Erotica, fantasy, and horror writer.
Greek myths were chock-full of magic items, most of them made by the gods; and with a few exceptions, most of the humans who meddled with them came to a bad end. Take the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece. It’s a very long and involved one, but the gist goes like this. Disinherited …
This timely and thought-provoking deconstruction of the Dragonriders of Pern series by silveradept. True identity of the stick-carrying man on the Led Zeppelin IV album cover discovered. Imaginary books about the imaginary Hyperdimensional universe. The many varieties of domestic peacock. Political commentary from historian Heather Cox Richardson.
One of the more oddball Greek myths I am fascinated with is that of Zeus and Ganymede. It’s NSFW so buckle up, and like most Greek myths, differs according to who tells it. Basically, Ganymede was a comely youth who caught the eye of Zeus so Zeus kidnapped him in the form of an eagle, …
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang First Second Books, 2006 American Born Chinese is a graphic novel about the experience of Asian Americans trying to come to terms with their heritage in mainstream American society. It was published in 2006, so it’s a few years short of its much-deserved twentieth anniversary –- it’s still …
Pretty much all fantasy writers are familiar with Greek myths, or they should be: they’re one of the unfailing constants of Western Culture. The Iliad, which told of the fall of Troy (and the Trojan horse.) The Odyssey, about the hero Odysseus’s epic journey to find his way home. Theseus and the Minotaur, Icarus who …
A Tale of Two Castles by Gail Carson Levine Harper Collins, 2011 The past year has seen a resurgence in cozy fantasy. In this subgenre the characters are genial, the stakes low. It’s slice-of-life, not slice-of-death, and centers on community and friendship. It’s been led by the runaway success of the self-published Legends & Lattes …
I dream about a certain bookstore/library sometimes. It’s not one I’ve seen in real life, but a combination of all the ones I’ve ever known. It always has the kind of books I am interested in: fantasy and science fiction, art and design, sociology and science and history and all the weird ways these intersect. …
The phrase “Venus and Mars” is a potent one. Not only does it bring to mind Venus, the goddess of beauty and love, and Mars, the god of war and brutality, in all their opposition, but also nights of stargazing, self-help books on relations between the sexes, astrology columns, and (as above) anthemical rock albums. …
Users of Midjourney know every day brings a new theme word to play around with decided by the site’s creators. (I suspect it’s a way for the owners to iron out problems with the AI’s interpretation of that word.) One recent word, for example, was generuk, which is a species of long-necked antelope renowned for …
The many, many incarnations of Ultraman over the decades gave fans a decorative Rogue’s Gallery of foes, most of whom were out to destroy Earth or conquer it. The show’s writers were careful to give them all distinctive names, which, oddly, the attack teams somehow always knew despite never seeing that monster before. Most sounded …