All 41 Plates From Evelyn Waugh’s Victorian Blood Book, Durenstein! – Among the papers left behind by the English writer Evelyn Waugh (8 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) is a so-called Victorian Blood Book. This large rectangular decoupage scrapbook of 41 plates bound and wrapped in marble endpapers is remarkable, strange and unsettling, with echoes of illuminated medieval manuscripts and Rosicrucianism. – The book’s decoupage (paper and card stuck on the page) was created from hundreds of engravings, many from collections of etchings by the writer William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) and other early nineteenth-century books –> https://flashbak.com/evelyn-waugh-victorian-blood-book-durenstein...

The Minox Files: The Spy Camera Photos – Mark van den Brink harnessed the quality of the Cold War Minox camera – “I like the timelessness of the photos. Of course, I am a bit of a dreamer and somewhat poetic. Distance and proximity are also what my photos are about” – Mark van den Brink –> https://flashbak.com/the-minox-files-the-spy-camera-photos-476134/

The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part I: Don Wollheim, Edwin L. Arnold, and Otis Adelbert Kline –> https://www.blackgate.com/2025/06/10/the-fundamentals-of-sword-pl...

WHEEL OF TIME TV series cancelled after three seasons –> https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2025/05/wheel-of-time-tv-series-...

By Crom: It’s Conan…I Mean, Starr the Slayer! – Just for fun, Roy Thomas had written a sword and sorcery story, and he had Barry (not yet ‘Windsor’) Smith draw it. Starr the Slayer was a very Conan-esque barbarian. In the story, he was the creation of Len Carson (named after Conan pastiche writer, Lin Carter), who dreamed his plots. But mentally exhausted from this, Carson wanted to kill off his meal ticket. Starr somehow travels to Carson’s time and kills the writer for attempting to dispose of him. –> https://www.blackgate.com/2025/06/09/513396/

Arent van Bolten’s Grotesques – Very little is known about the Dutch artist Arent van Bolten. We do know he was born at Zwolle ca. 1573 and was actually a silversmith by profession. His artistic output ranged from grotesque figures and monsters, to figural scenes from the Bible and mythology. –> https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/arent-van-bolten-s-grot...

“Togetherness,” by Thomas Pynchon – was published in the vol. 16, no. 12 issue of Aerospace Safety in December 1960. The byline reads “Thomas H. Pynchon” (for Huggles, presumably). –> https://biblioklept.org/2025/06/10/togetherness-thomas-pynchon-3/

Algernon Blackwood’s “Playing Catch” – appeared in the 1924 collection Tongues of Fire and Other Sketches. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize the story for HILOBROW’s readers. –> https://www.hilobrow.com/2025/06/13/playing-catch-2/

W. Somerset Maugham’s The Magician – The villain of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1908 novel The Magician was inspired by Aleister Crowley although the story itself is pure fiction. Maugham had met Crowley and while he disapproved of him and considered him to be a charlatan he was strangely fascinated by the notorious occultist. And while many of the extraordinary tales Crowley told about himself were untrue Maugham had to admit that they were not all untrue. Crowley was a remarkable man. It was obvious to Maugham that he was a perfect subject for a novel. –> https://vintagepopfictions.blogspot.com/2025/06/w-somerset-maugha...

The Girl Green as Elderflower – one of the oddest novels I have encountered in years. And I do not mean the term "oddest" to be a putdown. Rather, it's a bit of an attraction, for how often does one encounter a book, a personal vision, that is completely unexpected to the reader at almost every turn? – The author, Randolph Stow (1935-2010), was born and raised in western Australia. He wrote poetry and novels, settling in the 1960s for over a decade in Suffolk, England, where his ancestors had lived. During this time he wrote The Girl Green as Elderflower, which takes inspiration from many elements in Stowe's own life. –> https://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-girl-green-as-elder...

Birthday — Dorothea Tanning –> https://biblioklept.org/2025/06/07/birthday-dorothea-tanning-4/

The art of Martin Monnickendam, 1874–1943 –> https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/06/02/the-art-of-ma...

