![[Featured Story logo done on Photoshop by Jim McPherson, Year 2002]](graphicimages/feat-story3.gif)
The former Kronokronos Supreme pointed to the placard
above the entrance. It was in archaic Italian writing and read: 'LASCIATE
OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH'ENTRATE'.
"What's it say, Rider?" asked Furie.
"Abandon all hope you who enter," she translated.
"It's from Dante."
Akbar ripped the placard off the wall, tore off all
except the middle word then hammered it back onto the wall and opened
the door. They may be in Hell on Earth but they were going to live in
a house named 'SPERANZA', -- Hope!
-- from 'HOPE
IN HELL', the first chapter of "Psychodrama"
Introductory Remarks
Greetings. Welcome, or welcome back.
Whether you are a first time visitor to PHANTACEA
on the Web, or someone who bookmarks 'pHpubs'
such that you can come back here whenever you want (in my humble) entertaining
online reading or viewing, you might be curious as to why I call this
section of 'pH-Webworld' Hestia Housekeeping.
Although I provided a full explanation of that a few seasons ago, here
it is again ==>.
Neat trick, eh? Well, to my mind unfortunately,
it is and it isn't. Seems to work on newer browsers but not on Versions
4 of Netscape in particular. Other thing about it is, while Microsoft
Internet Explorer opens a window on the page, Netscape 7
opens another page. Last thing to say about it is you have to remember
to close the page you went to before you can return to the page from
whence you just came.
On this webpage, which is currently undergoing reconstruction,
as are many others in this website, there are any number of day-glow
lynx that will take you all over PHANTACEA on the Web.
Chances are, however, that even with the navigational
lynx at the bottom of every fine, up-staying page,
and after the page-top banner on the newest pages,
you will quickly get lost and forget where you were.
Because of that, my best advice is to read this season's
pHpubs: Web-Publisher's Commentary down to the bottom
then hit the Top of the Page text link, come back
up and start clicking away to your heart's content.
Want to buy into the PHANTACEA
Mythos? Go straight to the downloadable
order form and do just that.
Want to browse? Best places to start are:
- Right here, on my flagship page,
which I often refer to as 'pHpubs';
- The 'primer page', formerly the 'pH-Webworld'
home page, where you can always find lynx to
PHANTACEA Features and
Photo Essays, new, old, and recently added onto;
- The overall synopsis page, where you can
access all the story synopses I have ever web-published; or
- From the main menu, which consists of lynx
to almost every webpage still out here in Cyberia. (Once you reach
it, the menu page is also available in a framed version, which many
readers find convenient because it opens an area beside the menu
list that stays put, even when you click on a link and go elsewhere.)
Lynx to these four primary pages,
as well as ordering information, are provided
near the top of all the newer pages while, with the exception of the
chapter-by-chapter novel serializations, which I only leave up for a
three-month seasonal period, day-glow links
to the index, home and
menu pages are provided at the bottom
of every webpage that is still out here.
I appreciate your interest in PHANTACEA
on the Web and
welcome any 'pH-Webworld' commentaries you might have.
Let me know what you like, do not like and/or would like to see in future
installments.
Jim McPherson
Writer, Web Designer and Publisher
[jmcp@phantacea.com]
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![[Logo reads Web-Publisher's Commentary as prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2002]](graphicimages/pub-com2.gif)
Hestia Housekeeping
Last time up, in Autumn
2002, the caption at the topmost row of the index page read: PHANTACEA
gets colourful. This time up, in Summer 2003, it reads: PHANTACEA
gets downsized. As we'll get to momentarily both statements remain completely
true. Should first advise as to what's new this time up. A fay-fairy-fair
bit more than usual as it happens.
There are six new story
installments and a bunch more synopses to go with them. Are also a new
entry in the Serendipity section
having to do with what may have been a Mayan vampire cult, a new 'Travels
in my Pants' Photo Essay and some additions
to the long-neglected Glossaries of Peculiarities
webpages.
As you may have noticed if you came here via the Index
Page, there are some sample covers for 'The
Moloch Manoeuvres'
as well as a probably only temporary page that may form the basis for
its back cover,
should I decide to publish it independently. Finally, in the topic
section of this webpage, you can find details on the graphics that went
into last time up's Celebratory Collage.
