I have a feature in the June issue of Waitrose Food Magazine, about my search for ‘British BBQ’. It weaves together many of my pet passions. Well, two of them: national identity and BBQ. But… it also has illustrations from Adam Nickel that are adorable!

If you’re a Waitrose person, you get it free! If you’re not a Waitrose person, you can read it online for free, or pick up a copy in store. I bought FIVE, and the very nice lady at the till had the audacity to not ask me why.

Anthologies, a bit like an advertisement, should have a solid proposition.

A good anthology has something to say; a great one is persuasive in its argument. It is an opportunity to make your case with stories, as well as through them.

Metaphor break! Stories are construction materials. You may have the best materials in the world. Fancy marble. A lovely cast iron doohicky. Some gorgeous oak boards. The finest Roman concrete. Whatever. But without a plan, all you’ve got is a pile. A discerning reader can enjoy the individual stories as admirable components in their own right, but you’ve wasted their potential to be part of something more.

How do you know which blocks to use?

Any form of curation will always be idiosyncratic. I’m fond of quoting the Atlantic Monthly’s Ellery Sedgwick: “My selection is made according to the whim of one individual.” But even if the stories are selected whimsically, having a framework helps organise that perspective, justify it, and, ideally, build on it.

With cyberpunk, I found inspiration in Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan’s notion of the ‘global village’ was easily adapted to underpin The Big Book of Cyberpunk, and create the thematic pillars for this (Big) book. Critically, McLuhan saw media as a significant type of technology, and one of the reasons I’ve always gravitated to cyberpunk is that it is a science fiction that treats media with the appropriate respect. Cyberpunk as a literature, like McLuhan as a philosopher, understands the importance of what and how we read, listen to, watch, or gossip about - not as cultural window-dressing, but as a defining part of a society.

I knew what stories I liked, and I knew why I liked them - I have no shortage of confidence! But what McLuhan provided was a notion for something more: a way to hone what I wanted to say about cyberpunk. It gave me the foundation for writing a definition of the genre, a means of organising the stories I liked, and a guide to finding more stories to help complete this greater narrative.

What about dark academia?

As mentioned before, dark academia - as an anthologising task - presents a very different challenge to that of cyberpunk. Or of any other anthology I’ve every attempted, honestly. Dark academia isn’t a defined genre as much as an elusive sentiment; it is an emotional result rather than a rational stimulus. An aesthetic movement that’s inspired a literary genre, not vice versa.

We all find inspiration in different ways. For me, surprise!, I like books. I subscribe to Umberto Eco’s theory of the antilibrary; surrounding yourself with books that serve as reminders of everything you do not know. I’m never going to read every book we have piled around the house, but at least I’m living adjacent to knowledge. (Plus, they smell nice.) Specifically, when I’m stuck on a problem, I wander around the house aimlessly, patting spines and hoping that an answer reveals itself to me.

For dark academia, the answer came in the form of Edward Snyder and A. Syeram’s Further Corruption (1964).

Further Corruption is the authors’ attempted expansion of Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption. It is a gloriously counter-cultural artifact, published by The University of Chicago People’s Press.

Aristotle, in his work, derives the core principles of fire, water, earth and air. Snyder and Syeram go a step further and try to capture the nature of non-physical ‘elements’ as well, trying to derive the core principles of abstract ideas like honour, courage, love, desire, and many more. There are over a hundred ‘elements’ in their catalogue, as well as a concluding call for others to devise more. (A call that went, as far as I can tell, totally unanswered.)

I suspect Further Corruption is more than a little influenced by Barthes’ Mythologies, if by way of Timothy Leary. I found one contemporary review in an academic journal, which, although rather critical, at least dispels the notion that this was a student prank. Further Corruption also predates the famous Scavenger Hunt, which blows that theory as well.

There are a surprising number of Edward / Ted / Ned Snyders associated with the University of Chicago, including a famous economist. (It is not him, he would’ve been 11 at the time of publication.) The mysterious ‘A. Sreyam’ also has a pretty light online footprint. I am assuming that is the same A. Sreyam who received their Master of Arts from the university’s School of Social Service Administration in 1962, largely because they also received a prize for ‘artistic reading’ in 1961. (They did their undergraduate degree in Toronto, so… potentially Canadian?) I’ve yet to find another published work by the duo, but hope springs eternal. The University of Chicago People’s Press is, unsurprisingly, poorly indexed, but its brief legacy includes poetry, a chapbook series and at least one interview with Chicago institution Studs Terkel.

More unhelpfully, there’s a World of Warcraft quest called ‘Further Corruption’ which makes a surprising dense Google fogbank.

Further Corruption is a genuinely strange little book. It was firmly shelved in the mustiest corner in the antilibrary; a book I fully never intended to read. I stumbled upon my copy in a charity shop in York, first picking it up because I thought it had a cool title. In full transparency, I thought it was vintage smut.

I bought Further Corruption for the princely sum of three pounds when I saw it was associated, however unofficially, with my alma mater. Like all immigrants, I’m oddly drawn to the flotsam of my old land which washes up on my new shores. (I once found a t-shirt from my high school in Newcastle!)

