Martin Pale/Cold Henry

The following excerpt was taken from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel by Susanna Clarke. This is a paperback edition with close to thousand pages. This book looks like it might provide many extracts of text and hours of enjoyable reading.

Autumn 1806-January 1807

“Mr. Segundus took down ‘The Instructions’ of Jacques Belasis and read the following passage. The passage he read had to do with one of England’s greatest magicians, Martin Pale. The reading…’In Gregory Absalon’s ‘The Tree of Learning’, there is a famous passage which relates how, while journeying through Taerie, the last if the great Aureate magicians, Martin Pale paid a visit to a fairy-prince. Like most of his race the fairy had a great multitude of names, honorifics, titles, and pseudonyms, but usually he was known as Cold Henry. Cold Henry made a long and deferential speech to his guest. The speech was full of metaphors and obscure allusions, but what Cold Henry seemed to be saying was that fairies were naturally wicked creatures who did not always know when they were doing wrong. To this Martin Pale, briefly and somewhat enigmatically, replied that ‘not all Englishmen have the same size feet’. “

Chapter 1: The library at Hurtfew, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke.

The Hoonhors and Gviirl’s

The Hoonhors and the Gviirl were two other races that Simon Wagstaff encountered while on his 3000-year space odyssey.

“The Hoonhors were about eight feet tall, green-skinned, and shaped like saguaro cactus's. They had boney spines all over their body, long and sharp like cactus needles.”

“The Gviirl were as big as an African elephant. The had four legs as thick as an elephants to support their enormous weight. The arms, ending in six-fingered hands, must have been legs in an earlier stage of evolution. The Gviirl looked like giant cockroaches., but of a highly intelligent race.”

Venus on the Half-Shell, Philip Jose Farmer

Plants Verses Zombies Toy Miniatures

Packaging

I am not sure who originally marketed these miniatures, but I have a hunch that these five zombie and plant miniatures are not some of those. These are cheap Chinese copies. They are molded from what looks like PVC plastic. These figures stand approximately three inches tall and come with a verity of weaponry.

Four Very Intimating Zombies

There is a saw, hatched, sword and shield, and a pirate flag that fit into the zombie’s hands. In addition, there is one plant-pea-shooter and a bag of peas. There are yet two other accessories that I am having a hard time making heads or tails of. There is that yellow item (see package shot) and what looks like a door of some sort.

Plant-Pea-Shooter

Bibliography of Farmer’s Published Fictional-Authored Stories

---

“The unconscious is the true democracy. All things, all people are equal.” Philip Jose Farmer

---

Farmer is alone in writing works of fiction under a pseudonym. What makes it unique in Farmers case is the quantity of works written under several pseudonym. Here is a list of the published works by Farmer under a pseudonym.

“The Adventure of the Peerless Peer”, John H. Watson, M.D.
“Venus of the Half-Shell”, Kilgore Trout
“A Scarletin Study”, Jonathan Swift Somers III
“The Problem if the Sore Bridge-Among Others”, Harry Manders
“The Volcano”, Paul Chapin
“The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight”,
Jonathan Swift Somers III
“The Impotency of Bad Karma”, Cordwainer Bird
“Savage Shadow”, Maxwell Grant
“It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal”, Rod Keen
“The Phantom of the Sewers”, Rod Keen
“Who Stole Stonehenge?”, Jonathan Swift Somers III

“By assuming the role of a fictional author, Farmer don’s a shamanic mask and enters the sublime creative world where fictional characters take on a life more real than our own.”

Christopher Paul Carey

Green Smoke

"Again the green smoke rose and billowed. Again images unfolded before him (Conan), this time alien and seemingly irrelevant. He saw great towering black walls, pedestals half hidden in the shadows upholding images of hideous, half-bestial gods. Men moved in the shadows, dark, wiry men, clad in red, silken loincloths. They were bearing a green jade sarcophagus along a gigantic black corridor. But before he could tell much about what he saw, the scene shifted. He saw a cavern, dim, shadowy and haunted with a strange intangible horror. On an altar of black stone stood a curious golden vessel, shaped like the shell of a scallop. Into this cavern came some of the same dark, wiry men who had borne the mummy-case. They seized the golden vessel, and then the shadows swirled around them and what happened he could not say. But he saw a glimmer in a whorl of darkness, like a ball of living fire. Then the smoke was only smoke, drifting up from the fire of tamarisk chunks, thinning and fading."