Most visibly, though, is a whole lot more colour. In
fact I believe every webpage still out here in 'pH-Webworld'
has colour backgrounds. Some, like this one, even have background images.
However, a far less visible improvement to this website
is that all of the graphic images have indeed been downsized. That is
to say most of the kilobyte-eating GIF's and JPEG's have been re-saved
specifically for presentation on the Worldwide Web.
End result should mean I've a lot more space on my Internet
Provider than I used to have. Meaning I should be able to add many more
images and webpages to 'pH-Webworld' than I was able to
previously.
Some long-running webpages have necessarily been sacrificed,
at least temporarily. These include the graphic summary of the Launch
serials as well as such photo essays as the House Head Museum, the Ephesian
Heads Stone, and the Phantom Train.
 As
I say, they may be back so I've left up their links. They just don't
go anywhere anymore except here ==>. (Don't
forget to close the page that just opened.)
In some respects it's a bit of a shame I ditched the
House Head Museum because I spotted a great Boat
Head when I was in Honduras last January. Ah well, it looks happy
here.
Back to the colourful stuff. I've established a Colour
Key for various sections of PHANTACEA on
the Web. It's accessible from the Ongoing
Features
Webpage. For example, the Glossary
pages are now a pleasant pink, white and red.
Should note that the graphic on top
of this page was taken from one of the animated GIF's I mentioned last
time up. It still animates on the Features webpage
==>.
There remain two ongoing web-serials out here in Cyberia.
As of the Summer of 2003 'Helioddity',
which is set in 1938, is up to its twelfth chapter.
However, 'The Damnation
Brigade': 'Year One - After Limbo' , which is
set in 1981, is just starting out. That's because I decided it was so
long it had to be split in two. So it is what were its first 11 chapters
now constitute Month One - After
Limbo, which I've tentatively re-entitled: 'The
Weirdness of Cabalarkon'. Year
One - After Limbo now goes by the
title 'Psychodrama'.
In the former Cerebrus, stuck as he still is in a
tub of Cathonic Fluid, manages
to find a way to compel Blind Sundown into making an attempt on the
'unlife' of the Utopian Cabalarkon, who is some sort of psychic
vampire along the lines of Medea's lamia
from Manoeuvres. Results,
especially given what a great killer Sundown is supposed to be, are
unexpected to say the least.
In the latter we discover where the Zeross girls sent
Gloriella D'Angelo, Dervish Furie and ex-Kronokronos Akbarartha. Considering
Gloriel is often referred to as 'angel' it's a fittingly ironic
destination.
Our focus in Oddity
switches from the Inner Earth back to Aegean Trigon then to Charan's
Ark as it makes its way across the Mediterranean from Rome to Cairo.
On the Ark we re-encounter many of the Summoning Children who made it
through 'The Moloch
Manoeuvres' relatively whole.
Seems one of them's pregnant, which means if the father
was Count Molech she could die giving birth. Another one's about to
do a Jesus, in the Ark's rigging, a third's flying around the sky in
Granny Garuda's eagle regalia and, thanks to Airhead, a fourth develops
a balloon brain and goes floating off across the Mediterranean Sea.
Fortunately for her that aforementioned eagle's out there.
Unfortunately for most of those on the Ark that aforementioned eagle's
out there. As always, -- good reading!
'The
Damnation Brigade'
'Helioddity'
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Anheroic Fantasy Hotspots
This collage, which I prepared on PHOTOSHOP,
was intended to mark a quarter century of PHANTACEA.
It first appeared on the Index Page in the Autumn
2002 installment of PHANTACEA on
the Web.
Run your mouse over it and when a hand
shows click to take you to the entry on that aspect of the collage.
Top of Page
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Phantacea is the Greek word for imagination. I published
six issues of a comic book by that name in the late Seventies and
a graphic novel entitled "Forever
and Forty Days - The Genesis of PHANTACEA"
in 1990. Since 1996 I have been publishing PHANTACEA
on the Web mostly to showcase a series of interconnected
novels or novellas I have written based on characters from the comics
and graphic novel.
Some of these story sequences have been or are being
serialized in what I sometimes refer to as 'pH-Webworld'
. For the most part the individual chapters are no longer accessible
online. However, I have provided chapter-by-chapter synopses of what
was once up in terms of what I often refer to as my Web Wheaties
and they still are up. You can access them from the Serial
Synopses Webpage.
