Halloween in Austin, Texas this year will look and sound like this.
• “Blade Runner will prove invincible“: Philip K Dick’s letter of praise to the film’s producers. Related: one of the Blade Runner designers, Syd Mead, has recently styled New York’s Bar Basque and Foodparc.
• “I decided to go into fields where mathematicians would never go because the problems were badly stated…I have played a strange role that none of my students dare to take.” RIP Benoît Mandelbrot.
• Science and poetry: “a richly vexed topic badly in need of rethinking”. Related: Why the Singularity isn’t going to happen.
• In case you missed this week’s earlier announcement, a reminder that I was interviewed at Coilhouse. My vanity: it knows no bounds.
• Franklin Booth’s illustrations for The Flying Islands of the Night (1913) by James Whitcomb Riley.
• On the Verge (1950) by Maurice Sandoz, illustrated by Salvador Dalí. Also this and this.
Bowie Sphinx, 1969. Photo by Brian Ward.
• The Laughing Gnostic: David Bowie and the Occult.
• “Moonlighting as a Conjurer of Chemicals“: Isaac Newton’s alchemical interests.
• “A sense of otherness that goes right back“: Alan Garner at Alderley Edge.
• Jimmy’s End—Alan Moore’s new feature film and spin-off TV series.
• A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain by Owen Hatherley.
• The It Gets Better Project now has a dedicated website.
• Quicksand (1971) by David Bowie.
