Tumgik
#modern day american history is basic science fiction
Note
related to the "how do you organise your books" poll, what's in the fucked up weird tales section of your books? been looking for recs on what to read!
Right! Yes! Hello, friend! I meant to answer this days ago, but last week was deeply weird in several ways and then yesterday I fully spaced out. Anyway. The Weird Tales section!
First: here's the shelf! (It's the second one down, with all of the little whatsits on it.)
Tumblr media
Mainly when I say "fucked up weird tales," I literally mean "authors who were published in the magazine Weird Tales in the early 20th century, and authors related to them." Mostly for my collection that's H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard--I have basically all of Lovecraft's work in two huge volumes, as well as The Lovecraft Lexicon, which is a reference book that I mostly use when I want to drop a random name into a story as a background gag. For Howard I have these story collections:
Horror stories
the complete Conan the Barbarian
Kull the Atlantean (who was sort of a proto-Conan)
Solomon Kane (also horror stories, but about a specific guy)
I also have a book of Clark Ashton Smith stories, he was another contemporary and friend of Lovecraft and Howard, but I'm not sure where it's gotten to. On the shelf above (which is all mass-market/small format paperbacks) I have two collections of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber, the other great pioneer of sword-and-sorcery fiction along with Howard.
Past that, in Authors Related To Them, we've got:
Michael Moorcock (influenced by them)--most of my Moorcock is on the next shelf up, because I have all of the original Elric novels in cute little mass-market paperbacks, but I have an Elric collection on the Weird Tales shelf proper
Arthur Machen (influence on Lovecraft)--one book, a combined edition of The Great God Pan and The Hill of Dreams. I'd recommend The Great God Pan as a great example of late 19th century horror fiction, keeping mind that it is of course tremendously racist and misogynist, as is...a lot of this stuff, unfortunately.
The King in Yellow, Robert W. Chambers--late 19th century supernatural and horror fiction, which the Weird Tales crew read
The King of Elfland's Daughter, Wonder Tales, and The Complete Pegana, by Lord Dunsany (influence on Lovecraft)--lovely, slightly stuffy Irish fantasy. The King of Elfland's Daughter is beautiful and I highly recommend it.
Past them, we have other horror and horror-tinged science fiction and fantasy which seemed, by my highly scientific Vibes-Based Judgement, to belong on the same shelf:
Magic for Liars and The Echo Wife, Sarah Gailey (here on Tumblr at @gaileyfrey)--two truly astonishing modern novels, both of which made me cry hysterically at least once. Magic for Liars is a murder-investigation detective story set at a private magic school in California; The Echo Wife is a horror-ish science fiction story about cloning and spousal abuse. As you might be able to guess, there are some for real trigger warnings here--these books are both extraordinarily good, and I highly recommend them, but if you've got concerns shoot me a follow-up ask and I'll give you the TWs I remember. I also very much recommend their novella collection American Hippo, which is maybe my favorite alternate history of all time.
The Iron Dragon's Daughter, The Dragons of Babel, and The Iron Dragon's Mother, by Michael Swanwick--I read The Iron Dragon's Daughter for the first time at an inappropriately young age, and have reread it every few years since then. I ought to give it another reread, actually, and properly reread the sequels at the same time. Really they're all standalone novels in the same deeply weird, scary Fairyland, and, as with the Gailey novels, are hip-deep in TWs, but they're so good.
The Lottery and Other Stories, Hangsaman, and The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson--Hi! Shirley Jackson is my favorite horror author ever! Please read The Haunting of Hill House, and also We Have Always Lived In The Castle, which I don't have on the shelf because I own it in digital! I haven't finished her other books, so I can't recommend them yet, but I love her so much, please read Shirley Jackson novels.
Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir--gory horror sci-fi with an absolutely wild sense of humor and the toxic necromancy lesbians that a lot of folks on Tumblr have been talking about. (There's a third book, Nona the Ninth, which I have in digital and haven't read yet.) I think these books are excellent, but they're definitely not to everyone's tastes--give yourself a couple of chapters of Gideon to see if you like it, and then if you read the whole thing take a deep breath, because Harrow will definitely throw you for a loop anyway.
There are a few more books behind Dr. Lambshead, the plague doctor, but they're not actually on theme, I just needed to find a spot where they fit.
I would recommend literally any of these books, although pretty much all of them come with caveats of some kind--the older books and stories are often, as I said before, dreadfully racist and otherwise unpleasantly messy, and many of the more modern novels come with serious trigger warnings attached.
I also read a lot of books in digital and thus can't shelve them with the others, and some books fit better in other sections (such as large collections of books by a single author), so here are some other recommendations:
For an incredibly beautiful and moving feminist take on Lovecraft's fantasy work, read The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
For a very intense retelling of Lovecraft's wildly racist story "The Horror at Red Hook" from a Black perspective, read The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle
For a series of interlinked Lovecraft pastiches set in the mid-20th century and addressing, again, a lot of the racism issues, read Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff (there's also a sequel that just came out, but I haven't read it yet)
For a moving, complex take on sword-and-sorcery fantasy, with lots of discussion of power dynamics, slavery, racism, feminism, sexuality, economics, bouncy balls, and kinky gay sex, read the Nevèrÿon stories, by Samuel R. Delany, collected in Tales of Nevèrÿon, Neveryóna, Flight from Nevèrÿon, and Return to Nevèrÿon. Then, if you're as in love with his writing as I am, read Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection, or Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. I mean I love almost everything of his that I've read but those are good starting points.
If you were looking at the top shelf in the photo and wondering if any of those books might be a slightly trashy, extremely horny fantasy romance novel set in an alternate universe where men are few and far between and thus groups of sisters all marry one guy and share him, read A Brother's Price, by Wen Spencer.
9 notes · View notes
breitzbachbea · 2 years
Note
1, 6 and 26!
Thank you for asking!
Hetalia Ask Game
What got you into Hetalia?
I honest to god don't remember anymore. I somehow must have stumbled over it somewhere and thought "Oh! An anime about countries and history!!! How COOL!!!" I remember that I definitely still watched it on some German anime pirate site called proxy dot to or something.
6. How has Hetalia affected history for you?
Not at all, if I'm truthfully. I've always absolutely loved history. Ancient history especially, all thanks to my mother. I wanted to become an egyptologist when I was in primary school, then an archaeologist and since I was 14 or so, 'history professor' was the avowed goal. These days, I don't exactly know what I'll end up doing, but it is definitely within the field of historical sciences and everybody pray my school keeps up its super cool Masters programm that basically qualifies you to work as a public historian.
Hetalia has definitely opened me up more to contemporary culture and a wider interest in the world. I love the manga for its tidbits still, even if I don't save them as genuine information lest I looked them up myself. And writing fanfiction really gives me an outlet for my curiosity and encourages me to learn about the world! I can apply knowledge to stories about charming, little characters and because I want to write about all the charming, little characters, I have concrete avenues within which to seek out knowledge about other parts of the world! I love it, it's really cool.
(Also, I did bring my Hetalia mangas to school and had my teacher read them. Luckily, he found it very funny and in retrospect, it was much less cringe than you'd expect.)
However - I think people who create historical hetalia content are very cool people and put a ton of effort into their things. But I do think that Hetalia isn't a very good tool to really discuss history. It starts with how you define a country. Is it the concept of a modern nation state? When do states start? What is the difference between peoples and states? Do they represent solely their peoples or also their government? To which degree can they act independently? If you asked me on how to write historical - or even contemporary - Hetalia correctly as an exploration of the world, I would have you write a clear definition of your terms at the beginning of each fanfiction. The same way you have to define the terms you're using at the beginning of a book or paper. This is the only way that the history then depicted can be correctly interpreted and analyzed by everyone who engages with it.
'But isn't it just historical fiction -' It is not, because historical fiction deals with fictionalized events and real people, not with personifications of entire countries. Difference. I do think though that both hetalia and historical fiction can be a great way to make people emotionally attached and attuned enough to something that they then start to care about the facts. I tell ya what, I don't care much for American history, but Hamilton got me into reading a wholeass Wikipedia article on the whole scandal. Historical fiction, especially if it's popular, does make its own statements regarding the past and the present and has its own stances, which then shapes public discourse. It's still art and needs to be treated as such and 'historical accuracy' often misses the point. But it is art and not historical scholarship.
History is very, very complicated and messy, by virtue of it being a product of human existence. Trying to cram that into a human being is impossible.
26. Who would be the one character you would love to meet?
Oh, hm, good question! They're all rather silly, though, aren't they, by virtue of it being a comedy slapstick manga. I could say one answer for solely not safe for work reasons, which I won't. But it starts with T and ends with y.
I think I'd like to meet Romano somewhere in South Italy. The man is so fretful and self-conscious in the manga, I'd just wanna show him that I don't think his self-worth as a country is tied to the economy. Find Salvini parassita grafitti and approve of it. Eat cannoli and Neapolitan street pizza and enjoy the place I love the most on earth right after my homecountry.
