Links for the Four Aces Universe

(* These articles are now available at Internet Archive.)

 

Part One: The Game

• Eden Studios

 

Part Two: New York City

• New York City (official website)
• NYC Visit (neighborhoods)
• Forgotten New York
• New York Times
• Village Voice
• New York Public Library
• New York Cabbie
• Weill Cornell Medical College Archives
• New York Police Department
• New York Fire Department
• Columbia University
• American Museum of Natural History
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Guggenheim Museum
• Museum of Modern Art
• Museum of the City of New York
• New York Botanical Garden
• Central Park
• Carnegie Deli (landmark, south of Central Park)
• Zabars (landmark deli, Upper West Side):
• History of Brooklyn Egg Cream

 

Part Three: Harlem

• Photographer's website (great photos)
• A Walk Through Harlem
• Home to Harlem (Renaissance Casino)
• * The Harlem Rennies (basketball team)
• Internet Public Library: African/American (history and culture)

 

Part Four: Wicca and Other Neopagan Things

• Wicca and Neo-Paganism (older editions of many influential texts)
• Celtic (ISTA) (mythology, legend, and faerie)
• Lucky Mojo (great site about folk magic)
• Isaac Bonewits (the "Laws of Magic" came from him)
• Witches' Voice (influential neopagan site)
• Burning Man
•  
• (Wicca, modern witchcraft, and neopaganism in the Four Aces Chronicle don't work exactly like the following books describe them, but they were big influences: Drawing Down the Moon, by Margot Adler, The Spiral Dance, by Starhawk, Real Magic, by Isaac Bonewits, and Magic, Witchcraft & the Otherworld, by Susan Greenwood.)

 

Part Five: All Things Occult and Mystical

• The Internet Sacred Text Archive
• Altas Obscura ("the world's wonders, curiosities, and esoterica")
• Cryptomundo
• The Comte de St. Germain, by Isabel Cooper-Oakley (1912)
• Shinto & Japanese Religions (ISTA) (old editions but useful)
• Wolfgang von Kempelen's speaking machine
• Knights Templar (wild rumors)
• CSICOP (for some balance)
• Fortean Times (for some irony)
• Rat Cam (how a rat, or someone using the rat ring, sees the world)
•  
• (For more on Kempelen, check out Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life, by Gaby Wood. It has some interesting stuff about Kempelen's chess-playing Turk.)

 

Part Six: Wilhelm Reich and Orgone

• Wilhelm Reich and his Amazing Orgone
• American College of Orgonomy (Princeton, NJ)
• Elsworth Baker's short biography of Reich
• Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory (Ashland, OR)
• Public Orgonomic Research Exchange (has photo of cloudbuster)
•  
• (These were major sources for Reich in the chronicle. So was Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist, by Robert Corrington.)

 

Part Seven: Nikola Tesla, Wardenclyffe, and Cosmic Energy

• Wikipedia: Nikola Tesla (includes a list of sources)
• Lost Inventions of Nikola Tesla
• Rich's Tribute to Nikola Tesla (good links)
• * Nikola Tesla (anecdotes and photos of Wardenclyffe)
• * Yale Scientific article about Tesla
• "Tesla: Master of Lightning" (PBS)
• Model of Wardenclyffe tower in SPLIA Exhibit
• Tesla Memorial Society of New York (caretakers of Wardenclyffe)
• Theater of Electricity: Museum of Science, Boston (Tesla coil photos)
•  
• (The game also relies on two biographies: Tesla: Man Out of Time, by Margaret Cheney, and Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, by Marc Seifer.)

 

Part Eight: Demetrius Katsoulakis

• House on 35th St. (great Nero Wolfe site; inspired K's residence)
• Lesvos: A Guide to Ouzo

 

Part Nine: F. W. Woolworth and Winfield Hall

• Winfield Hall (very small page)
• Frank Winfield Woolworth (family site)
• * Haunted houses on Long Island (scroll down for Winfield)
• SPLIA newsletter article about Winfield Hall
•  
• (The main sources for the Winfield Hall arc were two books by Monica Randall: Winfield: Living in the Shadow of the Woolworths and The Mansions of Long Island's Gold Coast.)

 

Part Ten: Government and Military Matters

• Army Ranger (community site maintained by the Rangers)
• * History of the U.S. Army Rangers
• United States Special Operations
• State Department travel warnings

 

Part Eleven: Story Ideas

• Haunted England
• Tales of Terror
• CthulhuWiki

 

Part Twelve: And Finally...

• Tales of the Plush Cthulhu