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Interested in fantasy and sci-fi books/art/TV/movies, games, poetry, music, and natural history. Banner image of IC 2118 credit to NASA/STScI Digitized Sky Survey/Noel Carboni.

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Bluesky

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bus_error@buserror5· 14d

#WyrdWednesday Horned helmets A painting from Out of the Forests: The Art of Paul Bonner (2008). Part of his artwork for Games Workshop. Any image flaws are from my lighting, photography, and cropping, not the original artwork.

A painting of a battle in and around a small, beached boat. Some combatants wear horned helmets.

bus_error@buserror5· 18d

#BookWormSat Hell Screen (1918) by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. An artist has a very troubled relationship with his patron, and the artist's daughter is trapped between them. The artist begins a painting at the patron's behest and becomes increasingly crazed as he tries to finish it.

Title page of The Essential Akutagawa (Marsilio Publishers, 1999), which contained this story. Edited by Seiji M. Lippit. Illustration of a kappa by Akutagawa from Nihon Kindai Bungakukan (Museum of Modern Japanese Literature).

bus_error@buserror5· 19d

#PhantomsFriday One Boon by Lilith Lorraine, pseudonym of Mary Maud Dunn Wright. This text is from Let the Patterns Break (1947), an omnibus containing all of her prior collections, plus previously unpublished or uncollected material, through 1947.

One Boon

When that Dark Star which is my soul's possessor
Shall pilot me beyond the phoenix-throne,
Where I must overcome the last Aggressor,
And face the last Adventuring alone—
I ask one boon—to sail, returning never,
On that still ocean where the ghost-ships ride,
For there is something I would drown forever
Beyond the salvages of wind and tide.
Then when the deed is done, past all recalling,
I would sail on, unfettered, strangely blest,
(Where time is like a curtain gently falling—)
To join the Pale Flotilla in the west;
To wake the sea-witch with a pirate-ditty;
And sometimes when the crescent moon swings low,
To anchor fast beside a sunken city,
And feast with Warriors of long ago;
Or when the phantom ships put into harbor,
Where wares of all the ages are displayed,
I would lie dreaming in a dark-leafed arbor,
I would drink wine from chalices of jade.

bus_error@buserror5· 21d

#WyrdWednesday The Summer People (1950) by Shirley Jackson. When a vacationing couple stay longer than usual at a lakeside cabin, disturbing things begin to happen. A subtle, spooky short story by the author of The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

This story was collected in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (2011). Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Cover art by Nic Cheetham shows the hallway of a dark, Gothic-looking building in the background, with red tentacles in the foreground holding an old book.

bus_error@buserror5· 28d

#WyrdWednesday Weather Damnation Alley (Galaxy, Oct 1967) by Roger Zelazny. In this novella, a man on a critical mission in a post-apocalyptic world faces massive, deadly storms (and many other hazards). A painting from Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss (2011). More info in alt text.

Zelazny expanded the 1967 novella into a 1969 novel at the request of his agent. A variant of Foss' painting was used as cover art for the 1990 Sphere reprint of the novel. It doesn't match all details of the vehicle from the story, but it's awesome work nonetheless. A yellow armored vehicle with six wheels makes its way across rugged terrain as severe weather rages around it.

bus_error@buserror5· Jul 12

I was lucky to find a relatively cheap copy of Let the Patterns Break (1947), an omnibus containing her prior collections plus additional material. Just now digging in. Looks to be a treasure trove of 400+ poems 👍 Not sure yet if any overlap with Wine of Wonder (1952)/Time Grows Thin (2009).

A COLLECTION INCLUDING

Trailing Clouds of Glory, consisting mostly of unpublished poems written between the ages of ten and sixteen;
Banners of Victory, copyrighted by author, 1937;
Beyond Bewilderment, copyrighted by author, 1942;
They, copyrighted by author, 1943;
The Day Before Judgment, copyrighted by author, 1944;

AND A LATER SECTION

Call on the Rocks, 1944-1947;

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Let Dreamers Wake, a textbook of poetry;
Lilith Tells All, a textbook of poetry;
Fighting on the Cultural Front, prose;
The Brain of the Planet, a novelette.

AVALON PRESS ROGERS, ARK.

bus_error@buserror5· Jul 8

#WyrdWednesday Two depictions of an ocean-dwelling Deep One in its final form. I study these tomes with great interest 🧐😲 Left: S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters (1988). Right: S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors (2015). Art credit and book details in alt text.

Left image: Illustration from S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters (1988) by Sandy Petersen, Tom Sullivan (illustrator), and Lynn Willis.This depiction is mottled green and looks a bit more frog-like but with a deep-sea creature's head.

