Posts tagged When The Stars Are Right
A Thoroughly Gnostic Foreweird, Shubby Subs, and Lovecraftian Science
012 years ago
We’ve received the Foreword (or Foreweird, as he appropriately titles it) by Jordan Stratford (author of Mechanicals, Living Gnosticism: An Ancient Way of Knowing, and A Dictionary of Western Alchemy) for Scott R Jones‘ When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality and we gotta tell ya, Migraineers, it is some erudite stuff and no mistake! Stratford describes the work as an exercise in “cryptarchaeoxenotheology”, even. Grok the following excerpt…
“… the Madness of Cthulhu is not clinical dysfunction or psychosis, but a hermeneutic suspension of the pedestrian, rational mind that is required to successfully navigate the waking world. In its place is the supra-rational, the information that comes without the need for communication, egoic disassociation, the disintermediated experience of experience. What Jones refers to here as the Black Gnosis.
If I were to tell you I actually saw a beautifully strange city emerge from the sea, and in its seeing that I gained deep insight into my own psyche, you would have reasonable grounds to demand physical evidence or else have me institutionalized. Yet if I told you I dreamt this, and because of this dream I gained these same insights, you would no doubt nod and take another sip of your coffee. In our Nietzschean age of mechanistic meaninglessness, flensed horses and droning Dawkinistas, where the machine has been scrubbed clean of any ghosts; dreams, apparently, are granted a certain pass.
You can take your head apart with this book if you like, but you will never get it back together again. Unlike the sophomoric tattoo-parlour-flash of Carroll, the lunatic-trickster Bertiaux, or the almost-brilliant Grant – not to mention the gaptoothed carny antics of LaVey, whose Aynrandian quotes are eagerly nodded along-to by Creationist tea-partiers – Jones is not so easy to dismiss.”
We agree. He really isn’t. When The Stars Are Right (with illustrations by Michael Lee Macdonald) is coming soon in paperback and ebook formats and will be available for pre-order. Keep watching this space or follow us on Twitter or Facebook for updates.
THE CONQUEROR WOMB Submissions Rolling In…
Submissions for our second annual MMP anthology are beginning to show in our inbox and so far the range of pieces is interesting indeed! For more info on how you can submit your Shub-Niggurath themed weird-smut, please consult our SUBMISSIONS page.
She Blinded Me with Eldritch Science!
We’d like to take a second to give a shout-out to Fred Lubnow, who writes the very smart and interesting Lovecraftian Science blog. Curious about the sexual reproduction of Elder Things? Ever wondered how shoggoths get it on? Fred’s got everything you ever wanted to know about the squamous biology of the Great Old Ones but were (reasonably!) afraid to ask!
‘When The Stars Are Right’ TOC Announced
013 years ago
Our author S R Jones has finalized the Table of Contents for his upcoming non-fiction work, When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality, and so this morning we present it to you, our discerning and classy Migraineers, in all its perplexing and evocative tease. With a Foreword by Jordan Stratford and interior illos by Michael Lee Macdonald, this book (which we’re producing in our usual e-formats AND the hoary old medium of *gasp* PRINT!) will offer to the reader an interpretation of Lovecraft’s Mythos not yet seen. Serious gnostic text? Crank fundamentalist screed? Psychedelic auto-ethnography? YOU DECIDE. Whatever it is, we hope and plan to have it ready by Christmas time, so you can get your festival on right!
Please pepper us with questions and/or concerns in the comments, and if you’d like to tweet about When The Stars Are Right we encourage you to use the hashtag #keepinitrlyeh And, as long as you’re on Twitter, follow @Cthulhusattva, where Jones is posting excerpts from the work as it is completed. Alright! Enough with the promotional hoo-ha! Here’s the TOC…
WHEN THE STARS ARE RIGHT:
Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality
Foreword (by Jordan Stratford)
Sunken Bells in the Deep: An Introduction
H P Lovecraft: An Acknowledgement, A Dismissal
The Deadly Light: Examining the Great Old Ones
The Prolonged of Life: Meditations on Yog-Sothoth
Telling the Audient Void: the Voice of Nyarlathotep
The Conqueror Womb: Parsing Shub-Niggurath
A Certain Sort of Men: Dagon & the Deep One Aesthetic
On Cthulhu
The Cthulhusattva Vow
A Tour of R’lyeh
The Black Gnosis
Beating Nietzsche’s Horse: Notes on the Black Gnosis and Mental Illness
Beyond the Strange Angles
Chilling in the Ghetto with the Deep Down Homies
My Own Private Necronomicon
The Wisdom in the Clay
The Unbearable Strangeness of Being: Sex and the R’lyehian
Through Sunset’s Gate: Death and the R’lyehian
Afterword: Yes, Meridian, There Is A Great Cthulhu
Grok This NEWSCLUSTER! Reviews, Previews, Artwork!