10 notes · View notes
harrelltut · 3 years
Photo
Tumblr media
2 My Majestic UNDERWORLD [MU] SOULS [U.S.] of SIRIUS UNSEEN NANO [SUN] BIOTECHNOLOGICAL DEATH DNA from Our Parallel Subterranean Earth of Antediluvian [SEA] ATLANTEAN & LEMURIAN RNA Genetics… who Subconsciously RESURRECTED IN:side MAYA’S Mentally Healthy [MH = MAYAN] SPIRIT Language Prophecy of 2012 in 2021… JEHOVAH OCCULT BIBLE [JOB] WITNESS Me [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] on Earth [JE = JESUS] from 2012 in 2021… Legally Registered Privately Under My Historically AUTONOMOUS [HA = HARRELL] Underworld [HU = HURRIAN] SUN_KING [SUNKEN] DOME Confederate [D.C.] Military EMPIRE [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] of the Imperial HITTITE REICH of the BLACK SUN who Esoterically Articulate [SEA] Ancient Ægyptian TETHYS' [E.T.] Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Symbolical Languages Hieratically Taught by Our Astronomically Intelligent ANUNNAKI [AIA = AMÚN] SUN GOD [RA] PRIESTS [RAP] from Our Affluent Underground Ægyptian City of SAÏS.. who Cosmologically Recorded Our SACRED Astronomy of Subatomic Atoms from the Thermosphere of Uranium Radiation NATURALLY [SATURN] WARMING UP [WU] Our ULTRA HIGH EXOSPHERE of SIRIUS STAR Activity caused by the Thermonuclear UV Rays from NIBIRU'S [SATURN'S] MAGNETOSPHERE of Astronomical PLUTO [MAP]… Now [NWO] HEIL ARCHANGEL [HA = HARRELL] MICHAEL IN:side Cosmic Darkness [HEAVEN] since iDynastically [I.D.] BEE Ægyptian RAMESES' Highly Official… U.S. Ancient [USA = PREHISTORIC] Ægyptian American [ATLANTEAN] SON [RAMESES III] CREATOR of Lost America [L.A. = NEW Atlantis] in 2021 [2012]!!! https://www.instagram.com/p/CORT8qThtAn/?igshid=6bhl6o41lsty
4 notes · View notes
Text
Mike Milligram: The Lost Killjoy
Edit: On July 21st 2020, a Mike Milligram comic by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon was officially announced. However, I’ll leave this post as it is for future reference.
In 2009, while My Chemical Romance fans were eagerly awaiting news on their upcoming album, Gerard Way had another surprise in store: the announcement of a new comic series called “Killjoys.”
Co-written by Shaun Simon and illustrated by Becky Cloonan, Gerard told CBR that the series would “deal with much more mature and controversial themes, such as hate crimes and homophobia, the homogenization of American culture and American life.” Unlike “The Umbrella Academy,” which was set in a fantasy world, “Killjoys” was set in modern-day America.
But what nobody realized was that even after an album, two music videos, and a six-issue comic series, Gerard’s original conception would never see the light of day.
Tumblr media
In 2008, Gerard Way and Shaun Simon developed the Killjoys universe in a frenzy of inspiration. Gerard’s original sketch features Mike Milligram on the left–named after Gerard’s brother Mikey Way–with a host of other characters that accompanied Mike on his journey. The comic was announced a year later at San Diego Comic Con, with a release planned in 2010.
With My Chemical Romance wrapping up their fourth album, Gerard and Shaun were ready to start writing. Becky Cloonan drew concept art for Mike Milligram, as well as promotional artwork that they planned to use at the Comic Con announcement. However, the Mike Milligram art was scrapped and replaced with a simple image of the Killjoy spider–a move that could later be seen as prophetic.
Tumblr media
In 2009, “Killjoys” was an entirely different concept. There was no Party Poison, no Dr. Death Defying, no Battery City, no girl with special powers. The original comic involved a surreal road trip through America that reunited offbeat characters and confronted harsh realities along the way. In 2013, Shaun Simon offered this description in the introduction to the special hardcover edition of the comics:
The old version of the story focused on Mike Milligram, a late-twenty-something living in a desert trailer park and working a crappy job at a supermarket. Mike’s teenage years were a blur. He couldn’t tell if the things he remembered had actually happened or not. Part of him believed he was part of a gang called the Killjoys who fought fictional things in the real world. The other part of him believed it was all just a dream. Music was the only thing that kept Mike going, so when the music was erased from his Ramones tape, it sent him over the edge. He went out and got his old teenage gang, who were now living normal lives, back together because, yes, it was all real. Other members of his gang included Ani-Max, now a high school history teacher; Code Blue, a rabble-rouser who was a working girl in Vegas; Monster, a new young member they met on the road; and Kyle 100%, who was a B-list actor now. They all had strange powers based on objects. Halloween masks and costume accessories, puffy jackets, toy ray guns. It was a story about a group of old friends getting together and discovering what America really was. Reaching deep inside its pretty facade and pulling out the ugly guts. (It was semiautobiographical. I toured with Gerard and his band for a couple of years before realizing I needed to find my own path.) The gang would have found out that another former gang had now become the largest health care corporation in the country and were hell bent on making the world a safe and clean place by removing all that was dirty, like the Ramones. It would have been a great story, and I’m sure parts will end up in Gerard’s and my’s future work.
Tumblr media
Of course, we all know what happened after that announcement. After Gerard took a fateful week-long trip to the desert, MCR decided to scrap “Conventional Weapons” and fueled their energy into writing “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.” But even as Gerard delved into this new post-apocalyptic version of the Killjoy universe, the comics remained the same. As late as 2011, Gerard claimed in an interview with Artrocker that the comics hadn’t changed at all:
No, none of the characters, even our characters, are in it. It is a completely separate thing, even almost a separate setting. It shares all the ideals behind the record and the theories and the commentary but it is nothing like the videos you have seen. I think the car is probably the only thing that’s the same!
But as the band took on more responsibilities–filming music videos, promoting the album, going on tour–the comics kept getting pushed back. First the release planned for 2010; then it was pushed back to 2011. And while the era had kicked off without a hitch, MCR eventually hit one of the first of many roadblocks: they didn’t have enough money to film the third video. So as Shaun Simon told CBR, the original story featuring Mike Milligram was scrapped, and replaced with the story of the girl and the Ultra Vs:
[A]fter the record, Gerard had built this whole world around the Killjoys. When it came time for the comic, Gerard called me up and said, “We ran out of money. We wanted to make the third video, but we don’t have the money. So do you want to make the idea for that video into a comic?” We started talking about ideas, and we had so many that it turned into this whole series.
In an interview with Paste (2013), Gerard went into more detail about the process:
The deal is that I had written three videos (“Na Na Na,” “Sing,” and “The Only Hope For Me Is You”), and the third video had never gotten made. By the time we had completed the second video, we just ran out of budget money. At the time, somebody was managing us and not keeping an eye on this stuff. Long story short, there was no budget. So I wrote a video, and of course it ends up being the most expensive one, as the last part would usually be. But we couldn’t make it! Killjoys started its life as a very different comic. It was heavily-rooted in nineties Vertigo post-modernism. There’s a lot of very cool, abstract ideas in it; I wouldn’t even call it a superhero book. That (comic) was a visual and thematic inspiration on what would become the album Danger Days. It was pretty loose, though. This was going to be my interpretation of the story, so there’s way more science fiction involved. And what I need to say to the world needed to be a little more direct, so I boiled it down to something that’s still very smart and challenging, but I thought was definitely easier to understand through song or visual. Then (Killjoys artist) Becky Cloonan drew a 7-inch for “The Only Hope For Me Is You,” which was going to be the last video single. I realized I was out of budget, so I said ‘just make this the girl from the first and second video at 15. And have her shave her head or chop her hair off like in The Legend of Billie Jean, because that’s how the video was supposed to start.’ So (Cloonan) sends this drawing over and I’m on tour with Blink 182 in a hotel on an off day. I get this drawing and I’m so immediately blown away by it. I call Shaun, my co-writer and co-creator, and I say ‘open your email, I’m going to send you something.’ I ask him ‘how does this image make you feel?’ We talked for two hours. By the end of the conversation we both realized that that image was the comic, and the third video was basically the comic. So we figured how we were going to make this interesting and exciting for six issues and complete the story. And that was the final direction. It was pretty obvious to us.
Tumblr media
In a way, Mike Milligram’s spirit lived on, as fans noticed the similarities between Mike Milligram and Party Poison. But it’s inaccurate to say that Mike Milligram became Party Poison, though “Party Poison’s real name is Mike Milligram” became a persistent rumor in the fandom. Mike’s story was not Poison’s; he wasn’t a post-apocalyptic rebel, but a teenager searching for his identity in modern America.
