neon_suntan

2012-12-11T08:45:00.000-08:00

Cumbrian Cthulhu

All new tales of Cumbrian horror inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's legendary Cthulhu mythos. Images and text taken from volumes one and two, on sale now from
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CumbrianCthulhu

Each volume features ten stories all edited by Lucy Collier, fully illustrated by Andy Paciorek with original cover art by Ben Powell-Jones. All writers, artists and contributors have very generously given their work and time for free, allowing all profits from book sales to be donated to the 'Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association.'

The aim is to continue accepting and publishing new Cumbrian Cthulhu fiction and making donations to LDSAMRA for many years to come.

Official website http://cumbriancthulhu.blogspot.co.uk/

Twitter http://twitter.com/CumbrianCthulhu

Music - "Lovecraftian Madness Dwell'd Deep Within the Halls of Cumbria's Cavernous Mountains"

Artist - A Bleeding Star"

Download Link - http://wtrns.fr/JEqwEVHz4lNW4le

More Info - http://soundcloud.com/a-bleeding-star

Please contact directly with questions or submissions at Cumbrian.cthulhu@gmail.com

2012-11-22T15:51:00.002-08:00

Cumbrian Cthulhu

My short story "Invisible" is published in this compilation of new horror tales of inspired by the mystical beauty of Cumbria and H.P. Lovecraft's legendary Cthulhu Mythos.

100% of sales profits from each volume produced will be donated to The Lake District Search And Mountain Rescue Association (LDSAMRA).

Buy direct from Lulu - here

Or internationally here

Amazon and Kindle links coming soon.

Find out more

2012-11-05T14:56:00.002-08:00

UPDATE 1

"Machine for all Seasons" was published in Beyond the Asylum. Available from Amazon or from the publishers direct at Lastline

"Invisible" published soon... in volume 2 of Cumbrian Cthulhu

Coming soon an excerpt from "The Skein"

The Nothing Machine

2011-08-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Nothing Machine is a remnant of the British Z+ Pinch Inertial Energy Program. A project designed to probe further the boundaries of Nuclear Fusion Technology in the hope of finding a solution to the world's future energy problems.

The experiments ran for six months before curious side-effects surrounding the Z+ Machine could be successfully quantified. After a rigorous investigation was launched by Research Councils UK (RCUK) which discovered that the experimentation had effectively torn a 2m spherical hole in space/time which ‘relaxed’ out to a three square mile vicinity due to the elastic nature of reality when the Z+ machine was turned off. The Z+ Machine was then reconfigured to create a Nothing Containment Field (NCF) and ‘suck’ back in these dispersed gaps to return the Reality Density (RD) of the surrounding area to that measured previously.

Because of its creation and stabilisation of what amounts to a pure nothing, the reconfigured Z+ Machine has been christened ‘The Nothing Machine’ by the remaining attendant Technicians.

During the early experimentation phase of the Z+ Machines operation, various unexpected and unexplainable side effects occurred to the small number of permanent Technicians who were spending the most time around the reactor. These side effects varied in severity, the worst being varying degrees of telomeric shortening which brings about the symptoms of premature aging at the cellular level. The audio frequencies drawn in by the NCF have been shown to put the condition into remission and are now being recorded, edited and refined to produce Nothing Machine Therapy Recordings which allow the Technicians to spend time away from the Machine without the symptoms returning too heavily in the medium term.

How you can help

Experiments are currently underway to establish which portions of the sound are the ones which alleviate the symptoms of telomeric shortening. As part of this, Nothing Machine Therapy Recordings (NMTR) have been created using noises captured from the Nothing Machine and arranged for maximum effect. These Therapy Recordings allow the Technicians to spend periods time away from the Nothing Machine without a return of symptoms.

To fund further research increasing the effectiveness of the recordings and to reduce the financial plight of the Technicians, they have decided to set up a fund to enable public donations and, as a reward for donation, make these recordings available to the public.

NMTR v1 can be downloaded can be purchased for a donation of £4 on

CDRs of NMTR v1 will be available soon for those wanting a physical copy.

Missing Transmission

2010-10-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

Tales from the Asylum: A Steampunk Compilation

2010-09-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

Yes it's finally here, the Steampunk Anthology with my own humble contribution... and with three glowing reviews and counting!

A short excerpt and other links coming soon!

