John Higgs launches paid Substack option

John Higgs' Substack has until now been a free newsletter, filled with news and essays. While the free version of the newsletter will continue, John has announced he is offering paid options, too.

Readers who pay  £6 per month or £60 per year (or in American dollars, $9 a month or $85 a year) will get "The New Moon Letters," essays each new moon, plus a "Midsummer Annual," an entire book that will be mailed to you, plus the free newsletter. Founding members ($150 a year) get three copies of the annual book.

Here is a description of the newsletters for paid subscribers:

"So from January I will also start writing the New Moon Letters - new essays on all sorts of topics that will arrive every new moon. The New Moon Letters will be longer essays than have appeared in past Octannual Manuals, but still manageable in email form."

Here is what the annual books will be like:

"These Midsummer Annuals will build into a nice little collection over the coming years, and they will be quite rare, as the print run will be only a little more than the number of paid subscribers. Who knows, maybe they will worth a few quid on eBay one day? I’m aiming for each one to be around 150 pages or 50,000 words, based on my prejudice that collections of writers’ miscellany are great, but only for the first 150 pages."

Full announcement here.  

Maybe Night followup: New recording, new reading groups

 The video recording of the Maybe Night panel discussion of Finnegans Wake is now available, above. Among the folks I know from the blog are Bobby Campbell, Eric Wagner, Peter Quadrino and Oz Fritz, so I know RAW fans are well represented. Also present at the beginning of the video are Igor Belokrinitsky, Lorenzo Peyrani, Alexander Logvinenko, Amy and Richard Harte. Other folks appear later on.

Note that when you check out the official Maybe Night page, there are two new online Finnegans Wake discussion groups that are beginning. The Winter Wakeans, "the world's slowest Finnegans Wake reading group," is scheduled to do four pages each winter, from 2026 to 2234. That is not a misprint. That seems a bit slow to me, so instead I am going to participate in the Finnegans Wake 2026 Readalong. Here is some information, and here is the actual schedule. It looks like you can participate regardless if you have a physical copy of the book or an ebook.

The Maybe Night page I link to has various other links and contributions, check it out. 

Happy Maybe Night!

 

Maybe Night has arrived! Go here for all of the contributions and details! There are two new Finnegans Wake reading groups, for example, and contributions from quite a few people. Online discussion about to start as I write this. 

There is also a special Maybe Night announcement about an Illuminatus! TV series/film in development, with more details to be announced in 2026. 

Philip José Farmer reading recommendations

Philip Jose Farmer (source). 

Robert Anton Wilson and science fiction writer Philip José Farmer were fans of each other's work. See this blog post for an apparent reference to Farmer's Wold Newton in Masks of  the Illuminati; for Wilson on Farmer's Riverworld novels, and Farmer on Wilson's work, go here. 

A couple of RAW fans, Mark K. Brown and myself, are Farmer fans. So I asked him what his favorite Farmer works are.

Mark answered, "My absolute favorite is the 1st Riverworld book. I love that series, World of Tiers, the Khokarsa books, the fictional biographies."

I like the first two Riverworld books, the World of Tiers series and "Riders of the Purple Wage," his Hugo Award winning novella inspired by Joyce's Finnegans Wake. To find "Riders of the Purple Wage"  see this listing of appearances. 

For more on Farmer, see this elaborate official website.  See also the Science Fiction Encyclopedia entry.  I linked above to the Wikipedia bio. 

As with other classic authors, such as Poul Anderson, Farmer's books often go on sale cheap as Amazon Kindle editions, although I didn't notice any current compelling sales when I looked yesterday. 

Maybe Night art from RAW Semantics

 

Wanted to share the RAW Semantics artwork to promote Maybe Night. It's on Dec. 21, details here. (I made the picture as big as I could, but try clicking on it to make it bigger). 

Joseph Matheny: New art manifesto, 'Moby Dick' podcast

 The latest Joseph Matheny newsletter has quite a bit of interesting news, including the announcement of Art Is War: Fear and Loathing on the Internet, a current work in progress, "An art manifesto for our changing times." It is expected out next year, with more information coming out later in the Substack newsletter.

Also: A podcast on Moby Dick, a horror story Advent calendar some Ong's Hat bits and psychedelic mushrooms. 

Alan Moore's 'The Great When' is a fine book

Alan Moore's The Great When, both an historical novel and a fantasy novel, came out in 2024, so I am a little late in writing about it here.  But I thought it was a fine novel, so I thought I would recommend it to y'all. (The release date is for Great Britain; it actually does not come out in the U.S. until next year). 

The protagonist is one Dennis Knuckleyard, an 18-year-old orphan who lives with his mean landlady above a bookstore where they both work. Dennis comes into possession of a fictional book mentioned in an Arthur Machen story which should not really exist in the "real" world, and Dennis comes into peril as he tries to get rid of it. Dennis also comes into contact the magickal London that in some sense is more "real" than the everyday 1949 postwar London in which he lives.

While most of the book's main characters are fictional, real people also are part of the narrative, as is usual with historical novels. Austin Osman Spare, the occult artist, is one of the main characters. Smaller roles are played by folks such as Kenneth and Steffi Grant. 

