The Invisible College – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 852

Heaviness of Sleep (1938) by John Armstrong.

• Suntup Editions are reprinting two stories by Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan and The White People will be presented together in a single volume, with corrected texts printed in letterpress. The book will also feature eight tipped-in lithographs by Flora McLachlan, and an afterword by Henry Wessells.

• “While it mines much of the same material found throughout the horror genre, The Shout belongs to a parallel cinematic lineage—more art-house than grindhouse.” Leo Goldsmith on Jerzy Skolimowski’s film adaptation of the short story by Robert Graves.

• The week in Borges: “I seeded my dreams and this story emerged”: Poet Will Dowd let Jorge Luis Borges speak to him in his sleep. And Nick James reviews Life of Jorge Luis Borges, a 323-minute documentary directed by Mariano Llínas.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: “Venetian artist Canaletto merged fantasy and architectural detail in this previously unseen sketch”.

• Devil in the detail: 100 years on, FW Murnau’s Faust scrapbook reveals the secrets of his silent masterpiece.

• At Public Domain Review: Rudolf Kalvach’s Wiener Werkstätte postcards (1907).

• At the BFI: Alex Ramon chooses 10 great black-and-white films of the 2020s.

• At Colossal: Winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026.

• Mix of the week: A Samhain Mixtape at The Invisible College.

• New music: Sleep Machines by O Yuki Conjugate.

• Kali Malone’s favourite albums.

• ∞ Infinite Jungle

• Ordinary Sleep (1994) by Jessamine | First Sleep (2002) by Cliff Martinez | Black Sleep Part I (2008) by Jasper TX

Weekend links 850

Peacock Mandala (no date) by Judith Drury.

• A few links related to my own activities this week. Firstly, the mix of the week is a guest mix I put together for The Invisible College. I haven’t made a properly mixed mix for a while. This one was made with Audacity, an application that’s free, open source and multi-platform. Secondly, there’s the news that Ghosts on the Cam, another collection of spectral tales compiled by Robert Lloyd Parry, will be published by Swan River Press in December. I’ll have more to say about my cover art for the book at a later date. And on the subject of cover art, my cover for The Legend of Charlie Fish by Josh Rowntree is being reused by Planeta9 for a Czech edition of the novel.

• Halloween approaches. At Wormwoodiana Mark Valentine looks at the first modern ghost story anthology, The Ghost Book edited by Cynthia Asquith, which was published 100 years ago this month.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: “The Icebergs is one of Frederic Edwin Church’s most spectacular paintings. For decades, no one knew where it was.”

• New music: Passage by Chris Meyer’s Alias Zone featuring Robert Rich; Window To Askoy by Strugatsky Brothers.

• RIP Mighty Sparrow. Related: Two hours of Mighty Sparrow’s music at The Explorer’s Room.

• At the BFI: Josh Slater-Williams chooses 10 great South Korean science-fiction films.

• At Nautilus: This obscure 1960s guide to LSD holds up. Kristen French reports.

• At Colossal: The painted mandalas of Mu Pan.

• The Strange World of…Steve Reich.

• Bastardica

• Mandala (1973) by Stomu Yamash’ta’s Red Buddha Theatre | Mandala (1980) by Fondation | Sand Mandala (1997) by Philip Glass

Weekend links 847

La voix des airs (1931) by René Magritte.

• “Gangsters is to the 1970s what The Prisoner was to the 1960s—a playful, knowing and mildly crazed production but today it bears an important warning from the past to us.” John Quin on the extraordinary vitality of Philip Martin’s Play For Today and the BBC drama serial spun-off from it.

• New music: Juxtapositions by Boddy | Scanner; Embodied Shadow Of Thy Secret Mind by Philippe Blache; Light on Water by Modern Apartments.

• At Public Domain Review: Metamorphosis: Transformations in the Early Modern Flap Book (early 19th century).

Maeterlinck would write of [The Great God Pan], “it is, I believe, the attempt had been made to combine the traditional, or diabolical Fantasy with the new scientific kind, and that such a mixture has produced the most disturbing work I have ever come across”. Maeterlinck’s description of Machen serves as a tidy introduction to the crux of Ray’s writings too. A writer equally perplexed, intrigued, and possessed by the “the terrifying, hypergeometric, fourth dimension”. Ray’s works span the thin fabric of reality, piercing through into other eternal worlds and abducted by its eternal horror. Ray’s worlds are numerous realities battling one another, overlapping, mimicking, and distorting; it is an evocation of time and space as a battle-field of alternativities, governed by strange supernatural forces, notably angels or the occult.

The London of the Imagination, an examination of the fictional metropolis as it manifests in the stories of Belgian writer, Jean Ray

• Mixes of the week: A Slomo mix for The Invisible College, and DreamScenes – September 2026 at Ambientblog.

• At Colossal: “Spanning 200+ works, a new book celebrates the world of fungi“.

• The Electric Music Machine: Five Days at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (1988).

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Ege Basalt.

• Matt Cargill’s favourite albums.

• RIP Jeremy Thomas.

• Metamorphosis (1970) by Ananda Shankar | Metamorphosis (1995) by Pet Shop Boys | Metamorphosis (2012) by Demdike Stare