Comments on: Don’t Open This Book!

By: Claire

Claire — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 03:02:04 +0000

This book is actually classified as Fantasy, and contains many superb stories other than Crowley’s lovely short story.

By: Bookgasm: Reading Material to Get Excited About » Blog Archive » Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #1

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:44:49 +0000

[...] BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MARVIN KAYE: • DON’T OPEN THIS BOOK! edited by Marvin Kaye • THE FAIR FOLK edited by Marvin Kaye • FORBIDDEN PLANETS edited by [...]

By: Skadi meic Beorh

Skadi meic Beorh — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:00:28 +0000

“The Testament of Magdalen Blair” by Aleister Crowley is a very important piece, for it shows the reader in very clear terms the truth that we create our own realities. Here Crowley animates, and rather infernally, Dante’s cartoonish vision of Hell, and also draws upon traditional Biblical understandings of punishment in the afterlife. That Crowley stood unameliorated in his anger toward the Christian dominant paradigm becomes very clear in this story, but herein is also shown his weakness. A very good, precise writer, he reveals that his magic(k) could not deliver a new vision of the Inferno, and could not reinterpret the book of Revelation from a non-enraged position. Simply put, with all of his knowledge, Crowley fails to write anything other than an intellectual rant against a view of Eternity held by the loudest so-called Christians, and so reveals his true love of the hatred espoused by these alleged followers of Christ. But that is Satanism summed up anyway, isn’t it? Not a carving of a new reality altogether, but the playing of the anti-hero with inverted crucifixes, “black” masses, and silly stories about people burning in hell until their brains finally decay or are blown out with dynamite.

By: Forbidden Planets » Bookgasm

Forbidden Planets » Bookgasm — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:57:11 +0000

[...] OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR: • DON’T OPEN THIS BOOK! edited by Marvin Kaye • THE FAIR FOLK edited by Marvin Kaye • THE ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN edited by Marvin Kaye [...]

By: Bookgasm » The Fair Folk

Bookgasm » The Fair Folk — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:40:27 +0000

[...] THE FAIR FOLK is a themed anthology edited by Marvin Kaye and commissioned by the Science Fiction Book Club. Each of the six stories in the book was required to be novella-length and feature an elf as the central character. Now that idea itself seems a bit fey to me (ba dum bum bum), but let’s see what we have in store. [...]

By: Bookgasm » The Ultimate Halloween

Bookgasm » The Ultimate Halloween — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 14:30:35 +0000

[...] For this anthology, editor Marvin Kaye (DON’T OPEN THIS BOOK!) has rounded up a host of short stories (and one novella) old and new, all more or less taking place on Halloween. The old guard finds representation with Edith Wharton’s “All Souls” and H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Unnameable,” but it’s the more current works which make this book a must-have. [...]