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FT385

I have just been reading about the Barbados moving coffins in a book today lol
 
An excellent issue , after the low quality of the last two this one was full of interesting articles, phenomenomix went right over my head, but everything else was top drawer.
 
Yea, Phenomenomix went over my head as well, can anyone put it in idiot language for me please?

I have enjoyed it so far, still a few bits and bobs to read, i tend to read it all over, meaning i do not start from the front, i am here there and everywhere.
 
Must dig them out and post a couple here.

yes please!

I remember the case from The Unexplained so it must have been one of the first fortean things I latched on to.
 
Lovely article on the Usborne book, very tempted to order a copy now.
 
The Dechmont Woods

I was thinking that but decided against it, I mean it's very childish..... I know I will get it sooner or later

Christmas is a-coming - ask for it as a present, and then you have a non-childishness get-out clause. A Santa Get-Out Claus.
 
Anyone else having trouble finding the latest issue? My usual vendor - a train station WH Smith's- doesn't have any, and I had a very thorough look for it (which I usually need to do since they seem to shelve it in a different place each month).
 
Anyone else having trouble finding the latest issue? My usual vendor - a train station WH Smith's- doesn't have any, and I had a very thorough look for it (which I usually need to do since they seem to shelve it in a different place each month).
It’s only hit the shops today so try again tomorrow but yes the WH Smith’s Hunt the FT is a bit annoying!
 
It’s only hit the shops today so try again tomorrow but yes the WH Smith’s Hunt the FT is a bit annoying!

Usually they have it on a Thursday, they're usually putting their magazines on the shelves when I'm on my way to work in the morning, but for some reason it's always in a different place: it's been in with the politics magazines, tucked in behind Nexus, in the comics section, and next to Viz over the past year.
 
Usually they have it on a Thursday, they're usually putting their magazines on the shelves when I'm on my way to work in the morning, but for some reason it's always in a different place: it's been in with the politics magazines, tucked in behind Nexus, in the comics section, and next to Viz over the past year.
I’m picking mine up tomorrow, I’ll report back if it’s actually there.
 
I'm glad to see Muriel Spark get an, albeit tangential, mention in The Haunted Generation section.

Spark's spookier stories can be disconcerting in a way which reminds me just a little of Aickman. Often overlooked within the genre - possibly because she didn't write that many ghost stories, or didn't deliberately attempt to align herself with the type - her ghost stories are well worth looking out for.
 
I'm glad to see Muriel Spark get an, albeit tangential, mention in The Haunted Generation section.

Spark's spookier stories can be disconcerting in a way which reminds me just a little of Aickman. Often overlooked within the genre - possibly because she didn't write that many ghost stories, or didn't deliberately attempt to align herself with the type - her ghost stories are well worth looking out for.

Which ones would you recommend as spooky? Memento Mori certainly has that effect.
 
Which ones would you recommend as spooky? Memento Mori certainly has that effect.

There's a collection of Muriel Spark's ghost stories - rather imaginitively titled...erm...Ghost Stories by Muriel Spark: The Girl I Left Behind, The Portobello Road and The House of the Famous Poet come to mind, and I think they are included in this edition.

The stories are somewhat predictable (but then, I think ghost stories - even the truly great ones - generally are). To my mind, it's not that they are spooky, as such - they are more in the way of somehow disconcerting; like those odd dreams that, despite not much of a malign nature happening, leave you feeling slightly anxious on waking.
 
Yea, Phenomenomix went over my head as well, can anyone put it in idiot language for me please?
.
I suspect the thing with Phenomenonix this month.... anyone who has read Pyramids by Terry Pratchett will have a head-start here; this deals with how a civilization suspiciously like Ancient Egypt came to be, how it consumed the resources of a potentially very rich state in something as expensive and labour intense as pyramid-building, and most crucially why. Pyramids sees the beginning of, er, Djelibeybi in an authoritarian-minded wannabe High Priest wandering in what was then a desert, pondering exactly how to make himself the most important person in the land, and how to get a people predisposed to scepticism to say something other than "Get stuffed!", and to join in a Great Venture. Which has himself at or pretty near the top. Not for personal aggrandisment, oh no, perish the thought, but for the Good of the People and in order to do the bidding of the Gods.

in Pyramids, Dios (the intense-minded wanderer in the desert) claims the miracle of striking the ground with his staff, to make a mighty river appear where previously there was none (Actually, it's a temporal anomaly resolving itself - the river was really there all along, but temporarily hidden three thousand years in the future and was due to reappear all on its own anyway. He just claims the credit - and the People of the Djel go along with the Great Work of building Pyramids to glorify the Gods. Who Dios makes up - but this being the Discworld, god-energy comes along to fill the shapes he creates. It all makes sense in context).

