Mantichore No 5

MANTICHORE 2, No 1 (Dec 2006 e. v.) (Whole No. 5) A Contribution by Leigh Blackmore for Sword & Sorcery & Weird Fiction Terminus amateur press association. Leigh Blackmore, 78 Rowland Ave, Wollongong, NSW 2500. Australia. Email: [email protected] (Please note new email address) Official Website: The Blackmausoleum – http://members.optusnet.com.au/lvx nox/

IN THIS ISSUE “Mantic Notes”…………………………….1 Article: Notes on M. John Harrison’s “The Luck in the Head”.. ………………………………………3 Story: “Water Runs Uphill” ……………..7 Parodies: “The Lord of Lewd: Clark Ashton Smith & the Fiction of Fornication” & “Of Caves, Dark Holes & Vaginas: The Pornographic Prose of the Providence Poet” by Bryce J. Stevens…10 Mantichorus: Mailing Notes …….. …….11 Books Wanted…………………………….13 Bio Notes on Leigh Blackmore…………14

MANTIC NOTES Aha! I’m starting early this time! I’m commencing this issue in late September, which means I should have a decent amount of time to get it to a presentable level before deadline….Later: well, here I am past

deadline at the beginning of December! I managed to get the issue half-ready with another piece on an M John Harrison story and a short story by me. I’ll add mailing comments and see what else I can throw together. On a personal note, I have finished my first year at University of Wollongong with one credit, five distinctions (mainly for creative writing) and one high distinction (for sociology). I have also sat my preentrance examination for the Bachelor of Journalism, as I intend to undertake a double degree next year. If I pass the Journalism exam I will be doing Journalism as well as Creative Writing. Right now I’m on summer break and though I have made sporadic attempts to look for a job, there is little around, and I am occupying myself with original writing, selling on Ebay, and helping run the household. My son-in-law Rohan graduated from high school and turned 18, so we had two celebrations for him. MoonSkin, the occult group I co-facilitate, is moving towards a core of members after an initial founding year of working rituals from different traditions (Wiccan, Reclaiming, Thelemic, & others); in 2007 we will be moving to a model which sees the group members taking on more responsibility for running rituals, which will free me and Margi up somewhat. I had a few small appearances in print during the year, with a poem in the university mag Tertangala being one, but I am most proud of the podcast of my ghost story “Cemetery Rose”, which appeared as part of the seven days of Hallowe’en at www.writingshow.com. Check it out! The direct link is at: http://writingshow.com/?p=194. You can also access it via other podcast players including Odeo (http://odeo.com/channel/7166/view), Collectik (http://collectik.net/collectik/feed/155 40, Podcast Pickle (http://www.podcastpickle.com/casts/ 1791/), Yahoo Podcasts (http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?

s=e258f4f05cb1e0b59e20e34ff673d 8ca), Get a Podcast (http://www.getapodcast.com/podcas t496.aspx?hi=matthew), Blogdigger (http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups .jsp?id=961&f=299226), Podfeed (http://www.podfeed.net/podcast/The +Writing+Show/1860) Mefeedia (http://mefeedia.com/feeds/10216/ ), Idiotvox (http://www.idiotvox.com/Books/PodC ast_Review_The_Writing_Show__1230 7.html.), DirPodcast.com (http://www.dirpodcast.com/podcasts /index.php?iid=2277), & Vicasting (http://www.vicasting.com/contents.a spx/pid/1014/). Phew! Anyway, enjoy! There’s an interview with me there, as well as me reading the story. It was an enjoyable experience to record this, and they did a good job with the production generally, despite a couple of unfortunate sound effects. I recorded via phone to Paula Berinstein, Writing Show.com’s US editor, and all the other podcast feeds simply link to the main website, giving all this exposure on the net! A great way to go for any budding writers out there – contact Paul at www.writingshow.com and see if she’ll be interested to feature your work! An old interview I did in 1993 with writer/philosopher Colin Wilson should soon be up at www.colinwilsonworld.com. I sent editor Geoff Ward a copy, with photos taken at the time, and he will be adding it to the site. I also started editing on Wikipedia, and the first long article I started was (of course) on Terry Dowling – since I began it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Do wling, others have expanded it, as is par for the course on Wikipedia. I had a few teething problems with Wikipedia’s rather extensive rules that one has to abide by, but getting the basic info up there is important. I discovered LibraryThing, (http://www.librarything.com/ ), an online site where one can catalogue all one’s books. Up to about 100 books it’s free, but then you have to subscribe. It’s a fun site. I quickly used my quotient of 100 but haven’t

been able to afford to subscribe. One day I will. There’s no space here to cover books I’ve read or music obtained recently, but while I’m writing this, I’m listening to The New Cars. I am a musical child of the 70’s and 80’s – probably mentioned before that I used to play in Sydney New Wave band Worm Technology. (It was a Christian new wave band – pretty rad for the time! – and well before my later movement towards Gnostic and Thelemic worldviews). The Cars were a favourite. One of my other music gods is Todd Rundgren, and when I found out Todd had joined ex-members of the Cars in the New Cars for a US tour, I HAD to buy this album. It’s cool! They even do a coupla Todd songs… My friend, Melbourne writer Rick Kennett, recently sent me a copy of Weird Tales magazine for June 2006, featuring his story “Chinese Whispers”. Wow! I don’t know if Rick’s the first Aussie writer to break into the pages of this iconic horror/fantasy magazine, but he is certainly the first of my direct acquaintances. I know he tried them with several stories over the years with mixed success. I am envious of his finally landing one! The couple I’ve sent haven’t gotten through, but I hope to one day also be represented in “The Unique Magazine”. I was privileged recently to have a visit from poet and bibliographer Phillip A. Ellis, and poet Danny Lovecraft, who came to see me in Wollongong on the same day! The three of us spent a glorious four hours together discussing the poetry of Christopher Brennan, devouring cake and biscuits, talking of weird fiction, art and music. (I must thank my partner Margi for her contribution in helping prepare the repast!). We also saw some of Danny’s photos from the Providence leg of his US trip last year – watched them on the TV screen from a CD disk – something I didn’t know one could do until now. I would have liked to print some photos from the visit here but they’re not back from the printshop yet – maybe I’ll print them next time. In