Saint Christopher (Detail) — Otto Dix –> https://biblioklept.org/2025/06/06/saint-christopher-detail-otto-dix/

George Wightwick’s The Palace of Architecture – In 1840, British architect George Wightwick published a world history of architecture in the Romantic mode, inviting readers to enter a vast garden where Buddhist iconography rubs shoulders with Greek temples and Egyptian pyramids gaze upon Gothic cathedrals. His intended audience? Idle women. Matthew Mullane revisits this visionary but ultimately unpopular text, revealing the legacy of attempts to gatekeep the realms of imagination and fantasy pertaining to the built environment. –> https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/imagining-an-idle-countess/

Charles Davy’s Conjectural Observations on the Origin and Progress of Alphabetic Writing (1772) –> https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/conjectural-observations/

14 Amazing Land Art Creations by Jon Foreman You Have to See –> https://streetartutopia.com/2025/06/14/jon-foreman-land-art-uk/

The Monsters of the Hyborian Age 16: The Hundred-Headed Thing – Not all the L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter Conan tales are masterpieces. “The Castle of Terror” is such a tale. It is little more than Conan watching a band of Stygian slavers get pulled apart by a Lovecraftian horror. I suspect it was largely written by Lin Carter. It has the hashmarks of one of his Lovecraft pastiches. –> https://gwthomas.org/the-monsters-of-the-hyborian-age-16-the-hund...

William I. Goldman’s Secret Portraits from an 1800s Pennsylvania Brothel –> https://cvltnation.com/william-goldman-secret-portraits-1800s-brothel/

Ο Ιστός των Καταπραϋντικών Ψεμμάτων – Ένα μάθημα από την εμπειρία της ανθρωπότητας είναι ότι όλες οι προηγούμενες γενιές έζησαν «ενδιαφέρουσες εποχές». Η λαϊκή αμνησία θέλει να το ξεχνάει αυτό- γι’ αυτό και νομίζουμε ότι οι κακοτοπιές των ημερών μας είναι πρωτοφανείς. Τούτου λεχθέντος, φαίνεται ότι απομακρυνόμαστε από το καστ του παρελθόντος με τρόπο που καταρρίπτει τα πρότυπα. –> https://terrapapers.com/istos-ton-kataprayntikon-psemmaton/

Sword & Sorcery Books From Pinnacle Books –> https://gwthomas.org/sword-sorcery-books-from-pinnacle-books/

Strings Attached: Helen Haiman Joseph’s A Book of Marionettes (1920) –> https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/book-of-marionettes/

Off with Their Heads: Illustrations of Blemmyes (ca. 1175–1724) – Before we “lost our cool”, we “lost our heads”. The latter idiom dates back to the eighteenth century, but the literal phrase from which it stems (read: decapitation) was in use since at least the time of Chaucer. Long before English existed as a language, however, a headless tribe was thought to roam the distant reaches of the world. They were known variously as Blemmyes or Akephaloi, and later discovered again in the New World as Ewaipanoma. It wasn’t that this species lacked a face. The eyes, nose, and mouth were all present on their chest. Where the brain supposedly resided. . . well that’s lost to history. The earliest known reference to headless men comes from the Greek historian Herodotus, during a discussion of the eastern region of Libya in the fourth century BCE. “In that country are the huge snakes, and the elephants and bears and asps, the horned asses, the dog-headed men and the headless that have their eyes in their breasts, as the Libyans say”. Pliny the Elder offered a parallel account in his Natural History, describing a people who “have no heads, their mouths and eyes being seated in their breasts”. –> https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/blemmyes/

Underwater “Lost City” May Hold the Key To Understanding How Life on Earth Began – Deep in the ocean, near an underwater mountain in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, lie a series of carbonate “towers” that rise from the inky depths to create a jagged landscape. With only the light of remote-operated vehicles sent to examine the site, these structures appear eerie and ghostly. The various towers clustered together give them an urban feel, leading scientists to call this natural wonder the Lost City. –> https://mymodernmet.com/lost-city-hydrothermal-field/?

MISSED MASTERPIECES: HINTS OF SOMETHING GREAT IN “ABSENTIA” –> https://rue-morgue.com/missed-masterpieces-hints-of-something-gre...

Trailer for ALIEN: EARTH released – The series is set in the year 2120 and opens on Neverland Research Island on Earth (this is two years before the Nostromo visits the planet LV-426 in the original movie Alien), where human-synthetic interfaces are being developed – Alien: Earth is written and showrun by Noah Hawley, the much-feted creative force behind the TV series Fargo and Legion. It stars Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adrian Edmondson and Max Rinehart, amongst many others. Ridley Scott is producing. –> https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2025/06/trailer-for-alien-earth-...

