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The Cosmographs, Vol 1 by Stephen Owen.
A4 card cover, metal spiral bind, 50pp. £10 + £1p&p from Cosmocracy, PO Box 2155, Warwick, CV34 5ZF


   All 50 Cosmographs have numbered lines, ranging from a total of 8 to 21. Most of the numbered lines are presented as a sentence, in that they end with a full stop. For instance:- '8. Swimming in slow time across the face of the centuries.' (Cosmograph 6). Although, occasionally, a comma does link two of the numbered lines, and sometimes there is no punctuation at all. Each Cosmograph, though, is given a time and date, starting at 9.20pm 3rd January 1987 and ending at 10.58pm 26 November 1987. With vocabulary, phrasing and presentation faux biblical, the coming of 'the apostle of the millennium' is charted. Much is a hellfire and brimstone denunciation of what we have made of this world. And then, in Cosmograph 18, the prophet begins to prescribe for us that we may be cured...

     1. For I have knitted my brows together in the face of humanity
     2. I have sifted it through and through and considered its problem
     3. I have turned the earth over and altered its orbit
     4. So that humankind may start afresh and build its new technology...

   All of which will appeal, I imagine, to those who continue to be bothered by religion, as well as to those fans of fantasy fiction, with their mix of SF and archaic terminology. Or, given the Cosmographs' overt presentation, the thought has to be voiced, is Stephen Owen setting out to become the L.Ron Hubbard of the 3rd Millennia?