Given its dubious origins, the decision to weave this particular book into The Elements of Dark Academia may seem a little bizarre. But Further Corruption is absolutely perfect for dark academia.

The challenge specific to dark academia, as noted above, is that it is a ‘retroactive genre-fication’. Dark academia literature doesn’t need a theoretical framework to map it as much as a bottle to contain it. It exists as a look; a feel; an essence.

Handily enough, Futher Corruption is predicated on the notion that no essence is undefinable, be that fire or fury or friendship. And, furthermore, it believes there are certain innumerable, but fundamental, principles that can be combined and compounded to build any definition that may be required. Everything, says Aristotle, Snyder and Sreyam, is built from elements. We merely need to identify the right ones.

Further Corruption (and, indeed, Aristotle) provides exactly the right approach: a challenge to find the correct combination of elements that can define, and therefore contain, dark academia. Whether I’ve found that correct combination is up to you, but I’m pretty satisfied on the whole.

On the micro level, the way that Further Corruption delineates the qualities of individual elements is also fitting. The elements within are arbitrarily selected, and then explained obliquely, through poetry and allusion, with the authors drawing on sources from science, etymology, pop culture, myth, folklore and occultism. There are mentions of Tarot, chemistry, Crowley and cigarette ads (and those are the references I caught). It is honestly quite hard to explain exactly how weird this book is. The authors have a free-wheeling and emotive methodology for describing the supposedly fundamental qualities of the universe. This is, of course, perfect for this task. A vibes-based approach for a vibes-based movement.

Further Corruption is an iconic little artifact, both of its time and its place; unhinged, arrogant, and quite possibly genius. It is a rebellious little book, inspired by the Classics and written in the shadow of an elite academic institution. Lost for half a century, it resurfaced an ocean away; finding its way to me through circumstance and dusty shelves. You don’t get much more dark academic than that.

It has been a strange combination of recent events: Twin Smoke (Vilnius) to judge BBQ, SXSW (London) to launch a new campaign and programme of work, Cymera (Edinburgh) to watch Anne (and other talented friends) talk books.

Twin Smoke was a blast. Two dozen teams from around the world all came together to throw down, and it was a delight to chew through their submissions. I learned a lot, ate too much, and stayed up all night watching Eurovision. (“Bangaranga” is for real, and I love it.)

Cymera was also great: a well-organised con with great guests, great amenities and a great city. I was impressed about every aspect of it. Generally the great convention ice-breaker is ‘how’s your con?’ followed by fifteen minutes of bonding through shared complaints. Cymera really ruined that conversational approach, as everyone was having such a nice time.

SXSW has plenty of coverage already.

I’ll be in the audience this Sunday for this talk on women in BBQ at the British Library. And then (after a few other bits and bobs) off to Bradford Literature Festival at the start of July. There are a ton of amazing items already in the programme. And the great Amy Coombe will be talking about cosy fantasy with Sangu Mandanna on 4 July.

I’ve just finished a long, long, loooong re-read of Tad Williams’ super-epic, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. MST is one of ‘the’ era and genre-defining fantasies, cited by George RR Martin as his inspiration, and by many others as a sort of fantasy ‘north star’.

I’ve put off the reread for a while. A long while, in fact, I think I last read this series when I was in high school. My memories of it were fuzzy: it was long (so long). But even as a kid sweatily mainlining Dragonlance books and Piers Anthony, I could still sense the presence of actual quality. The series stuck in my head.

Part of my delay in rereading was not, in fact the massive size of the thing, or even its reputation as slow (it is not). I had vague memories of dissatisfaction with the ending, and it is pretty hard to gear yourself up for a trip of this length if you think the destination is a bit ‘meh’. I’ve been stung by The Stand rereads in the past: ‘the end can’t be as bad as I remember it being, right? RIGHT?’

(If this seems a bit discursive and meandering on its way to a point,… I’m not sure this is the series for you anyway.)

MST was actually even better than I remembered. I think, and not to be unfair to my younger self, I misunderstood the ending when I was a teenager. It isn’t simple, but it isn’t ‘unfair’ - and, if anything, it demonstrates an unexpectedly gentle subversion that I really enjoy. MST is a big ol’ epic fantasy, but it is also about big ol’ epic fantasies. The heroes and villains all operate in the shadow of (the memory of) bigger, more grand heroes and villains. The series examines our relationships with legends and myths, and teaches us that - although we shouldn’t take them for granted, they’re still wildly powerful and important. It is a series about how the truth is made, not born. All in all, well worth the effort to revisit. (It did not, as they say, ‘pull a Stand’).

My Very Short Introductions challenge continues, where the Goblin chooses one for me to read during our regular library visits. I’ve since covered:

You can tell the Goblin is interested in history, which is great. I’ve cheated a bit by steering him away from the hard sciences (mostly), but he keeps trying to feed me Crystallography.

Other recent reads that deserve proper reviews but aren’t getting them:

Shelfies is creeping up on two years and 100 issues!