lieu, here are a few photos from the Conflux convention in Canberra earlier this year, where Margi and I were on several panels, some about horror/fantasy and some about real magic. Leigh with writer Rick Kennett

Leigh with writer/editor Jack Dann

I have run together. Though with a small roll-up, we had an intimate and valuable day of exploring the different aspects of divinity, with various meditations and ritual presentations including the Golden Dawn’s Middle Pillar ritual, and a fabulous PowerPoint presentation that we had prepared with hundreds of images of divinity from different cultures. Well, I’d better get to it! Any more personal news and there’ll be no room in the issue for articles. I take perverse) pleasure in running this issue a piece from my old Terror Australis magazine colleague Bryce Stevens, a sexy sendup of two major weird fiction figures and their work. I hope it causes at least some offense (and a few chuckles!) “Water Runs Uphill” is a story I wrote recently for my creative writing course. It has a slight supernatural element but is mainly inspired by my current environment here in the city of Wollongong in the Illawarra, NSW.

NOTES ON M. JOHN HARRISON’S “THE LUCK IN THE HEAD”. Margi with writers Russell & Jenny Blackford & Kate Forsyth

Leigh & Margi with Canberra bookseller & fellow pagan Lilitu Babalon In other personal news, Margi and I ran a workshop at Lotus bookshop recently on “Gods and Goddesses in Us All”. This was historic for a coupla reasons – the first all-day workshop I’ve been involved with, and the first Margi and

Here we continue to examine (in brief) the stories of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium sequence. I am not here attempting a critical analysis but more of a story summary, for a project ultimately intended to be a full-length manuscript on the work of MJH. In “The Luck in the Head”, one of the most haunting of the entire sequence, we are introduced to Ardwick Crome, poet, the author of the long poem Bream Into Man. Crome lives in a tenement on the

outskirts of Montrouge, near the arena, where “they were burning or quartering somebody every night for political or religious crimes”. Viriconium, whose name changes through the ages, is here called “Uroconium”. Crome was born in the ploughlands but has come to Uroconium to pursue his craft. He wears green plush country waistcoat and yellow pointed shoes. Here in the Artists’ Quarter, in this tenement once occupied by Kristodulos Fleece the painter, Crome remembers his childhood near the Yser Canal, and his mother singing the carols of the Oei’l Voirrey. (We don’t, of course, know what this means, but it sounds like authentic detail.) Crome writes by strapping himself to his bed: “the sense of unfair confinement or punishment induced by this, he found, helped him to think”. Barzelletta Angst, the critic, writes of Crome’s work that he tries to “represent his work as a series of narrativeless images, glued together only by his artistic persona”. This sounds very much like a criticism that could be leveled against Harrison’s imagistic style, and may be Harrison’s own sly or ironic comment to forestall such criticism; he is certainly self-aware enough to be aware of what he is doing in his work, and of its possible limitations in terms of style and technique. Crome is having disturbing dreams which revolve around a ritual he has witnessed in his childhood – the ceremony of ‘The Luck in the Head’ in which a pie is made from the head of a lamb which is sacrificed three days after the Eve of Assumption. Luck is considered to come to the person that eats the pie made from the head. Now, Harrison is not a conventionally religious writer, but the introduction of such religious imagery as a sacrificial lamb and a three day period cannot help but add a resonance of the Christian story to this tale. However, the imagery relates more to the role Crome will play out in the story’s narrative. As in other Viriconium stories, we get mentions of places in the countryside – Dunham Massey, Lymm, Iron Chine, and Lowick (with its slate roofs).

Crome goes looking for the woman in his dream who has brought the sacrificial lamb to him. More colourful names from within the city crop up – the Via Varese (which is near the Bistro Californium), Mecklenburgh Square, and Proton Alley, where the beggars and pavement artists draw the Lamia (a reference to yet another Harrison story). Again (as in “The Dancer from the Dance”) we have the Unter-MainKai, which seems to be a main street of Viriconium or at least of the artist’s quarter, and the Luitpold Café. At the Luitpold, Crome meets such characters as Ansel Verdigris, with his coxcomb of reddish-yellow hair and his white triangular face – Verdigris lives with his mother, Madame L, in Delphine Square. Both are ill and dissipated. Other characters hang out at the Luitpold – Gunter Verlac, and the Baron de V . There are stories of proctors pursuing these

characters for debts along the cinder paths past the isolation hospital. Verdigris gives Crome a sheet of thick green paper, folded three times, with a cryptic message which implies if Crome wants his dreams to cease he should come to the Aqualate Pond. We get more place-names interspersed in the “series of narrativeless images” – Margery Fry Court, the Ghibbeline Stair, the Aqualate Pond. One of Harrison’s most frequent techniques, the narrating of overheard snatches of conversation, gives us “Aachen by the Haunted Gate”. These many evocative names all add to our sense of Uroconium as old, mysterious, and rife with strange goings-on, as the