Η Φαντασία ως το Κέντρο της Πραγματικότητας – Η φαντασία δεν είναι, όπως η ετυμολογία αφήνει να εννοηθεί, η ικανότητα σχηματισμού εικόνων της πραγματικότητας. Είναι η ικανότητα σχηματισμού εικόνων που ξεπερνάνε την πραγματικότητα, που τραγουδούν την πραγματικότητα. Είναι μια ικανότητα «υπερανθρωπότητας». – «Η φαντασία δεν είναι μια κατάσταση. Είναι η ίδια η ανθρώπινη ύπαρξη» William Blake –> https://terrapapers.com/fantasia-os-to-kentro-tis-pragmatikotitas/

Book Review: 'Maske: Thaery' by Jack Vance –> https://theporporbooksblog.blogspot.com/2025/06/book-review-maske...

Η Μίμηση και ο Φόβος – Είναι πλέον αδιαμφισβήτητο ότι ο φόβος αποτελεί έναν από τους βασικότερους παράγοντες που εμποδίζουν την ελεύθερη πρωτοβουλία. Πίσω από την οικονομική δυσχέρεια εκατομμυρίων ανθρώπων, κρύβεται —χωρίς καμία υπερβολή— ο παραλυτικός μηχανισμός του φόβου. –> https://terrapapers.com/mimisi-kai-fovos/

Jean Cocteau: Autoportrait d’un inconnu – The title translates as “self-portrait of an unknown” although “unknown man” would be better English. The phrase is a curious one to apply to Jean Cocteau, an artist (or “poet”, to use his favourite epithet) who was known for his creative work from a very early age. Director Edgardo Cozarinsky uses Cocteau’s own narration from a collection of documentary films to chart the evolution of a polymathic public life, following the progress of Cocteau’s art from the poetry of his youth (which the older man deemed “absurd”), to his involvement with the Ballets Russes, his films and plays, and his later flourishing as a painter of murals like those in the Chapelle Saint-Pierre de Villefranche-sur-Mer. –> https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/06/11/jean-cocteau-...

Journey to the Fourth Dimension: 1920s – Fourth Dimensional fiction tends to fall into certain types of tales. The most common is the traveler who like the Time Traveler, goes beyond our world to find an universe that sits beside our own. These wayfarers usually get attacked by the locals. In a related types of tale, the machine brings the dimensional monster to the earthly lab before it goes on a rampage. –> https://gwthomas.org/journey-to-the-fourth-dimension-1920s/

Deep time and the revenant – In enigmatic burials, crafted to bind the bodies within, we can see how truly ancient our fears of the undead must be –> https://aeon.co/essays/how-ancient-are-our-fears-not-simply-of-dy...

Τα καλύτερα Δωρεάν και Open Source προγράμματα (ανά κατηγορία) –> https://www.dwrean.net/2025/06/ta-kalitera-dorean-kai-open-source...

Η Ελευθερία Πάνω από τα Χρήματα – Η ελευθερία δεν μετριέται σε λογαριασμούς. Μετριέται στην ικανότητά σου να καλύψεις βασικές ανάγκες — χωρίς μεσολαβητές. –> https://terrapapers.com/eleftheria-pano-apo-ta-chrimata/

Post-Punk Monk – Searching for divinity in records from '78-'85 or so… –> https://postpunkmonk.com/ – ABOUT THE MONK –> https://postpunkmonk.com/about/

Cloudflare Warns EU About Extensive Piracy Overblocking, Calls for Safeguards – American Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare is pushing back against increasing calls to broaden pirate site blocking in the EU. The company notes that since similar efforts in Spain and Italy have resulted in extensive collateral damage, there's a need for more transparency and constructive collaboration on the anti-piracy front. Cloudflare also wants rightsholders to pay for their overblocking mistakes. –> https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-warns-eu-about-extensive-pira...

"A logo is a kaleidoscope of meaning": why logos are more important than you think – Brand Impact Awards judge reveals why logos are more than just graphic marks. –> https://www.creativebloq.com/design/branding/a-logo-is-a-kaleidos...

Here Are the Top 5 Most Valuable Paintings as of 2025 –> https://mymodernmet.com/most-valuable-paintings-2025/

How 80’s Punks Found Metal… And Changed it Forever! –> https://cvltnation.com/how-80s-punks-found-metal-and-changed-it-f...

The Suspension Bridges of Disbelief –> https://www.blackgate.com/2025/05/22/the-suspension-bridges-of-di...