VICTORIAN DETECTIVE STORIES—EDITED BY MICHAEL COX

  I found there was life beyond horror and sci-fi. Although still within the main confines—film and literature. As livid and lurid, sensation fiction could not escape my interest for long, and once the tenterhooks increased, it was only a matter of choice. Mystery is still the unifying factor, whichever the strain—supernatural, detective or psychic, though permeation is a case, if not often.

  As of today, the Victorian era still beams of relevance. It is continually studied/taught as a significant fashion period, behold its over-ornamentations—nobody has done it better. On another aspect, it was the time when Edgar Allan Poe picked a pen, and literature was never the same. As chronicled by Michael Cox, Victorian Detective Stories traces the detective story from the bud to the broadly branched trunk it has become. From Auguste Dupin to Simon Carne, through Sherlock Holmes.

  Where the detective looms in a given tale, some authors prevail by ingeniously distracting the reader into seemingly founded preconceptions, by only beguiled and engineered insinuation. Some cases neither involved crime, others no detection, yet unfolded a strongly concocted mystery. With a keen and sharp eye for detail, I thought nothing could be better than a detective writer describing atmosphere—mostly brooding the narration's surroundings. Sinister a link for the detective and the ghost/gothic story. It is the mania related stories that turned up the most thrilling, the weakest being the first supernatural tale—a slight plot-hole. When binge-reading does not hurt, eyes pleading, consider "your curiosity has been raised to fever heat"—if in the company of puns from two headings.

Alternative version

 

  As the detective progressed to to capacitate mad-scienists, these one-and-thirty are what is essential for book pleasure in the drawing-room. After supper, a glass of grog, and a smoke. Better than meerschaum in the smoking-room with accompanies. And nothing is as schooling as a studious introduction.

RE: DESIGN—EXPERIMENTAL

  Goth is aesthetic. Punk is attitude. I don't wish to tie myself down. School is over, and my last project involved experimental apparel design. Any previous project was far from the blog's topic, and even as the blog has slightly changed t incorporate a few objects, the would still not cut it. (Other than being unsatisfactory. Explaining. So punk.)

 

  I made a Steampunk inspired attire. Upper torso is adorned in a leather crop-top (originally to be cap-sleeved), whose rear was fashioned into a tail-coat design. It has a bishop collar with ingrained spikes and shoulder studs. 3 on either side.

  It has a  waistband with collapsible pipe cords, half split lengthwise for ease of attachment on the newly formed flat side.

  The lower torso is a circular skirt, opening at the front, and a half-cut pipe at the hemline of the right side. It is a theme garment. Best suited as a costume. The back is overrun by a spine with spikes contrived to reptile-like protrusions. From hairline to butt.

 Materials:
Recycled leather.
Golden chains/Golden studs.
Cardboard      —Spikes. Spine.
Nylon             —Waisband. Holding plastic cords intact.
Plastic cords.
Aluminium foil —Wrapping spikes and spine edges.
Black paint     —Evening garment and material colour; exposed spine area and nylon.

NIGHT PRAYERS BY P. D. CACEK

  The room temperature drops by a dozen degrees. The occupants are either Breathers and Vampires. At times a Watcher is around. Sometimes. A side of the scare tactic – a Breather finally encountering what they couldn't prove – the other moment they experience the chills is a flesh encounter with the undead. Whichever. Equally three bites, and turning innocents. Into Fledgies. Becoming a Maker. Doing Unto Others: The First Rule of Vampirism.

  Other narrations may plant the teething plot around poetry stanzas. Night Prayer's boasts of movies' and comics'. I Broad bases. At the time where every OTT Dracula tendency was at its height. Vampire jokes that were at the stake of being sucked dry once they saw the light of day. Wryly amusing puns at their prime before being passé.

It really didn't matter - O, A, OR B ... it tasted the same

  Expressly and explicitly as Dracula spawns with everything in-your-face. Every chapter is in your face. On the right hand side. Prologue. Epilogue – literally covered, only someone forgot checking spelling and tense somewhere. Since vampires are always up against doctrine, it is still the case, to a point. Luci goes first and John sees it to the end. The very onslaught of vanity till her flesh crawls commanders the Count's disdain for mirrors. The Fledgy offers herself to finality. Ah, can't Alice facet? B.Y.O.C(laret). . . to the gory.

STATIONARY ORBIT BY PETER MACEY

  Inaccessible books are quite sizzling, and nothing comes close to one from a niche category. Checking out of a library a century-crossing hardcover for the first and maybe one of the few times IS it. It appeared anything by Peter Macey isn't easy to come across, and not just Stationary Orbit.

  The mysteries of pulsating alien frequencies awaiting solutions recall back to keen investigation. The best method to overseeing this involves creation of a branch of study–and which better way to do this than through research from a college. As this opportunity presents itself to an undergraduate at the eve of his studies, doubts are eminent on thecy of the subject – Alien signal search and demystification in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Reason enough for it to be given minor concern by - everybody else.

  Chance does have it that success comes calling. The first of contact turns out to be with a highly advanced entity. As the everybody else catches up with the big discovery, international politics aggrandize, overhauling, greed and situational appropriation. She becomes a national representative wherever possible. When the world's superpowers align their best against her, the country of the rising sun succeeds to be the long lasting cortical. Needless to mention: Japandroids is one great name.

  Everything unfolds as a light-hearted view of power efforts a state with extraterrestrial upper hand will undertake, interwoven to world war paranoia;and daily life with a background of disintegrating romance. A brink of war overrules mankind's tenure for rational stability. The extraterrestrials thus far contacted must withdraw, albeit as virtually as they came. It may have not mattered about their locus, exo-Sol or otherwise. As much as the speculation of beyond-Earth ant colonies, but animals, dolphins, make appropriate invitations.