Right image: Illustration from S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors (2015). This is an updated omnibus of S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters (1988) and S. Petersen's Field Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands (1989). Written by Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis, and Mike Mason. Illustrated by Loïc Muzy, Mariusz Gandzel & Claire Delépée. This depiction is black and more lizard-like, with a long tail.

bus_error@buserror5· Jul 8

#WyrdWednesday Signum Advenit, a woodblock printing by Liv Rainey-Smith. A mermaid foresees the destruction that will occur when the stars are right and R'lyeh rises from the sea. "The rays of an inhuman eye of providence reach down to illuminate the prophetess..." Book details in alt text.

From: The Dagon Collection (2024), an authentic-looking auction catalog with highly detailed descriptions of items recovered from Innsmouth. Each real contributor to the book wrote as a fictitious expert in their field to describe the history and condition of the auctioned items. Edited by Nate Pedersen.

Image:

A mermaid is holding a human skull upside down and has her hand raised to the sky. Above, a comet with a key inside it is descending. In the background, a city is rising from the waves.

Rainey-Smith's artwork is available for purchase on her web site.

bus_error@buserror5· Jul 4

#BookWormSat Children's fantasy books Parsifal Rides the Time Wave (1962) by Nell Chenault. A time-traveling, magical being and a special dog help a grieving child deal with loss.

Cover art by Vee Guthrie for the 1962 Weekly Reader Children's Book Club edition. A child and a dog hide under bushes as two warriors with medieval-style armor and weapons approach.

bus_error@buserror5· Jun 26

#PhantomsFriday "I slept, and out of their ancient tombs of tissue-plasm streamed a shadowy host of Living Dead. Gliding silently across the waxed and shining floor of my soul, they breathed their breaths upon the emptied mirror of my mind: And Terror and Guilt captained that crew." See alt text.

From: Resurrection Night (1915) by Benjamin De Casseres, reformatted slightly to fit into a post.

Part of a painting by Les Edwards that was used as the slipcase art for Born to the Dark (2017) by Ramsey Campbell. In the foreground, many tendrils of black smoke topped with skulls waft across the lawn. In the background, a pale man stands in the doorway of a stone-block building with dark, latticed windows.

bus_error@buserror5· Jun 24

#WyrdWednesday The novelette Children of the Corn (1977) by Stephen King, collected in Night Shift (1978). Summer among the cornfields and "...the power and grace of he who walks behind the rows..."

Cover of the 1986 New English Library reprint of Night Shift, the collection that contained Children of the Corn. No artist credit. Small figures brandishing farm implements chase a man through rows of corn.

bus_error@buserror5· Jun 20

#BookWormSat Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden (1983) by Jack Vance combines coming-of-age stories, political machinations, warring kingdoms, sorceries, and the Fae. "Within and about the Forest of Tantrevalles existed a hundred or more fairy shees, each the castle of a fairy tribe..."

Cover of the 1991 Grafton reprint of Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden. Cover art by Mick van Houten. A person on horseback approaches a castle on a cliff, overlooking woods and the sea.

bus_error@buserror5· Jun 10

#WyrdWednesday The Hanged Man (1895) by Eça de Queiroz and The Cannibals (1868) by Álvaro do Carvalhal are memorable macabre stories. They can be found translated to English by Margaret Jull Costa as part of the Dedalus Books of Fantasy series.

The Dedalus Book of Portuguese Fantasy (1995). Cover art by Jorge Garizo do Carmo. Edited by Eugénio Lisboa and Helder Macedo.

bus_error@buserror5· Jun 9

We don't usually see each other's headers. Here's mine. Quote post with yours. Details and image credit in alt text. Also, Morgan's book (quoted below) is a great noir thriller with a big speculative twist. Well deserving of all the awesome reviews!

Banner image of IC 2118 credit to NASA/STScI Digitized Sky Survey/Noel Carboni. Part of the Witch Head Nebula illuminated by the star system Rigel. I like the image, plus Rigel is the source of a brief, obscure, but very funny incident in a Jack Vance book.

bus_error@buserror5· Jun 6

#BookWormSat The Shadow Kingdom (Weird Tales, Aug 1929) by Robert E. Howard. Featuring Kull of Atlantis, king of Valusia. "The statecraft of the Seven Empires is a mazy, monstrous thing..." Art credit in alt text.

Painting by Roy G. Krenkel used as cover art for King Kull (Lancer, 1967 and later reprints), which included this story. Kull, riding a horse, is surrounded by a host of human and non-human beings and creatures. The buildings of Valusia are seen in the background.

bus_error@buserror5· Jun 3

#WyrdWednesday A painting by Philippe Druillet, who co-founded Métal Hurlant. This image is from an art book, but was originally used as the cover of Pilote No. 663 (1972).

The head and top of the torso of a huge black metallic figure. Creatures are flying into the wide-open yellow/orange mouth.

bus_error@buserror5· May 29

#PhantomsFriday Not Theirs the Cypress-Arch (1951) by Clark Ashton Smith.