I realize that many people have written about what a good writer Moore is, but this was my first encounter with his prose at book length. I discovered that he has a marvelous talent for description and for wonderful and unexpected turns of phrase. Referring to an historic old fort that had been unearthed in London, he says it was "situated here before Rome stumbled and the ages suddenly went dark." There are wonderful witty bits all through the book.

Moore also is an expert plotter and the book held my attention throughout.

The Great When is the first book of a projected fantasy series; the next book, I Hear a New World, comes out on both sides of the pond in 2026. 

I thought The Great When was so good, I assumed it had at least been nominated for a literary award. As far as I can tell, it has not. No Hugo nomination, no World Fantasy Award nomination, no Booker Prize listing. So who are you going to believe, all of those guys, or me? 

Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees announced

The nominees for the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award have been announced:  James Blish, Aldous Huxley, C.S. Lewis, Adams Roberts and Charles Stross. Full announcement here.  As I've mentioned before, the connection to this blog is that this is the only literary award Illuminatus! ever received.

A mystery writer who's a RAW favorite

In the interview which is included in the Hilaritas Press edition of Coincidance, Robert Anton Wilson praises the mystery writer John Dickson Carr, noting that Carr lacks the "literary values of Chandler or Dashiell Hammett" but is good at puzzles. "But I don't think one always wants literarature; one wants to relax sometimes," RAW says, declaring he has "read almost all of John Dickson Carr's books." 

Brian Dean remarked on RAW's comments in a recent Bluesky post, asking, "Any recommendations for his novels?"

As it happens,  when I saw's Brian's post, I was reading The Crooked Hinge, a novel featuring Carr's best-known detective, Gideon Fell. I thought it was a good read, and the introduction by Charles Todd says the book is a "good place to start" in reading Carr.  The Wikipedia article on John Dickson Carr says that The Hollow Man is usually considered Carr's masterpiece. I would guess that most of the Gideon Fell books are worth reading. 

In an earlier post, I noted that RAW had recommended The Crooked Hinge in Sex, Drugs and Magick: "Before dropping witchcraft and the solanaceae drugs, it is worth mentioning that John Dickson Carr has written a detective thriller, called The Crooked Hinge, revolving around a revival of witchcraft in which the members drink belladonna and imagine they are flying around on broomsticks or copulating with demons. Carr cooked this plot up before the current occult revival -- his book was published in 1937! It's still reprinted frequently in paperback and is worth your time. The surprise ending is a lulu." 

 

Maybe Night is one week away

 

I just wanted to remind everyone that Maybe Night,  the celebration of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake organized by Bobby Campbell, is now a week away.

Full details here. The deadline for submitting material to Bobby is tomorrow. 

Jesse Walker's movie picks

At the end of every year, film buff Jesse Walker lists the best movies of ten years ago, 20 years ago, etc. He's resumed this year with 2015 and 2005 so far. 

Jesse's list includes TV series, and his 2015 list is topped by The Americans, one of my all-time favorite TV series, along with Twin Peaks and Devs. 

How Steve Jackson's 'Illuminati' game came about

Above is the excerpt from an interview in Mondo 2000 posted on Bluesky, here for your convenience is my transcript:

M2: What are some of the other games in the SJ Games line?

SJ: Well, of course therer's Illuminati.

M2: How did that come about? Where you a fan of the Illuminatus Trilogy?

SJ: Oh yes! That came about when Dave Martin [the guy who did the cover art for the game] and I were drinking wine and talking about life, the universe and everything.

M2: One of my favorite drinking conversations!

SJ: Right. Anyway, the subject got around to how you could make a game out of the Shea and Wilson books. I didn't think you could do a game based on the actual characters and events ... what with yellow submarines, Discordians and a giant octopus running all over the place. It would be too tough. A few days later, I was driving someplace when it occurred to me that you could build it all around a deck of cards. After I got the car under control ....

M2: (Laughs)

SJ. No really! I sat there in the front seat and started taking notes. I realized that rather than trying to use the world that Shea and Wilson had envisioned, I would go back to their source material.

M2: You mean basic fear and paranoia?

SJ: Yeah, right. No, I mean the Principia Discordia. Did you know that it actually exists?

M2: Oh, yes.

SJ: A lot of people don't. Anyway, we decided to focus just on the conspiracy theory aspects of Illuminatus. After that the creation of the game became absolutely simple.

With Mr. Jackson's permission, my new Robert Shea book has a short piece that Shea wrote for the Illuminati game. 

 

Another good one gone: Arthur Hlavaty has died

Arthur D. Hlavaty at Lunacon 45 in 2002. (Mark Olson photo via Fancyclopedia 3). 

I am sorry to have to report that prominent science fiction fan Arthur Hlavaty, 83, has died. Here is the announcement from Bernadette Bosky on Facebook.   And also here is Kevin Maroney on Bluesky.   The death also has been announced on File 770 (seventh item).  Writer Jo Walton has posted a new poem, "On the death of Arthur Hlavaty and Sophie Kinsella."

Arthur was a twelve time nominee for the Hugo Award for best fan writer. He published many fanzines and also was a prominent blogger. This article at the Fancyclopedia lists much of his fannish activity and you can follow the links to online versions of  his zines. 

Arthur founded The Golden APA, which counted both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea as members. He often wrote about how Illuminatus! had influenced him. His support of this blog was much appreciated. 

When Arthur had to post about an obituary on his blog, his headline would be, "Another Good One Gone." Hence my own headline.