Under the tree, on the shelf

The good folks at Atlas Obscura have put together a lovely list of book gift ideas, including offbeat guidebooks, strange history, and curious collections — compendia of wonder for the curious wanderer and adventurous wonderer.

Roads to nowhere

The Map Realm is a collection of maps of fictional countries created by professed "avid map collector and roadgeek" Adrian Leskiw. There are even multiple iterations of the same territories mapped through time, from the seventies into the mid-21st century. Meticulous and absorbing.

From alien landscapes to wonder cabinets

Josh Foer of the Athanasius Kircher Society and Dylan Thuras of Curious Expeditions have teamed up to launch the Atlas Obscura, an ambitious, user-driven catalog of curiosities, wonders, and oddities around the world.

The Garden of Noisy Roses and other attractions

Radiant Copenhagen. An expansive alternate reality of future Copenhagen, as created through Google mapping and Wiki fiction.

Via io9.

A sense of place

Morning travelogue is a curiously compelling record of one man's commute to work as he ditches the Tube in order to walk through some of the lovelier and more interesting parts of downtown London. If only we all had such a short, pedestrian-friendly, and pleasant itinerary. The somewhat accelerated tracking and a peppy, danceable tune help, too.
Via Weekend Stubble.






Fed by Birds has just shared a few photographs paired with ambient soundscapes from a recent trip Cornwall, in Cornish Sounds. The captured ambience of waves and seabirds and breezy forests and tolling churchbells is wonderfully tranquil.





I was reminded of Their Circular Life: An Exploration About Human Behavior, an interesting little flash presentation that allows you to cycle through twenty-four hours of sounds and images captured from stationary observation posts in a variety of urban locations. Go fast and watch the day whizz by your eyes, or slow down to listen to the nuances of the place.









At La grange numérique, the panoramic photography site of Denis Gliksman, you can find a number of beautiful 360° scenes, some with sound and animation, like this set of "Spriteoramas" of rocks and lapping waves on the coast of Brittany.

Fourth annual Halloween roundup

Happy Halloween, all. Here are some offerings in the spirit of the season. Enjoy.

Exhibits

A large collection of vintage Halloween postcards on Flickr.
Via Mira y Calla.






Spookshows.com is a treasure of vintage things suitable for Halloween, like this collection of vintage poison labels, or poster art advertising spook shows.
Via Mira y Calla.







The Art of Mourning is an excellent collection of antiques representing various funeral and mourning mementos and paraphernalia. There are also some articles about mourning art and practices through time.
Via Regina Noctis.









Cabinet Magazine visits the Museum of the Dead, a small church in Palermo that curates a startling display of preserved corpses.

There are no tickets and no reductions for this visit to the underworld. A fat, unspiritual, greasy monk just takes the money and throws it into a basket with unexpected abruptness. A guidebook I buy later dresses up the visit and, after a serious discussion of burial customs in different cultures starting in antiquity, talks about all the artworks lining the stairs going down into the catacombs. I don't notice these important paintings. It seems a minimal space, stripped bare of all pretense that what lies ahead is anything but grim.






Games

Ben Leffler is the talented designer behind the spectacular Exmortis series of games (1 and 2; there's also the horror short Purgatorium). I had hoped there would be an Exmortis 3 ready to offer you for Halloweentime this year, but no, it's still in development. There is, however, Goliath the Soothsayer. Rejoice. Play.
Walkthrough at Jay Is Games.





There's also a new sequel to The Bat Company's horror series, Atrocitys: Atrocitys 2: The Revenge. Point-and-click scarefest. Be warned, subtlety is not in their toolbox.





Scuttlebuggery is the latest flash oddity from super-stylish gothic design studio My Pet Skeleton. It's sort of like a game of liquid soccer played between beetles with drops of absinthe and formaldehyde. Is that clear?





In Zombie Inglor, you are an ordinary man who has been bitten by a zombie, and you have fifty days to find a cure. Saving the village from the zombie infestation would be nice, too. This is a neat little RPG game with adventure and combat elements, with some nice touches like day/night changes, weather, and fully voiced characters.
Via Regina Noctis.





How will you fare when the outbreak occurs and undead roam the streets? Take the Zombie Survival Quiz to test your fitness, wits, temperament, and knowledge.





Video

It's time for the annual pilgrimage to Childrin R Skary for the newest works from this prolific gothic animation studio. Check out the films playing in the theater, or visit author Katy Towell's non-Childrin site, Crookedsixpence.com, where you can find more movies like the gorgeously spooky Never Woke Up.







For a whole pile of Halloween-themed animation, check out Newgrounds Presents Halloween 2008, a Flash film fest and competition from the popular Flash gaming site with ten cash prizes for the best entries. Some notable entries:

The Dark Room is slow, dreamlike, and gory, and features some very nice background locations. Aside from that, it's hard to tell just what happened.