013 years ago
Folks, it’s been a while since we dropped some mad Martian Migraine Press knowledge on you, so here goes: gird your loins for a NEWSCLUSTER!
We’re told by our author SRJones that his auto-ethnographical non-fiction book, When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality, is nearly complete. “It’s reading less like a work of Lovecraftian apologetics now, and more like a wigged-out crank religious text,” he says. “Which bothered me, initially, but I’ve since decided to just go with it. Y’know, git mah crank on.” CRANK AWAY, sir! We’re looking forward to getting our editing mitts on the thing, and we’re excited by some of the early illustrations coming in from Michael Lee MacDonald, an illustrator from Victoria BC, that Jones has tapped to provide cover and interior artwork! Check out this mock-up our DesignDroid5000 slapped together on a down-cycle!
Originally we had been looking at Lovecraft’s birthday for the release of When The Stars Are Right, but, since this is going to be our first actual physical book-type consumable product (as well as our usual electronic edition) and since we’d like to do this up right (or at least as right as possible — is anything ever truly perfect? Hmm) there is a possibility that the release date may be pushed towards Halloween. Appropriate, yes? Yes. And of course, Jones’ weird musings on all things squamous and spiritual will be available for pre-order. Follow Martian Migraine Press on the twitter @MartianMigraine for updates as they happen!
Martian Migraine Press authors have been getting some truly lovely reviews lately! Here’s just a sampling…
Jordan Stratford (author of Mechanicals) on JustineG’s ORGY IN THE VALLEY OF THE LUST LARVAE
Low-brow, squelching fun. You don’t grab a book like this on literary merit, you dive headfirst into unapologetic escapism. It is unrepentant camp without resorting to self-satire (which shows admirable restraint). There’s a lot informing this – Lovecraftian subtext and J-Pop tentacle hentai, even French New Wave surrealism a la Moebius and the Métal Hurlant crowd, Laloux’s La Planète sauvage – Like a Ray Bradbury Theater rerun gone horribly, horribly wrong. It is a fever-dream of adolescent-imprinting and sexual development during the era of underground VHS cult. Deviant, imaginative, grotesque and what-the-hell-else-were-you-expecting-exactly-with-this-title. The name promises, the text delivers. It’s a three dollar bid to see how the author can top this title with her next foray into pulp depravity. Seriously, there is simply no better answer to “What are you reading?” while sitting next to someone on a train.
Calum MacIver (UK blogger at Kult Kulture) recently picked up Justine’s BLACKSTONE Erotica series and here’s some of what he had to say about that…
Red Monolith Frenzy is a superb read; fast moving, cleverly constructed and delivering both a knowledgeable Lovecraftian pastiche (honourable mentions of The Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Hidden Plateau of Leng) alongside the slippery, slimy cosmic sex that Lovecraft sublimated in most of his best work. The plot is intriguing, the writing is smooth and elegant and there are some really clever turns of phrase that help the forward momentum and at the same time deliver an intriguing off-kilter feel. The combination of bizarre perverted sex, weird supernatural elements and insane cosmic horror all work in perfect unison to make Red Monolith Frenzy a magnificently entertaining read and the perfect combination of Lovecraftian creepiness, freaky erotica and cosmic horror. All the other books in the Blackstone Erotica series are queued on my Kindle.
You can read the full review over on the Kult Kulture site here. Calum also has some nice things to say about us! Clearly, we’re happy to have him as a reader.
Finally, a discerning reader makes favourable comparisons between Nick Mamatas’ Cthulhu Senryu and our own skawt chonzz’s R’LYEH SUTRA. We’re not surprised, per se, but we have had our hair blown back a bit. Having chonzz in the bullpen here at MMP HQ has never been… easy. But reviews like this make it worth the drain on our psyches and various glands…
Exploring new ground in Mythos poetry, skawt chonzz’ avant garde verse recalls some of the more experimental and daring works from THE STARRY WISDOM: A Tribute to H P Lovecraft and Songs of the Black Wurm Gism: The Starry Wisdom Part 2 (Creation Oneiros). Like Nick Matamas’ Cthulhu Senryu, R’lyeh Sutra can be enjoyed both from a straight reading and at a higher level, reflecting on how skawt chonzz uses and refers to the Mythos – often in ways that might surprise some of the more hidebound Mythos fans!
Yes, if you’re a “hidebound Mythos fan”, Martian Migraine titles may not be for you… but if you can grok a little originality with your Old Ones, then we might hit that sweet spot in your soul.
