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@buserror5.bsky.social
180 followers 140 following 400 posts
Interested in games, fantasy and sci-fi books/art/TV/movies, poetry, music, and natural history.
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#PhantomsFriday

Another interior illustration by Stephen Fabian for the 1977 Underwood-Miller reprint of The Eyes of the Overworld (1966) by Jack Vance. This image is from a book that collects his art. In this scene, a ghostly city and ship full of ghost revelers appeared, then disappeared.
A shimmering city with the outlines of many towers, domes, and spires is in the background. An elaborately decorated trireme with large sail is in the foreground. Many figures are dancing and playing instruments on the ship.
November 28, 2025 at 12:59 PM
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#WyrdWednesday

The Seven Geases (1934) by Clark Ashton Smith. An arrogant nobleman on a hunting expedition annoys the wrong sorcerer and is sent as a sacrifice to dwellers below.

Paddock, as used here, is an archaic word for toad.

Tsathoggua idol sculpted by Jason McKittrick.
"You shall know Tsathoggua by his great girth and his bat-like furriness and the look of a sleepy black paddock which he has eternally. He will rise not from his place even in the ravening of hunger, but will wait in divine slothfulness for the sacrifice. And, going close to Lord Tsathoggua, you must say to him: 'I am the blood-offering sent by the sorcerer Ezdagor.' Then, if it be his pleasure, Tsathoggua will avail himself of the offering." A toad-like creature with short fur crouches on a pedestal etched with runes and symbols. There are four human skulls in a row beneath him. The color is a mix of greys and browns.
November 26, 2025 at 12:12 PM
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Poul Anderson was born on this day in 1926.

Art credit in alt text.
Cover art by: Charles Moll for The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories (1973). Boris Vallejo for the 1981 Del Rey reprint of The Broken Sword (1954). Book text is based on the 1971 revisions. No artist credited for Fantasy (1981), a Jim Baen Presents book.
November 25, 2025 at 11:16 PM
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#PhantomsFriday

Two haunted house poems.

Tenant by Frances Angevine Gray. I could not find an original publication date. This text is from Fire and Sleet and Candlelight (1961).

In the Shadows (1935) by Leah Bodine Drake.
TENANT Something lives in this house, Unseen by my eyes, Impossible ever to take by surprise. On the staircase a tread. As I lie on my bed, A fleet footfall crosses The floor overhead. When I read in my chair, The sensitive air Grows suddenly chill. I glance in the mirror In startled surmise. Some image dissolving Baffles my eyes, A presence not evil, Portending no harm, Yet alien to all things Familiar and warm. IN THE SHADOWS As we went up the narrow stair, My candle slim and I, From the crouching shadows came A little tired sigh. And there was nothing on the stair Or in my garret room, But cobwebs on the rafters, And corners filled with gloom. And still and silent was the house, And dark and still the air.... But where the shadows wavered In the candle-flare, Something small, unearthly, sighed Out of some strange despair.
November 21, 2025 at 12:28 PM
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#PhantomsFriday

Interior illustration by Stephen Fabian for the 1977 Underwood-Miller reprint of The Eyes of the Overworld (1966) by Jack Vance.
Cugel encounters a ghost wearing pale robes and a fillet (headband) with 20 moonstones on stalks.
November 21, 2025 at 12:17 PM
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Share the last movie you watched.

I knew nothing about this movie and just read the short description on a streaming service before watching. I really enjoyed it.
Poster for Prospect (2018) with actors Pedro Pascal, Sophie Thatcher, and Jay Duplass. Characters are wearing spacesuits.
November 20, 2025 at 10:55 PM
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#WyrdWednesday

Elric and Stormbringer.

Art credit in alt text.
Cover art for the 2001 Fantasy Masterworks collection of Elric stories by Michael Moorcock, painted by Michael Whelan. Slightly altered version of the cover for The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976). Elric stands at the bow of a ship, which has an elaborately carved prow. He is wearing a Melnibonéan dragon helm and holding the sword Stormbringer.
November 19, 2025 at 12:33 PM
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#BookWormSat

Gnomes (1976 Dutch/1977 English) written by Wil Huygen and beautifully illustrated throughout by Rien Poortvliet. A fascinating field guide to gnomes and similar beings. One of my childhood favorites.
The cover of Gnomes with a painting of a male gnome in a red cap and blue tunic surrounded by hand-written notes.
November 15, 2025 at 12:26 PM
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#BookWormSat

