The Unbearable Weight of Fantasy, Tolkien, and Race (or, Eh, Black Elves Are Fine)
The Internet is abuzz about the one fantasy author to rule them all, J.R.R. Tolkien. Over Superbowl weekend, Amazon released the first trailer for their new Tolkien adaptation, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. As with any highly-anticipated media property, the trailer (and the still shots released earlier this year) have sparked […]
Space Opera and Epic Fantasy: Two Trees Sharing a Root System (and Then Becoming Two Big Nasty Trees That Eat Other Trees, or Something)
Last month, Paul Weimer suggested I write about the connections between epic fantasy and space opera. Initially, I didn’t know how to approach the topic. Paul, you see, is far better read than myself, particularly in the literary history of science fiction and fantasy. What could I say about the topic that Paul couldn’t say […]
Literary Explorations: Gender Normativity, Genre Fiction, and Other Such Nonsense
In a past episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show, we (Paul, Liz Bourke, and myself) discussed, however briefly, the paucity of women among published science fiction authors in the UK. Specifically, we were talking about their minority status in the present while acknowledging the existence of a long string of incredible female SF writers […]
Literary Explorations: What the hell is a “strong female character”?
(This is a ramble. Expect ramble-ness. Note: there aren’t many comments on this blog (you can fix that if you like), but some of my Google+ followers opened the flood gates here.) No joke. We hear about them all the time. But what do we mean when we say “strong female character”? I ask this […]
Literary Explorations: When to Re-read?
Today, I had a strange moment of contemplation: since I don’t re-read books all that often, I wondered about the criteria for re-reading and what re-reading does to our perception of the work. Do we re-read books we simply love, or are there certain elements that compel re-reading? And what happens to a book when […]
Literary Explorations: Jack London’s The Iron Heel and the Political Dystopia
In a recent discussion on The Skiffy and Fanty Show (it’s here), Andrew Liptak, James Decker, Paul Weimer, and I discussed the prevalence of dystopian narratives in science fiction. At one point, Andrew suggested that dystopias are, in large part, responses to the political climate of the author’s present. I agree with this assessment in […]