Chapter 7: The Rending of the Veil, The Hour Of The Dragon, Robert E. Howard

It Came Out of the Dark

"Now the thing was emerging from the cell and was again advancing up the corridor, its misshapen head close to the ground. It paid no more heed to the locked doors. It was smelling out his trail. He saw it more plainly now; the gray light limned a giant anthropomorphic body, but vaster of bulk and girth than any man. It went on two legs, though it stooped forward, and it was grayish and shaggy, its thick coat shot with silver. Its head was a grisly travesty of the human, its long arms hung nearly to the ground.

Conan knew it at last—understood the meaning of those crushed and broken bones in the dungeon, and recognized the haunter of the pits. It was a gray ape, one of the grisly man-eaters from the forests that wave on the mountainous eastern shores of the Sea of Vilayet. Half mythical and altogether horrible, these apes were the goblins of Hyborian legendary, and were in reality ogres of the natural world, cannibals and murderers of the nighted forests."

Chapter 5: The Haunter of the Pits, The Hour of The Dragon, Robert E. Howard

Dangerous Terror Corpses (from packaging)

The six zombies are made from some form of ridged plastic and they stand approximately four inches tall. In addition, their bodies and torsos can be switched out and their heads, torsos, and arms can be moved into a verity of positions. Over all I am quite happy with my new set of zombie figures and they make a nice addition to my ever-expanding collection. However, I do have two gripes, the first, the majority do not stand on their own and second, whoever painted these figures should take some painting lessons. They are painted awfully. I thought I might try my hand at making them look a little more presentable.

Black Ring & the Black Lotus

"Conan's scalp prickled. In Stygia, that ancient and evil kingdom that lay far to the south, he had seen such black dust before. It was the pollen of the black lotus, which creates death-like sleep and monstrous dreams; and he knew that only the grisly wizards of the Black Ring, which is the nadir of evil, voluntarily seek the scarlet nightmares of the black lotus, to revive their necromantic powers.

The Black Ring was a fable and a lie to most folk of the western world, but Conan knew of its ghastly reality, and its grim votaries who practice their abominable sorceries amid the black vaults of Stygia and the nighted domes of accursed Sabatea."

Chapter 4: 'From What Hell Have You Crawled?', The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard

Magic Arts

'Better if steel and bowstring prevail without further aid from the arts, for the constant use of mighty spells sometimes sets forces in motion that might rock the universe.'

Chapter 4: 'From What Hell Have You Crawled?’, The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard

Ramshackle Games Trolls-Another Look

Ramshackle Games Trolls

Ramshackle Games, Trolls Bagrha and Skargill, stand approximately two inches tall, and are molded from a very dense resin. The quality of their details and expressions are splendid.

“He watched as the trolls gobbled the food and threw the plates and drank everything in sight...”

The Brothers Grimm

Xaltotun, the former High Priest of Set-A Host of Characters

On meeting Xaltotun Conan reflects on his seeing Xaltotun for the first time.

“It was a magnificent face, with strongly chiseled features of classical beauty. There was, indeed, something disquieting about the calm tranquility of its aspect, a suggestion of more than human knowledge, of a profound certitude beyond human assurance. Also an uneasy sensation of familiarity twitched at the back of Conan's consciousness. He had never seen this man's face before, he well knew; yet those features reminded him of something or someone. It was like encountering in the flesh some dream-image that had haunted one in nightmares.”

Chapter 4: 'From What Hell Have You Crawled?

Premonitions

"'I saw again the battlefield whereon I was born,' said Conan, resting his chin moodily on a massive fist. 'I saw myself in a panther skin loin-cloth, throwing my spear at the mountain beasts. I was a mercenary swordsman again, a hetman of the kozaki who dwell along the Zaporoska River, a corsair looting the coasts of Kush, a pirate of the Barachan Isles, a chief of the Himelian hillmen. All these things I've been, and of all these things I dreamed; all the shapes that have been I passed like an endless procession, and their feet beat out a dirge in the sounding dust.'

'But throughout my dreams moved strange, veiled figures and ghostly shadows, and a faraway voice mocked me. And toward the last I seemed to see myself lying on this dais in my tent, and a shape bent over me, robed and hooded. I lay unable to move, and then the hood fell away and a moldering skull grinned down at me. Then it was that I awoke.'"