The closing poem of Flower Fables (1854) by Louisa May Alcott. This text is from an 1898 reprint as part of the Altemus' Young People's Library. I don't have a definite credit for the art.
Fairy Song. The moonlight fades from flower and tree, And the stars dim one by one; The tale is told, the song is sung, And the Fairy feast is done. The night-wind rocks the sleeping flowers, And sings to them, soft and low. The early birds erelong will wake: 'Tis time for the Elves to go. O'er the sleeping earth we silently pass, Unseen by mortal eye, And send sweet dreams, as we lightly float Through the quiet moonlit sky; For the stars' soft eyes alone may see, And the flowers alone may know, The feast we hold, the tales we tell: So 'tis time for the Elves to go. From bird, and blossom, and bee, We learn the lesson they teach; And seek, by kindly deeds, to win A loving friend in each. And though unseen on earth we dwell, Sweet voices whisper low, And gentle hearts most joyously greet The Elves where'er they go. When next we meet in the Fairy dell, May the silver moon's soft light Shine then on faces gay as now, And Elfin hearts as light. Now spread each wing, for the eastern sky With sunlight soon will glow. The morning star will light us home: Farewell! for the Elves must go. As the music ceased, with soft, rustling sound the Elves spread their shining wings, and flew silently over the sleeping earth; the flowers closed their bright eyes, the little winds were still, for the feast was over, and the Fairy lessons ended. THE END.
November 15, 2025 at 12:18 PM
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#WyrdWednesday

The King in Yellow (1895) by Robert W. Chambers.
Cover of the 2015 Stark House Supernatural Classics collection that includes part of The King in Yellow and The Mystery of Choice. The cover art is by Robert Chambers and was first used for the 1895 F. Tennyson Neely hardback edition of The King in Yellow. "Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink behind the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies, But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa. Song of my soul, my voice is dead, Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa." Cassilda's Song in "The King in Yellow." Act 1. Scene 2.
November 12, 2025 at 12:18 PM
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#BookWormSat

There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) by Ray Bradbury. Published in Collier's. Revised for The Martian Chronicles.

"The five spots of paint—the man, the woman, the boy, the girl, the ball—remained. The rest was a thin layer of charcoal."

The 1918 Sara Teasdale poem central to the story:
This text is from The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale (1996). "THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS" (War Time) There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white; Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
November 8, 2025 at 12:27 PM
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#WyrdWednesday

Fire Demon by Frank Frazetta.

Used as cover art for the 1977 anthology Swords Against Darkness with stories by Robert E. Howard/Andrew J. Offutt, Poul Anderson, George W. Proctor, Bruce Jones, Manly Wade Wellman, Richard L. Tierney, Raul Garcia Capella, David Drake, Ramsey Campbell.
A demon with horns and tail is seen from the back, standing over a flaming abyss and raising its hands while a person in the background is falling.
November 5, 2025 at 12:53 PM
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#BookWormSat

This collection of Karl Edward Wagner's early novellas has one story with a werewolf and one with ghouls, ghosts, and a vampire. Plus an excellent quasi-Western, but in a sword-and-sorcery setting.

Art credit in alt text.
The cover of the 1978 reprint of Death Angel's Shadow (1973), a collection of three novellas by Karl Edward Wagner that feature the character Kane. The Frank Frazetta painting used as cover art, titled Cave Demon, was unrelated to the stories and character. But, it was available for use and made a nice eye-catcher in the book carousel. A warrior battles a huge demon on a small cliff edge.
October 25, 2025 at 12:03 PM
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#PhantomsFriday

Some One (1913) by Walter de la Mare. Text is from Collected Poems (1921). I like to think of this poem as a counterpart to his more well-known spooky poem The Listeners. Which side of the door was the phantom on...🤔
SOME ONE Some one came knocking At my wee, small door; Some one came knocking, I'm sure — sure — sure; I listened, I opened, I looked to left and right, But nought there was a-stirring In the still dark night; Only the busy beetle Tap-tapping in the wall, Only from the forest The screech-owl's call, Only the cricket whistling While the dewdrops fall, So I know not who came knocking, At all, at all, at all.
October 24, 2025 at 11:39 AM
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#PhantomsFriday

Strindberg's Ghost Sonata (2008) by Tanith Lee. A very moving novella with a tie-in to August Strindberg's play. A man, saved from suicide, is trapped in the household of his rescuers. His destiny intertwines with that of a ghost woman with a strange and traumatic past.
Cover of Strindberg's Ghost Sonata and Other Uncollected Tales (Immanion Press, 2019) by Tanith Lee. Cover art by John Kaiine shows an insubstantial, ghostly image of a woman. She glanced away from Blya, who stood there speechless, not four feet from her, unable himself to move. In a blank despair, a sort of horror, he watched her further descend the wooden steps. She had given off no human warmth; the skirt of her dress, brushing by him, had been insubstantial. At the bottom of the stair, in the split second before she turned the corner, she vanished. There could be no doubt she did this. You could not tell yourself you had imagined it. One breath she had been there, then she had exhaled herself back into some dusk otherness, with the smooth down stroke of a soundless sigh.
October 17, 2025 at 11:09 AM
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#WyrdWednesday