Tumblr media
Will Mike Milligram’s story ever be told? At this point, it’s not likely. But his tale offers a glimpse into the creative minds of Gerard Way and Shaun Simon, and makes us ponder the fact that with a few changes–the comics being released earlier, for instance, or MCR having the money to fund the third video–the comics could have been entirely different.
Tumblr media
57 notes · View notes
snarktheater · 3 years
Note
Hey, d'you have any French book recs? I'm trying to work on my French, and rn I have downloaded one of my favourite book series' French translations, but I figured maybe books already written in French might work better? Also have you read the Ranger's Apprentice series? 1/2
RA's def flawed - the books' narration does like to point bright arrows at the protagonists' intelligence, and the last few books def have the tone of 'old white man trying to write feminism', although at least he's trying? - and it's aimed more to the younger side of YA, but it is still a very fun series, and I can ignore the flaws fairly easily, at least partly due to nostalgia? This rather long lol but I'm wordy.
I'll start with the second question: no, although every time the series is brought up I have to check the French title and go "oh, right, I've seen these books in stores". But I've never purchased or read them. It sounds like something I probably would have enjoyed as a teen but I just missed the mark, and these days I'm trying to drown myself in queer books, so that probably isn't happening.
As for your first question, geez, I haven’t read a French book in years, so this is gonna skew middle grade/YA, though that may not be so bad if the point is to learn the language. I will also say that as a result, these may read a little outdated.
I'll put it under a cut, even if Tumblr has become really bad with correctly displaying read mores. Sorry, mobile crowd.
It's also likely that old readers of the blog will have seen me talk about most of these. I don't feel like going through old posts.
One last thing: while I was curating this list I took the time to make a Goodreads shelf to keep track of those.
The Ewilan books by Pierre Bottero
Tumblr media
(It's a testament to how long ago I read these books that these are not the covers of the edition I own, and I can't even find those on Google. I'm settling for a more recent cover anyway since it'll make it easier to find them, presumably)
There are at least three trilogies (that I know of) set in the same world.
The first trilogy is essentially an isekai (so, French girl lands in parallel fantasy world by accident) with elements of chosen one trope, though I find the execution makes it worth the while anyway.
The second trilogy is a direct sequel, so same protagonist but new threat, and the world gets expanded.
The third one is centered around a supporting characters from the previous books, and the first couple of books in it are more her backstory than a continuation, though the third one concludes both that trilogy and advances the story of the other books as well.
Notably these books have a really fun magic system where the characters "draw" things into existence. It's just stuck with me for some reason.
A bunch of stuff by Erik L'Homme
I have read a lot of this man's books, starting with Le Livre des Etoiles.
Tumblr media
They also skew towards the young end of YA, arguably middle grade, I never bothered to figure out where to draw the line. They're coincidentally also using the premise of a parallel world to our own (and yes, connected to France again, the French are just as susceptible of writing about their homeland), but interestingly are set from the point of view of characters native to the parallel world.
It also has a very unique magic system, this one based on a mix of a runic alphabet and sort-of poetry. I'll also say specifically for these books that the characters stuck with me way more than others on this list, which is worth mentioning.
This trilogy is my favorite by Erik L'Homme, but I'll also mention Les Maîtres des brisants, which is a fantasy space opera with a pirate steampunk(?) vibe. I think it's steampunk. I could be mistaken. But it's in that vein. It's also middle grade, in my opinion not as good, but it could just be that it came out when I was older.
Another one is Phaenomen, which was a deliberate attempt at skewing older (though still YA). This one is set in our (then-)modern world and centers a group of teens who happen to have supernatural powers. I guess the best way to describe it is a superhero thriller? If you take "superhero" in the sense of "people with individualized powers", since they don't really do a lot of heroing.
...I really need to brush up on genre terminology, don't I.
The Ji series by Pierre Grimbert
Tumblr media
This one is actually adult fantasy, though it definitely falls under "probably outdated". It is very straight, for starters, and I'd have to give it another read to give a more critical reading of how it handles race (it attempts to do it, and is well meaning, but I'm not sure it survives the test of time & scrutiny, basically).
If I haven't lost you already, the premise is this: a few generations ago, a weird man named Nol gathered emissaries from each nation of the world and took them to a trip to the titular Ji island. Nobody knows what went down here, but now in the present day, someone is trying to kill off all descendants from those emissaries, who are as a result forced to team up and figure out what's going on.
I'm not going to spoil past that, though I will say it has (surprise) a really unique magic system! I guess you can start to piece together what my younger self was interested in. Which, admittedly, I still am.
Once again, this one also has a strong cast of characters, helped by rich world building and the premise forcing the characters to come from many different cultures (though, again, I can't vouch for the handling of race because it's been too long).
The first series is complete by itself, though it has two sequel series as well, each focusing on the next generation in these families. Because yes, of course they all pair up and have kids. Like I said: very straight.
A whole lot of books by Jean-Louis Fetjaine
Tumblr media
OFetjaine is a historian, and I guess he's really interested in Arthurian mythos especially, because he loves it so much he's written two separate high fantasy retellings of them! I'm not criticizing, mind you, we all need a hobby.
The former, the Elves trilogy (pictures above) is very traditional high fantasy. Elves, dwarves, orcs, a world which is definitely fictionalized with a pan-Celtic vibe to it. The holy grail and excalibur are around, but they're relics possessed by the elves and dwarves with very different powers than usual. Et cetera.
Fetjaine also really loves his elves (as the titles might imply), and while they're not exactly Tolkien elves, there's a similar vibe to them. If you like Tolkien and his elf boner, you'll probably like this too. And conversely, if that turns you off, these books probably also won't work for you.
This series also has a prequel trilogy, centered around the backstory of one of the main characters. I...honestly don't remember too much about it, but I liked it, so, there you go, I guess.
I said Fetjaine did it twice. The other series is the Merlin duology, which, as the title implies, is a retelling of Merlin's story. Note that Merlin is also in the other trilogy, but it's a different Merlin; like I said, completely different continuities and stories.
This one is historical fantasy, so it's set in actual Great Britain, and Fetjaine attempts to connect Arthur to a "real" historical figure...but, you know, Merlin is also half-elf and elves totally exist in Brocéliande, so, you know. History.
Okay, that's probably enough fantasy, let me give some classics too.
L'Arbre des possibles et autres histoires - Bernard Werber
Tumblr media
Bernard Werber is a pretty seminal author of French sci-fi and I should probably be embarrassed that the only book of his that I read was for school, but, it is a really good one, so I'll include it anyway.
It's a novella collection, and when I say "sci-fi" I want to make it clear that it's very old school science fiction. It's more Frankenstein or Black Mirror than Star Trek, what we in French call the anticipation genre of science fiction: you take one piece of technology or cultural norm and project it into the future.
It has a pretty wide range of topics and tones, so it's bound to have some better than others. My personal faves were Du pain et des jeux, where football (non-American) has evolved into basically a wargame, and Tel maître, tel lion, where any animal is considered acceptable as a pet, no matter how absurd it is to keep as a pet. They're both on a comedic end, but there's more heartfelt stuff too.
L'Ecume des Jours - Boris Vian
(no cover because I can't find the one I have, and the ones I find are ugly)
This book is surrealist. Like, literally a part of the surrealist movement. It features things such as a lilypad growing inside a woman's lungs (and, as you well know, lilypads double in size every day, wink wink), the protagonist's apartment becoming larger and smaller to go with his mood and current financial situation, and more that I can't even recall at the moment because remembering this book is like trying to remember having an aneurysm.
It is also really, really fun and touching. Oh, and it has a pretty solid movie adaptation, starring Audrey Tautou, who I think an international audience would probably recognize from Amelie or the Da Vinci Code movie.
I don't really know what else to say. It's a really cool read!
Le Roi se meurt - Eugène Ionesco
Ionesco is somewhat famous worldwide so I wasn't even sure to include him here. He's a playwright who wrote in the "Theater of the Absurd" movement, and this play is part of that.
The premise of this play is that the King (of an unnamed land) is dying, and the land is dying with him. I don't really know what else to say. It's theater of the absurd. It kind of has to be experienced (the published version works fine, btw, no need to track down an actual performance, in my humble opinion).
The Plague - Albert Camus
You've probably heard of this one, and if you haven't, let me tell you about a guy called Carlos Maza
youtube
I'm honestly more including this book out of a sense of duty. The other three are books I genuinely liked and happen to be classics. This book was an awful read. But, um. It's kind of relevant now in a way it wasn't (or didn't feel, anyway) back in 2008 or 2009, when I read it. And I don't just mean because of our own plague, since Camus's plague is pretty famously an allegory for fascism, which my teenage self sneered at, and my adult self really regrets every feeling that way.