events begin to unfold amidst the “cat-infested towers of the city”; there is the “whine of violin and cor anglais from the Artist’s Quarter” and “the flares of the auto da fe at the Arena”. We learn that in the past, Uronoconium was liberated from the Analeptic Kings In fact, it is the anniversary of this event as Crome makes his way to the Aqualate Pond. This is one of Harrison’s literary injokes, analepsis being the technique of flashback. We learn that the text known as ‘the Earl of Rone’ tells how the kings handed over power to Mammy Vooley, the current ruler (or ‘Moderator’) of Uroconium. There are mentions of the steep hills of Alves, the Obervatory with its cracked copper dome, and an ancient song that the people sing: ‘Ou lou lou’. An extraordinary procession is unveiled: “in the middle of it all, the night and the banners and the lights, swaying precariously to and fro fifteen feet above the procession like a doll nailed on a gilded chair, came Mammy Vooley herself”. Mammy Vooley is a bizarre figure, made up like a doll, wearing a russet-orange dress, with only one good eye, and on her head a wig made from a hank of faded purple hair. Her lap is filled with lumps of plaster and crusts of wholemeal bread. She is “silent as a log of wood”. The householders of Alves all kneel to her, but Crome doesn’t. But she blesses him anyway. The Great Brown Waste is mentioned: the endless wastes which surround Uroconium, with papery winged flies hovering under a poisonous brown sky. This image is one used repeatedly by Harrison – compare the chemical waste pits in Signs of Life (1997). There is a mention of Ingo Lympany the dramatist. Crome finds his way to the Aqualate Pond, where there is a gibbet made of two great arched, bleached bones – a rather Lovecraftian touch that makes one wonder from what creature of enormous size those bones could have come. The local people have various superstitions about the pond.

Henrietta St is near the pond. Another ritual is annually performed here, one very similar to that that of the locust ritual in “The Dancer from the Dance”. A woman in a brown cloak appears to him, coming closer in three states of nearness – a very filmic image. She wears over head a complicated mask of wafery metal to represent the head of one or another wasteland insect. She tells Crome he must kill the Mammy. She removes from the corpse on the gibbet an omen – it is the lamb of his dreams. She promises to bring him a weapon. The lamb begins to haunt him in his waking life. More evocative place-names : Cladich, Mynned, Cheminor. Kristodulos Fleece had been half-dead with opium and syphilis when he vacated the northlight studio. Audsley King is mentioned in passing – a major character from the novel In Viriconium; Harrison often interweaves his work in this, and more complicated ways. Fleece has left behind a painting titled ‘Children Beloved of the Gods Have the Power to Weep Roses’. It depicts girl children doing a spiral dance, a very pagan image. Harrison gives an extensive description of the painting. It includes the bedogne – the stripped and varnished skull of a horse, with brittle glass eyes and crepe paper harness, put up on a pole covered with an ordinary sheet. But this one has a lamb’s skull. This haunting image is another that will crop up repeatedly in Harrison’s work – even so recently as in the description of the creature known as the Shrander in Harrison’s sf novel Light (2002). The woman with the insect mask arrives, finding Crome strapped to the bed. Verdigris has come with her, but waits outside. She reveals the weapon, which she produces from a brown paper parcel. It is two feet long, has been a long time in the ground, and leaks a greenish jellylike substance. It is like a dagger in a sheath and leaks motes of light. This ties to other such ancient weapons which are little-understood (see other Harrison novels such as The Pastel

City). The woman reveals Mammy Vooley is trying to change the name of the city; this is ironic, given the names changes from age to age in any case. There are atmospheric mentions of wash-houses and women gutting fish. Crome tries to refuse the weapon. Notice the theme of a dance again, in the painting. The painting changes before Crome’s eyes, the lamb vomiting its bad luck onto the children. The weapon shocks Crome when he touches it. Mention of the Tinmarket. Verdigris comes in to check Crome has touched the weapon. He dances about and sings absurd and cryptic couplets. He gets revenge for Crome having told him earlier that neither of them had ever been to Cheminor. The insect-headed woman fucks Crome all night. At the observatory, the machines of the old cultures whisper madly, as does the brooding Mammy. She looks out over Antedaraus, the hill behind observatory, where Daraus Gorge divides Uroconium “like a fissure in a wart”. We get a glimpse of the Old City with its ruinous towers. Decay and mourning occupy the Mammy’s subjects. In a scene reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s “How It Is”, a legless man pulls a wicker basket of earth and excrement. A crowd gathers at the observatory. They bring out gaunt wooden images of the Analeptic Kings. The people wear outlandish costumes. Crome is there with the weapon and the woman. Little boys perform a traditional dance on the steps. The choir sings. Mammy Vooley is pulled out in front of the crowd, her head lolling. She will throw a yew wreath, but is barely capable. It starts to rain. The wreath “rolled about on the bottom step like a coin set spinning on a table in the Luitpold Café”. (A similar tightlyfocussed image of a coin spinning on its edge will occur years later in a key scene in Light). Crome, who has brought the ancient weapon here to assassinate the Mammy, vacillates. Ansel Verdigris appears, accusing Crome of being an assassin in front of the whole crowd.

