Books

23 Skidoo: Goodbye Robert Anton Wilson

My old friend Robert Anton Wilson has died. I learned of the news from my friends Patrick Huyghe and David Pescovitz. I’m sure someplace, Bucky Fuller, Timothy Leary, Charles Fort, and Robert Anton Wilson are deciding whether it’s time to play supercheckers or Texas hold ‘em. I corresponded with Robert Anton Wilson (RAW as he sometimes was called) from the 1970s through the early 1990s, until his health and his in-and-out self-exiles moved him near-and-far from many people. In the waning years, like many, I kept in touch via friends of friends, as it were. Wilson had a universe of [...]

Harry Horse, The Ogopogo Author & Atlantis Rising Cartoonist Dies

The author of The Opopogo – My Journey with the Loch Ness Monster, Harry Horse, 46 (real name: Richard Horne), his dog Roo, other pets, and his ill wife Mandy, 39, have all died in an apparent mass suicide. The Scotsman is reporting on January 11, 2007, that Horne, his wife (multiple sclerosis saw her confined to a wheelchair at 39), and their pets were found Papil, on Burra, Scotland, on January 9, victims of an apparent assisted suicide and suicide pact. Richard Horne, better known as Harry Horse, a famed children’s book illustrator, author, and cartoonist of the bizarre [...]

Scorpions On Planes

Two incidents in one week. Two scorpions on two separate planes. The news is coming in so rapidly this week, I shared this one directly with Chad Arment’s Strange Ark, a good site for you to know about anyway. Read more fully about the scorpions on the planes, here.

Afghan Artillery and Baffling Barmanu

Jodi Magraner discusses the Barmanu and shows the drawings he had made of them from eyewitness accounts. In my modest effort to send some field guides and other books to the troops who are in harms’ way, a few shipments have gone out. Today, via a received email, I heard back from a soldier in an area known for some unknown hominoid activity and much more. Mark Langenkamp is stationed someplace in eastern Afghanistan. He writes: I got your book in the mail today! Thank you again for sending it. When I am done reading it, I will leave it [...]

New Book: The Terror

Little, Brown and Company has published, on January 8, 2007, a new novel with cryptozoological fiction as a major component of the plot. Dan Simmons’ The Terror: A Novel features a central character that is a creature, the Thing, which attacks and slowly kills off the crew members. Here’s what Publishers Weekly has to say: Hugo-winner Simmons (Olympos) brings the horrific trials and tribulations of arctic exploration vividly to life in this beautifully written historical, which injects a note of supernatural horror into the 1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for the Northwest Passage. Sir John Franklin, the leader [...]

Shadows of Existence

I posted the cover on July 21, 2006, and gave the book an honorable mention on December 12, 2006. Let me share some more thoughts I have about Matthew Bille’s Shadows of Existence. Starting with the beautiful cover by William Rebsamen, there is a hint that this book contains material you don’t find in most of the run-of-the-mill cryptozoology books. I think that is the strength of Bille’s books. He takes somewhat obscure cryptids, and gives them a platform. His books are historically significant because he does an excellent job in overviewing discoveries. What bothers me about this book is [...]

Wunderkammer

Musei Wormiani Historia, the frontispiece from the Museum Wormianum depicting Ole Worm’s 17th Century cabinet of curiosities. Boing Boing co-editor and Cryptomundo correspondent David Pescovitz wrote a wonderful piece speaking of the chambers of wonders, the cabinets of curiosities, to wit, der Wunderkammer, which was published on New Year’s Day. As Xeni Jardin notes, his response was to the question: “What are you optimistic about?” David’s essay’s wonder-filled title is “We’re Recognizing That the World Is a Wunderkammer“, and some extracts from his thoughts spell out what I consider happening at Cryptomundo, The Anomalist, Boing Boing, and similar websites. David [...]