Quarterly Review // May–June Wrap–Up – Jordan Casstles

 The Last Englishman – A. S. Salinas

“You’re not who you think you are. You never were. Your real name is Horatio, and you’re the world’s greatest secret agent.”

Thank God, he thought. For a minute there, he was convinced he was just some writer nobody had ever heard of.

From bloodthirsty dogfights between Spitfires and Messerschmitts to decadent garden parties at the end of the world, the life (or lives, or un-life) of Horatio Welington is truly remarkable. To his metatemporal nemesis John Constant, he is the wretched Englishman who both thwarts his schemes and enacts his own with elegant menace; to his transdimensional lover Melissa Prophet, he is both glorious champion and pathetic cuckold – but who or what truly is Horatio Wellington?

World War II flying ace?

International man of mystery?

A hapless teenager in way over his head?

Or something far more complex?

For those who love the works of Michael Moorcock (especially his Eternal Champion books and the Jerry Cornelius Quartet), this loving homage is an absolute must. 

Take a deep breath, and jump.

The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases – Jeff VanderMeer et al.

Ballistic Organ Syndrome. Clear Rice Sickness. Download Syndrome. Hsing’s Spontaneous Self-Flaying Sarcoma. Postal Carrier’s Brain Fluke Syndrome. 

These are but a few of the rare and truly bizarre diseases collected within this compendium, each one devised and donated by a variety of writers operating with the New Weird and related subgenres. Presented as the life-long work of Doctor Thackery Trajan Lambshead (who may or may not have engaged in a bargain with diabolical powers in a bid to cure the sponge-related amnesia of his mother and who definitely suffered a violent beating at the hands of surrealist Antonin Artaud), this book provides the reader with in-depth commentary on no less than 49 alien ailments for the pseudomedical dilettante to sink their teeth into.

(A personal favourite of mine is ‘Buscard’s Murrain’ (AKA ‘Wormword’), submitted by the excellent Dr China Miéville: a malignant word that, once accurately pronounced by the sufferer, gradually builds to a violent glossolalic state in which said sufferer will attempt to spread the diseased words to as large an audience as possible. For the safety of the fine readers of Threads of Ariadne, the word in question shall not be presented here.)

Masks on, hands washed, eyes open. Pay attention.

The Crime Studio – Steve Aylett

There’s nothing so degrading as being killed by a stranger. It wrecks continuity.

If you can bring to your mind’s eye a vision of Damon Runyon’s Guys and Dolls and the collected works of Bruce Sterling being thrown at full force into a seething vat of LSD, you may be able to conjure up a vague idea of exactly what sort of insanity you are in for when you open The Crime Studio. The city of Beerlight is home to a deranged menagerie of strange sinners, from the likable Joe Solitary (“a baby-faced guy with a sublime introversion and a deep self-destructive streak” named for his “love of solitary confinement, which he said really got him into himself”) and Billy Panacea (“burglar extraordinaire, known to the denizens of Beerlight as a man who could think without using his legs”) to the bloodthirsty Auto-Rhino, who is introduced to the reader as being incarcerated in maximum security for “cannibalising his fellow passengers in an elevator when it stopped for five minutes”.

If you are looking for a short and sweet collection of day-trips into the truly abnormal, The Crime Studio is the book for you. Buckle up.

Fragments from the Ludography of Chester G. Saltmarsh – Kiran Gill & Jared Sinclair

Chester G. Saltmarsh: interdimensional cartographer, heterodox theologian, and renegade game designer. Such is the manner in which Gill and Sinclair’s metafictional man of mystery is introduced to the unsuspecting reader of this truly unusual aleatoric text. For lovers of tabletop roleplaying games, this short text will provide all manner of wild and inventive idea-spaces to let your creative juices run wild within; for scholars of the form, I can think of few more effective pieces of worldbuilding conveyed in so short a time. 

The instructions and techniques provided within this pamphlet open up a myriad number of questions and trails of hypothetical inquiry for the savvy reader – for example, what sort of culture would lead to the use of the cards of the Horizon Oracle, from the Thirteen of Blossoms to the Thirty-Seven of Troubled Waters?

The answers lie between your ears. Shuffle the deck, roll the dice, brace for impact.