CONTENTS

NOVEMBER 2015
VOLUME 25
NUMBER 3

Richard Wiseman - Experimental
By David Britland
He's the man behind the magic show without a magician. Richard Wiseman is a psychologist, best-selling author, magician, and noted television and YouTube personality - and he combines these careers in fascinating, entertaining ways.

Stars of Magic - A Dramatic History
By Rory Johnston
It is one of the best, most influential magic books of all time. Stars of Magic started as a series of manuscripts in the 1940s. Collected in a book, they have endured for seventy years, most recently being turned into a documentary show at MAGIC Live

Wes Barker: Stunt Magician
By Jamie D. Grant
Turning down a well-paying career was just what he needed. Now billing himself as a "stunt magician," Wes Barker does magic, comedy, and sideshows feats. Read about this "inappropriate for all ages" performer, and learn his Bill to Light Bulb effect here.

Billy Topit: Master Magician
By Rory Johnston
Five years after retiring from the stage, Lance Burton is back in a theater - this time onscreen as the star, director, and co-writer of Billy Topit: Master Magician. A pet project for Lance and his friends, the movie finally premiered in Las Vegas this September.

Plus Updates on... Justin Flom's arena-size close-up. SuperStars of Magic 4 in Malaysia. Peter Marvey's latest international shows. The 2015 Genii Convention. Fifty years of "The Chicago Session." MAGIC Magazine "Conventions at a Glance."Bonus Content for the November Issue... Scenes from Billy Topit: Master Magician. Performance and tutorial video of Tom Elderfield's Gum Warp from Influx. All eighteen of the products reviewed in the November issue, plus 504 reviews from previous issues, are all now available at the fully searchable "Marketplace" section of M360.Marketplace
Eighteen products are reviewed this month by Peter Duffie, Gabe Fajuri, Alan Howard, Jared Kopf, Francis Menotti, Peter Pitchford, John Wilson:
The Experts at the Card Table by David Ben & E.S. Andrews
The Examiner by John Graham
Mail Shot by Chris Congreave and Magic Tao
Slicer by Rizki Nanda
Kids Show Masterplan by Danny Orleans
The Opongo Box by Juan Luis Rubiales
Thumb Fun by Sid Lorraine and Devin Knight
Bring It by Will Fern
The Bound Deck by Juan Luis Rubiales
Rich by S Magic
Quick Change Transformation, Part 3 by Sos & Victoria Petrosyan
What's Next
Switch Up by Danny Weiser.
Awesome Self-Working Card Tricks by Big Blind Media
The Other Stories by Leo Behnke
Wonderbox by SansMinds
Gambler versus Gambler by Peter Woerde
Tour De Force by Michael O'Brien

First Look: An Essay on Magic
Robert E. Neale
Robert E. Neale is a prolific creator of magic effects and presentations, and a leading philosopher of magic. These two effects are excerpted from Neale's new book, An Essay on Magic: Managing Mommy, using colored cards to represent caskets, and Pentagram, in which black and white stars point in surprising directions.

First Look: Influx
Tom Elderfield
Tom Elderfield is an eighteen-year-old magician from Buckinghamshire, UK, who was awarded the 2014 Young Close-up Magician of the Year trophy from The Magic Circle. Gum Warp is a trick excerpted from Tom's new DVD of close-up material, Influx. The effect is similar to Roy Walton's Card Warp - when a package of gum is pushed through the gum box, it appears to turn over in transit. It reverses itself again when being pulled back out, and the gum and box are all examinable at the finish.

Loving Mentalism: I Chant Now
Ian Rowland
This month's item affords plenty of scope for you to have fun and get a few laughs. Someone thinks of a famous movie, and you try to read her mind. You employ some rather unusual mindreading techniques, including meditation and chanting, but to no avail. It seems your attempts have failed. However, at the end of all the lighthearted proceedings, you present your audience with a richly satisfying mystery in which you prove you had anticipated the spectator's thoughts in a most unusual and surprising way.

Bent on Deception: The Eyes Have It
Mike Bent
By the time you read this, Halloween 2015 may be a thing of the past. But why not do what I do, and keep Halloween in your heart the whole year through? Kids do. They love and need monsters all year round. Just look at the television shows and movies they watch, the toys they play with, and the books they read - plenty of monsters and spooky stuff there. This month's routine is geared to preschool and kindergarten-age kids. It was designed to acknowledge the natural fears kids have and to give them a tool to help overcome them - to let them use their own imaginations, to control their imaginations. It's my variation on the Spot Card, a classic of magic. This routine makes the card a character that is - you guessed it - a monster, and a furry one at that. And the spots have become eyes. Lots of eyes.

The Monk's Way: Topsy-Turvy Failure Surprise
Steve Reynolds
"Card problems" get my blood flowing and my creativity focused. Whenever I session with a card worker, I enthusiastically ask, "Got a card problem?" I asked this of my friend Bill once and he replied, "The last thing you need, Steve, is another problem." Touch