Okay, finally, some more lighthearted stuff, we gotta talk about the Belgian and French art of bande dessinée. How is it different from comic books or manga? Functionally, it isn't. It really comes down more to what gets published in the Belgian-French industry compared to the American comics industry, which is dominated by superheroes, or the Japanese manga industry, which, while I'm less familiar with it, I know has some big genre trends as well that are completely separate.
The Lanfeust series - Arleston and Tarquin
Tumblr media
This is a YA mega-series, and I can't recommend all of it because I've lost track of the franchise's growth. Also note that I say "YA", but in this case it means something very different from an American understanding of YA. These books are pretty full of sex.
No, when I say YA I mean it has that level of maturity, for better or worse. The original series (Lanfeust de Troy) is high fantasy in a world where everyone has an individual magical ability but two characters find out they're gifted with an absolute power to make anything happen, and while it gets dark at times, it's still very lighthearted throughout, and the humor is...well, I think it's best described as teen boy humor. And it has a tendency to objectify its female characters, as you'll quickly parse out from the one cover I used here or if you browse more covers.
But still, it holds a special place in my heart, I guess. And on my shelves.
The sequel series, Lanfeust des Etoiles, turns it into a space opera, and goes a little overboard with the pop culture reference at times, though overall still maintains that balance of serious/at times dark story and lighthearted comedy.
After that the franchise is utter chaos to me, and I've lost track. I know there was another sequel series, which I dropped partway through, and a spinoff that retold part of the original series from the PoV of the main love interest (in the period of time she spent away from the main group). There was a comedy spin-off about the troll species unique to this world, a prequel series, probably more I don't even know exist.
Les Démons d'Alexia
Tumblr media
Something I can probably be a little less ashamed of including here.
Some backstory here. The Editions Dupuis are a giant of the Belgian bande dessinée industry, and for many, many years I was subscribed to their weekly magazine. That magazine was (mostly) made up of excerpts from the various books that the éditions were publishing at the time; those that were made of comic strips would usually get a couple pages of individual scripts, while the ongoing narratives got cut into episodes that were a few pages long (out of a typical 48 page count for a single BD album). Among those were this series.
For the first few volumes, I wasn't super into this series, probably because I was a little too young and smack dab in the middle of my "trying to be one of the boys" phase. But around book 3 I got really invested, to the point where I own the second half of the series because I had canceled by subscription by then but still wanted to know more.
Alexia is an exorcist with unusual talents, but little control, who's introduced to a group that specializes in researching paranormal phenomena, solving cases that involve the paranormal, that kinda stuff.
As a result of the premise, the series has a pretty slow start since it has to build up mystery around the source of Alexia's powers, but once it gets going and we get to what is essentially the series' main conflict, it gets really interesting.
Plus, witches. I'm a simple gay who likes strong protagonists and witches.
Tumblr media
Murena
Tumblr media
There was a point where my mtyhology nerdery led me to look for more stuff about the historical cultures that created them, and so I'd be super into stuff set in ancient Rome (I'd say "or Greece or Egypt" but let's face it, it was almost always Rome).
Murena is a series set just before the start of Emperor Nero's rule. You know, the one who was emperor when Rome burned, and according to urban legend either caused the fire or played the fiddle while it did (note: "fiddle" is a very English saying, it's usually the lyre in other languages). He probably didn't, it probably was propaganda, but he was a) a Roman Emperor, none of whom were particularly stellar guys and b) mean to Christians, who eventually got to rewrite history. So he's got a bad rep.
The series goes for a very historical take on events, albeit fictionalized (the protagonist and main PoV, the titular Lucius Murena, is himself fictional) and attempts to humanize the people involved in those events. Each book also includes some of the sources used to justify how events and characters are depicted, which is a nice touch.
It's also divided in subseries called "cycles" (books 1-4, 5-8 and the ongoing one starts at 9). I stopped after 9, though I think it's mostly a case of not going to bookstores often anymore. Plus it took four years between 9 and 10, and again between 10 and 11. But the first eight books made for a pretty solid story that honestly felt somewhat concluded as is, so it's a good place to start.
24 notes · View notes
aelaer · 3 years
Note
☕ The fact that Wakanda was presented as an advanced country looking down on others from it's comfortable vibranium armchair but had a monarchist system that could place a ruler with 100% muscles and 0% brains at the head, along with other bothersome stuff like that, like Shuri being the head of the government's science department while she is a part of the royal family, or really, every single part of Wakanda that looks good on paper - a king with a council of people leading the different tribes - but that history has shown us very often ends up creating a dictatorship, which is really what happened in the movie and I'm surprised no one sees it.
Like, the movie literally shows us this country that's supposedly so advanced, with spies and people placed around the world, most likely putting their fingers in as many pies as possible, and an incredibly developed technology - which is frightening on many levels considering that UN or no Wakanda could blow up everything outside of its borders and people wouldn't know it until it happened -, but with a monarchist - and whatever other words could define it - governmental system that has revealed a lot of problems in its configuration. The tribes leader were literally being choked in the throne room and no one was doing anything, there was a destruction of a historical, scientific and cultural heritage being condoned by the new religious ceremony leader(???) just because the king ordered it. They would've literally tried taking over the entire non-black population (and where does that leave all the metis people? All the ones that are not white, but not black? Of middle eastern descendance? Of Asian one? Etc?) if the ex-monarch hadn't done something.
What I'm trying to ask if, what do you think of Wakanda being a good idea on paper but terrible in practice? True! Untrue? Something else?
Holy shit lady, you ask the tough questions. This is a difficult subject to cover - you’re asking me to look at the political structure of a fictional society within a disenfranchised continent - and I’m uncertain if it’s possible to do a decent analysis without addressing heavy topics. Basically, I don’t want to sound like a privileged dickwad. So I guess what I can say is - this comes from someone with a (mostly decent) American-based education, and no formal study of pre-colonial customs and political structures in Africa. I apologise for any misconstrued ideas and more than welcome any corrections to those who know more about these subjects!
I like Wakanda on paper, mostly due to the fact that the majority of Africa got completely screwed in terms of historical treatment and I’m rooting for the continent’s people to gain their own voices again. Wakanda being such a huge thing in international popular culture might serve as an inspiration for someone who ends up being important to at least one country there. In that sense, I really like Wakanda - the idea that it can potentially inspire historically disenfranchised cultures in the real world. How practical that thought is, I’m not sure - I might just be too idealistic.
Dictatorships can happen in non-monarchies as well, which you know -- as the most famous examples in 20th century history are not monarchies. The issue that can appear in monarchies -- or dictatorships -- is the lack of checks and balances to help keep those in power from going overboard (or the populace not having enough manpower/arms to get a dictator-like-coup out, but that’s an entirely different discussion!)
From what we got in the movie, Wakanda does seem to lack those checks and balances and no ability to overrule a king’s command. It seemed that they never had any sort of Magna Carta in their history (which is far from a perfect document, but did start the precedent of limiting monarchical power), and it doesn’t seem there’s anything resembling a representative government with veto power over the leader that you see in, what, 2/3rds of the world these days? (I legit have no idea, but I do know it’s wide-spread.)
But why wouldn’t they have such a document limiting monarchical power or some sort of democratic process? The modern mindset across many countries around the world leans towards democracy and elected, representative governments. But it can’t be denied that colonialism helped spread this, as -- at least, according to wiki -- representative democracy/liberal democracy/Western democracy all originate in Europe. So, in some way it makes sense that they didn’t transition yet because they were never colonized, and they were completely self-contained so didn’t have any of the outside world conflicts to force them to make changes. France helped fund the barons who pushed for the Magna Carta. France was also responsible for helping fund/arm the US in their fight to gain independence (lol France vs England history, it’s so great). External conflicts with other regions/countries caused *changes* to happen in those societies, at least from what I know of European history. Possibly happened in other continents, but I’m just not knowledgeable enough about their histories to give specific examples.
Wakanda had no outside conflict, and with no outside conflict, you get one major source of problems eliminated. Civil wars happen for a multitude of reasons, but perhaps one of their solutions historically for kingship changing without civil war was the fight of a representative of a tribe to try and win it over. Who knows? But when you’re enclosed like Wakanda was, there’s a lot less chance of things changing.
(On that note - their selection of a new leader is also incredibly disproportionately unfair to women. The average man is physiologically stronger and faster than the average woman. It’s just--biology. But who knows, maybe Wakanda was the same as much of the rest of the world in terms of their thoughts of women leading in politics. There’s comic canon that could be different, but the MCU did a lot of changes from comic canon.)
A *lot* of things changed across the world in the 20th century, making the world much smaller. Before the 20th century, it was likely considered completely useless and nonviable to make war on other nations because, though they were more technologically advanced, it’s incredibly unlikely they had something akin to nuclear bombs in the 19th century. They had to have their own steps of progression. And if they were only *a bit* better, they couldn’t stop the entire world if they started attacking and word spread. It’s only in the late 20th, early 21st century that things like destroying the rest of the world with Wakandan weaponry was likely actually feasible. Though honestly? I don’t think that shield could withstand a nuke. I just don’t see it. If Erik’s plan went through, he may have doomed Wakanda's capital city to being utterly annihilated because too many countries do have the ultimate kill button, and there are some who would not hesitate to use it.
