Strange Attractor

by Mark Pilkington (Editor)

A second helping of high strangeness from the acclaimed Strange Attractor anthology series. Contents
My Travels with Münchausen Richard Burdett
In which the author deceives his friends on an adventure of the mind Enter the Jaguar Mike Jay
Digging up the ancient psychedelic temple cults of Peru's Chavínde Huantar School for Shamans JasonLouv
Our intrepid young author braves Maoist rebels and astral collapse to learn the secrets of Nepalese sorcery The Temple at the End of Time John Rowe
Jerusalem's Temple Mount and its role in all our ends Haunts of the Halifax Slasher Tim Chapman
A gentlemanly tour of the city's dark past Admiral Byrd, Atlantis & the Hollow Earth Theo Paijmans
A letter, a legend and a flight beyond the poles Under Petticoat Rule
An anonymous manuscript reveals one boy's restrictive upbringing.
Introduction by Peter Farrer & Cathy Ward An Animist Manifesto Graham Harvey
A call to arms. And antennae, branches, tentacles etc. Dr Price's Final Transmutation Guy Ogilvy
How the Royal Society found, then lost, the secrets of alchemy Life from The Golem and Homunculi Gary Lachman
The mystical origins of artificial life. Photography by Maud Larsson Robot Power, Robot Pride Ken Hollings
How the robot found its self Should they on the Use of Dead Babies Don Mader
The hidden meaning of a sinister 19th century religious print Mould Art Discovered by Doug Harvey
Beauty grows in unexpected places The Court of Lust John Branston
Waldo parapsychologist, poet, feminist, martyr Sandoz in the The Life and Art of Wilfried Sätty
John Coulthart on a lost visionary hero of the psychedelic revolution Boris Vian for Anglophones Doug Skinner
The scandalous oeuvre of the man who shocked his world Richard Jefferies and the Agitated Pool of Life
Neil Mortimer
introduces this early, apocalyptic ecologist Anagrams for Maya Deren Kevin Jackson
Artist, film maker, voodoo priestess Change in a Parallel CFRussell, Louis Culling and the Book of Changes
Steve Moore presents an eccentric history and a new I Ching Spirits of Strange Encounters of an Anglican Kind Alan Walker
How the Church of England answered The Exorcist One More Nightmare calling… the Heathen Robert J Wallis
Loki the 'pervert god', Seidr sorcery and the Left Hand Path.
Illustrations by Arik Roper and Carina Thorén Terror by the Sleeping Partner Roger Dobson
Memoirs of a hag-ridden man Folklore of Underground London Antony Clayton
What rumours lie beneath the city's streets? Cesare Thodol Mark Samuels
On brain fungus and other horrors. Illustrated by Betsy Heistand

404 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2005

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Strange Attractor Volumes of Essays (I hope to review the Third and Fourth Volumes in due course) are periodic indicators of the health of a rather peculiar and interesting culture that has emerged in London over the last decade or so. Volume 2 is from 2005.

The best way to describe this world - literary and historical with a dash of the artistic but relatively little of the musical - is not to review the 24 individual short essays in the Volume which are of variable quality although all bar one or two are still to a reasonably high standard.

Far better would be to list the subject areas in general terms and so allow you to get a sense of the world you will be entering into if you pick up this volume:-

* Literary Jokes & Horror
* Psychedelics and Anthropology with a dash of 'October Gallery' hippiness
* Parapsychology
* Cultural History (often with an Highly Esoteric Aspect)
* Alchemy & Magick
* Neo-Paganism
* By-ways of Urban History & Folklore
* Sexual Difference & Deviance in History
* Slightly Off-Centre Literary & Artistic Figures (Boris Vian, Richard Jefferies, Maya Deren)

You get the drift. A sort of antiquarianism of the mind. A cultural recovery of memes and tales just off-centre from Reason but presented in a detached and sometimes slightly sardonic way. Essays that are mostly about real settings for unreal phenomena.

No direct politics (a sort of libertarian urban leftism is sometimes implied) and little religion (one or two contributions clearly come from men of faith, albeit wearing it lightly) and the sex is so English - an observed phenomenon, even in the case of the confessional night hag experience.

The whole thing represents a mood amongst London creatives that is interested in the past, in odd people and Fortean phenomena, in the esoteric and the magical, in beliefs and strange behaviours, and all in a very English ironic, tolerant and slightly wistful way.

It is a movement that is rationally interested in the irrational. As my son put it once (I paraphrase):"I know there are no Lovecraftian horrors out there but there ought to be. Life would be so much more interesting'.

Strange Attractor rejects modernity and reason but without rancour and without ideology. It puts the crooked timber of humanity on the mantelpiece and it talks to it like a friend. There is much that is strange and much that is interesting in this volume and it is recommended.

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quality collection of writing on various offbeat and slipstream subjects.

[Hugh Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating from start to finish, amazed there were a few topics covered that I had already an interest in, seemed too much of a coincidence...