2017

H. G. Wells — The Island of Doctor Moreau

Probably the least well-remembered of Wells’s three groundbreaking science fiction works of the late 1890s, The Island of Doctor Moreau has suffered even more then The Time Machine from a series of poor quality adaptations, and an odd sort of uncertainty of what the point of the story is. Whether you view the book as …

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Centuries of Sound on Resonance FM

Centuries of Sound’s debut radio show on London’s Resonance FM was this Thursday night, repeated this Friday morning. The show goes through the first four mixes, spanning the years 1860 to 1889, and features my actual real-life voice, which I’m not quite ready to actually listen to myself . The whole hour is here on …

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Elsewhere in 1896

Firsts The first modern Olympic Games takes place, Blackpool Pleasure Beach opens, X-rays are discovered, La bohème premiers, Henry Ford builds The Ford Quadricycle, his first vehicle, there is the world’s first motoring fatality, the first speeding fine and the first study of the sensitivity of global climate to atmospheric carbon dioxide. American Politics William …

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1895 in Art

Sir Frederic Leighton – Flaming June George William Joy – The Bayswater Omnibus Edvard Munch – Madonna Thomas Eakins — Portrait of Maud Cook Paul Cézanne – The Basket of Apples Valentin Serov — Portrait of Countess Varvara Musina-Pushkina Aubrey Beardsley — Venus Between Terminal Gods Edgar Degas – After the Bath, Woman drying herself …

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1895 in Film

  L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat Annabelle Serpentine Dance Repas de bébé Barque sortant du port Akrobatisches Potpourri La Charcuterie mécanique Démolition d’un mur The Derby L’Arroseur Arrosé Cordeliers’ Square in Lyon The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory

J. Meade Falkner – The Lost Stradivarius

If obsessively uncovering secrets through ancient sound is our job here, then this is very much on-topic. It’s not exactly an obscure occult text, but The Lost Stradivarius is a great ghost story anyway, Falkner pitching it at a sweet spot somewhere between The Great God Pan and the works of M. R. James. It’s …

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H. G. Wells – The Time Machine

Looking back at people looking forward never fails to fascinate – in order to judge predictions, of course, but also because of what these stories tell us about the cutting edge of thought and values at the time. On the whole The Time Machine works well from this sort of perspective, the predictions are far …

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