While it may not feature the slickest animation around, Vampiric Wit is a short, humorous entry that wins points for its clever premise.





.Alice. is a moody little piece, short on plot, that aims to recreate the effect of a horror movie haunted highway scene. Very cinematic in style.





Fear.net is a horror-themed video site that offers a mix of full movies, clips and excerpts, shows, shorts, and other videos. It's a slasher/thriller/horror lover's playground. Try the Halloween FEAR Fest for some seasonal fun.
Via Regina Noctis.

ADDENDUM: io9 has just posted a great list of several places to find free horror movies online in addition to Fear.net.

For more, check the "Halloween" label for past years' offerings.

Into the underground

City of Ember is a new favorite blog. Taking inventory of the world's tunnels, bunkers, cellars, caverns, and other dark subterranean locales, like the catacombs under Paris, the lavish Wielicza Salt Mine, or Darvaza, the Door to Hell in Turkmenistan, it's like a lushly-illustrated travel blog for the underworld.









The Entrance to Hell is a great Flickr photo pool full of mysterious portals.











Take your own plunge into the underground in CHASM, a very simple but satisfying game in which you must pilot a ship through a deep, narrow tunnel. The only thing I could have wished for was an option to reverse the Y axis, as my fighter pilot instincts inevitably kicked in whenever things got hairy and I'd plunge straight up or down into a wall, completely intending to go the opposite direction. May you fare better than I.





Under New York is an urban exploration site dedicated to exploring the dark, abandoned parts of the city. Most of the sites involve the metaphorical underside of the city, but there are quite a few interesting subterranean expeditions under Tunnels & Bridges. While the pictures are small and too few, there are a few gems — most taken looking back at the world above.

Book your next vacation with the interplanetary time-travel agency

Steve Thomas has created a series of five incredibly sleek vintage-style posters advertising luxury interplanetary travel for a refined retrofuturistic age. From a midnight train to Saturn to a pit stop on Uranus to powder on Pluto, these images promise that the skies can be yours.





If three dimensions aren't enough for you, travel in the fourth to any one of the exotic eras featured in this time-travel agency poster series by Amy Martin to benefit 826LA, a Los Angeles nonprofit writing and tutoring center for kids. Pick from one of five great packages (or take all five for $10 off). The Echo Park Time Travel Mart can send you to see megaflora and fauna up close in Pangaea, study Bushido in feudal Japan, or learn binary to chat with the bots of Tokyo 2.0. Book your tickets now. Or yesterday.
Via io9.





Before you go, don't forget to take your Time Pills to enhance your time-travel experience. DO: Take only the dose your teleportator and/or teleportist recommends. DON'T: Mix time pills with alcohol, "recreational" drugs or digital pills of any kind. This can increase the risk of side effects, including timewalking, destination offsets, memory lapses, digital coma and hallucinations. Part of the "Future Vintage Series" by ~rootout.





If you want to explore the 'Verse in all its majesty, you should take a look at what Blue Sun Travel has to offer with this poster series by artist Adam Levermore-Rich.

The Blue Sun Travel Company encourages citizens of the Alliance to explore the many amazing vistas that comprise our proud republic. It’s a great, big ‘Verse full of fabulous sights to see and exotic cultures to experience. Whether you partake of the ancient, noble tea ceremony at the Companion Guild House on Sihnon, behold the awesome canyons of glass and steel on Londinium, enjoy the many distractions of the Gateway District on Persephone, shed a tear for our fallen Alliance heroes at the Monument at Serenity Valley, or be among the first to experience the pure tranquility of Miranda, a multitude of planets full of unparalleled adventure awaits you.





For the all-inclusive cruise experience, why not embark on a voyage aboard the Axiom? With Buy N Large, you'll travel in the luxury and comfort only a fleet of highly efficient robots attuned to your every need can provide. These retro Wall-E posters were designed by Eric Tan, whom io9 interviewed recently about his inspiration for the series.





Designer Rob Sheridan invites you on a thrilling Hyperion Holiday. More great work on his Sketchblog.





Chances are your interplanetary luxury liner will be passing through the City of New New York Municipal Spaceport ("Now with 7% fewer mid-air collisions!"). Always follow all recommended local safety and hygiene protocols. This series of Futurama posters will tell exactly you what you need to know, and no more.





Space isn't all nice and pretty, though. This series of Battlestar Galactica propaganda posters alerts you to the dangers out there and urges you to do your part. If you don't have a large travel budget, joining up with the Colonial Fleet is a great way to travel the stars, meet interesting people, and try to figure out whether or not they're Cylons. (Potentially of use: How to Spot a Cylon.)