Mindblasters: England Goes Mental
Cost £12/$24
You can buy it from any of the authors and from Peter Duffie himself. My advice is to pick your favourite, email him, and buy directly.
Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)
If you’re comfortable with Corinda or Annemann, you’ll be fine, which gives it a top end of about 3 –always remember, however, that the devil is in the presentation when it comes to mentalism.
Review
To give you a feeling of what it’s like to flick through this work the first time, here’s the table of contents. It’s like Christmas in ebook form:
- Marc Paul AAA Serial Number Divination / Shuffle Challenge Too
John Archer Back to the Future
Wayne Dobson Fluke
Stephen Tucker 58 to 1 / ACAARN
Paul Hallas Still Battling Along
Christopher Williams Ungaffed Entourage / Predictext
Abracadaver Con-Flatulation
Les Johnson Remote Viewing Magic
Harold Cataquet The Knight’s Tour / Seeing & Believing
Andy Nicholls Borderline Location / Out of the Ordinary
Shiv Duggal A Good Year / Frequency
James Ward What’s in a Word? / Sentimental Journey
Stephen Jones 1812 / Titanic
Russell Hall The Blackwood ESP test
Roni Shachnaey The Inquisition
Lewis Jones Concord
Scott Creasey The Eternal Triangle
Barry Cooper Are you a “real” mentalist? / The ABC of ESP
Al Smith Tryangle / Friendly Persuasion
Roger Curzon The Devil Rides Out
Andrew Brown The Living & the Dead / The Clairvoyant Card
Anthony Brahams Cabin Book Test
Dominic Twose Drawing Close
Justin Higham Double Minded
Mike Hopley Two-Person Book Test / A Card in Motion
Roger Ferriby The Ghost of the Ferry Boat Inn
Todd Landman My Ching
David Britland Fooler’s Gold – T. A. Waters
Walt Lees Ring Master
Andi Gladwin Mentalist’s Luncheon
Chris Hare Crab
Chris Wardle P.S.
James Brown Dark / Caught 3 Times
Olly Crofton Three Thoughts
Paul Gordon Twin Peeks / Thought Stealer Rethought
Steve Cook Balls 2 / Barefaced!
Stephen MacRow Brain Fry!
Mark Elsdon Bottle Capped / Best Telephone Trick / Brainwave-2
John Holt Absolutely Positive
Doug Segal I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Cluedo
David Penn Drawing Duplication – A Video Bonus!
Rather than laboriously go through each effect, let’s take Marc Paul’s AAA Serial Number Divination as an example. After a preamble about his attraction to serial number divinations including the approaches Marc has used over the years in different situations and the problems he’s encountered with each, it’s clear that the effect is a culmination of what he knows about divining bank note serial numbers designed to overcome previous shortcomings. It’s an ingenious use of a classic technique tailored to UK bank notes, but the most important point is that it’s something he’s arrived at through experience. This is a theme repeated through out the work. The techniques are mature and beg to be used.
Something else you notice about this book is variations of the phrase “I’ve been doing this for years”. Knowing the pedigree of the performers involved (and knowing some of them personally) I know this is being said not in a glib way to convince others of some notional pedigree. Instead, it hints strongly at the maturity of the techniques. These people are experienced performers and developers of effects and techniques, and it shows. They’re the people whose lectures you attend, whose products you buy and whose material you use, and there’s a tonne of it here. As a bonus, the final effect is a design duplication video by David Penn. The ebook links to it and provides a username and password for you to access it.
If, at a very conservative estimate, you use just 5 of the 58 effects in this book, that’s still a complete mentalism act – all for £12. There are several card effects for a regular deck, which should upset the purists. No one says they have to use playing cards, however, and several use either tarot or ESP decks.
Curiously, Mindblasters is also an experiment in distributed capitalism. All the contributors have the right to sell it. This is an excellent alternative to a magic company putting it out and retaining control over revenues. There are some shockingly bad deals awaiting people with bright ideas that pay a small one-off fee or a paltry percentage of the revenue, and yet still sell by the bucketful. Mindblasters deserves to sell in quantity. The quality is there, but quite whom you buy it from is up to you.
Overall
I wanted to sum up by saying simply: “It’s 12 quid. Buy it,” but that’s not enough. At 195 pages, this is a big ebook of big names. I know it’s almost a cliché to say that it’s stuffed with useable material, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it is indeed stuffed with useable material. The thinking is classical but progressive, with some strong, mature effects you’ll want to use. Well done to Peter Duffie for having the idea to bring this vast resource together.
It’s 12 quid. Buy it.