You can access pages dedicated to the comic
book series and the graphic novel
from the Main Menu.
They contain little known information on the publications as well
as reproductions of a variety of covers, some of which were never
used.
Top of Page
Return to the Celebratory Collage
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 The
background image on this page is a minutely distorted, partially decolourized
and then much-multiplied version of this photograph of what is actually
part of a sandstone cliff face. I took it on Saturna Island, off the
southeast coast of Vancouver Island, around 1994.
 I
upended the bottom land formation, which I was assured is natural, and
incorporated it into the celebratory collage.
From that perspective it reminds of a ghost-like face, something from
an American horror movie or what a kid might wear as a mask on Halloween.
I used this image, or parts of it, on the
synopses pages for 'The Trigregos
Gambit', a Web Wheaties cereal I published out here in Cyberia
in the mid to late Nineties. I call this sort of thing a peculiar
perspective. Most of the photo
essays I do for pH-Webworld can be classified as just that:
peculiar!
Top of Page
Return to the Celebratory Collage |
I
spotted this carved rock at Ephesus, Turkey, in October 1996 when I
went through there as part of a tour I took of that country back then.
 I
call it the 'Ephesian Heads Stone' because there are a number
of head-like shapes chiselled into it. I used this image and some of
its heads on the Web Wheaties cereal synopses pages for 'Ringleader's
Revenge'.  Another
of its heads reminds me of the ghost above.
There was a photo essay on this rock
in PHANTACEA on the Web for
a number of years. It's no longer viewable but that doesn't mean it
won't be back eventually. Currently the only pure travelogue out
here in pH-Webworld is entitled: "Godly
Caterwauling and other Rude Awakenings". However, you might
want to check out the 'Travels
in my Pants'
section of my Ongoing Web Features
in case I missed deleting one of them. (By the way, if you click on
the image of the Heads Stone a slightly bigger
version of it pops up.)
Top of Page
Return to the Celebratory
Collage
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One
of the premises of the novels and novellas I write and publish
for pH-Webworld is that starting around Xmas 1920 a large
number of babies, who grew up to become unusually gifted adults,
were born. These are the 'Summoning Children'. Many of
them became what are referred to throughout the PHANTACEA
Mythos
as 'supranormals'. It is speculated they are the mortal
offspring of the Gods and Goddesses, the Demons and Monsters,
of Ancient Mythologies.
 Among
the demons and monsters featured in PHANTACEA
are the feeorin of Twilight and the faeries of Temporis, both
of which are sizeable areas on the Hidden
Continent of Sedon's Head. They are earthborn as opposed to
skyborn. That is to say they are indigenous to the planet whereas
devils, as fallen angels, are extraterrestrial in origin.
Fay-saying faeries appeared briefly
in 'The War
of the Apocalyptics' and return in greater number in
both 'Coueranna's
Curse' and 'The
Volsung Variations', neither of which have as yet
been serialized in pH-Webworld.
There are demons galore in the first few chapters of 'Psychodrama',
part of the 'Year One
- After Limbo'
sequences.
The shot reproduced on the right
is of the outer wall of a restored Mayan temple in the vicinity
of Uxmal, in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Complete with only
3 eyes, it reminds me a little of Demon Land (Antaeor
Thanatos), one of the principal characters in 'The
War of the Apocalyptics'. I use this shot in the masthead
for one of my favourite Ongoing
Web Features: Faeries
and PHANTACEA!
Top of Page
Return to the Celebratory Collage
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While I was in Montreal
in April of 2000 I spotted a display of wooden decorative plates
being sold on a street corner. The reproduction of a small portion
of the display, on the lower left below,
isn't one of my best scan jobs but the design on one plate is
of a wolf whereas the other is of a rather scary looking woman.
The isolation scan on the lower right
is from the second plate. It reminds me of one of my long time
PHANTACEA characters,
Wilderwitch.
 The
juxtaposition of the two plates is what really caught my PHANTACEA-fancy.
Come the time I web-publish 'The
Volsung Variations', which probably won't be until
late 2004 at the earliest, you'll meet a ten year old, female
wild child called either Wolf Girl or Wolfie. Might that wild
child grow into Wilderwitch? Wouldn't want to say, would I?
