Weekend links 756

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A Diver (no date) by Walter Crane.

• At Worldbuilding Agency: The first part of a long interview with Bruce Sterling concerning “the pursuit of deliberate oxymorons as a creative strategy, worldbuilding in the context of history and futurity, Berlusconi on the moon and more”. With questions from Paul Graham Raven, and my cover art for Bruce’s Robot Artists and Black Swans.

• “With its focus on the 1970s career of Leonard Rossiter and its mordant metaphysics of the moist, Sophie-Sleigh Johnson’s Code: Damp might just be the most original book yet to emerge from Repeater publishing,” says Tim Burrows.

• “A definitive guide to the work of William S Burroughs’ on screen.” It’s a guide but it’s hardly definitive when there’s no mention of the four films Burroughs made with Anthony Balch.

• A catalogue of lots at the forthcoming After Dark: Gay Art and Culture online auction. Homoerotic art, photos, etc, also historic porn and a few garments worn by Divine.

• New music: Jay recommends the high-grade motorik en espanol dance-rock of Sgt Papers; Topology Of A Quantum City by Paul Schütze; Overtones by Everyday Dust.

• This week’s obligatory Bumper Book of Magic entry: Ben Wickey at Alan Moore World talks about his work on the book’s Great Enchanters comic strips.

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s Malcolm Le Grice’s Day. Le Grice’s death was announced earlier this month.

• At The Wire: The magazine’s contributors’ charts showing their favourite music of the past year.

• A new website for the Sanborn Fire Maps and their decorated title pages.

• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – December 2024 at Ambientblog.

• At Public Domain Review: Albert Kahn’s autochromes.

Burroughs Called The Law (1960s) by William S. Burroughs | Language Is A Virus From Outer Space (Live) (1984) by Laurie Anderson | Burroughs Don’t Play Guitar (1996) by Islamic Diggers

Weekend links 289

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Fathomless Sounding (1932) by Gertrude Hermes.

• Over at Greydogtales (“weird fiction, weird art and even weirder lurchers”) I talk about art, design, the writing of this blog, and I also reveal more about my ongoing Axiom project. The latter currently stands at two novels, a couple of half-finished stories and a few pieces of artwork. I may be unveiling some of the art in the new year so watch this space.

• Howard Brookner’s Burroughs: The Movie (1983), a definitive film portrait of William Burroughs, is released at last on DVD/Blu-ray. US-only for the moment but further releases elsewhere are promised. The director’s nephew, Aaron Brookner, has a documentary about his uncle released next year.

• “…beautifully articulated bawdiness, perverse pleasures and a radical, though nondidactic, political view.” Melissa Anderson reviews Boyd McDonald’s Cruising the Movies: A Sexual Guide to Oldies.

The crisis, as Ellis and Silk tell it, is the wildly speculative nature of modern physics theories, which they say reflects a dangerous departure from the scientific method. Many of today’s theorists — chief among them the proponents of string theory and the multiverse hypothesis — appear convinced of their ideas on the grounds that they are beautiful or logically compelling, despite the impossibility of testing them. Ellis and Silk accused these theorists of “moving the goalposts” of science and blurring the line between physics and pseudoscience. “The imprimatur of science should be awarded only to a theory that is testable,” Ellis and Silk wrote, thereby disqualifying most of the leading theories of the past 40 years. “Only then can we defend science from attack.”

Natalie Wolchover on A Fight for the Soul of Science

• Mixes of the week: A mix by Front & Follow, and The Ivy-Strangled Path Vol. XIV by David Colohan.

• “Psychedelics can’t be tested using conventional clinical trials,” says Nicolas Langlitz.

• At Dangerous Minds: Ralph Steadman illustrates Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

• Why does Moby-Dick (sometimes) have a hyphen? Erin Blakemore investigates.

• My thanks again to Dennis Cooper for including this blog on his year-end list.

• Cian Traynor was given 20 minutes to ask Ennio Morricone some questions.

Lolita at 60: Ten writers reconsider Nabokov’s novel, page by page.

• At Ballardian: High-Rise: Wheatley vs Cronenberg.

Poison Ivy: The Queen of Psychobilly Punk

The Cinema of Hotels: a list

Solo intimacy DIY

Moby Dick (1970) by Led Zeppelin | William Burroughs Don’t Play Guitar (1996) by Islamic Diggers | Physical (2001) by Goldfrapp