Leigh Blackmore - Youth

Youth

Leigh Blackmore was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of Rod and Beth Blackmore. His early hobbies included philately and phillumeny. He read omnivorously from an early age, particularly the works of Geoffrey Willans, J.P. Martin, Norman Hunter and W.E. Johns. While attending Lane Cove West Primary School, he was deeply affected by a reading of Rudyard Kipling's horror story "The Strange Ride of Morowbie Jukes", by Lucy Boston's novel The Castle of Yew and by the TV broadcast of Richard Matheson's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" episode of The Twilight Zone.

He was later educated at North Sydney Boys High School (1971–72) and Newcastle Boys' High School (1972–76). In high school, after reading the science fiction anthology series Out of This World (edited by Mably Owen and Amabel Williams-Ellis), he graduated to devouring the works of Ray Bradbury, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Leslie Charteris, and became a keen enthusiast of sword and sorcery fiction as represented by Lin Carter, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Michael Moorcock and others, and horror fiction (especially the Weird Tales school, including Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Donald Wandrei and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos), discovering their work via anthologies edited by August Derleth, Peter Haining, Vic Ghidalia and others, and via publications of Arkham House which he special-ordered via Space Age Books (Melbourne), then Australia's only specialist supplier of science fiction and fantasy books.

While at high school Blackmore co-founded the Arcane Sciences Society and the Horror-Fantasy Society; the journal of the societies, Cathuria (named after a place in Lovecraft's story The White Ship), was banned after three issues by Blackmore's high school principal for quoting in a review four-letter words used by the unleashed monster in Flesh Gordon. Having corresponded with enthusiasts in the field such as Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, Glenn Lord, W.H. Pugmire and Gregory Nicoll Cthulhu Mythos reference codes and bibliography#Nicoll, Gregory, he began (aged 13) to write fiction and speculative poetry in the vein of Lovecraft and C.A. Smith. His earliest in-print appearances included Lovecraftian sonnets in R. Alain Everts' magazines The Arkham Sampler (new series) and Etchings and Odysseys. Blackmore was also a devotee of horror movies principally from the Hammer horror and Amicus Productions era. Samuel Beckett and William S. Burroughs became lasting literary influences at this time.

Early interest in the world of science fiction fandom was evinced in Blackmore's attendance of Aussiecon 1 (the 33rd World Science Fiction Convention and the first such held in Australia) in 1975 at the age of 15; he there met such figures as Forrest J. Ackerman, Jack L. Chalker (publisher of Mirage Press) and L. Sprague de Camp. He also played judo during high school in Sydney and Newcastle.

Blackmore also became interested in Aleister Crowley through reading Moonchild (novel), Crowley's Confessions: An Autohagiography and the John Symonds biography The Great Beast. His other occult studies began with books by such authors as Paul Huson (on Tarot and witchcraft) and Idries Shah's The Secret Lore of Magic (on Goetia) as well as June John's biography King of the Witches, on Alex Sanders.