Crome hits Verdigris on the head with the untrustworthy weapon and it cuts through the front of Verdigris’ skull, and sinks down to hack off his shoulder. Veridgris stumbles around and falls down dead. The weapon goes out “like a wet firework” before Crome can use it on the Mammy, and he is arrested her attendants. The hilt of the weapon has become imbedded in his arm. It seems he will be taken to the arena to be burnt. The Mammy looks at him and seems to forgive him, though it is uncertain whether or not she recognises him. He is led away to the tune of the “ou lou lou”. All ends in frustration and absurdity; the whole plot, which Crome never took on of his own accord, has failed. The Mammy announces that the name of the city will be changed to ‘Vira-Co” – an irony since the name of the city is always changing through the ages, and the whole reason for the attempted assassination, which was to stop her changing it, was doomed from the outset. “The Luck in the Head” has a graphic novel version, which was published by Gollancz in 1991, illustrated by the incomparable Ian Miller. It has some interesting textual variations from the published story text, and also some amusing in-jokes such as Ansel Verdigris being drawn to resemble M John Harrison himself. “The Luck in the Head” is a remarkable story, in which, as Ingo Lympany says “surface is only the visible part of technique!”.

WATER RUNS UPHILL By Leigh Blackmore © 2006 It was one of those muggy evenings that come late in November. The sea was lapping against the harbour wall under a pumice-coloured sky like a cat licking up water from its drinking bowl. An area of low pressure had crept in

from the east. Perhaps I’d started to doze, because the waitress tapped on my table where the empty glass stood. “Anything else?” “Lemon, lime and bitters,“ I told her. Couldn’t she remember? It was all I’d been drinking. The sky, out over the Five Islands, was going murky orange, the kind you generally only see when there’s a distant bushfire. The waitress returned to the bar to get my drink. Heat reflected into my face off the metal-topped tables. The chairs were those rickety aluminium tubing jobs, so uncomfortable to sit in that you feel like an intruder patronising the café. I fantasised about the owner watching through a secret spy hole from behind the bar. Maybe he would be getting his jollies timing each patron on how long it took us to get so uncomfortable we would leave, so that more paying patrons could come in to replace us. I wished I had some gum, something to chew on, to take my mind off things. A few young girls were sitting around a nearby table. The conversations I overheard amused me. The girls were different from me: the way they tossed their hair, laughed loudly, talked over each other. Earlier that day I’d decided to go up Mt Keira. The weather had been dicey at first, and I feared rain, but by the afternoon the sea breeze had cleared the clouds. The mountain made a shape against the sky like a pushed-in hat. The piecrust indentations of my old Volvo’s steering wheel were hot and sticky under my knuckles. Trees dotted the streets, lush grey-olive foliage interspersed at intervals with the startlingly purple jacaranda trees in full bloom. Along the edges of Mt Keira Road and the winding route to the lookout teahouse, I passed native grasses, yellow tea-roses growing wild, and acacia heavy with new growth. As the afternoon wore on, I’d gone for a walk along the track that led away from the lookout’s teahouse. The profuse undergrowth

was full of yellow cassinias and straggling mintbush, wild honeysuckle and orange blossom. Scrubby paperbarks and tall Norfolk pines formed a shadowy canopy overhead. A little brook trickled slowly between the trees, heading down the mountain side towards the sea. Cockatoos shrieked and squawked as they flocked across the valley. But after a while I’d grown restless and bored, and drove down to spend time at the harbourfront café. Now I was taken by the urge to go out to Toothbrush Island. Simultaneously, I knew I never would. The waitress returned with my drink. As I sipped it, I wondered: had the Aborigines ever made it out there in their paperbark canoes? My mind played back a scene from the year before. I’d been at the Chinese herbalist at Kiama, waiting for my partner Val’s acupuncture session to finish. The pungent herbal smell, reminiscent of marijuana, filled the small waiting room with its cane chairs and glass-fronted cabinets full of Pe Min Kan Wan, Xiang Sha Liu Jun Wan. A model of a human body marked with meridians sat atop one of the cabinets; there was the obligatory golden Lucky Cat atop another. A kids’ toybox – a yellow plastic crate – filled with plastic cars and battered board books sat in one corner. “How was it?” I asked. “More work needed on the spleen.” Okay. At the Out of the Blue Café, we had date scones and coffee. Why were there so many small troubles, things we had to try and resolve? We lacked energy, since our health was poor. It turned out hers was far worse than we thought. I remembered the days twenty years ago when, newly married, we had belonged to the fabulous in-crowd. Nothing could touch us then. Now look at me, I thought morosely. Belly straining at overly-tight pants. Unsightly bags under the eyes, chronic pains in various parts of the body. Where once I‘d woken up fresh as a daisy in the morning and bounded out to