DOPPELGANGERS XIII

  From Realism to Pop Art . . . . Le Déjeuner Sur L'herbe. Other works here, with influences that found a way into science fiction. The artwork's interesting OG inspiration.

—Edouard Manet 1862
—Alain Jacquet 1964 (diptych)

HORRIFIED (IN THE GARDEN OF THE UNEARTHLY DELIGHTS)

  Whichever congregation achieves much the herald of ripe sapience. Doom Metal is the oldster who crouches forth; where the seminal genres copulate to promulgate the eternal torch of Metal. Being there from the advent and managing to lay distanced. Be here a style that straddles high art and its limiting conformities.

  In the Garden of the Unearthly Delights features a mark between the mentioned outlines. tainting its presence with shades of either side; either a keenness on non indulgence; or a failure to make the decisive leap. Horrified counter forth with an orchestra of gloom. Forlonity is an aura that unfolds like the wings of the fallen. Elisaph's Death Doom guitars sear around an orchestra that provides a rhythm for the most part. Pulsating at its opening and closure.

  The first of dark melancholy instrumental breaks plow with non word hymns of a female vocalist. But not to sway into the opera kind, nonetheless, the only feature. Turns out the orchestra is an elastic band! Getting to Down at the Valley of the Great Encounter, anticipatory drums presage the climax—and how immense Death Doom should be about. An ambulation of instruments: From the dramatic drums; to the soaring Death Doom guitars; to the album's better growls. Taking the shape of the painting's polymorphs—well thought-out mutations—before coruscating and embodying a cross-breed itself; where an acoustic shed bleeds into a short flute composition. To play the devil's clarinet; an extended knows. This is another track that skirts with Black Metal.

  Horrified's ideas change oftenly, sometimes for the unfitting. 4 acoustics are a lot for a 39 minute record. Too many passages, where the triptych's main are 3. They even manage to teeter on raw melodic Death Metal, the old school kind, as they harken The Poetry of War.

The closing enchantment glides the sombre and solemn wake of drifting penance. The hoars: A L'enfer - la chute des damnés ; or L'ascension vers l'empyrée - le paradis portal. As the dead weight floats away, apart from the other Giger-esque cover.

SCIENCE AS THE STIGMA OF BRAVE NEW WORLD

  During the post-formative years of his career, Philip K. Dick was ensnared by what some philosophically inclined old men renounce to once they retire—religion, spending their time reading, and thinking. The antithesis of an intellectual-monitoring, senile phobic society. The Brave New World. It is hard to ignore this book had an impact on Philip K. Dick, whichever its sizableness.  Here, however, the links of the two masterpieces—Brave New World and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch—will heed another topic.

  Long gone are the viviparous days where reproduction is by piddling twos and threes. Even some animals, mammals, can do that. Bokanovskification—from Bokanovsky's Process—allows serial arrested development, genetic modification to obtain 8 to 96 similar individuals. This is one of the processes keeping the CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING busy. As busy as the Eichenwald Clinic during therapeutic seasons. The German E Therapy clinics—owned by Dr. Denkmal—almost linger on pseudo-science. His trial-and-error approaches to evolution have both yin and yang. A patient is subject to either, at their own risk—considering E Therapy opens doors for one to be personae gratae. Or devolving back to Sinanthropus.

  Future societies seem to have gotten Denkmal's work right as he becomes legendary; with evolution moving forward 100 000 years at a crack. The present society's beneficiaries  undergo evolution both physically and spiritually. E Therapy brings about growth in the cortex area—one manifests a huge frontal lobe; they practically are precogs through advancing—leading to many new and exciting concepts occurring to one, especially those of religious nature. Advantages of the therapy are foreseen,  including chitinous-type skin, rind an altered metabolism, and improved ventilation. Traits that account for the non experienced before individual thought patterns, but notably, base human tendencies seem too intrinsic for evolution.

  Had Moustapha Mond allowed the publication of A New Theory of Biology, the unsettled mind, and these ought to exist where mental cavorting has been banished, may be deconditioned  by believing purpose is some intensificaton and refining of consciousness—enlargement of knowledge. The conception of purpose challenges what happiness really is, conditioning notwithstanding.

Chemical handlers are trained in chemical tolerance.

Rocket-plane engineers are kept in constant rotation to improve their balance.

Unto the kind of conditioning an Alpha-Plus intellectual undergoes is left to the reader's guess, with subtle hints. And thus the happiest knack for slogans and hypnopaedic rhymes extends to include: All related men are equal, but some related men are more physico-chemically equal than others.

  Starting with a predestination that cleverly morphs into events leading to the protagonist's life, his new world peers are 2 years apart from the generation ahead or behind them, thanks to Podsnap's Technique—an egg ripening process. The defining factor of the genetic modification from mere imitation of nature was the Freemartins, a result of the view that fertility was a nuisance. These females lacked fertile embryos and were given sterile male-sex hormone—giving them a tendency to sprout beards.

DRAW EVEN BROWL/EVEN BOWL DRAW

Mechanical Elements—Fernand H. Léger

  Man appears unable to save himself from his erring hand by creating defects, some that affect his course greatly, even at the disposal of science, or attuning his tools, especially the sentient ones, to the machine's undertakings. Sensations are savage enough to affect subservience to the machine. Had Aldous Huxley been a music critic, the l-p's would melt in sight. The Philip K. Dick replacement iron oxide tapes could handle his . . . BRAVE NEW WORLD / LEVER DRAWN BOW / LOW REVERB WAND. Even the cubists loved strings.