Buy it here on Amazon.com

Or

Here on Amazon.co.uk

The Psychogeographical Commission - Patient Zero

2010-09-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

Patient Zero - new album from the Psychogeographical Commission - released Sept 27th reviewed here:- http://bit.ly/9ggKIC

Dark Age Music 1 - Forest Silence

2010-09-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

Not quite dark ambient, not quite black metal... Forest Silence

Read the bio here at Encyclopaedia Metallum

Strange 2 - The Vrillon Hijack

2010-08-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

The Vrillon Hijack was a broadcast interruption through the Hannington transmitter of the Independent Broadcasting Authority in the United Kingdom at 5:10 PM on 26 November 1977.

The transmission itself claimed to be from an extraterrestrial being.

Judge for yourself....

Strange 1 - The Vela Incident

2010-08-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia

The Vela Incident (sometimes referred to as the South Atlantic Flash) was an unidentified "double flash" of light that was detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on September 22, 1979.

In his 2006 book On the Brink, the retired C.I.A. clandestine service officer, Tyler Drumheller, wrote of his 1983–88 tour-of-duty in South Africa:

"We had operational successes, most importantly regarding Pretoria's nuclear capability. My sources collectively provided incontrovertible evidence that the apartheid government had in fact tested a nuclear bomb in the South Atlantic in 1979, and that they had developed a delivery system with assistance from the Israelis."

It may have been a nuclear detonation near one the worlds most remote places Bouvet Island, which is the tiny yellow dot in the centre of this Orthographic Projection:-

Bouvet Island was probably discovered on January 1, 1739, by Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier,

It's difficult to land except by helicopter and 90% of it is Glacier

It's about 1700 miles to the nearest human and about 2500 miles to the nearest shops.

In 1964, an abandoned boat was discovered on the island, along with various supplies;

...the boat's passengers were never found.

More Vela info from Steel Hip

Wikilinks

Vela Incident

Bouvet Island

Sacred Selections 5

2010-07-10T17:15:00.000-07:00

Available from the Locus+ office.

Sacred Selections 4

2010-07-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

From Workplace gallery Blog

Brighton Festival - Manic Organic - Thursday 15th May 2008

...Matt Stokes Sacred Selections, performed and transcribed by Paul Ayres and William Whitehead.

...Mixing up the medicine throughout in a series of mind-bending organ excursions is Sacred Selections, a brave music venture curated by Beck's Futures prize-winner Matt Stokes. Here, the high-octane break beats of rave-era Happy Hardcore and publicly selected tracks from Brighton's recent musical output are transcribed and performed live by renowned concert organists Paul Ayres and William Whitehead.

Pull out all the stops - its time to get Manic Organic!

Sacred Selections 3

2010-07-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

From Vimeo by Mot

This is a brief excerpt from Matt Stokes' 'Sacred Selections' at St. Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh. 'Sacred Selections' is a programme of Northern Soul, Happy Hardcore and Black Metal songs performed on a church organ. The song you hear here is Happy Hardcore, er, classic 'Braveheart' by Joining of the Clans, transcribed for the organ and performed by John Riley.

Sacred Selections from Mot on Vimeo.

Sacred Selections 2

2010-07-10T16:51:00.000-07:00

Copied and Pasted from Woebot

"A series of pipe organ recitals featuring experimental transcriptions of underground music"

Northern Soul

Thursday 27th April, 2006 at 7 o'clock
St Paul's Chruch, Bedford Street, Covent Garden

Music selected by: Ali Duff, Tam McClymont, and Alan Watson

Transcribed for the organ by: Andrew Macintosh (Royal College of Organists)

Performed by: Daniel Moult (St Peter's Church, Eaton Square) and William Whitehead (Royal Academy of Music)

Happy Hardcore

Thursday 4th May, 2006 at 7 o'clock

St Matthew's Church, Great Peter Street, Westminster

Music selected by: DJ Sy (Quosh Records)

Transcribed for the organ by: John Riley (St Paul's and St George's Episcopal Church, Edinburgh)

Performed by: Paul Ayres (St George's Church, Hanover Square

Black Metal

St Dominic's Priory, Southampton Road, Haverstock Hill

Friday 12th May 2006, at 8 o'clock

Music selected by: Bruno Frenguelli and Grim Reality

Transcribed for the organ by: Andrew Macintosh (Royal College of Organists)

Performed by: Andrew Macintosh (Royal College of Organists)

