Paul S. Moore

If you woke up one day and realized you had memories from more than seventy lives, fluid in every language you’d ever spoken, and recalled all the texts you’d ever read, would you wonder why? It took Asitr forty years to discover the why. Soon after, he appears as a guest on a radio talk show to bait traps with the telling of stories. He tells tales about his life as one of the world’s most popular and quickly forgotten celebrities — of gardening for the Prophet Enoch, eavesdropping on Satan and Baal Zebub, and living between lives in a lost world. They sounded like the tall tales of a crazy man. Twenty years later, a John Doe is found, naked and shivering, on the grounds of the Harbinger Psychiatric Institute, clutching a six-inch orb of blue glass and anxious to tell his own story. Is it a tale of organized insanity inspired by Asitr’s radio appearance? Dr. Henry Milton has what looks like an easy assignment: he has twenty-four hours to evaluate the John Doe and refer him for processing. But John Doe has a timetable of his own. He has less than forty-eight hours to convince Dr. Milton to suspend his disbelief in a supernatural world where activities swirl around us unseen and mingle within our own natural realm.

Rules of the Campfire

When a concoction of ethers channels a little of their magic properties to one location, inspiration springs to life. When this convergence happens in the village of Densholme, changes take place. A father softens. A hunter is captured by his game and, paradoxically, he works to set free his captor. A king bargains with coin not of his realm. Nothing to bother the town crier with. Although you won’t find this event in the history books, it’s not without its sweet relic. When you recognize the troubadour's song, help him out. Hum along.

The Alchemist Daughter

This time, the enemy is human. On a trip to spread his Grampy’s ashes in the Amazon, John "Lockjaw" Smith finds love, and a renewed sense of purpose, in the person of Willa Vernon, a lady haunted by her past association with a group of eugenic maniacs. On the return trip, they add a passenger. She is a delightfully unique “ninety-year-old hyperactive child” with eyes like a jaguar, muscles like a howler monkey, and the mind of the Savant. She names herself Dorothy, after the fictional balloon traveler to a place called Oz. Dorothy knows the world only from stories, yet she is the only person alive with the ability to save the world from Willa’s old employers. She has thirty days to solve a puzzle. The maniacs have a head start of more than a century. It’s not fair. Poor maniacs. Oh, well. A little mass murder could even the playing field again.

Songs in a Box

Charles Keil

Rob King

Marta Braun

Louis Pelletier

The visionaries of early motion pictures thought that movies could do more than just entertain. They imagined the medium had the potential to educate and motivate the audience. In national and local contexts from Europe, North America, and around the world, early filmmakers entered the domains of science and health education, social and religious uplift, labor organizing and political campaigning. Beyond the Screen captures this pioneering vision of the future of cinema.

Institutions, Networks, and Publics of Early Cinema

Beyond the Screen

Locates the origins of the mass audience and the emergence of everyday moviegoing in the culture of cities.

Paul S. Moore

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