• In Tate Britain yesterday afternoon I finally got a proper look at Frederic Leighton’s An Athlete Wrestling with a Python (1877). It’s been part of the Tate collection for years but I never used to see it there, my only sighting being a view through a glass door into a locked gallery where the exhibits were being rearranged. I put the statue into my adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu in 1988 (see this post). Virgil Finlay also borrowed the pose for a Tarzan illustration in 1941.
• At Smithsonian magazine: See the first section of the largest-ever cosmic map, revealed in stunning detail by the Euclid space telescope.
• At The Daily Heller: Your Next Stop, The Twilight Zone. An interview with Arlen Schumer about the TV series.
• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine on Punch and the Surrealists.
• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – October 2024 at Ambientblog.
• New music: A House Where I Dream by Mattias De Craene.
• RIP Lillian Schwartz, pioneering computer animator.
• At Bandcamp: The Acid Mothers Temple Dossier.
• Where to start with Alan Garner.
• The Twilight Zone (1963) by The Ventures | The Twilight Zone (1979) by The Manhattan Transfer | Twilight Zone (1998) by Helios Creed
Nice to find out that Alan Garner is still with us. My introduction was Weirdstone of Brisingamen which I found at a used bookstore in one of these 1960s Ace paperbacks with the fantastic covers. (I went through a phase where I would buy them just for the covers until the booksellers discovered their popularity and the prices went through the roof. ) In later years apparently Garner held a low opinion of the book but many authors are naturally highly critical of their early work. Worked for me.
We have the lifesize marble version of the Leighton on permanent display in Sydney, Australia; it’s a joy.