Oh foolish fire, encased in lantern skin,
Bleed out this night and light my way
With elemental grin.
Reveal the Horns of Deviltry,
Show me the Mask of Death;
I'll gaze beyond the dead-grin glow,
Beyond the dead-leaf flesh.

From: Lantern by Juan J. Gutiérrez

Art credit in alt text.
Headless Horseman I by Frank Frazetta. The headless horseman holds his pumpkin head in one hand. A large yellow-orange moon is in the background. Commissioned for a magazine ad, but was deemed not scary enough. He painted a second version with more menacing pumpkin, no moon, and horse positioned differently on the canvas.
October 1, 2025 at 10:07 AM
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#BookWormSat

From a Train Window (1934) by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Text is from Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1990).
From a Train Window Precious in the light of the early sun the Housatonic Between its not unscalable mountains flows. Precious in the January morning the shabby fur of the cat-tails by the stream. The farmer driving his horse to the feed-store for a sack of cracked corn Is not in haste; there is no whip in the socket. Pleasant enough, gay even, by no means sad Is the rickety graveyard on the hill. Those are not cypress trees Perpendicular among the lurching slabs, but cedars from the neighbourhood, Native to this rocky land, self-sown. Precious In the early light, reassuring Is the grave-scarred hillside. As if after all, the earth might know what it is about.
September 27, 2025 at 11:08 AM
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#PhantomsFriday

One Night of the Year (1980) by Tanith Lee, who was born on this day in 1947. Cyrion is a sword-and-sorcery character, private detective, and master of disguise. In this story, a family of ghosts lures him into a sepulchre. To survive, he must solve a 1200-year-old mystery.
"It was midnight in Teboras. Midnight all across the quiet and ancient city, perfumed with its oleanders, ghostly with its magnificent ruins, harped through with the faint strumming of its deep blue lake. In this quarter, high in the fine streets above the old Remusan Forum, you might expect falling blossoms, the occasional well-to-do courtesan with her litter and attendants, even a stray phantom, perhaps, from one of the arcane temples... "
September 19, 2025 at 11:13 AM
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#WyrdWednesday

The Lord of Cities by Lord Dunsany (1908). Collected in The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories. A rarely mentioned little story with some great passages. Here a spider speaks about the transient nature of humans and all of our works, which it will inherit.
Ten years to a hundred it takes to build a city, for five or six hundred more it mellows, and is prepared for me; then I inhabit it, and hide away all that is ugly, and draw beautiful lines about it to and fro. There is nothing so beautiful as cities and palaces; they are the loveliest places in the world, because they are the stillest, and so most like the stars. They are noisy at first, for a little, before I come to them; they have ugly corners not yet rounded off, and coarse tapestries, and then they become ready for me and my exquisite work, and are quite silent and beautiful. And there I entertain the regal nights when they come there jewelled with stars, and all their train of silence, and regale them with costly dust.
September 17, 2025 at 10:05 AM
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#BookWormSat

Lean Times in Lankhmar (1959) by Fritz Leiber. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser clash when Fafhrd becomes deeply devoted to the obscure god Issek of the Jug, while the Mouser works for a thug extorting priests. A night of drinking and kidnapping ends with an accidental ascension to divinity.
The cover of the 1999 Millenium/Orion omnibus volume Lean Times in Lankhmar, containing the collections Swords in the Mist and Swords Against Wizardry. Cover art by Geoff Taylor, based on the story Stardock, shows two tiny figures standing amid a large mountain range. And if anything else were needed (truly, it hardly was) to convince them that here was the god, the divine Issek, they had summoned with their passionately insistent cries, then it was supplied when that nearly seven-foot-tall apparition called out in a deep voice of thunder: "Where is the jug? WHERE IS THE JUG?"
September 13, 2025 at 11:43 AM
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#WyrdWednesday