Matt Stokes's is one of the favourites to win this year's Beck's Futures art prize at the ICA this year. His 'art' is often inspired by documenting or interpreting informal movements or 'rave' culture from an anthropological angle as a means of placing and understanding contemporary culture. His piece in the exhibition is a beautiful crafted 16mm film, 'Long After Tonight', which recreates a Northern Soul Event in a Dundee church. The religious setting and cutaways of icons seen through the swirling skirts and stylised forms of the dancers makes explicit and amplifies the 'worshipful' collective nature of such events whilst acknowledging the importance of faith and belief - however that finds expression. Three organ recitals take place as part of the 'performance' elements to his work, whereby 'dance' music (northen soul and anthem-ish rave tunes) and more bizarrely black metal are transcribed for the organ and performed in churches to lend a new but not unrelated sensibility to both the music and listening experience. These 'Sacred Selections' featuring acclaimed organists, will take place at three central London venues, on 27 april and 4 and 12 may.

Sacred Selections - 1

2010-07-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

I'm obsessed with this CD so here's the few scraps I've found on the 'net.

Alsvartr - Emperor - from Sacred Selections

2010-07-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

A Boot to the Head

2010-07-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Very silly but makes me laugh every time....

David Jason - Black magician

2010-06-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

In this very odd episode of Childrens ITV Dramarama... David Jason assisted by David Rapaport attempts to earn a black-glove (!?)

Wild Palms - 2 The Reader

2010-06-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia

...The Wild Palms Reader was published by St. Martin's Press before the series aired. It included time lines, secret letters, and character biographies. ABC, concerned that viewers might get "hopelessly lost in the tangled story line", arranged for the primer to be published. It also included writing supposedly from the “world of the series." Contributors included:

Norman Spinrad - radical sci-fi writer of Bug Jack Barron

Genesis P. Orridge - Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle

E. Howard Hunt - Nixon era scandal, writer of spy/sci-fi novels

William Gibson (who appears as himself in the series) - Poet

Brenda Laurel - Virtual reality consultant on the mini-series

Spain Rodriguez - Underground 60’s comics artist illustrates the Mimecom backstory

Hans Moravec - The science of Wild Palms, backdated to the 70’s and an email conversion between the fathers of two characters

Click here to buy it at Amazon.com

Wild Palms - 1

2010-06-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

Mostly forgotten this little mini-series suffered from comparisons to Twin Peaks, but was a very different animal constructed by Oliver Stone in one of his few forays into TV.

From Wikipedia

Wild Palms is a six-hour mini-series, which first aired in May 1993 on the ABC network in the United States. Written by Bruce Wagner, who (with Oliver Stone) was also the executive producer, Wild Palms was a sci-fi drama about the dangers of brainwashing through technology and drugs. It was based on a comic strip written by Wagner and illustrated by Julian Allen first published in 1990 in Details magazine. The mini-series starred James Belushi, Dana Delany, Robert Loggia, and Angie Dickinson. The episodes were directed by four people known more for their feature films: Kathryn Bigelow, Keith Gordon, Peter Hewitt, and Phil Joanou.

And a great summary of the comic from Dot What
The strip version of the story is that Harry Wyckoff, an entertainment lawyer, sitting in a posh Hollywood eatery, sees a fellow patron dragged outside and beaten up, ignored by everyone else. He learns of and then goes to work for the mysterious talent agency Wild Palms, which turns out to be the public face of a conspiracy called The Fathers, whose aims are never really clear. Their leader is Senator Anton Kreutzer, who had founded the popular religion Synthiotics. He had also killed Harry's father in the late 1960s, the real inventor of virtual reality. In the present, 2008, Kreuzer and friends control Church Windows, a VR television network that immerses viewers who buy the home projector and take a drug called Mimezine, in their favorite programs.

The writer of Dot What also draws some nice PKD parallels... in the full article

The Creepy Marconi Deaths?

2010-06-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

From Phoned Up and Shut Up

“You know those strange deaths of Marconi scientists? There’s been a helluva lot of those of TV technicians, but they never get into the papers. Really bizarre, really strange methods of committing suicide, you know?”

“Yeh, that book by Tony Collins an’ all that? 25 Mysterious Deaths In The Defence Industry?”

“Yeh, that’s right. Well, when I first started as a —- TV technician, they walked up to me, friendly as anything, saying, ‘Wait ’til you see what we can do with very low frequencies man! Absolutely fantastic, totally incredible!!! You’ll never believe it! It was like they were bursting to show something really big off to me, then when they found out I came from Ireland, they instantly clammed up, went funny on me, wouldn’t even tell me the time of day, ignoring me on the lift and everything. And in the 18 months since then, there’s been four or five of these mysterious deaths, like those Marconi deaths, of —- TV technicians, really weird flippin’ deaths man, never being reported in the papers. It seemed to happen every time after they were taken into some funny room and to do with some funny frequency.”