greet the day like a young gazelle, now I awoke in a stupor, staggering out to breakfast with a headache and a stiff neck. It didn’t seem to matter that I went to bed early or tried to treat myself kindly. It was the entropy – things running down, the body groaning at its continued use through the years. These days, indulgence took precedence over duty. Any notion I had back then of being responsible had died with my marriage. Now I passed my days in a fug of smoke, sometimes drugged, often drunk. I kept strange hours, immured in my own indolence. Another, more interesting woman sat at another table. She was a slender blonde with sensous lips, pale creamy skin, dark eyelashes, long flowing hair. I fantasised about her: young enough to be into bands like the Kooks and the Arctic Monkeys. Occasionally, I thought, she listens to skate music – lo-fi, blunted beats over deft guitar melodies and solid bass foundation. Probably got a boyfriend the same age. She didn’t so much walk up to me as undulate in my direction, until before I knew it she was right there. She had on a powder-blue dress, light and summery, that left her shoulders bare. Small pearl earrings. Tight black stockings showed off her shapely legs. Bright red shoes. Around her neck was a string of dark wooden beads and on her right forefinger, a chunky amber ring. I had, at best, a cloudy knowledge of fashion, but I liked what I saw. Slightly startled that she had approached, I was aware of the faint scent of cinnamon coming off her skin, the round smoothness of her shoulders. “May I join you?” “Of course.” I tried to kid myself I knew all about her as soon as I saw her. Her lips would taste like luscious wine, her kisses would be intense. Her pale skin gave me a blissful amorous sense. I was sick of my life, of moping around. For some moments, I honestly thought about getting this girl into bed. But something in her eyes set me on edge; her look was so

direct I could hardly face it. She lit up a cigarette. I took this as my cue to speak. “Can I get you a drink?” “What?” “I’d like to buy you a drink. What’ll you have?” I was direct as she was, not wanting to say anything contrived. She gave me an appraising glance, then; unclenched her hands, which opened like twin blossoms unfolding. “Daquiri”. I gave her my most boyish smile. I nodded to her unvoiced question. “I’ll get myself a whiskey”. I motioned to the waitress, who brought us the drinks. She gave me an odd look, which I took to mean she wondered why I had switched my drinks. I noticed while we talked that she gestured with her hands a lot, using them like elegant wedges to emphasise her point. She spread them wide, or clenched her fist, and talked wide-eyed, enthusiastically. I imagined making love to her: the way her arm might tighten around my waist, the darkness of the tangle between her legs. I played deliberately with the notion of taking her home, willing myself to feel alive again. I managed to picture her opulent hips poised in provocation. I thought of her cool eyes, her liquid fingers, her nudity glittering with sweat as she seduced me. “I feel like cutting loose and getting mashed tonight” she said. She smiled. I smiled back. It was all possible. We continued talking the small talk that strangers often do when meeting for the first time. But something about her was injured. Oh, there was electricity there, we both sensed it, and we would play the game for a while. But something about her reminded me of old injuries of my own. The time I’d cut my wrist on a broken glass while pushing it into the wastebin and had to go to the hospital for stitches. The car crash I’d once been in on Gladesville Bridge – coming up over the bridge’s crest, blithely laughing and talking with friends, when – wham! – our car collided with a vehicle that had

stalled just over the crest, and I walked away with whiplash. This girl was attractive, but I sensed she could be bad news. Inside, I was already drawing back. I noticed too, that her eyes were almost colourless. It wasn’t a good sign. Suddenly, not wanting to encourage her further, I began to talk haltingly. Before long, I was letting the silence develop. I couldn’t do this. I had to rescind the illusion that anything could be the same without Val. Anyway, this girl must have some surreptitious motivation. I was no longer young and attractive. The conversation faltered badly. She walked away. Chalk that one up to experience, I told myself. Back home, I sat listening to the evening sounds. A possum dropped on the roof with a thump. Bushes scratched at the window. There was the “fark, fark, fark” of great glossy black ravens perching on the high TV aerials. Cats loped across the road in the gloom. Raised voices carried from the housing commission flats opposite - another blazing argument was in progress. I looked out the kitchen window. Against the clouds’ underside blossomed a red haze that might have been sunset but was more likely reflected flame from the steelworks. I set up my camcorder on its tripod and replayed some of the old home movies. There was Val, with me and some of our friends, gathered around the barbecue equipment. Plates of sausages, onions, and rolls, Val’s delicious terrine; glasses of red wine. I could almost savour the tantalising aroma of the special rice concoction that my friend Bruce always made at such occasions. Good days, despite Bruce’s insistence on wearing shirts so loud I had to block my ears. Val: red-haired, fierce, independent. How could I do anything without her in my life? Here she was packing the station wagon: folding chairs, tables, picnic blankets packed up safely for the return trip.

Here was more footage: me escorting Val at the opening of her play. She was wearing a black feather in her hair. A friend must have taken that using our camera. In another shot, we were drinking beer outdoors at the pub at the seaside town of Thirroul, Bruce’s band pumping out r&b. The escarpment rises above, grey and green jutting against a cabbagecoloured sky, water sluicing down through the valleys and rifts, old miners’ cottages staggered against them. Where, I wondered, did Lawrence get the internal reserves to cope with Thirroul in the 1920’s? I’d visited Wyewurk with Val, the Californian-style bungalow D.H. Lawrence and his partner Frieda had lived in - a wintry shack where he cooked up the plot to his Australian novel Kangaroo. Frieda had been independent, a free spirit, yet loyal to Lawrence. I thought of Thirroul now, a cluster of shops about to be gentrified and commodified out of existence. The film showed a few shots here of Sunday lunch after Sedition by the Sea lectures in the old Railway Institute Hall: dusty portraits of Labour Party once-greats on the walls, where Val and I had gone in our activist days. I remembered Val’s voice: it was hot lemon, honey and vanilla when you’ve just come in from the rain. On the film, still running, she turned to the camera and smiled, her teeth pearl white, a strand of her auburn hair blowing across her face. The last scene was a holiday we’d taken, the spray from the waterfall behind her flying up into the air in a drift of coloured droplets that the sun caught. The film ran out. There was no footage of the hospital, where Val had lain for months as the cancer took her inch by inch. No footage of that, or of the funeral. No-one had filmed me either, as I grieved afterwards. I was glad our collection showed only the good stuff. I switched off the camcorder and sat. The TV’s blank screen stared back at me. My hands grew clammy. I hugged myself against the sudden

