Cyclonopedia

[Mr. Tea]

Had quite a cool moment the other day. Readers of Cyclo may remember the curious cursive figure Negarestani calls the "Druj letterature" - a symbol apparently standing for Druj, the "dead mother of abominations" - where should it turn up but at the end of a line of Arabic script on a mediaeval icon of the Virgin and Child in Beirut's orthodox Cathedral of St. George?

 

[Zekk]

So... with the recent Middle East uprisings, what is the Oil trying to convey? Simply another strategy to level cities into desert sand?

 

[jenks]

...just saw a $2.99 copy of this on the cut-out 'Bargain Books' display at local (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) retailer McNally Robinsons. A single copy, sandwiched between teetering piles of Paula Coehlo (!) and Dennis Johnson. Makes a sort of bizarre sense.

Well, mine is still sitting, unsold, on the shelf of the local Oxfam £1.99.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well, mine is still sitting, unsold, on the shelf of the local Oxfam £1.99.

OK, you did't dig the book - we get it already.

 

[mistersloane]

I had the pleasure of seeing Reza do a talk - on internet linkup, cos he was denied a visa to the UK - recently, and it was heartening to see that, even at 4 o'clock in the morning (his time) he treated us to such a startlingly freeform display of the inner workings of his brain that I was laughing.
Readers, he speaks how he writes. It's great.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Wow, that's pretty cool. Shame he wasn't allowed in, I mean how much of a 'risk' can he represent to national security? :slanted: Then again, maybe some senior Home Office bod has read the book...

 

[Mr. Tea]

So I was in Stoke Newington last weekend for a mate's birthday and as we walked past a bookshop, I looked in the window display and saw a row of children's non-fiction books from the same publisher. The titles were so I good I can still recall them:

• MUMMIES
• THE MIDDLE EAST
• ARCHAELOLOGY
• SPIES
• EPIDEMICS and PLAGUES
• COMMUNICATION - from Hieroglyphs to Hyperlinks

and I thought "Reza's arm is indeed long".

 

[Mr. Tea]

OK guys, I've written a wee something on 'Lovecraft, Cyclonopedia and Materialist Horror', which will hopefully be in print at some point. I'd be chuffed if anyone fancied having a read and letting me know what they think.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

 

[mistersloane]

OK guys, I've written a wee something on 'Lovecraft, Cyclonopedia and Materialist Horror', which will hopefully be in print at some point. I'd be chuffed if anyone fancied having a read and letting me know what they think.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

You should send this to Robin, Ollie, if you haven't already

http://www.urbanomic.com/contact.php

I'm sure he'd love to read it, he publishes Reza's stuff

 

[luka]

oh do you know him sloane? i spent a day with him and his missus once, i dragged thm around newham with a bottle of cognac and a bag of weed. i dont know if they liked it but thy were good natured about it.

 

[...]

Ha ha, well ask yourself -- did they come out with you again?

 

[...]

That's a very good essay, Tea -- I can definately see you in the CCRU orbit. (I would have thought a sense of humour disqualified you, but you can obviously turn it off when required!)

 

[Mr. Tea]

You should send this to Robin, Ollie, if you haven't already

http://www.urbanomic.com/contact.php

I'm sure he'd love to read it, he publishes Reza's stuff

Thanks for the rec! I was invited to write the piece by someone who's putting together a book of assorted 'weird' writings...not really my place to say more about it as it's not my project. I guess I could ask this Robin guy's opinions on it, though. I was just looking at the Urbanomic website actually, it says Reza's new book should be out in a couple of months.

Thanks to Craner for feedback also.

Edit: well I've sent it to Robin Urbanomic, it'd be cool to get feedback from someone who deals in this sort of theory-horror.

 

[mistersloane]

oh do you know him sloane? i spent a day with him and his missus once, i dragged thm around newham with a bottle of cognac and a bag of weed. i dont know if they liked it but thy were good natured about it.

That sounds like a lovely day. Um, don't know if I know him - we've never hung out - but met a few times now and have mutual friends and I think he's cool, and I like what he's doing. We played the launch of his Collapse journal Concept Horror thing, which was really nice to do, I enjoyed that. We were awful though, whiskey and ketamine bad combo.

 

[luka]

to be frank i dont underestand anything he does or is involved in. but h was nice and so was she. very tolerant. laughed graciously at my jokes. thats all i ask for.

 

[mistersloane]

to be frank i dont underestand anything he does or is involved in. but h was nice and so was she. very tolerant. laughed graciously at my jokes. thats all i ask for.

Speculative Realism is like Spanish for me; I understand what they're saying sometimes but can't speak it back and to speak it properly I'd have to live there, and I don't want to live there. Nice place to visit and all that.

And yeah he seems like a nice bloke. His Nick Land book that he just published is fucking gibberish at points though.

 

[luka]

land = self-aggrandising amphetamine nerd

 

[droid]

Nice work Tea. I havent read Cyclonopedia, but the Lovecraft bits were spot on.

BTW, you must have read the various S.T. Joshi bits on Lovecraft? His bio/bibliography and his edited compendiums are amongst the best bits of Lovecraft commentary I've found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._T._Joshi

 

[Mr. Tea]

Cheers droid! I've not read any Joshi, but the name crops up pretty much everywhere that HPL is mentioned online so I definitely intend to check him out at some point. Have you read Houellebeqc's Against the World, Against Life? I picked it up a few months ago, pretty good I thought (hope it doesn't look like I've cribbed off it too badly in my article...).

I also haven't forgotten your recommendation for that Lovecraftian spy fiction, in fact I've got some Amazon vouchers gathering dust so no reason not to get that too. And have you come across this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_Over_Baker_Street? Holmes/Cthulhu x-over!

 

[mistersloane]

land = self-aggrandising amphetamine nerd

That sentence produced a right 'doh' moment in me, I hadn't seen the Land/amphetamine connection until that, and given the amount I done in my time you'd think I could sniff it. You're so right. I quite like amphetamine nerds though. But it's better when you're on it with them than in hindsight.