The second half of 2010 is shaping up to be most exciting for Strange Attractor Press, all part of our planned expansion over the next year or two.
Our current publication schedule looks something like this:
Strange Attractor Journal Four: A long overdue addition to our anthology series, and probably the last in the current format, though don’t worry there will be plenty more Strange Attractor anthologies (the truth is less cryptic than it sounds)! We’re keeping the contributors’ list under wraps at the moment, but you can expect a potent brew of authors and artists presenting A-Grade high strangeness plucked from the furthest reaches of the globe, and dredged from the deepest folds of the imagination. SAJ4 should go to press in late August and be available in late September 2010.
Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London’s Lost Artist by Phil Baker. This long-awaited biography charts the rise and fall and rise again of British art’s darkest star. He was the enfant terrible of the Edwardian art scene, but by the time of his death in 1956 he was living in squalor and all but forgotten. What happened? Fascinated with mysticism and spiritualism from an early age, Spare practiced automatic drawing before the Surrealists and developed a unique system of magic. By the 1930s Spare had retreated from fashionable society, living out the second half of his life in poverty and obscurity, but he never stopped working. Holding shows in pubs, he painted local Londoners and film stars from fan magazines, as well as weirder, more personal visions. And as Spare the artist went underground, so the myth of Spare the magus began to grow… Illustrated with colour plates and b/w images, Austin Osman Spare will initially be published in a reasonably-priced collector’s hardback edition in late October.
The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology – SAP is thrilled to be publishing the first book from the team behind the celebrated Electric Sheep magazine. Taking ‘The End’ as its theme, this new anthology includes essays on the bad endings of bad girls, low-end sounds in Lynch’s films, personal and collective apocalypse in Ingmar Bergman’s work, the ending of road movies, French master Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished masterpiece Inferno, a graphic piece on The Night of the Living Dead and an image-based recollection of Decasia. The fascinating world of Nollywood is investigated through an essay on the controversial film End of the Wicked, which deals with animism and occult practices. Japanese enfant terrible Kôji Wakamatsu, nihilistic director of some of the most sexually and politically charged films of 60s Japan, gives a rare interview. Rounding it all up, emerging and established filmmakers comment on an end shot of their choice. To be published November 2010. Electric Sheep
More books will be announced as their publication dates draw nearer.
SA.co.uk 2.0
Meanwhile, later this month the Strange Attractor web site will undergo its first extreme makeover in nine years, thanks to the brilliant Ralph Cowling. The new site will integrate SAP, our new book production Studios, the Further blog as well as the Shoppe, and will drag SAP kicking and screaming into the web’s Iron Age.
SA talks for Autumn and Winter
A new season of Strange Attractor talks at Viktor Wynd’s Little Shoppe of Horrrors is being scheduled for Autumn and Winter. Speakers booked thus far include Phil Baker, Richard Barnett, Gerladine Beskin, Alex Butterworth, John Cussans, Mike Jay and Chris Josiffe. Dates and details can be found here, while we’ll be featuring the full line up on our new-improved web site.