It also could be cultural. Wakanda didn’t go conquering their neighbors left and right. They were happy with five tribes and it seemed to remain five tribes. That speaks of something deeply cultural, deep within the roots of how they’re raised and taught. Erik came from an entirely different culture with a violent childhood and background, and because they were in the 21st century, other Wakandans could *learn* of the rest of the world, and get new ideas - and get the same anger that stirs war and revolutions, and ultimately can affect a country’s culture.
So perhaps before the 21st century, limited power with the king wasn’t needed simply due to their isolation. Now, though that they are much more connected with the world, maybe they need something more like Botswana or Nigeria, only tied in with a monarchy (according to wiki -- Elsewhere, in Botswana, the kgosis (or chieftains) of the various tribes are constitutionally empowered to serve as advisors within the national legislature as members of the Ntlo ya Dikgosi. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the various traditional polities that currently exist are politically defined by way of the ceding of definite authority from the provincial governments, which in turn receive their powers to do so from a series of chieftaincy laws that have been legislatively created.)
So basically what I’m trying to say is, while I’m personally super gung ho about representative democracies and individual liberties, that’s not necessarily the culture of Wakanda and it may not fit for them. But *what* the culture of Wakanda evolves into, being more open to the rest of the world -- and thus, the rest of the world’s ideas and cultures, remains to be seen. They may find that they do need to reform their political structure after the civil war we saw in the first film, though, and perhaps they do so.
20 notes · View notes
Text
Everything You Need To Know About Zombies, And 5 Sightings Of The Real-life Walking Dead We STILL Can’t Explain
At this point, I’m not sure anything would surprise me.
In fact, a zombie apocalypse would actually make sense at this point. But even if the grand finale of 2020 was the dead rising from their graves, it wouldn’t actually be the first time.
According to those that practice Haitian Voodoo, zombies exist. And according to scientists, zombies exist.
But the thing is, Hollywood has gotten our favourite flesh-eating, apocalypse-heralding monsters wrong. The folklore behind these monsters is actually rather different than men and women foaming at the mouth as they mummy-walk towards you.
The reanimated corpse didn’t take its first steps with the debut cinema screening of Night Of The Living Dead (1968).
It started with slaves.
Today we are going to cover everything you need to know about zombies from forgotten folklore of years gone by, to the rumours of the living dead among us in preparation from the incoming apocalypse...
Tumblr media
What Are Zombies?
It’s pretty simple: a zombie is someone who was dead and is now not-so-dead. According to an official definition they are corpses which have been brought back from the grave to haunt the living.
Yep - they’re just like ghosts. But instead of wafting gently they have to lump around this great hulking cadaver which is in the midst of decay.
Zombies can be traced back to Haitian Voodoo which claims that a dead body can be reanimated by magical rituals. This supernatural take on the walking dead, however, is at odds with more modern fictional beliefs which centre on science.
Parasites, diseases, and viruses (*looks into camera*) feature as the main causes of zombies taking over the world in Hollywood’s take on the beast. This new zombie first pulled itself out of the ground in 1968 with Night Of The Living Dead, but the term ‘zombies’ was only applied by fans after the release of the cult classic. They were originally known as ‘ghouls’ in the film, confirming the premise that zombies exist to haunt the living.
Following this on-screen debut, the horror genre was overrun by zombie films with Dawn Of The Dead and Thriller going down in history as some of the most iconic movies of all time. The genre waned towards the 90s, however, and was due a resurgence just before the millennium thanks to predominately East Asian video games.
28 Days Later and Shaun Of The Dead resurrected the genre at the turn of the century and shaped what zombies are now known most for: the zombie apocalypse.
Tumblr media
The terrifying claims of a civilised world being brought to its knees by walking corpses is now a pop culture staple, but more recently its been given a makeover and shopping montage as a part of its rom-com redo. Warm Bodies and iZombie are a novel take on the horror must-have and incorporate a human-zombie relationship that is an emblem for the sexual liberation of the era.
The severed relationship between supernatural zombies and the sci-fi alternative doesn’t just take place on Netflix. There is evidence that both could exist.
Zombies In Haitian Voodoo
In 1819, poet Robert Southey was the first to use the term ‘zombie’ in his history of Brazil. This heralded the emergence of zombies in Haitian Voodoo which chimed with a concept even more terrifying than the prospect of a zombie apocalypse:
Slavery.
According to Haitian Voodoo, bokors - or witches - would use necromancy to revive a dead person. This zombie would then be under their control as a personal slave and would have no personal will.
Bokors were also known to capture ‘zombie astrals’ - part of the human soul - in a bottle which would provide the owner with extra luck or healing properties, for example.
These beliefs were rooted in Voodoo traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans: they believed Baron Samedi would take them to an African heaven after they died. Those that offended the Ioa (a Voodoo god) would be a slave forever - AKA a zombie. This fear of eternal slavery was reinforced by slave drivers who were often also voodoo priests; to prevent slave suicides, they would threaten zombification.
It was this widespread belief in zombies as slaves that would spread beyond Haiti’s borders during the US’ occupation of the country in the early 20th century. A number of case studies reporting zombies came to the US’ attention, such as in the William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929): he cited an article in Haiti’s criminal code which recognised zombies’ existence, (it essentially said even if you murder someone and you make them come back as a zombie, it is still murder).
It was shortly after US forces entered Haiti that one of the most famous cases of an alleged zombie emerged. We will get to Felicia Felix-Mentor’s story later in this article.
Zombies In Science
Zombies are deeply rooted in some of humanity’s darkest chapters in history - but they also have a place in our natural history, too.
Technically, zombies do exist. Sure, if you made the claim for human zombification via Voodoo priest scientists would counter with claims that these ‘zombies’ are schizophrenic, in a catatonic state, or are suffering from a mental illness that mirrors how we believe they would act. But if you made a similar claim for other animals - namely insects - they’d believe you.
In fact, there are numerous known cases of such instances.
Tumblr media
Whilst there are no known insects that practice Haitian Voodoo, these cases follow the basic plotline of zombie cult classics - parasites infect them and alter their behaviour or use them to their advantage. The parasites effectively make slaves out of those they target, mirroring what we saw in Haiti.
Take zombie carpenter ants, for example:
A fungus enters their bloodstream, hijacks their mind and grows around their muscles. Within one short week the ant is compelled to leave its colony and seek higher ground which has the right temperature and humidity for the fungus to grow in. It then forces the ant to bite down into a leaf, grows a stalk through the ant's head, and cuts off the ant’s muscle control.
The ant’s corpse still moves its legs vigorously as the bulbous capsule of fungi spores grows through what’s left of its body to infect the ant colony below.
There are many more examples just like this with most parasites having their own unique - and uncomfortably brutal - method of killing off wildlife.
Scientists are unable to refute claims that a parasite might mutate and have a similar effect on humans one day, reducing us all to the zombie hordes seen in the movies.
We just have to wait and see. 
Cases Of Actual, Real-life, Not-so-living-n-breathing Zombies
Although scientists don’t support claims that Haitian voodoo can in fact raise the dead and create personal slaves, various sightings and reports suggest that human zombies do exist.
Question is - do you believe them?
#1 - Felicia Felix-Mentor
In 1936, the owner of a farm in a small village in Haiti woke up to quite a shock.
A naked woman staggered towards them with her raspy voice mumbling and slurring that this farm belonged to her farmer. But the most terrifying thing about this strange woman that stumbled her way through the village was that she looked rather familiar.
In fact, they were pretty sure that this was a woman who had died and had been buried many years before.
19 years before.
Zora Neale Hurston - an anthropologist - investigated this alleged case of zombification and met Felicia Felix-Mentor at a hospital. The doctors were convinced she was a zombie and her husband confirmed this was his wife.
Even Hurston admitted that she believed what they were telling her:
“I know that I saw the broken remnant, relic, or refuse of Felicia Felix-Mentor in a hospital yard.”
#2 - Clairvius Narcisse
30 odd years after Felix-Mentor first wandered up to her father’s old farm, a 40 year old man admitted himself into hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti. Doctors, however, were unable to work out why he had a fever, was clearly fatigued, and was spitting up blood. He died 3 days later.
20 years after he died, a man claiming to be Narcisse approached Angelina Narcisse, his sister.
He told her and other villagers private, personal information in an attempt to convince them that he was in fact Clairvius and had been turned into a zombie for use on a sugar plantation. He had been paralysed for the duration of his burial and then dug up to be put to work as a slave.
