Steve Moore – Page 4 – { feuilleton }

Pádraig Ó Méalóid talks to Steve Moore

Author Steve Moore discusses Somnium, his occult novel for which I provided a cover illustration, with Pádraig Ó Méalóid at the Forbidden Planet site. In addition to examining his comics work and long friendship with Alan Moore, Steve also tells us something about his novel and his lunar obsession:

Without giving away too much of the plot, it’s a historical fantasy about a young man called Kit Morley in 1803 who, fleeing an impossible romance, arrives at an inn on Shooters Hill, where he’s intent on writing a story set in Elizabethan times, titled Somnium, which means ‘a dream’. In that story, a courtier named Sir Endimion Lee arrives on Shooters Hill and finds a lunar dream-palace called Somnium, where he encounters someone who appears to be a moon-goddess. Then there are various other stories embedded within these, set at various times, written in various styles and providing a number of layers, while Morley himself starts to question the nature of the world he’s living in. So it’s a fantasy, but a long way away from the sort of Tolkien-type adventure that a lot of people think of as fantasy.

As to what it’s about … myth (particularly that of the moon-goddess Selene and her mortal lover Endymion) and dream and the fluid nature of reality … lost love and redemption … the psychogeography and psychohistory of Shooters Hill, where I’ve lived all my life … about writing, and real and imaginary books … and goddesses, and Romantic Idealism. It’s poetic, and it’s very, very pagan …

Somnium, as mentioned before, is available direct from that splendid cabinet of curiosities, Strange Attractor.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Somnium by Steve Moore

Weekend links 83

In Memory by Caitlin Hackett who describes her astonishing drawings as “contemporary mythology”.

• David Lynch’s solo album, Crazy Clown Time has just been released so The Guardian last Friday let the artist/director/musician edit their G2 supplement. Xan Brooks tried to get Lynch to open up about his inspirations while elsewhere Lynch had a chat with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. Of more interest to me was news that some of the deleted sequences from Blue Velvet have been discovered. I’ve known about these for years from a feature in Video Watchdog magazine but never thought we might get to see them. Related: a mixtape by David Lynch & musical collaborator/engineer ‘Big’ Dean Hurley.

• “Book jackets these days, for reasons I won’t unpack, seem to revel, overtly, in wit, conceptual deviousness, unusual clever or droll juxtapositions – we, as a professional community, seem to have elevated the visual bon mot above all other virtues.” Peter Mendelsund in a great post about certain problems in book design, starting with the very problematic question of what to do with Nabokov’s Lolita. Related: Covering Lolita, a gallery of covers through the ages which run the gamut of bad decisions.

• “For his sins Pinocchio is not only hanged but robbed, kidnapped, stabbed, whipped, starved, jailed, punched in the head, and has his legs burned off.” Nathaniel Rich goes back to Carlo Collodi’s original Pinocchio. Disney it ain’t.

Some of Berthold Wolpe’s Faber cover designs are now available as prints from wire-frame whose Pelham/Ballard prints were mentioned here recently. Related (and worth another visit): Faber 20th century classics at Flickr.

• Technical Vocabularies – Games for May, a small collection of poems by Alan Moore & Steve Moore, is now online with authorial permission. Alan’s Beardsley pastiche on the cover is a bonus.

• Cabaret Voltaire’s Richard H. Kirk says the group’s Virgin albums will be reissued next year by Mute. A new edition of The Crackdown? Yes, please.

• “Homo Riot can only think of six or seven street artists in the world who regularly feature gay themes in their work, and he knows all of them.”

• Rub Out The Words: Letters from William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick on the language virus theory of William Burroughs.

• L’exilé de Capri: the connections between Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen and Roger Peyrefitte explored at Strange Flowers.

• Flying cars and monorails: Soviet Russia in the 1960s also had a Gerry Anderson view of the future.

• Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You.

• Baby’s On Fire (1973) by Brian Eno | Baby’s On Fire (live, 1974) by Eno & The Winkies | Baby’s On Fire (live, 1976) by 801 | Baby’s On Fire (1998) by The Venus In Furs.

Somnium by Steve Moore

Another new piece of illustration and design. Somnium is an occult novel by Steve Moore being published this month by Strange Attractor. Some readers here may know Steve’s work as a comics writer, ex-editor of Fortean Times and also the subject of Alan Moore’s recent Unearthing text and recording. I’ve not seen the book yet but it comes laden with praise from Michael Moorcock and Iain Sinclair, and features an afterword by Alan Moore:

Written in the early years of the 21st century, when the author was engaged in dream-explorations and mystical practices centred on the Greek moon-goddess Selene, Somnium is an intensely personal and highly-embroidered fictional tapestry that weaves together numerous historical and stylistic variations on the enduring myth of Selene and Endymion. Ranging through the 16th to 21st centuries, it combines mediæval, Elizabethan, Gothic and Decadent elements in a fantastic romance of rare imagination.