Not Theirs the Cypress-Arch

Dream not the dead will wait,
Slow-crumbling in the allotted ground,
Nor rise except to some sonorous trump
And searing splendors of the doomsday sun:
They rise, they gather about us now,
 Crowding the quiet day.  

To us, entombed in time,
Asleep within a vaster vault,
They use a speech we seem not to have known,
Yet guide us like sleep-walkers to and fro—
By those forgotten voices drawn
With secret tacit guile.  

Not theirs the cypress-arch,
The sexton's haunt, the hallowed stones,
The charnel morris stilled by chanticleer:
Dark demons, through the forum and the street
They move, and we, their fleshly ghosts,
Like driven demoniacs are.

bus_error@buserror5· May 27

#WyrdWednesday The painting Atlantis (1972) by Frank Frazetta depicts a statue of an Atlantean warrior amidst partially submerged ruins.

A statue of a warrior with spear, shield, and crested helmet stands on a pedestal just above the waterline. The statue is bronze with green patina and has algae hanging from it. Ancient ruins are in the background. All objects are reflected in the water.

bus_error@buserror5· May 22

#PhantomsFriday Traffic not with ghosts Lest if you do You find their world More real than earth to you. From: Unsought Advice (Weird Tales, May 1937) by Dorothy Quick, used as the epigraph to Requiem for a Siren: Women Poets of the Pulps (From Beyond Press, 2024). Art credit in alt text.

The cover of Requiem for a Siren, edited by Jaclyn Youhana Garver and Michael W. Phillips Jr. The cover art is a painting by Margaret Brundage, first used as the cover of Weird Tales, November 1933. A seated woman in a green gown is looking at a skull that she's holding close to her face.

bus_error@buserror5· May 20

#WyrdWednesday Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone, and the brain froze in my skull— But I won through, I alone, and I poured my chalice full Of horrors and dooms and spells, black buds and bitter roots— From the hells beneath the hells, I bring you my deathly fruits. Credit in alt text.

A black-and-white drawing from a Stephen Fabian art collection book in a section titled Lovecraftian Ceremonies. It was inspired by the short story The Music of Erich Zann (1922) by H. P. Lovecraft. A man with talon-like fingers holds a stringed instrument.

bus_error@buserror5· May 15

#PhantomsFriday If I can raise one ghost, why I will raise And call up doomsday from behind the east. Awake then, ghostly doomsday! Throw up your monuments, ye buried men That lie in ruined cities of the wastes! From: Doomsday (1851) by Thomas Lovell Beddoes Art credit in alt text.

The black-and-white drawing is from a Stephen Fabian art collection book. It was originally used as an interior illustration for Zach Phalanx is Vlad the Impaler (Weirdbook 11, 1977) by Brian Lumley. In the foreground is a skeleton warrior holding a lance and mounted on a horse. In the background are the ruins of a castle.

bus_error@buserror5· May 13

#WyrdWednesday A Rose For Ecclesiastes (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1963) by Roger Zelazny. A future exploration of Martian history and society with spirituality, philosophy, and culture of Earth's past as backdrop. Also a personal story of lost love. Art credit in alt text.

Wrap-around cover art by Hannes Bok. One of his final paintings; one of Zelazny's earliest stories. The front cover depicts two Martian women playing instruments while a third (Braxa) dances. The back cover depicts Braxa holding a rose.

bus_error@buserror5· May 9

#BookWormSat Darrell Schweitzer wrote many stories set in a fantasy world based very loosely on the ancient Nile region. In his setting, the god of the underworld is crocodilian. Collected in The Mask of the Sorcerer (1995), Sekenre (2004) and a few in a two-volume short story collection (2020).

The covers of a two-volume short story collection by Darrell Schweitzer (PS Publishing, 2020). The titles are The Mysteries of the Faceless King (Volume 1) and The Last Heretic (Volume 2). Art by Jason Van Hollander.

Text excerpt from On the Last Night of the Festival of the Dead (1994).

"On the third and final night of the Festival of the Dead, those who had received special signs assembled in silence on the steps of the black temple of Surat-Hemad, who created the crocodile in his own image.
The temple doors formed the Devouring God's jaws. Bronze teeth gleamed by torchlight. Within the great hall, two red lanterns burning above the altar were the all-seeing eyes of Death. In the vaults beneath the altar, in the belly of Surat-Hemad, dead and living commingled freely, and the waters of dream, of Leshe, lapped against the shores of the living world those of the land of the dead. On this night, of all nights, the borders were freely crossed.
The doors swung wide. Twenty or so pilgrims entered..."

bus_error@buserror5· May 8

#PhantomsFriday The text of the poem Night Terror (Weird Tales, July 1930) by Sara Henderson Hay added to a drawing from a Stephen Fabian art collection book.