The Death of Malygris (1934) by Clark Ashton Smith. A cabal of sorcerers believes that Malygris is dead and seeks to usurp his position. But even in his current state, he demonstrates why he was the most feared sorcerer in Poseidonis.
THE DEATH OF MALYGRIS At the hour of interlunar midnight, when lamps burned rarely and far apart in Susan, and slow-moving autumn clouds had muffled the stars, King Gadeiron sent forth into the sleeping city twelve of his trustiest mutes. Like shadows gliding through oblivion, they vanished upon their various ways; and each of them, returning presently to the darkened palace, led with him a shrouded figure no less silent and discreet than himself. In this manner, groping along tortuous alleys, through blind cypress-caverns in the royal gardens, and down subterranean halls and steps, twelve of the most powerful sorcerers of Susran were brought together in a vault of oozing, death-grey granite, far beneath the foundations of the palace.
September 10, 2025 at 11:00 AM
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#WyrdWednesday

Necromancy in Naat (1936) by Clark Ashton Smith. Zombies, a vampiric demon-weasel, patricide, a wild sword fight, and an operatic finale, all wrapped in beautiful prose. Night Shade restored much of the original text removed by Weird Tales editors.
NECROMANCY IN NAAT Dead longing, sundered evermore from pain: How dim and sweet the shadow-hearted love, The happiness that perished lovers prove In Naat, far beyond the sable main. —Song of the Galley-Slaves. Yadar, prince of a nomad people in the half-desert region known as Zyra, had followed throughout many kingdoms a clue that was often more elusive than broken gossamer. For thirteen moons he had sought Dalili, his betrothed, whom the slave traders of Sha-Karag, swift and cunning as desert falcons, had reft from the tribal encampment with nine other maidens while Yadar and his men were hunting the black gazelles of Zyra. Fierce was the grief of Yadar, and fiercer still his wrath, when he came back at eve to the ravaged tents.
September 10, 2025 at 10:58 AM
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#WyrdWednesday

The Empire of the Necromancers (1932) by Clark Ashton Smith. The opening paragraph establishes the setting for this first story of Zothique.

In their hubris, two necromancers raise an empire of the dead from the distant past. But the newly arisen have their own prophesy to fulfill.
THE EMPIRE OF THE NECROMANCERS The legend of Mmatmuor and Sodosma shall arise only in the latter cycles of Earth, when the glad legends of the prime have been forgotten. Before the time of its telling, many epochs shall have passed away, and the seas shall have fallen in their beds, and new continents shall have come to birth. Perhaps, in that day, it will serve to beguile for a little the black weariness of a dying race, grown hopeless of all but oblivion. I tell the tale as men shall tell it in Zothique, the last continent, beneath a dim sun and sad heavens where the stars come out in terrible brightness before eventide.
September 10, 2025 at 10:55 AM
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#BookWormSat

Beyond the Black River (1935) by Robert E. Howard. Frontier story reimagined as sword-and-sorcery in the (fictionalized) Pictish wilderness. Main character is Aquilonian, but the Picts' viewpoint is clearly explained. Dark, gloomy, and thought-provoking, with top-notch action.
Cover art by Stephen Fabian for Beyond the Black River: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 7 (Wildside Press, 2007). A band of warriors paddles a canoe, while a monster lurks in the background. Valannus shuddered. Turning, he walked to a casement and stared silently out over the river, black and shiny under the glint of the stars. Beyond the river the jungle rose like an ebony wall. The distant screech of a panther broke the stillness. The night pressed in, blurring the sounds of the soldiers outside the blockhouse, dimming the fires. A wind whispered through the black branches, rippling the dusky water. On its wings came a low, rhythmic pulsing, sinister as the pad of a leopard's foot. "After all," said Valannus, as if speaking his thoughts aloud, "what do we know — what does anyone know — of the things that jungle may hide... "
September 6, 2025 at 11:44 AM
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#PhantomsFriday

Opening Door (1959?) by Winifred Adams Burr. Text is from Fire and Sleet and Candlelight (1961). I like the analogy between a poltergeist opening a house door and Burr's imagination opening her mind to new ideas for creative works. She was also a painter.
OPENING DOOR I know an old house, grey with years Whose front door opens when no one hears... A low, worn sill, an ivied wall Report no footfall, no sound at all. When embers fade beneath the fender, When stars have turned westward in their splendor, Through draughty dark one sees them spin, Though no one went out—and none came in. Nor is there bolt—lock—key That can abate this mystery: Folk mutter, finding the door ajar, "How determined these north winds are!" And sometimes in this tent of flesh Where I must dwell alone There'll be a door that opens wide At a wandering overtone— Wind in the woodbine, Glint of moon On silvered rushes Where hylas croon: Yet who opens that door, or who comes in, Whether angel, wraith or harlequin, I never can know nor tell at all— Though vistas open where once was wall...
August 29, 2025 at 11:08 AM