Will say that, as hinted at toward the end of
'The Last of the
Supranormals' and as described in greater detail during
'The War of
the Apocalyptics', come the story sequences set in late
1980, particularly in Apocalyptics
and the 'Month
One - After Limbo'
material, the Witch is one of the twelve surviving supra-participants
in the 1955 debacle on Damnation Isle
 Of
the twelve, ten took to calling themselves the Damnation
Brigade but,
even back in the story sequences set in 1938, some of them figured
quite prominently. In fact, although PHANTACEA
has always been a mosaic piece as well as Anheroic Fantasy, it
could be said these ten are the closest it ever comes to having
actual protagonists.
For more character likenesses you might want
to check out my Web-Publisher's Commentary from the Summer
of 2002. You could also spend some time going through the various
character entries in the Glossaries
of Peculiarities section of the Ongoing
Web Features Webpage. There's an a-building entry on Wilderwitch
on the Witches'
Webpage.
Top of Page
Return to the Celebratory Collage
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It should go without saying
that monotheistic religions tend to demonize the gods and goddesses
of Ancient Mythology. Curiously, from what I've read two very much still
extant polytheistic religions, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, apparently
demonize each other's gods and goddesses. The Hindu gods, 'devs'
or 'devas'
(from whence came the Latin word 'Deus', meaning God, and,
self-evidently, our word 'devil', which means much the same
thing) are the Zoroastrian bad guys whereas their Lords and Ladies,
their angels or 'azuras',
are the Hindu fallen ones.
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So, I fantasized, what if the antique gods and goddesses
actually existed? And, if they did, where did they live? In PHANTACEA
the answer is the Hidden Continent
of Sedon's Head. Which, although it is often referred to as the Inner
Earth, is not Hell on Earth. The Moloch Sedon, in whose likeness
it is shaped, is none other than the western version of the Devil.
As to what an aerial photograph taken by the Egyptian
air force in the late Twenties of the Giza Plateau, where stand the
pyramids and the Egyptian Sphinx, has to do with what I have come to
call the PHANTACEA Mythos that
answer can be found on a webpage I prepared for a PHANTACEA
Feature I rather coyly entitled: Sedon's Head: Inspiration
or Destination? (There's a hotspot
on the shot, which I took in the Cairo Museum when I was there in the
Year 2000, that might prove, um, suggestive.)
There are a couple more webpages you might to look
at in terms of PHANTACEA's connections to
Ancient Egypt. They are: 'Dispatches
from a Distance, England & Egypt, Autumn 2000' and 'Egyptian
Evocations'. As for the background image in this panel, it's
a minutely distorted, partially decolourized and then much-multiplied
version of a photograph I took of the Sphinx, with the pyramids behind
it, while I was in Egypt. I use the same background in the Graphics
section below and on the Dispatches
Webpage.
Top of Page
Return to the Celebratory Collage
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Have to admit the print
in the reproduced version of the Collage is awfully small to read. So,
just in case your eyes are no better than mine, here it is:
| Serialized Novels
| Chapter Synopses | Photo Essays | Updated Four Times a Year | Seasonal
Web-Publisher's Commentaries | Order Complete PHANTACEA
Novels on CD or Floppy Disks |
Lynx to the first three have been provided
during the course of this feature and can always be found in the Introductory
Remarks area of pHpubs. Have to admit I can't guarantee
updating pH-Webworld
4 times a year and I only do a commentary when I put up a new installment.
As for ordering novels on disk or the graphic novel, the only PHANTACEA
print publication still available, allow me to remind you, yet again,
where to get information on how to do just that ==>.
Top of Page
Return to the Celebratory Collage
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4. Graphics: Footnotes and off-page
links:
It isn't in the Collage reproduced above
but here's another collage I prepared on Adobe PHOTOSHOP around the
same time. It takes you to the latest PHANTACEA on
the Web 'Travels in my Pants' (TIMP)
Photo Essay. (I'll finish off the his-story
of how I earned the nickname 'Donkey Jim' while in
Egypt in the Year of the Dome 6000 next time up.)
Top of Page |
![[PHANTACEA.COM Collage prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, Year 2002]](graphicimages/sphinx-jim-logo3.gif){kind=logo}