chill in the room, drew my ratty black bomber jacket closer around me. I cooked. I watched a TV programme about a woman who taught people how to train their dogs better. After that, there was the news programme: the usual stuff about children being forced to work in the copper mines in the Congo, about twenty-six people having died today in suicide bombings in Iraq. I walked around the room, picking up things at random, putting them down again. A clock chimed eerily in the silent darkness. Got to get grounded, I told myself. But I couldn’t help remembering a time before the Net, before Ebay, before Google, before Amazon. It was a primeval time of typewriters and liquid paper. A time when we had both been speechless with passion, in bed and out of it. Where was the pulse, the clamour, now? I closed my eyes and thought of kissing Val, her lips beesweet. Faint rainy noises, muted by the walls, came from outside. The room had gotten dark. I got up and switched the light on. I looked at the grease and dust on the surfaces of things, the kitchen cupboards with their shabby paint, some swinging open because their latches were broken and I couldn’t be bothered fixing them anymore. I got into bed and pulled the blankets over my head. I was awake most of the night. But I must have dreamed at some point. In the dream, I was out in the street. I saw myself turn up my coat collar and quickly walk away from my house. I felt on the cusp of a revelation. A cloud passed over the moon. There was an extraordinary feeling that it prefigured something important, but what? Next day, I set the camcorder replaying the film’s last scene, looped to run endlessly backwards. On the screen, behind the face of the woman I had loved, water ran uphill, flowing from below to above. Time ran in reverse. But it couldn’t be like that for me. I packed a suitcase, got in the Volvo, and headed out of town and away from the coast for good.

TWO PARODIES by Bryce J. Stevens THE LORD OF LEWD: CLARK ASHTON SMITH AND THE FICTION OF FORNICATION Auburn-Haired Press presents the fiction of one of the masters of 20th century erotica. Here are the unexpurgated pennings of porn from the man who invented “The Ashton Position”. A masterful narrative of seediness and chicanery, which some believe germinated his mature period. The Witchcraft of Ovule CAS was at his peak here. He gave freely of his time to other writers, passing on what he’d himself received. The Passer of the Crabs For the first time since its initial publication in Very Weird Tales TM in 1931, we give you a delicate tale of client’s friction, which opened the gates for Smith’s entry into the ‘Slicks’. Vulvathoom Uncensored, for the first time in print, we give you the stream-of-conscious autobiographical vignette of authorial delusion: The Colossus of Yours With tongue in cheek and elsewhere, Smith celebrates his sexual permissiveness in a narrative of a smorgasm of orgasm: The Cumming of the White Worm For years not believed to be a Smith story, this has since been accredited to him and has been acknowledged as a minor masterpiece. A story of jealousy, obsession and spiked drinks: The Passing of Aphrodisiac A rare tale of pain and humiliation, this is a story of interspecies sex and epidermal infatuation. Master of the Hemorrhoid

“A fucking good read” – Hillary Clinton “Bugger me! I loved this book” – Martha Stewart For information on our other titles, simply log on to [email protected] om.us

OF CAVES, DARK HOLES AND VAGINAS: THE PRONOGRAPHIC PROSE OF THE PROVIDENCE POET Dagon/Gonad Press and Onya Sonia Books are proud to present a collection of saucy tales from the man who put the Love in Lovecraft, the one and only HPL. Daring tales of sex and death and cheap crackers by Howard Phillips ‘Screwdriver’ Lovecraft. A tale of backwoods lust, nocturnal emissions, farm animals and incest in: The Dunwich Whorer She invaded his dreams, took him to a south-seas island and made him worship her and indulge in water sports, in The Call of Lulu A swelling tale of new dimensions in Lovecraft’s lusty tale of a mathematics teacher and a very familiar rival: Wet Dreams in the Witch House A tale of carnality under the slyly winking moon in: The Fling in the Moonlight A Kinky-knickers fetishist on a boat cruise has his life turned into a major fantasy in: The White Slip Then there’s the deservedly muchreprinted tale of the author’s love of woman’s anatomy: The Unmentionable We’re also proud to present here, an early work, which first showed

Lovecraft’s burgeoning interest in animals in: The Bestiality in the Cave For a good titillating read just pull open the covers and slip between the sheets amid luscious prose. Get your copy now from our website at www.howarhardonforlove.com.u s Or wherever good porn is sold.

MANTICHORUS: MAILING NOTES FOR SSFWT #23 Scott: Dalriadic Chronicles 46: I enjoyed your thoughts on women and fantasy fiction. I think my main curiosity was why there are no women in SSFWT. Maybe this is yet to be remedied. Wow! Your mailing comments are extensive, even to the point of giving an index to them on p. 6! Puts me to shame. The stuff about Dunsany and chess was highly interesting to me. I love chess and have some occult theories about it (64 is a highly significant occult number and corresponds to the number of squares on the chessboard; I’ll publish an article some day on my whole take on this). Have recently read a book called Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death, with many psychological theories about the game – fascinating stuff! Congratulations on Brianne’s pregnancy! Mark: Opharion 1: Welcome to SSFWT! I know of you by reputation, of course. I have only one issue of Wormwood and wish I could afford to buy more. I would like to submit, too, but the usual pressures of time and too many projects has prevented me from doing so thus far. I’m on the Machen e-list so you may see posts from me there on occasion. The article on Lewis Grassic Gibbon was fascinating; it’s always good to see obscure authors written up well, and a bibliography is useful too, so thanks.