Maybe none of it's true... but read Phoned Up 'n' Shut Up in full and judge for yourself...

The Black Knight Satellite Part 5

2010-05-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

A discussion on the veracity of VG1991 [or BG1991] bautforum.com and whether it might be a Bracewell Probe*

And a Highbrow Harvard paper on VG 1991

and an image

*From Wikipedia

A Bracewell probe is a hypothetical concept for an autonomous interstellar space probe dispatched for the express purpose of communication with one or more alien civilizations. It was proposed by Ronald N. Bracewell in a 1960 paper, as an alternative to interstellar radio communication between widely separated civilizations. (Bracewell, 1960)

The Black Knight Satellite Part 4 - 1960 report

2010-05-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

From the Newsday blurb 9/1/1960: By: Bob Caro

It’s not a satellite and it’s not a meteor. Any astronomer can tell you that. And he can tell you its color and, to some extent, its speed. [There's just one thing he can't tell you - what it is. He can't even guess.] That’s the status at the moment of the ”week-long nationwide attempt to identify the mysterious REDDISH object that has been circling the earth since last Thursday.” Astronomers all over the country admit that they’re puzzled. One, Frank Judson of Chicago’s famed Adler Planetarium says ”I’ve been watching it for days and I don’t have the faintest idea what it is.”

Even taking a picture of the object hasn’t helped. [ The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. announced yesterday that a tracking camera at the Bethpage plant had photographed the object at 8:51 PM last Thursday. But, a Grumman spokesman added, "all the picture shows is a white line, so we still can't even begin to make an identification." ] The white line, difficult to detect, was barely visible even after the photo was enlarged.

Expert observers and just plain citizens have been catching glimpses of the mysterious object in Long Island, Chicago, Washington, Boston, New Haven, Chicago and points west. But the few conclusions that they are able to draw about its behavior only heightens the mystery of what it is.
Judson, who has been studying the object in conjunction with Robert L. Johnson, director of the Adler Planetarium sums up the conclusions about the thing this way:

“It’s not a meteor because it’s much too slow. And it’s not an artificial man-made satellite”…,

The Black Knight Satellite Part 3 - Sgt Clifford Stone

2010-05-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

Watch the full interview at Disclose.tv

Especially at 25 minutes in :-

[In] 2016 I think that we’re going to have to announce to the world that there’s a probe that comes very close to the Earth every 15 or 20 years. And we’ve been calling it an asteroid. It’s not an asteroid. But it actually in reality is an artificial probe. In other words, somebody else put it here.... I’m talking about BG1991. Roughly 30 meters in diameter, highly polished surface. Asteroids don’t have a highly polished surface. It took corrective course changes to avoid collision with another asteroid. That don’t happen. This one it did.

The Black Knight Satellite Part 2 - The PKD connection

2010-05-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

John Carter writing at The Excluded Middle.

In Disneyland of the Gods, John Keel writes of the Black Knight satellite. Never mind the almanac. You won't find it listed with Sputnik or Explorer. Black Knight is the name given to a radar blip discovered in 1960. This mystery satellite was found in a polar orbit, something neither the US nor the Soviets had accomplished. It was several times larger and several times heavier than anything capable of being launched with 1960 rockets. It shouldn't have been there, but it was.

If that weren't enough, ham operators began receiving odd messages from the Black Knight. One operator decoded a series of these messages as a star map. The map centered on Epsilon Boštes as seen from the earth 13,000 years ago. Remember, stars don't move very far even after 13,000 years, and Epsilon Boštes is moving towards us. Only the neighboring stars appear different after that amount of time. Was the Black Knight an alien calling card?

Perhaps the strangest effect associated with the Black Knight is the Long Delay Echo (LDE). The effect observed is that radio or television signals sent into space bounce back seconds (or even days) later, as if recorded and retransmitted by a satellite. They didn't begin with the Black Knight, but they were part of its mystery. Keel places the earliest LDEs in the 1920s. It's not in Keel's book, but in 1974 another mystery entered earth orbit. No radar saw it. No ham operator listened to it. One man contacted it- or rather, was contacted by it. That man was science fiction author Philip K. Dick.....

Read the complete article at Excluded Middle