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I recommend the 1978 Bantam edition illustrated by Ian Miller. No surprise there... Miller chooses to illustrate the robot animals for this chapter.

Re: Barry Windsor-Smith in the 70s, this isn't in The Studio unfortunately. BWS did a series of Conan-related poster prints, of which this portrait of Thoth Amon is one. I've always enjoyed its incongruous appearance, the way it makes the Stygian sorcerer seem like a Hyborian antiques dealer.

www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/20...

Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craftLLMs are theft by 'absolute scum' who make life harder for writers by putting them in copyright perilwww.theregister.com

I dug out this photo for the post since it's not in any of the Savoy books: the Gruesome Twosome in 1979, photographed in the Savoy office by the actual Kevin Cummins. Dave was never that morose but the interview was partly about the ongoing police harassment of the bookshops.

New blog post: Snaps: The Studio tour, 1979

Snaps: The Studio tour, 1979I'd been hoping that Malcolm Whitehead's Snaps might be made public eventually, and here it is, a 25-minute film documenting the northern end of a British book-signing tour undertaken by three artists and their publisher in October 1979. Not only that, there's also this shorter compilation of footage that didn't make the final cut. The artists were three of the four whose work is showcased in the book known as…www.johncoulthart.com

Today's blog post is one I've been wanting to write for years but had to wait until the items it concerns were freely available. All about the unlikely intersection between these four things. Stay tuned.

Carl T. Ford's Dagon at the IA. There's a few more copies there if you search around although no sign yet of the Ligotti special. archive.org/search?query...

"...cut-out shapes and secondhand daylight..." #nowplaying

New blog post: Weekend links 841

Weekend links 841Drawing Hands (1948) by MC Escher. • New music: The World In Layers by mōshonsensu; The Rest Is My Ghost by Lawrence English; Rotostyles by Julien Ash & M.Nomized. • At Public Domain Review: “The Persian Mâr-Nâmeh or, The Book for Taking Omens from Snakes” (1892). • At Little White Lies: Sam Moore writes in praise of Hiroshi Teshigahara, "surveyor of the abyss".www.johncoulthart.com

#nowplaying

#nowplaying Always preferred these mixes over the later ones, especially Ommadawn, but that's because they were the ones I'm most used to. A friend at school with a lot more pocket money than me had the original vinyl box.

Big thanks to @nicholasroyle.bsky.social for today's delivery! (No, you hadn't already sent me a copy.)

Last night's Zatoichi was ZATOICHI GOES TO THE FIRE FESTIVAL, film no. 21 in the franchise. Made in 1970 so there's a little more blood and even nudity by this point. Poster art shows a set-piece scene where Ichi is ambushed in a bathhouse by sword-wielding yakuza assassins.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: The Complete BBC Radio Full-Cast Dramatisation. "Starring Ian Holm as Frodo, Michael Hordern as Gandalf, John Le Mesurier as Bilbo, Bill Nighy as Sam, and Robert Stephens as Aragorn...dramatised by Brian Sibley and Michael Bakewell." burningshed.com/jrrtolkien_t...

In today's post.

Aye.

New blog post: Leonor Fini, a film by Yvan Butler

Leonor Fini, a film by Yvan ButlerAs an artist, Leonor Fini has never received as much attention as her contemporary and near namesake Leonora Carrington but this didn't stop film-makers calling at Fini's door in later life. The best of the ones I've seen to date (and probably the best of all) is the feature-length documentary made by Chris Vermorcken in 1987 but there are many other short ones, several of which were made for television.www.johncoulthart.com