Ben: Quill is Mightier 23: Congratulations on your continued success with studies and job placement. Similar congrats for you non-lit crit writing gigs. While Mariah Carey is not my cup of tea, I’m sure writing for All Mariah will be an enjoyable exercise for you – as doing interviews for Rhyme and Reason. I always enjoy your film and comics reviews. Gone are the days when I had time to buy and read any current comics/graphics novels, but it’s good to know something about them. Well, re The Da Vinci Code, I do differ with you – I enjoyed the novel as a page turning thriller (though with low literary values) and think that its main positive effect has been to make people think more about the idea of the Sacred Feminine. In our patriarchal society we are sadly lacking in perspective about this, and if the Da Vinci Code has re-awoken people (or turned them onto) this concept, I for one applaud it. Anyhow, I’m a sucker for books about secret codes and ciphers. The article on Bloch and Fitzgerald influences on Ellis’s American Psycho deserves to be (or should be) fleshed out to further support your deductions; interesting, but too brief, I feel. It was excellent to see an essay on WH Hodgson, one of the all-time classic weird writers, and too-little studied. You asked me if there’s a large magical arts following in Sydney. Well – too huge a question to answer in short. Pagan presence in Australia is steadily growing across the board. I personally was initiated in the OTO (Aleister Crowley’s magical organisation) and worked with them for years before moving to Wollongong. There are many more Wiccan and Druidic groups, though there are ceremonial magic-focussed orders and groups such as the OTO. When I update my website there will be plenty of information there. I would still like to see member photos made compulsory! Thanks for suggesting sending my CAS essay to Connors, I’ll have to get around to it. John Howard : Change-Winds 13: Thanks for pointing out the movie version of Lovecraft’s “The Hound”

on those Lurker Films compilations. I have not yet been able to afford buying those, but they are on my wants list, along with a doco on HPL called THE ELDRITCH INFLUENCE. Glad you like Solar Pons; I really must write more about the Pons stuff, including all Basil Copper’s updates to the genre. I didn’t really know about the variant versions of geography etc in the stories as I read all Derleth’s tales of Pons many years ago, and haven’t yet caught up with all the Copper ones. I enjoyed your look at Michael McDowell’s work. I read several of his books in the eighties and enjoyed them. Mike: Koshtra Belorn 11: Another article – an extensive one on McDowell, in the same mailing with John’s piece. An excellent overview which I really enjoyed reading. On Tolkien, I must confess my abysmal ignorance. Both my partners are devoted lovers of old JRR, but I cannot fruitfully comment. I got halfway through LOTR in high school before giving up, and have never finished the trilogy. I saw all the movies and greatly appreciated them; perhaps I’ll read the books one day. The Lovecraft CD sounds good. There is a plethora of Lovecraft audio CD’s coming out. Back in the old days one could only get things like the Caedmon recordings of certain stories, or the old Roddy McDowell album. My friend Danny gave me a burned copy of an HPL CD that features many stories I have never heard read before, including early ones like “the Beast in the Cave” etc. Glad to know you’re a Holmes aficionado. Perhaps I’ll print my “Return of the Hound” here some time – it needs some serious work before seeing print. Martin: Hyperborean Exhalations 12: Your new book acquisitions are astounding. I used to buy a lot of books, and still do get rather a lot although I am very poor. Surely you don’t read all these as you acquire them!!? Congratulations on the new job, and the apartment. I was delighted to hear of the imminent release of the Lovecraft/Barlow

correspondence, as news of this had not reached me from other sources. I still try and buy every new book about HPL, though I long gave up on collecting Mythos fiction – there’s just too damned much of it these days, and most of it not very good. And the Lovecraft/Derleth correspondence due too – excellent! (Rubs hands together in Mr Smithers fashion). I wish I’d had time to do all of your intriguing Lovecraft quiz, but studies prevented me. I enjoyed “Abe Sapien, Outsider”. I only know Hellboy from the movie, but loved it. (Which leads me to remark that I’m looking forward to Guillermo del Torro’s Pan’s Labyrinth for its Machen and Alice in Wonderland overtones, and also to his mooted At the Mountains of Madness adaptation. Now there’s a director that could film one of HPL’s greatest works in a moody, haunting and terrifying fashion).

John Mayer : Nightmayericana 2: John, a superb memoir of Karl Edward Wagner. Karl’s year’s best horror anthologies were hugely influential on me, and he was one of the dedicatees when I edited Terror Australis: Best Australian Horror in 1993. A greatly talented writer. His columns in Fantasy Newsletter were memorable for their wit and wisdom about writing craft and the genres of horror and sword and sorcery. I miss his point of view, as well as his excellent horror tales. NECRONOMICON PRESS BOOKS WANTED – LEIGH BLACKMORE If anyone has any of these for sale or trade, please let me know!! Brian Stableford – THE INNSMOUTH HERITAGE Richard F. Searight – THE BRAIN IN THE JAR: COLLECTED STORIES & POEMS ONE Ramsey Campbell – TWO OBSCURE TALES Barlow, Robert H & HP Lovecraft – THE HOARD OF THE WIZARD-BEAST AND ONE OTHER Barlow – ON LOVECRAFT AND LIFE