The top of the image is a drawing of darkened house at night with a few windows illuminated. A full moon is overhead.

The bottom of the image is the poem text:

Lie still—the phantom stars are clear,
The moon is white against the snow—
Ah, Mary Mother, make Them fear
Even this candle's feeble glow—
Make Them afraid to enter here!

Its little gasping flame is all
We have, to guard and keep the sill
From things that wait, close-cloaked about
In darkness, where the shadows sprawl—
What should we do if it went out?—
Lie still...

bus_error@buserror5· May 6

#WyrdWednesday "I hope...my repast won't offend a delicate stomach. I have learned that the best way to keep my health is to eat the fruits of the earth in their intended state—so much goodness is wasted in cooking and garnishing." ~ Family matriarch in Wolfland (1980) by Tanith Lee.

Wolfland, Lee's take on Little Red Riding Hood, was reprinted in the collection Red As Blood (1983). Cover art by Michael Whelan. A woman reclines on the doorstep of a stone-walled building. A spooky figure stands behind her holding an apple.

bus_error@buserror5· May 2

#BookWormSat Conan and the Emerald Lotus (1995) by John C. Hocking. A fearsome flower is key to a sorcerous plan for conquest. Reprinted with the sequel in City of the Dead (2024). "I am the master of the Emerald Lotus. You have tasted its glorious power and felt its mortal demands..."

Cover of Conan: City of the Dead. Art by Richard Pace. In the foreground is a black silhouette of Conan from behind. In the background is a white outline of a fortress with a central dome that looks like a grinning skull.

bus_error@buserror5· May 1

#PhantomsFriday Mementos (Weird Tales, May 1934) by Marie W. Linné.

Mementos

Marie W. Linné

I will not haunt you after I am dead;
My wistful, sad, unsatisfied wraith
Shall not be lingering near these streets we tread,
These walls that look so much on love and death;
My hungry laughing eyes, the words we said
Shall no way haunt you after l am dead....

Oh, I'll have other things than these to do;
I'll find a deep depression in a hill,
And to the wind's white songs, the drip of dew,
Call all lost, joyous hearts to dance their fill,
So passers-by shall wonder, pausing there,
Remembering joy before man knew despair.

And I will keep a tame wind for my own,
And if I break your musings, now and then,
Riding by, through some lamplit dusk, alone,
You will remember lightly, once again,
A snatch of song, a vanished jest or two....
No, but for these, I'll not come back to you.

bus_error@buserror5· Apr 29

#WyrdWednesday The Hill Woman (Weird Tales, October 1934) by Frances Elliot.

The valley people wondered at her choice,
The old house groping up the straggling hill,
With mold'ring walls that echoed back her voice
And vistas that were always blank and still
As ancient dreams; they never really knew
The hill flowers had such laughing Pixy eyes,
Hill clouds with silver pitchers poured the dew
As dawn fans quivered in the orchid skies.

She hugged the secret of her wishing well,
A whispering madness when the luring Junes
Tossed ragged roses in a drowsy spell
That burgeoned to the bee's bass-violed tunes.
The valley people marvelled as their spires
Caught up the splendor of her altar fires.

bus_error@buserror5· Apr 25

#BookWormSat Walter de la Mare's birthday I enjoy his eight earliest poetry collections very much. I haven't read his later collections and have read only a few of his many stories, so I need to remedy that! Art credit in alt text.

Dorothy P. Lathrop illustration of a darkened house with illuminated windows.

Poem text:

HAUNTED

From out the wood I watched them shine—
The windows of the haunted house,
Now ruddy as enchanted wine,
Now dark as flittermouse.

There went a thin voice piping airs
Along the grey and crooked walks,—
A garden of thistledown and tares,
Bright leaves, and giant stalks.

Poem text ciontinued:

The twilight rain shone at its gates.
Where long-leaved grass in shadow grew;
And black in silence to her mates
A voiceless raven flew.

Lichen and moss the lone stones greened.
Green paths led lightly to its door,
Keen from her lair the spider leaned,
And dusk to darkness wore.

Amidst the sedge a whisper ran,
The West shut down a heavy eye,
And like last tapers, few and wan,
The watch-stars kindled in the sky.

A SONG OF ENCHANTMENT

A Song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green—green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wild wood tree.

Widdershins turned I, singing it low,
Watching the wild birds come and go;
No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen
Under the thick-thatched branches green.

Twilight came; silence came;
The planet of Evening's silver flame;
By darkening paths I wandered through
Thickets trembling with drops of dew.

But the music is lost and the words are gone
Of the song I sang as I sat alone,
Ages and ages have fallen on me—
On the wood and the pool and the elder tree.

bus_error@buserror5· Apr 24

#PhantomsFriday Suspicion (Weird Tales, Nov 1953) by Harriet A. Bradfield. Art credit in alt text.