He described in detail the process of his alleged zombification, claiming she was given a paste made from hallucinogenic chemicals which scientists would later use to refute most claims of zombies as simply a drugged state. When the bokor died and he was no longer fed the concoction, he regained his sanity and thus his free will, and returned to his family.
Much like Felix-Mentor’s story, Narcisse is actually widely believed to have been a zombie. His death was documented by 2 American doctors unlikely to follow Haitian Voodoo folklore, and even the man who investigated his claims - Lamarque Douyon - believed to some extent zombies could be real despite dismissing supernatural claims.
He brought a sample of the powders or paste used by the bokor back to the US to investigate whether ‘zombies’ were actually people who were drugged and then revived.
Tumblr media
#3 - Woman from Port-au-Prince
Only known as FI to The Lancet, the journal investigating cases in southern Haiti in the late 90s, she was discovered 3 years after her death wandering near the village she once called home by a friend.
FI was mute and unable to feed herself but she was still recognised by her family, her fellow villagers, and the local priest by a distinct facial mark and other features.
The local courts opened her tomb to investigate the fact that she had apparently risen from the dead and found it full of stones. Her husband was accused of zombifying her after he caught her having an affair.
Despite local claims of supernatural goings-on, she was later admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Port-au-Prince.
#4 - Son of a secret policeman
WD (mentioned in the same study by The Lancet) was 18 years old when he became ill. He developed a fever, his body swelled up, and his eyes went yellow. They thought he was dying or at least already dead.
His father asked his brother to get advice from a bokor but WD died 3 days later. 19 months after he was buried, he reappeared at a cock fight and recognised his father before accusing his uncle of zombifying him.
#5 - Unknown young woman
MM (also mentioned in the same study by The Lancet) was joining her friends in prayer for a local who had been zombified when she fell under a similar affliction. The 18 year old became ill with diarrhoea and fever, her body swelled, and she died.
Her family immediately suspected a sorcerer had had their way with their daughter.
13 years later and MM reappeared at the town markets, claiming not only had she been a zombie in a village 100 miles away, she had had a child with another zombie.
When her bokor died, his son released MM from their control and she travelled home.
Tumblr media
What do you think?
Are zombies real? Or are they merely a fictional beast haunted by the forgotten history of slavery?
If you liked this post I’m pretty sure you’ll love the other articles I post every Saturday! Make sure you hit follow if you want to see ‘em.
Can’t wait ‘til next weekend for a new hit of horror? Check out this online archive of paranormal experiences…
19 notes · View notes
gizkalord · 3 years
Text
2020 Book Reviews
I just thought I’d do quick reviews of the books I read this year, because in 2020, I read the most books for fun since my high school days! I categorized by new books, books I reread, and unfinished books.
And if your situation allows for it, and you’re interested in any of these books, I encourage you to purchase from local bookstores and/or support your local libraries, instead of buying from large corporate vendors like Amazon!
New Books I Read
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi — historical fiction
Homegoing is a sprawling, multigenerational story of two diverging branches of a single family—one branch remains in Africa, while the other branch is enslaved and brought to the United States via the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It’s such an emotional and intimate look at family, heritage, and history. Every vignette about both families leaves such a deep impression, and the ending left me in tears. 10/10 Highly recommend, my favorite book I read this year.
Parable of a Sower by Octavia E. Butler — dystopian/science fiction
Parable of a Sower follows a young African-American girl as she tries to find meaning and purpose in a future dystopian, 2020s (oof) America rife with anarchy, violence, social inequality, and racism. What really impressed me with this book was how relevant its commentary was to the current state of the US—I got through the entire book thinking it had been written in last few years, only to find out it was published almost 30 years ago in 1993. While I thought the plot was a little weaker in the last third or so, it’s an incredibly unflinching and raw story about people and society, and it really left me thinking by the end.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury — science fiction
The Martian Chronicles is a collection of loosely connected short stories about the colonization of Mars by humans, featuring themes of colonialism, racism, anti-war sentiment, censorship, and more. I’ve always been a huge fan of Ray Bradbury, and I’m glad I got the time to read more of his short stories. His writing style is so imaginative, surreal, and at times even unsettling, and the social commentary, while it may seem a little basic to some considering it was published in 1950, is nonetheless still relevant and poignant.
The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt — fiction
Not to be confused with the 2003 movie starring Tom Cruise (though this book is arguably just as bad in a completely different way), The Last Samurai tells the story of a genius mother and her equally genius and precocious son, stuck in the rhythm of mundane society. I think the book has interesting and things to say about how we as a society discourage ourselves from achieving our full potential by seeing some things as beyond our innate ability to learn, and how we squash down those with extraordinary or atypical abilities and favor utilitarian learning over “learning for the sake of learning”. However, the message is couched in such a pretentious and experimental writing style that made me want to rip my eyes out, and I really couldn’t help but feel that the author must have a highly self-inflated view of herself. Can’t believe it was so well reviewed, but then again, it appeals to a brand of intellectualism that reviewers probably love to eat up.
Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh — fiction
Gun Island ties together modern events with Bengali myths and legends through the eyes of an Indian-American academic, covering topics like environmentalism and refugee/migrant crises. While the summary sounded promising, I thought it was actually a very clumsily written book, laden with painfully heavy-handed symbolism, stock characters, and obvious plot contrivances. A lot of things happened and not very much was said. I spent an hour roasting this book with my friends over Trader Joe’s snacks.
Books I Reread This Year
His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman — fantasy
I hadn’t read this series since I was a kid (and at the time, most of the religious themes went completely over my head), so it was a cool experience to read these books again with older and more knowledgeable eyes. Though I think some of the characterization isn’t as fleshed out as I hoped, I still think it’s a wonderfully imaginative and magical world that tackles daring themes about the nature of religion and humanity.
Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston —fantasy/sci-fi
I revisited this book after The Clone Wars finale, and phewww it’s even sadder with full context. While the prose can be a little bare at times, I think Johnston really nails down Ahsoka’s character as the lost, hurt, and traumatized teenaged girl that she is after Order 66, but reminds us of the steely grit and heroism that makes up the core of Ahsoka. Out of the few SW books I’ve read, I think it remains my favorite. DLF, please hire EK to write more Ahsoka books!!!
In-Progress Books
Dune by Frank Herbert - science fiction
Dune is an epic sci-fi story following young Paul Atreides as he navigates life on the desert planet Arrakis in the middle of a massive interstellar political feud. So far, I really like the depth of Dune’s world and the themes of environmentalism, colonization, politics, and exploitation that it’s setting up. I wish the character writing was stronger though, as I’m roughly halfway through and still feel zero emotional connection to Paul.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - non-fiction
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the narrative of Henrietta Lacks and her family, as well as the ethical and moral controversy surrounding her treatment by the medical and scientific community. Lacks was a Black woman treated at Johns Hopkins for cervical cancer, whose cancer cells were sampled and collected without her consent or knowledge in 1951. Lacks died from cancer, but her cells lived on as the HeLa cell line, the first human immortal cell line that has become a crucial staple of biomedical research, playing a significant role in discoveries like the polio and HPV vaccines. While I’ve read quite a bit about her before in news articles, I was excited to finally read the book, and so far it doesn’t disappoint.
To-Read List (for 2021??)
Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
idk.... maybe some star wars books too lmao
10 notes · View notes
Photo
Tumblr media
~IDENTITY (AS OF 6TH YEAR)~
Name: Lilian Marie Le’Reau
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Birth Date: February 23, 1973
Species: Human
Blood Status: Muggleborn
Sexuality: Gay
Alignment: Neutral
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Nationality: French/English (dual citizenship)
Residence: London, England
Myer Briggs Personality Type: INFJ-T The Advocate
1st Wand: 
Alder Wood 12 3/4 Slightly springy flexibility Unicorn Hair core Alder is an unyielding wood, yet often its ideal owner is not stubborn or obstinate, rather helpful, considerate and most likable. Whereas most wand woods seek similarity in the characters of those they will best serve, alder is unusual in that it seems to desire a nature that is, if not precisely opposite to its own, then certainly of a markedly different type. When an alder wand is happily placed, it becomes a magnificent, loyal helpmate. Of all wand types, alder is best suited to non-verbal spell work, whence comes its reputation for being suitable only for the most advanced witches and wizards.
2nd Wand:
Acacia Wood 13 Supple flexibility Horned Serpent Horn core A very unusual wand wood, which I have found creates tricky wands that often refuse to produce magic for any but their owner, and also withhold their best effects from all but those most gifted. This sensitivity renders them difficult to place, and I keep only a small stock for those witches or wizards of sufficient subtlety, for acacia is not suited to what is commonly known as ‘bangs-and-smells’ magic. When well-matched, an acacia wand matches any for power, though it is often underrated due to the peculiarity of its temperament.
