Fans of the work of English fantasy author John Whitbourn won't want to miss the chance to lay their hands on The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Landscape Figures. This is a hand-numbered limited edition hardcover featuring a selection of weird tales involving chalk giants and other ancient entities slumbering in the hills. Mr Whitbourn's contribution may (so he threatens) be his last short story. We must hope that's not so, but collectors will want to snap up their copy just in case. Forget about NFTs and crypto; give it a year or two and these books will be worth more than their weight in Saxon gold.
As for prehistoric chalk figures -- abiding through the centuries, they evoke a sense of the numinous even in a thoroughgoing materialist like me. They can be variously seen as guardians of the sacred, warnings to intruders, or just marks left by those lived before us to say, "We were here!" In the hands of these skilled writers they lie across the threshold where folk horror and psychogeography meet. I haven't been able to resist using them in my own work, both in the Dragon Warriors scenario "Wayland's Smithy" and, more frivolously, in this letter to the Royal Mythological Society in Mirabilis, the comic I created with Leo Hartas and Martin McKenna.
I had wanted to buy a copy of 'The Ghosts and Scholars...' in order to complete my Whitbourn collection, Dave, but it's sold out unfortunately. Perhaps you can persuade Mr Whitbourn to include it in an expanded version of 'Alternate Englands'? Although given your previous advice about not trying to fix something on Amazon unless it's broken, perhaps not. My 'The Hammer of the Sun' review did finally reappear on there by the way!
ReplyDeleteAll gone already, Andy? Apologies, I should've been quicker with getting this post up. No doubt a few copies will surface on eBay at prices to rival an Oasis front-row ticket (though much more desirable, obviously). Perhaps I can prevail on John to include the story in Wrong magazine -- if I ever get around to doing a print issue of that.
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