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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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bus_error@buserror5.bsky.social · 10h ago

#WyrdWednesday From: Barley Night (Spectral Realms No. 3, Summer 2015), a dark take on agricultural rituals by Jonathan Thomas. Six collections of his weird fiction/horror stories and poetry have been published, plus a novel. All are still available in at least one format. Art credit in alt text.

Cover art titled Tunnel Fiend 6 by Rabban. A black-and-white illustration of a hand on the ground, with the rest hidden by a dark tunnel opening.From: Barley Night Priest is casting holy bones Out in front of every home. As they fall he reads the will Of the gods for good or ill. Heaven only talks to him. Barley day is always grim. Would that fate had granted we Should have a captive enemy. Have no fear, you'll be all right If you live through barley night. Have no fear, you'll be all right If you live through barley night.
bus_error@buserror5.bsky.social · 2w ago

#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.bsky.social · 2w ago

#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 This text is from Let the Patterns Break (1947), an omnibus containing all of her prior collections, plus previously unpublished or uncollected material, through 1947.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.bsky.social · 2w ago

#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.bsky.social · 2w ago

Pre-orders are open for the hardcover edition of the Clark Ashton Smith biography. www.hippocampuspress.com/clark-ashton...

The Star-Treader: A Life of Clark Ashton Smith by S. T. Joshi [LIMITED HARDCOVER] : Hippocampus Press, specializes in classic horror and science fiction

Hippocampus Press The Star-Treader: A Life of Clark Ashton Smith by S. T. Joshi [LIMITED HARDCOVER] - Limited Hardcover: 500 copies only! Prepublication discount in effect! Save $5 By S. T. Joshi Cove...

hippocampuspress.com

bus_error@buserror5.bsky.social · 3w ago

#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.bsky.social · 4w ago

#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.bsky.social · 4w ago

#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.bsky.social · last mo.

#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.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#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.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I missed this announcement in February. It's nice to see this new version being released this year. The cover art looks great. www.chaosium.com/blogjohn-sum...

John Sumrow shows his magnificently eldritch cover for the forthcoming Encyclopedia Cthuliana

Artist John Sumrow shows his magnificently eldritch cover painting for the forthcoming new edition of Daniel Harms’s Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, which will be released in the second half of 2026.

chaosium.com

bus_error@buserror5.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#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.bsky.social · 2mo ago

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.
Morgan Richter@morganrichter.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We don't usually see each other's headers. Here's mine. Quote post with yours. (Also, please consider adding my weird neo-noir thriller The Divide to your reading list. It earned lovely reviews, including a handful of highly flattering Chandler comparisons, but it never quite found its audience.)

bus_error@buserror5.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#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.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#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.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#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.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#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.
Jussi@finnfolklorist.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Lud-in-the-Mist, the capital city of the small country Dorimare, is a port at the confluence of two rivers, the Dapple and the Dawl. The Dapple has its origin beyond the Debatable Hills to the west of Lud-in-the-Mist, in Fairyland. In the days of Duke Aubrey, some centuries earlier, #BookWormSat 🧵

Cover of "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees. A surreal ship sails amidst whimsical, dreamlike scenery with floating planets, birds, and gears.
bus_error@buserror5.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#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..."