Bill’s Guest Posts at Wormwoodiana

Wormwoodiana is introduced as “a blog is devoted to fantasy, supernatural and decadent literature. It was begun by Douglas A. Anderson and Mark Valentine, and joined by friends, to present relevant news and information.”

Friday, September 29, 2023

Authors Take Sides on Spiritualism – ‘Metropolitan’ 1920 – A Guest Post by Bill Ectric

I bought this May 1920 issue of Metropolitan magazine on eBay, several years ago, in good condition . . . what caught my attention was the unrelated cover line, “Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, A. Conan Doyle, Sir Oliver Lodge, G.K. Chesterton, and Sir William Barrett talk of SPIRITUALISM: Truth or Imposture?”

I had to have it. The set-up is a classic trope: Six well-known individuals discuss the veracity of seances conducted by mediums, presented as three believers and three skeptics, with a couple of twists.

Apollinaire and The Zombie – Guest Post by Bill Ectric

The Zombie of Great Peru is a transgressive novel written in 1697 by Pierre–Corneille Blessebois, (not to be confused with Pierre Corneille, the dramatist). Newly translated into English from the original French by Doug Skinner for Black Scat Books (2015), the book is described by its publisher as “a memoir of occultism, seduction, slapstick, and humiliation, set in the racial and sexual hothouse of colonial Guadeloupe. It contains the first appearance of the word ‘zombie’ in literature.”

‘The Book Lovers’ by Steve Aylett: A Guest Review by Bill Ectric

The Book Lovers by Steve Aylett (Snowbooks, 2024) is a steampunk noir masterpiece. It’s a detective story about rare, fantastic books, human relationships, and a kidnapping.

The story unfolds in a dystopian city where the populace barely notices a planned book-burning initiative. It’s like Fahrenheit 451, or Nazi Germany, or present-day Florida. People who still read are referred to derisively as “book eaters.” They meet in out-of-the-way arcane bookstores that require secret passwords to get in.

Friday, May 9, 2025

Decadence in the Cumberland Mountains – A Guest Post by Bill Ectric

Crimes, Criminals, and Characters of the Cumberlands and Southwest Virginia (1970) by Roy L. Sturgill has a Southern Gothic feel from the first page. A murder in the year 1902 begins as a “spree” in Wise County, Virginia. One of the three defendants describes a spree as staying up all night drinking liquor, stealing a chicken from someone’s chicken coop, cooking the chicken over an open fire in the woods, and drinking more liquor. Things go wrong. One of the revelers shoots and kills the homeowner when he surprises them. The book includes excerpts from court records, trial transcripts, contemporary newspaper accounts, and verbatim last words of convicted men on scaffolds. Read More.