Same sort of thing here - the power-minded dreamer is there when the meteorite falls. Then the very tiny pyramid-shaped entity (you know, the one with the Eye in the Triangle) hidden within takes his, or her, opportunity.... and thus the Egyptian people are suckered into spending the next few millenia raising up the Phaoronic and Priestly class to rule over them. And spending their days dragging piles of stone around to stack up in an aestheitically pleasing and pointy sort of way.

Now go read Pratchett's Pyramids, if you have not already done so.
 
The low Information zone - a beguiling article. PB writes "Back in the good old days if you were lucky to be carrying a Kodak instamatic when you saw a UFO, the phots were relatively close...as technology improved, the LIZ got further away, but the UFO's move with the LIZ, just beyond where we could tell what they actually were, and the quality of the images remained about the same, even though the LIZ is tens of miles out. "

That's not the aliens being fiendishly cunning; it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Things further away that were beyond the power of a kodak Instamatic to resolve on film - you would not have seen them at all. nothing apparently there, therefore nothing to discuss. Photograph the same scene in the same light and weather conditions with a 11megapixel digital camera - well, the hazy ill-defined things in the Kodak's LIZ would come up with complete clarity and become IFO's; but at the same time you open up a whole new world of UFO's right at the 11mp digital's limit - things the Kodak wiuld not have noticed. Of course the LIZ moves further out with increased techological "reach". LIZ is a function of the thing doing the observing, not of the thing being observed.
 
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I suspect the thing with Phenomenonix this month.... anyone who has read Pyramids by Terry Pratchett will have a head-start here; this deals with how a civilization suspiciously like Ancient Egypt came to be, how it consumed the resources of a potentially very rich state in something as expensive and labour intense as pyramid-building, and most crucially why. Pyramids sees the beginning of, er, Djelibeybi in an authoritarian-minded wannabe High Priest wandering in what was then a desert, pondering exactly how to make himself the most important person in the land, and how to get a people predisposed to scepticism to say something other than "Get stuffed!", and to join in a Great Venture. Which has himself at or pretty near the top. Not for personal aggrandisment, oh no, perish the thought, but for the Good of the People and in order to do the bidding of the Gods.

in Pyramids, Dios (the intense-minded wanderer in the desert) claims the miracle of striking the ground with his staff, to make a mighty river appear where previously there was none (Actually, it's a temporal anomaly resolving itself - the river was really there all along, but temporarily hidden three thousand years in the future and was due to reappear all on its own anyway. He just claims the credit - and the People of the Djel go along with the Great Work of building Pyramids to glorify the Gods. Who Dios makes up - but this being the Discworld, god-energy comes along to fill the shapes he creates. It all makes sense in context).

Same sort of thing here - the power-minded dreamer is there when the meteorite falls. Then the very tiny pyramid-shaped entity (you know, the one with the Eye in the Triangle) hidden within takes his, or her, opportunity.... and thus the Egyptian people are suckered into spending the next few millenia raising up the Phaoronic and Priestly class to rule over them. And spending their days dragging piles of stone around to stack up in an aestheitically pleasing and pointy sort of way.

Now go read Pratchett's Pyramids, if you have not already done so.
Imma big TP fan lol need to read that one again, thanks, i do remember bits of it
 
The article on page 51 about the Fighting Fantasy roleplaying books: I looked at the artwork for the cover of The Citadel of Chaos and saw a link there that might interest Ryan Shirlow. Whoever designed and painted that cover - well, if they didn't also do the classic sixties and seventies cover art for Michael Moorcock's fantasy fiction such as the Elric Saga - well, I'd be very surprised. It's got to be the same artist. And of course Moorcock wrote some of the classic fantasy adventure novels dealing with themes like Law versus Chaos and the Eternal Champion fighting quests in weird places.
 
Thanks to the Fighting Fantasy article I found out Charlie Higson had written a new one last year, which piqued my interest, but the Amazon reviews are mixed, to say the least. Sounds more like that Harry Harrison Stainless Steel Rat CYOA book, which was fun, but not much of a game. Anyone read/played Higson's The Gates of Death?
 
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