Animagus: Black Ragdoll with curved white marks under the eyes and on the paws
Misc Magical Abilities: Naturally adept at most forms of transfiguration and animation charms, wandless spell casting, silent spell casting
Boggart Form: Death Eater from her past
Riddikulus Form: Darth Vader saying “Lilian, I am your father”
Amortentia (others): A kitchen cooking a full meal; generally steak, green beans, baked potatoes, buttered rolls and brownies
Amortentia (Lilian): (before dating) Machine shop oil, the smell of grease and degreaser (after dating/ married) The smell of an old book and the fragrance of Merula’s perfume
Patronus: Multiple Wolves (average 2-3, more depending on the need)
Patronus Memory: The memory of all her friends, family and loved ones attending the unveiling of her first golem
Mirror of Erised: Herself, living life without fear of persecution by muggles or pureblood wizards.
Specialized/Favourite Spells: 
Piertotum Locomotor
Baubillious (for offense and creation)
Permanent Sticking Charm (It’s easier than weeks of welding)
Aguamenti (you wouldn’t believe how many fires are started near Lilian)
Incendio (speaking of fire…)
Engorgio
Reducio
~APPEARANCE~
In game
Tumblr media
Height: 6’3” (190.5 cm)
Weight: 170 lbs (77 kg)
Physique: Toned/ Lean build
Eye Colour: Purple/ Amethyst
Hair Colour: Snow White (originally chestnut)
Skin Tone: Porcelain
Body Modifications: Single Purple streak of Dyed hair
Scarring: After the battle of Hogwarts in the second wizarding war, Lilian loses her left arm and right leg below the joints. She later develops prosthetics nearly identical to her original limbs, but stronger than steel
Inventory: On her person she will have a charm bracelet of several shrunken items including:
-a table -a cooler -a medical cabinet (with everything inside secured) -three Tiny Golems (for easy transport when not in use)
As well as a satchel with several books, pencils and sketch pads for when she has an idea or observes something inspiring. She owns a car and a Thunderbolt broomstick.
Fashion: Lilian normally dresses in black slacks, a white button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a black vest over the white shirt. She also owns several pairs of boots, most in the style of buckle up platforms with steel toes.  She will also wear various dresses to accentuate her figure, muscles or the dresses design as well as several pop culture t-shirts (her favorites are often science fiction based such as Star Wars and Halo)
~ALLEGIANCES~
Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw
Affiliations/Organizations:
The Order of the Phoenix
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
The Constitutional Republic of France
The Royal Crown of England
Professions:
Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office (consultant)
Department of Magical Equipment Control 
Freelance Craftswoman (magical prosthetics)
Freelance Craftswoman (miscellaneous items)
Freelance Craftswoman (Animated Objects)
~HOGWARTS INFORMATION~
Class Proficiencies:
Astronomy: ★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (E) Charms: ★★★★★★★★★★ (O) DADA: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (O) Flying: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (A) Herbology: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (E) History of Magic: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (A) Potions: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (O) Transfiguration: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (O)
Electives:  Study of Ancient Runes Ancient Runes Alchemy Arithmancy Advanced Arithmancy
Extra Curricular: 
Dungeons and Dragons club Potions Club Magic TheoryAncient Runes Club Education of Muggle Items Group (unofficial president)
Favourite Professors: 
Professor McGonagall: While not typically the first choice of Ravenclaws, Lilian respects Professor McGonagall for her cool and decisive temperament, her rational thought processes and her ability to make the correct call in stressful situations. She is also partial due to the shared Animagus attribute as well as the professor’s forgiving nature towards Lilian’s Experimentation with magical creations.
Least Favourite Professors:
Professor Trelawney:  While Lilian respects every form of knowledge, she never understood why this class was a core requirement and not an elective. Surely if someone was that desperate to know their ‘future’ they could use their own time instead of forcing an entire class to follow suit. Lilian is a firm believer in ‘you make your own fate’ and views Professor Trelawney as overly superstitious, even by wizarding world standards.
~RELATIONSHIPS~
Father: Daniel Le’Reau Muggle English Professor Attended University of Cambridge, England Short, Chestnut brown hair with matching Goatee. Tall, slightly scrawny 38 years old.
Daniel is soft-spoken and amicable, often seeking the least confrontational methods. Polite and poised, as expected of a respected University professor
Upper Middle Class 
Professor of Literature and English Studies at the University of Cambridge 
Daniel is a very well known professor, often sited in many English studies papers for his ideas on early literature such as Shakespeare and Anglo-Saxton ballads, noting their implications in modern art and culture as well as their historic significance. He is also known to be quite supportive of his students, often treating them like family members and helping them achieve their dreams. 
Known the McKinley family since Lilian was 5 (the day she was almost kidnapped)
Mother: Amelie Nicole Le’Reau Muggle Long straight Black hair, Amethyst eyes, Average height, toned muscles, rugged beauty. Mechanic (military contracted) 37 years old.
Amelie is an outspoken, avid thinker who spends just as much time as her husband educating people.
Amelie originally served in the Royal Engineering Corps in her early years until she met and fell in love with a rather awkward yet lovable man named Daniel. Shortly before her Exit date, she married him and had Lilian. Since then, she’s been a military contractor for the Royal Engineering Corps. Assisting with various mechanical jobs from basic transportation to armored troop transports to Tanks and Mobile Weapons Systems.
Nearly traumatized when a dark wizard kidnapped Lilian after killing several bystanders with magic and curses. Almost forbade Lilian from attending Hogwarts when she received the acceptance letter. Remains in good standing with Shamus McKinley.
Love Interest: Merula
While they only officially started dating during the Sixth year, their relationship started in the Fourth year.
During the Celestial ball, Lilian noticed that Merula didn’t have anyone to dance with and offered to dance with her.  After the Celestial Ball, Merula’s Attitude softened to a degree. While Lilian was still being teased about how tall she was, she was no  longer harassed for being a muggle, nor was she mocked for her passions. While Merula wouldn’t outright ask for help from Lilian, She would never deny Lilian helping her.
Generally the attitude of the two was always Lilian genuinely trying to learn about Merula while Merula made an effort to understand Lilian and where she was from. Eventually Mistrust and Resentment would make way to curiosity and intrigue. 
Only when Lilian had saved Merula’s life from Dementors had she finally figured out her mixed feelings for Lilian, realizing that she had fallen in love with the quiet muggle born witch, eccentricities and all.
Best Friends:
Rowan Hubei Khanna (Female Khanna) Rowan Harrow Khanna (Male Khanna) Ben Copper Penny Haywood Badeea Ali Ismelda Murk Rival: None
Enemy:
Patricia Rakepick
R
Dormmates: 
Rowan Hubei Khanna Badeea Ali Tulip Karasu
Pets:
Eleanor is an american shorthair that Lilian rescued from the street during her trip to Diagon Alley. Eleanor had been a kitten at the time, thus Lilian was given special permission to have her familiar with her during all classes to make sure she didn’t go hungry.
Due to outstanding Circumstance, Lilian has also (legally) adopted an Acromantula that refers to himself as Cain. While technically intelligent enough to take care of himself, he does allow her to give pets and scratch his carapace in the right areas. In exchange, Lilian is given a supply of webbing to refine into silk as she needs.
Closest Canon Friends:
Ismelda Murk Rowan Hubei Khanna
Closest MC Friends:
Helene Adler @heleneplays​
Skylar Morningstar @angrynar​
Ada Corcoran @ask-bincopper-archive​
Neon Welkin @neonbluewaves​
Ethren Whitecross @hogwartsmysterystory​
~BACKGROUND/HISTORY~
[The following is an excerpt from the book The Craftswoman, a biography on the Life and Philosophies of Lilian Le’Reau]
Interviewer: What do you know of Mrs. Le’Reau? Headmistress Rowan Hubei Khanna: Lilian? Wow, where do I begin… She was always quiet. It was almost as if she were watching everything that happened for the sake of safety and precautions. Like she was always expecting the worst to happen to her no matter what. But given her history I wouldn’t put it past her. 
I: Could you please elaborate on that? Headmistress Khanna: Well, I suppose so. When Lilian was around the age of five, she and her mother were attacked by a rogue Death Eater, one of the remnants of the first wizarding war. A lot of people died that day, several more had to have their memory erased. 
I: With the Memory Erasing Charm, yes. The report of ‘The Market Massacre’ were in the papers for weeks after the incident, if I recall. Headmistress Khanna: Right. Well, This death eater had a particular goal in mind. I was told that he kept on rambling about how he was gonna make  new army, one to combat the remnants of the Order of Phoenix. He had planned on kidnapping Children with magical talent in order to build this order. 
I: Fortunately, the Auror Shamus McKinley was nearby to save her. He not only saved her, but dispatched the dark wizard as well, yes? Headmistress Khanna: While this is true, it still had its ramifications. No one goes through that sort of experience the same. Lilian didn’t like to talk about where she came from or about her childhood.
