Please note that this item is copyright Richard Alexander. It may be freely copied for non-commercial use, provided this copyright notice remains attached and the text is not altered without my permission. Commercial use of the text is forbidden without agreement as to payment. (Normally I will accept the usual wordage rate.)

“Strange Attractor” #1, published by Strange Attractor, Devices, Wilts. Journal 1, 2004. Pbk, vi, 259pp, illus. ISSN 1742-4534. £10.00 (distributed by Counter Productions) 

Having seen the blurb about this in the Counter Productions monthly list I was curious to know exactly what this journal would contain. Would it be a political, libertarian perhaps, maybe similar to Fortean Studies, or perhaps something a tad decadent or zany? Well it’s a bit of all of them actually with more besides.

For your money (and I’ll say upfront that a tenner is more than I’d normally pay for what is basically a paperback, but I expect there’s plenty of people for whom ten notes isn’t particularly expensive.) you get a neatly designed and produced book, with 17 essays in it, some illustrated, some not.

To say this is an eclectic mix of items is an understatement, but the focus is on the marginal, the unpopular, the outsiders, the experimenters and the dropouts.

For those whose main interest is political, you may find Alex Martin’s brief look at the “drop-out” community formed at Ascona in Switzerland at the very start of the twentieth century to your taste, or maybe Tom McCarthy’s whizz through Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” and the possible links to actual or other fictional anarchist bomb plots may tickle your palate.

For those of more literary bent, Cathi Unsworth introduces the reader to the boozy world of two London novelists: Derek Raymond and Patrick Hamilton, whose work may not be so well known as it should be. Of a different nature is Timothy d’Arch Smith’s piece on Montague Summers and his interest in the Marquis de Sade and membership of the British Society for the Study of Sexual Psychology. Alternatively you may prefer Mark Valentine’s introduction to the life and works of David Lindsay, author of the cult sci-fi classic (so we’re told, I’ve never read it) “Voyage to Arcturus”. Whilst Doug Skinner wraps up the volume with a look at some rather strange books wherein their authors claim to have discovered all manner of hidden meanings.

Popular culture is represented by Xtina Lamb’s look at some bizarre women’s hairdo’s from a 1950’s tome, Count Eric Stenbock’s piece on the character “Punch” is resurrected from the dim and distant; Cathy Ward recounts a visit to one of the more obscure Blackpool waxworks which showed some graphic depictions of venereal diseases and sexual abnormalities (one wonders if it was related to the Museums of Masturbation Foucault’s recalls in one of his lectures gathered in “Abnormal”).

There are anthropological pieces too: Mike Jay has a wry look at the John Frum “cargo cult” in Tanna; whilst Tom Vater explores the world of Indian Sadhus. There is also a brief summation of some of the cults discovered (if not invented) by Elliot O’Donnell in 1930’s London by Father Alan Walker.

And the last category one can give the catch-all description of mindscapes, as it takes in Helen John’s interview in which claims that some form of microwave mind-control device was used on the Greenham Women’s peace camps; Ken Hollings explores 1950’s US space and its relation to schizophrenia; Drew Mulholland gives an account of his magical psycho-geographic excursion through parts of Glasgow and Joe Banks looks at the wacky world of Electronic Voice Phenomena.

The standard of the writing is uniformly high and a great deal of care has obviously been expended on making this journal as good as possible. The design is unusual, with some great headlines and drop caps. However, and I may be wrong on this, it does seem a little presumptuous to issue the first volume of a journal and not put anything on the front cover except an enigmatic colour photograph (which doubtless Roland Barthes would have had great fun decoding.) Also the name, taken from chaos theory, may be misleading for those expecting a volume dedicated to fractals and the like! (That said, it is a good name!)

I can only hope that the market for this sort of journal exists and that the producers are going to sell enough copies to make it to number 2! Mark Pilkington (of the Guardian and Fortean Times) and his team should be congratulated on their efforts on this journal and I hope that the summary above will be enough to encourage those with sufficient spare dosh to seek out and buy a copy (and a couple for your mates as well while you’re at it!)

Recommended if you can afford it.

8/10 

Richard Alexander