Providence: Introduction – The Haunter of the Drift
Providence is an series of essays that are nominally about HP Lovecraft. You find out why ‘nominally’ fits as the essays go on. This is the introduction essay. The rest … Continue reading
Estate Agents of Doom, or, Scooby Doo vs. the 1%
The cultural artefact known as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? represents a sustained and surprisingly rigorous interrogation of the late twentieth century landscape. To the casual observer, the first two … Continue reading
Phantom Limbs, Withheld Worlds, and the Quatermass Experience (Part Three)
In Quatermass and the Pit, Kneale’s ‘Hobbs End’ is London’s wound reopening. Agoraphobia is the private version of that reopening; the moment the body realises its access to the world … Continue reading
The Ghosts of Ash and the Nuclear Spectre (Part Two)
If Hiroshima haunts through absence, the Titanic haunts through overexposure. The Titanic has been replayed, retold, reconstructed, and reanimated so many times that it barely qualifies as an event anymore. It … Continue reading
The Ghosts of Ash and the Nuclear Spectre (Part One)
Disasters have a habit of lingering long after everyone has agreed that they are finished. The rubble gets cleared. The plaques get installed. The anniversary documentaries get commissioned. The calendar … Continue reading
Namaste, or: What Keeps Coming Back (in a Slightly Worse Mood) (Part 1)
We were almost at the top when we heard it. Not music exactly, more a pressure system. A low drone with delusions of grandeur, stretching itself between notes like a … Continue reading
Haunted When the Minutes Drag.
I’m not usually one for blowing my own trumpet. If there’s one thing that is going to ever scupper my chances as being a well known author, its that I … Continue reading
The Gentle Violence of Obsolescence Vs the Thingness of Stuff (Part Three)
What built in obsolescence ultimately produces is not progress, but permanent provisionality. Nothing is allowed to settle. Systems are designed to be replaced before they become fully known. Objects arrive … Continue reading
The Phantom Hitcher Hiker (Again)
Further thoughts – and new material – about a compulsive urban legend. The original essay is in the book ‘Haunted When the Minute Drag’ from my Book Shop. The Phantom … Continue reading
The Treachery of Doors
Doorways are where time goes to hesitate. Not dramatically. Not with any particular flair. A small, almost polite pause, like a sentence without its verb, your inattention assumed. A doorway … Continue reading
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