I’ve started work on a Chronology of Indigenous Lunar Life in preparation for the next Phantom Traditions Library anthology. The chronology will chart many of the major moments in the history of scientific discovery regarding life on the moon along with some key works of fiction about the same subject. The anthology, on the other hand, will focus on fiction from the early 1800s, the decades when advances in telescopes supported what many scientists had already theorized: the moon is just plain too inhospitable to support any kind of sophisticated life. As that consensus solidified, fiction about life on the moon seems to have waned.
“Waned.” Get it? A bad pun, yes, but get used to it because it’s probably going into the anthology’s title.
Speaking of chronologies, I’ve started to spit-shine the Chronological Bibliography of Early Occult Detectives. First, I decided to end it at 1925. That’s a pretty nice number to limit “early.” It’s also the year when Seabury Quinn’s character Jules de Grandin debuted in Weird Tales. This long-lived series is a landmark in the occult detective tradition, given the quantity of de Grandin adventures if not their quality. I’ll also be streamlining the bibliography information in such a way that I suspect no one will ever notice the difference. The following step is to start looking for additional works, which will take a long, long time.
For now, you can visit the still-very-new Telescopes versus the Moon People timeline here. Check back in the weeks to come, though, because I’m still adding new entries and new links. Find the Chronological Bibliography of Early Occult Detectives — and lots of other stuff — under the “For Fun and Edification” tab.
— Tim
BROM BONES BOOKS 