Chapter 2 A Black Wind Blows, The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard

The Iron-Bound Books of Skelos

“I read the iron-bound books of Skelos, and talked with unseen creatures in deep wells, and faceless shapes in black reeking jungles. I obtained a glimpse of your sarcophagus in the demon-haunted crypts below the black giant-walled temple of Set in the hinterlands of Stygia, and I learned of the arts that would bring back life to your shriveled corpse. From moldering manuscripts I learned of the Heart of Ahriman. Then for a year I sought its hiding-place, and at last I found it.' “

Chapter 1, O Sleeper, Awake!, The Hour of The Dragon, Robert E. Howard

International Hobby Corporation Kwik-Kits

The following three sets of plastic sprue are manufactured in Denmark. I don’t know if you have noticed, but I have a hard time sticking to one project and seeing it through until completion. These three “kwik-kits” offer a verity of detail pieces scaled to HO or 1/87 scale. I have completed one or two of these kits and these detail pieces sit waiting to be added to my model train layout. You can never too many detail pieces.

Railroad Details: # 4551

(relay cabinet, instrument case, call box, track bumper, and block signal)

Rural Details: # 4552

(2 trash cans, satellite TV dish, 2 Television antennas, fuel oil tank, 3 rural mail boxes)

City Details: # 4553

(large mail storage box, city letter mail box, 2 trash cans, 2 fire hydrants, 6 parking meters, 2 window air conditioners, 2 television antennas, and telephone booth)

The Lalorlongians

“The natives resembled automobile wheels with balloon tires. The tires were composed of thin but tough inflated skins with diamond shaped treads. The wheel part consisted of a rim of bone and twelve bone spokes with grew from the hub. The hub was a ball covered with a hard shell like an ant’s exoskeleton. This contained the brain, and the nervous, digestive, and sexual systems.”

Venus on the Half-Shell, Philip Jose Farmer

A Song as Sung by Simon Wagstaff

While strumming on his banjo Simon sings a philological song to his robot lover, Chworktap.

Envoi

“Our Lady of Our Love’s Afflatus,
Unveil the All, and please don’t freight us.
Sans paddle up the amorous creek,
Unknowing if by will or freak
Of circumstance our loves’ll mate us.
All flappers think they’ve picked their sheik
With prefect freedom in their choice.
In this have they as little voice
As chickens swallowed by a geek.”

Simon Wagstaff

Venus on the Half-Shell, Philip Jose Farmer

Simon’s Robot Lover (A Host of Characters)

Chworktap was a protein robot and was complete in every way. If Chworktap hadn’t mentioned the fact, Simon might not have caught on right away. But Chworktap told Simon of her physiology soon after their first liaison.

“Chworktap certainly wasn’t like any robot he had ever met. Robots were prefect within their limitations, which were exactly known. Robots had no potentiality for mutation. Humans were badly flawed, flawed physically because of genetic mutations, flawed mentally and emotionally because of a flawed and mutating society.”

Venus on a Half-Shell, Philip Jose Farmer

Four Yo-Kai Watch Game Tokens

This is my second Yo-Kai Watch related post. I recently came across the four of these game tokens. They are from Yo-Kai Watch Monopoly. Yo-Kai Watch Monopoly is for little kids and these Yo-Kai Watch tokens are Yo-Kai Watch characters.

These game tokens are made from a hard plastic and stand approximately two inches tall. The characters are (from left to right):
Jibanyan, Komajiro, Komasan, and Whisper.

1/32 Scale Jaguar SS-100

As you can see from the condition of the box (it is yellowing) this is an old Matchbox 1/32 scale model. It is partially built (the engine block) and is complete. It is the last Matchbox model I have. At one time I owned several Matchbox scale models, but through my trading and selling, this is the last of the lot.

I don’t see too many Matchbox models being offered any longer and there aren’t too many models being produced in 1/32 scale anymore. At one time Matchbox (Lesney Products) had a full line of plastic models in various scales. There does seem to be pretty many old Matchbox models still available and at premium prices.

The Jaguar has always been one of favorite makes. When I was a young lad I remember wanting to own a Jaguar someday. The model itself looks like it will produce a relatively realistic model.