HP LOVECRAFT LETTERS TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN & VINCENT STARRETT Leonard Cline – THE LADY OF FROZEN DEATH & OTHER WEIRD TALES Joan C. Stanley – EX LIBRIS MISKATONICI Ramsey Campbell – TWILIGHT TALES FROM MERSEYSIDE audiocassette Jane Rice – THE SIXTH DOG Don D’Ammassa – TWISTED IMAGES Clark Ashton Smith – TALES OF ZOTHIQUE Frank Belknap Long – ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW: THREE PREVIOUSLY UNREPRINTED WEIRD TALES Brian Stableford – FABLES & FANTASIES William R. Stotler – THE FINAL DIARY ENTRY OF KEES HUIJGENS Clark Ashton Smith – THE BOOK OF HYPERBOREA Donald R Burleson – SPIDERS AND MILK audiocassette Clark Ashton Smith – LIVE FROM AUBURN: THE ELDER TAPES 11 poems read by the author Book + cassette HP LOVECRAFT LETTERS TO ROBERT BLOCH HP LOVECRAFT LETTTERS TO HENRY KUTTNER HP LOVECRAFT LETTERS RICHARD F SEARIGHT HP LOVECRAFT LETTERS TO ROBERT BLOCH SUPPLEMENT HP LOVECRAFT IN THE ARGOSY: COLLECTED CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE MUNSEY MAGAZINES Fred Chappell – THE LODGER David Langford – IRRATIONAL NUMBERS CRYPT OF CTHULHU – many issues needed, particularly after 70 LOVECRAFT STUDIES – several issues needed, esp after 41 NECROFILE – most issues needed STUDIES IN WEIRD FICTION - need all except 2, 9, 16, 21, 25. Leigh BLACKMORE

FuBar, Masque Noir, Outpost, Severed Head, Shadowplay, Shoggoth, Sirius, Tabula Rasa and www.tabula-rasa.info, Talents & Twilit Grotto. is editor of Terror Australis: Best Australian Horror (Sydney: Coronet, 1993); co-author (with Dr Van Ikin) The Eternal Yes: The Affirmations of Terry Dowling (forthcoming); author Terry Dowling: Virtuoso of the Fantastic (R’lyeh Texts, 2005); author Harlan Ellison/Terry Dowling/Jack Dann: A Bibliographic Checklist (Sydney: R’lyeh Texts, 1996); co-author (with S.T. Joshi) H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: A Bibliographical Supplement 1980-84 (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1985); author, Brian Lumley: A New Bibliography (Sydney: Dark Press, 1984; San Bernadino CA: Borgo Press, 1986).

He has contributed to various scholarly works on speculative fiction including Supernatural Literature of the World An Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.) He is a co-editor (with chief editor Benjamin J. Szumskyj) of the bi-annual journal Studies in Australian Weird Fiction. Other critical writings & interviews with leading writers in speculative fiction have appeared in Australian Horror and Fantasy Magazine, Crypt of Cthulhu, Dagon, Dayspring, E.O.D.,

His weird fiction has appeared in Agog! Fantastic Fiction, Agog! Terrific Tales, Avatar, Bold Action, Micro, Phantastique & Pulse of Darkness and online at www.ligotti.net and www.writingshow.com. His first book of fiction is Uncharted & Other Strange Excursions; in 2004 its title story was nominated for a Ditmar Award for Best Novella & received an Honourable Mention in The Year’s Best Horror & Fantasy (17th annual,) ed. Ellen Datlow et al. His weird verse has appeared in Arkham Sampler, Avallaunius, Beastly, www.chaosmagic.com, EOD, Etchings & Odysseys, New Lovecraft Collector, Shoggoth, Telmar, & www.eldritchdark.com, where he was Featured Poet of the Month Oct 2005. General poetry has appeared in Tertangala. Leigh has reviewed horror & fantasy fiction for www.AsIf.com, EOD, Galaxy Newsletter, Prohibited Matter, Science Fiction, Shoggoth, Skinned Alive & The Sydney Morning Herald. He formerly co-edited (with Glayne Louise) Mythopoeia: The Newsletter of Dymocks SF & Fantasy (1995-97) & Terror Australis: The Australian Horror & Fantasy Magazine (with Chris G.C. Sequeira & B.J. Stevens) (1987-92). He regularly contributes the zine Mantichore to the SSFWT amateur press association. He co-founded The Sydney Horror Writers & Artists Society (The Gargoyle Club) & has been NSW Correspondent for Australian SF Writers News, local representative for Horror Writers of America, & a judge on the annual George Turner Awards for best first sf novel. He is an active member of the Sydney Passengers Sherlock Holmes Society.

His non-writing pursuits include specto-situationism, mixed-media collage & high magick. He is an initiate of Ordo Templi Orientis. As founder of Aurora Australis Thelemic Temple, he regularly runs esoteric workshops in the Illawarra and with Margi Curtis co-facilitates MoonSkin coven. His published esoteric work includes Transpersonal Magick (with Margi Curtis, forthcoming); & poetry & reviews for Beastly, Crossroads, Kwa, Shadowplay, Sirius, ThAT (which he edited for seven issues) & Waratah magazines. His regular column “Arts of the Craft” (with Margi Curtis) appears in each issue of internationally distributed magazine Spellcraft. Leigh worked for over 25 years in the book trade. Currently he is a freelance manuscript assessor for various agencies and is undertaking a BA Creative Arts (specialising in Creative Writing) at the University of Wollongong. His website, The Blackmausoleum, is at http://members.optusnet.com.au/lvx nox/ .