With its delirious and heartbroken text spiralling out from the classical myth of Endymion and the Greek lunar goddess Selene, Somnium is an extraordinary odyssey through love and loss and lunacy, illuminated by the silvery moonlight of its exquisite language.

The printed version should incorporate metallic silver ink on the title and border, something you can never quite replicate on a web image, hence the gradient on the title lettering. Somnium is available in a range of signed or unsigned editions and can be purchased direct from the Strange Attractor Shoppe.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dodgem Logic again
• Of Moons and Serpents

Dodgem Logic again

Look what the postman delivered. Well, not the peacock feather and candle, obviously… Dodgem Logic #4 is now in print and my cover design looks as splendid as I hoped, gold ink included. The bonus item for this delirious issue is the rather wonderful poster you see in the background, a Joe Brown & Alan Moore collaboration entitled Bohemia which features a burgeoning growth of Bohemians through the ages, from Sappho through to more contemporary cultural icons. Inside there’s Dick Foreman discussing psychedelia, comics from Steve Aylett, Barney Farmer, Lee Healey, Kevin O’Neill and Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie’s gorgeous paintings, Debbie Delano on how to be an openly gay school teacher, Steve Moore asking for no more war, and Mister Alan Moore giving us his personal history of science fiction. You can order it online here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dodgem Logic #4
• Dodgem Logic

Of Moons and Serpents

It’s lunar, it’s serpentine, it’s grandly thaumaturgical. Cover design by yours truly.

Via Top Shelf:

Splendid news for boys and girls, and guaranteed salvation for humanity! Messrs. Steve and Alan Moore, current proprietors of the celebrated Moon & Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels (sorcery by appointment since circa 150 AD) are presently engaged in producing a clear and practical grimoire of the occult sciences that offers endless necromantic fun for all the family. Exquisitely illuminated by a host of adepts including Kevin O’Neill, Melinda Gebbie, John Coulthart, José Villarrubia and other stellar talents (to be named shortly), this marvelous and unprecedented tome promises to provide all that the reader could conceivably need in order to commence a fulfilling new career as a diabolist.

Its contents include profusely illustrated instructional essays upon this ancient sect’s theories of magic, notably the key dissertation “Adventures in Thinking” which gives reliable advice as to how entry into the world of magic may be readily achieved. Further to this, a number of “Rainy Day” activity pages present lively and entertaining things-to-do once the magical state has been attained, including such popular pastimes as divination, etheric travel and the conjuring of a colourful multitude of sprits, deities, dead people and infernal entities from the pit, all of whom are sure to become your new best friends.

Also contained within this extravagant compendium of thaumaturgic lore is a history of magic from the last ice-age to the present day, told in a series of easy-to-absorb pictorial biographies of fifty great enchanters and complemented by a variety of picture stories depicting events ranging from the Paleolithic origins of art, magic, language and consciousness to the rib-tickling comedy exploits of Moon & Serpent founder Alexander the False Prophet (“He’s fun, he’s fake, he’s got a talking snake!”).

In addition to these manifold delights, the adventurous reader will also discover a series of helpful travel guides to mind-wrenching alien dimensions that are within comfortable walking distance, as well as profiles of the many quaint local inhabitants that one might bump into at these exotic resorts. A full range of entertainments will be provided, encompassing such diverse novelties and pursuits as a lavishly decorated decadent pulp tale of occult adventure recounted in the serial form, a full set of this sinister and deathless cult’s never-before-seen Tarot cards, a fold-out Kabalistic board game in which the first player to achieve enlightenment wins providing he or she doesn’t make a big deal about it, and even a pop-up Theatre of Marvels that serves as both a Renaissance memory theatre and a handy portable shrine for today’s multi-tasking magician on the move.

Completing this almost unimaginable treasure-trove are a matching pair of lengthy theses revealing the ultimate meaning of both the Moon and the Serpent in a manner that makes transparent the much obscured secret of magic, happiness, sex, creativity and the known Universe, while at the same time explaining why these lunar and ophidian symbols feature so prominently in the order’s peculiar name. (Manufacturer’s disclaimer: this edition does not, however, reveal why the titular cabal of magicians consider themselves to be either grand or Egyptian. Let the buyer beware.)

A colossal and audacious publishing triumph of three hundred and twenty pages, beautifully produced in the finest tradition of educational literature for young people, The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic will transform your lives, your reality, and any spare lead that you happen to have laying around into the purest and most radiant gold.

A 320-Page Super-Deluxe Hardcover, co-written by Alan Moore and Steve Moore, and illustrated by various luminaries from the comic book field.

Cover design by John Coulthart.

A 2009 RELEASE!
ISBN 978-1-60309-001-8