Mantichore 5, No 4 (Whole Number 19).

****Edited by Leigh Blackmore

for the SSWFT (Oct 31, 2010/39th mailing), &
Esoteric Order of Dagon (Oct 31, 2010/
152nd mailing) Amateur Press Associations.
***78 Rowland Ave, Wollongong, NSW 2500.
Australia.***
 (though didn’t get to spend any actual time
MANTICHORE 19
19 with him apart from having books signed) and Robert
Leigh Blackmore Silverberg and his wife Karen Haber (likewise), as well
Contact lvxnox@gmail.com as locals like editor/writer Paul Collins. Mostly, I
Official Website: Blackmausoleum –
enjoyed spending time with local horror fans whom I
http://members.optusnet.com.au/lvxnox/
Latest SSWFT news at: http://sswftapa.blogspot.com/ hadn’t seen for too long – Steve Paulsen and Aaron
LB at Australian Horror Writers Association: Sterns. There were a couple of occasions through the
http://www.australianhorror.com/member_pages.php?page=86 very busy con where Margi and I got to hang out with
LB’s library : http://www.librarything.com/profile/666777
them over coffee. Danny Lovecraft was also there and
we managed to promote the new printing of my poetry
Contents This Issue
volume Spores from Sharnoth & Other Madnesses quite
Mantic Notes……………….………………..2 well – a dealer called Of Science and Swords took copies
Re: Russian Lovecraft translations………..4 of all Danny’s publications for his table.
The only panel in which I participated was
called “In Search of the Necronomicon”. It went really
Left: Leigh well.
Blackmore & Unfortunately
Margi Curtis at American
Aussiecon. scholar Faye
Photo: Danny Ringel was
Lovecraft unable to attend
the con as she
had injured her
elbow. Some
reports of the
Mantic Notes
panel from the points of view of others can be found on
(Pronunciation:'man-tik. Etymology: Greek mantikos, from mantis: of,
relating to the faculty of divination; prophetic). the web at:
http://joffrehorlor.com/Articles/AussieCon4/01_DayOn
This issue’s cover is an old piece by Kurt Stone, e.php and also at:
(involved in Terror Australis magazine years ago(. http://taliehelene.livejournal.com/195944.html.
Never been published elsewhere to my knowledge.
Thanks Kurt!//Most of my time for several months has
involved editing Midnight Echo 5 for the Australian
Horror Writers Association. Somewhat delayed from
its October release date due to the intervening World
SF Convention in Melbourne (Aussiecon 4), the ME
issue should be out late November or early December.
//Aussiecon 4 was quite an experience. I haven’t had
much time blog about it, though my brief report about
meeting critic John Clute here:
http://sswftapa.blogspot.com/2010/10/i-meet-one-of-
my-critical-heroes-at.html. Margi and I both enjoyed
the con, but saw little of Melbourne outside of the con Below, L-R: Talie Helene, Danny Lovecraft,
itself. We did have dinner one night with some of our Leigh Blackmore. (Chuck McKenzie had already run
Reclaiming witch friends who live there. My main away…)(Photo: Margi Curtis)
experiences in meeting admired authors included
meeting Charles Stross (who turned out extremely odd
in person). I also met John Clute, as mentioned – a
definite highlight
– and China
Mieville
Left:An
overawed Leigh
Blackmore with
critic John Clute
in Melbourne.
 Significantly, at Aussiecon I was elected the
new President of the Australian Horror Writers
Association. In that capacity I got to chat to Rocky
Wood, fellow Australian writer who is now President
of the Horror Writers Association based in the USA;
this should prove a fruitful contact. Being the new Pres
of AHWA is involving me in lots of duties of
reorganising the way the committee functions. I hope I
can help grow the association in productive ways for
Australian writers.//I also met Peter Watts, who won
the Hugo Award while at the con. It was a particular
pleasure, for it was no less than he who wrote of my
novella “Uncharted” – “Blew me away! The story gets
kudos for prose style alone!” //The Nightmare Ball,
organised by Kyla Ward, was a great part of the con.
Some pics from it can be seen here:
http://garykemblenews.blogspot.com/2010/09/in-
pictures-nightmare-ball.html
Left: Leigh
Blackmore with
songwriter,
guitarist & this project and
producer Todd
Rundgren in
Sydney.
(Photo: Danny
Lovecraft)
In October I got to witness a dream-of-a
lifetime live concert from Todd Rundgren, the
legendary performer whose music I have loved for
thirty-five years, at the Basement in Sydney. I was with
Margi and Graham, and Danny Lovecraft also
attended. Won’t waste space on it here, but you can
check here for my review of the brilliant gig:
http://sswftapa.blogspot.com/2010/10/todd-rundgren-
is-still-officially-godd.html//
Radio 2SER in Sydney interviewed me, and
featured writer Kyla Ward (reading from one of her
stories from the massive new Australian horror
anthology Macabre), during October. I was suffering a
horrendous ‘flu when I did the phone interview, but it
came reasonably OK. You can listen to the podcast by
going here: http://finaldraft.podomatic.com/entry/2010-
10-18T22_33_00-07_00. My bit comes around the 5:00
min mark.
My Holmesian horror story “The Arcana of
Death” was not accepted for Gaslight Arcanum, to my
disappointment. (That of my colleague Chris Sequeira,
who had also been in a previous volume of the series,
was also not accepted). So that tale is looking for a new
home…//My collaborative poem with Richard L.
Tierney, “Twilight of the Mage”, will be in Midnight
Echo 5. I will also have a poem, “The Golden Goblet”,
in STJ’s new journal, Weird Fiction Annual No 1, due out
later this year from Centipede Press. //I supplied
Robert Bloch’s daughter with some recordings of her
father which she had not heard. That was a big thrill!
Will Hart (www.cthulhuwho.com) has also been
putting up a plethora of Bloch and Leiber audio files
from various conventions. Check ‘em out if you haven’t
already!//Due to my need to finish editing Midnight
Echo, I’m going to again beg off providing interesting
original material in this issue. Instead, I’m reproducing
some correspondence I had back in 1993 with Kubin
Literary Agency, who helped produce various
translations of Lovecraft into Russian around that time.
The items listed in the bibliography supplied by Fiodor
Eremeyev are detailed in STJ’s H.P. Lovecraft: A
Comprehensive Bibliography in the Russian translations
section which starts at p. 276, though not with the
Cyrillic alphabet. It may interest some hardcore HPL
fans to see this correspondence, with its Cyrillic
spellings of the Russian Lovecraft titles. // I believe
Graeme Phillips’ special issue devoted to Australian
writer and Lovecraftian Vol Molesworth will be out
shortly. James Doig and I lent Graeme assistance with
it should be
quite a large
number of
Cyaegha.
The
cartoon left is
by Phillip
Cornell, drawn
many years ago
for Terror
Australis
magazine but from memory, not actually used there.
The cartoon above was drawn by Alex
Macdonald, lead singer of Surprise, a band with
whom my old 1980’s band Worm Technology often
used to gig. He drew it after concluding from my
story “The Infestation” that all my horror writing was
about physically repulsive occurrences!