet
• Ecstasy Symphony/Transparent Radiation (Flashback) (1987) by Spacemen 3 | Almost Transparent Blue (1996) by David Toop | Transparent (1997) by Reflection
I’ve really been enjoying those Dreamscenes sets.
John, after you posted about Andrzej ?u?awski’s On the Silver Globe a while back I sought out Uncle Jerzy’s ‘Lunar Trilogy’. I laid it by and finally got around to it earlier this year. What an utterly astounding read! These books written in the 19aughts had their first English translation only in 2020 . The first volume definitely begins in Jules Verne territory but it quickly evolves into mature psychological suspense. The scenario is superficially dated; as part of the then current Nebular Hypothesis of planetary formation it was seriously proposed that there might be breathable atmosphere on the far side of the Moon.
It’s regrettable that these books weren’t able to have a proper influence on the SF of the 20th century in the West. Easy to see why they had such an effect on Lem and other Eastern European writers.
Like any fresh convert I’ve been evangelizing. Don’t miss them!
Thanks, Stephen, that’s good to hear. I’ve been curious about the books since first hearing about the film but always assumed they must be terribly antiquated, and only of interest to the director because of the family connection.