I: Well, how about her years alongside you at Hogwarts? How would you describe that? Headmistress Khana: Our time at Hogwarts was actually rather mundane compared to the adventures of our other classmates. Lilian and I were generally the part of the plan that collected information and helped solve the riddles of the vaults, rather than actually fighting any of the curses there. Otherwise, much of her time was spent studying, trying to figure out new ways to apply spells and context of said spells, and honing her own personal abilities.  Like I said, a rather average Hogwarts tenure for the both of us.
I: Alright. How about during the battle of Hogwarts? Or perhaps anything during then and your graduation of Hogwarts? Headmistress Khanna: The time before the battle of Hogwarts, I can't testify for. For a while, most of us fell out of contact as we moved on with our lives, trying to make a name for ourselves in our own fields. But… 
I: It’s okay if you would like to avoid this subject. Headmistress Khanna: No no, it needs to be said. During the battle of Hogwarts, a lot of us were scared. None of us had been in this sort of conflict before, and those of us that had weren't ready for what we faced. Yet there Lilian was, setting up perimeters and directing people to the best suited jobs to help defend. She even brought in nearly a dozen golems to assist in the defense. We were lucky too, since those were the only things stopping the main host of trolls from climbing up the bridge. The battle itself is a blur, but when the dust settled, we all saw Lilian slumped against a wall, babbling on about equations and how many litres of blood she felt she had lost. She was missing her arm and leg, surrounded by a dozen or so dark wizards. 
I: Thank you, Headmistress. I think that’ll be all for now. Headmistress Khanna: I appreciate the need to document Lilian’s life. She’d be too busy to actually sit down and write it herself, believe it or not.
~PERSONALITY~
Lilian is a very open minded individual. Creative and Intelligent, She will always see projects through to the end, even if she already knows that the result will be failure. Despite the innumerable amount of failures that she’s had, Lilian always finds a way to take joy from any situation. While she mainly focuses on her work, she is a rather quiet and shy woman despite her imposing stature and very apparent abilities. She doesn’t like to brag, nor is she prone to any outwardly negative emotions. 
She does have several flaws though, first and foremost being her inability to cope with overly strong negative stimuli as well as a tendency to hyper fixate on a project at hand, often forgetting to eat and rest until her body physically forces her to sustain itself. (most common being her collapsing from exhaustion and sleep deprivation.)
MISC
Lives in the muggle world (London specifically)
Has family in both France and England
While not typically a fighter, Lilian has mastered the Patronus charm to astonishing success, manifesting three or more Wolf patroni with one casting.
While she is missing her left arm and right leg from the joints down, Lilian has since made prosthetic arms that are not only nearly identical to the previous limbs, they are far stronger than steel and well crafted enough to fool Muggles unless they closely inspect the hand in question.
Lilian married Merula nearly a year after the Battle of Hogwarts
In order to maintain hold of her tools while working and simultaneously casting spells, Lilian has mastered both the art of wandless and silent spellcasting.
Lilian owns a machine shop in London, making both Muggle and Magical items for multiple clients. She is allowed to do this through the employment of Squibs. This also allows her to take Auror Interns, teaching them how muggle technology works.
Lilian attempts to pioneer Golemancy, even attempting to have it recognized as an official practice of magic.
After Much convincing and reassuring, Lilian managed to get Merula to move to the Muggle world. Even then, this was only after several charms had been cast to help hide their magical nature from Ordinary Muggles. (Merula is particularly keen on cell phones.)
After several letters, Lilian agrees to teach several Magic Theory classes at Beauxbatons, much to the joy of several students and faculty. Lilian even demonstrates the magic and technology behind her prosthetics, inspiring the next generation of magic craftsmen and women.
66 notes · View notes
randomnumbers751650 · 3 years
Text
Long, unedited text in which I rant about comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell and his monomyth,
Back in 2012 I wanted to improve my fiction writing (and writing in general, because in spite of nuances, themes and audience, writing a fiction and a nonfiction piece shouldn’t be that different) and thus I picked a few writing manuals. Many of them cited the Hero’s Journey, and how important it became for writers – after all Star Wars used and it worked. I believe most of the people reading this like Star Wars, or at least has neutral feelings about it, but one thing that cannot be denied is that became a juggernaut of popular culture.
So I bought a copy of the Portuguese translation of The Hero of a Thousand Faces and I fell in love with the style. Campbell had a great way with words and the translation was top notch. For those unaware, The Hero of a Thousand Faces proposes that there is a universal pattern in humanity’s mythologies that involves a person (usually a man) that went out into a journey far away from his home, faced many obstacles, both external and internal, and returned triumphant with a prize, the Grail or the Elixir of Life, back to his home. Campbell’s strength is that he managed to systematize so many different sources into a single cohesive narrative.
At the time I was impressed and decided to study more and write in an interdisciplinary research with economics – by writing an article on how the entrepreneur replaces the mythical hero in today’s capitalism. I had to stop the project in order to focus on more urgent matters (my thesis), but now that I finished I can finally return to this pet project of mine.
If you might have seen previous posts, I ended up having a dismal view of economics. It’s a morally and spiritually failed “science” (I have in my drafts a post on arts and I’m going to rant another day about it). Reading all these books on comparative mythology is so fun because it allows me for a moment to forget I have a degree in economics.
Until I started to realize there was something wrong.
My research had indicated that Campbell and others (such as Mircea Eliade and Carl Gust Jung, who had been on of Campbell’s main influences) weren’t very well respected in academia. At first I thought “fine”, because I’m used to interact with economists who can be considered “heterodox” and I have academic literature that I could use to make my point, besides the fact my colleagues were interested in what I was doing.
The problem is that this massive narrative of the Hero’s Journey/monomyth is an attempt to generalize pretty wide categories, like mythology, into one single model of explanation, it worked because it became a prescription, giving the writer a tool to create a story in a factory-like pace. It has checkboxes that can be filled, professional writers have made it widely available.
But I started to realize his entire understanding of mythology is problematic. First the basics: Campbell ignores when myths don’t fit his scheme. This is fruit of his Jungian influences, who claim that humanity has a collective unconsciousness, that manifest through masks and archetypes. This is the essence of the Persona games (and to a smaller extent of the Fate games) – “I am the Shadow the true self”. So any deviation from the monomyth can be justified by being a faulty translation of the collective unconsciousness.
This is the kind of thing that Karl Popper warned about, when he proposed the “falseability” hypothesis, to demarcate scientific knowledge. The collective unconsciousness isn’t a scientific proposition because it can be falsified. It cannot be observed and it cannot be refuted, because someone who subscribe to this doctrine will always have an explanation to explain why it wasn’t observed. In spite of falseability isn’t favored by philosophers of science anymore, it remains an important piece of the history of philosophy and he aimed his attack on psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung – and, while they helped psychology in the beginning, they’re like what Pythagoras is to math. They were both surpassed by modern science and they are studied more as pieces of history than serious theorists.
But this isn’t the worst. All the three main authors on myths were quite conservatives in the sense of almost being fascists – sometimes dropping the ‘almost’. Some members of the alt-right even look up to them as some sort of “academic’ justification. Not to mention anti-Semitic. Jung had disagreement with Freud and Freud noticed his anti-Semitism. Eliade was a proud supporter of the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist organization that organized pogroms and wanted to topple the Romanian government. Later Eliade became an ambassador at Salazar’s Fascist Portugal, writing it was a government guided by the love of God. Campbell, with his hero worship, was dangerously close to the ur-fascism described by Umberto Eco (please read here, you won’t regret https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf).
“If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge – that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.”
Campbell did that a lot. He considered the Bible gospels and Gnostic gospels to be on the same level. Any serious student, that is not operating under New Age beliefs and other frivolous theories like the one that says Jesus went to India, will know there’s a difference between them (even Eliade was sure to stress the difference).
But Campbell cared nothing for it. He disliked the “semitic” religions for corrupting the mythic imagination (which is the source of his anti-Semitism), especially Judaism. When I showed him describing the Japanese tea ceremony to a friend who’s minoring in Japanese studies, she wrote “I’m impressed, he’s somehow managed to out-purple prose the original Japanese”. So, it’s also full of orientalism, treating the East as the mystical Other, something for “daring” Westerners to discover and distillate.
What disturbed…no, “disturbed” isn’t the word that I need in the moment, but what made me feel uncomfortable is that, in spite of all his talk of spirituality, the impression I had of Power of Myth is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more materialist than him. Not even Karl Marx, founder of the Historical Materialism, was as materialist as Campbell.
At one point in the book, he was asked if he believed in anything and he gave a dismissive reply and said “I want to get experiences.” A man who studied all the myths of the world available, apparently didn’t believe in anything. Is that what spiritual maturity is? A continuous flux of experiences? Being taken by some sort of shamanistic wind like a floating plastic bag?
In nowhere in the interview he talked about virtues. In rebellion with his Catholic childhood, he said that we should go to the confessionary and say “God, I’ve been such a good boy”. Any cursory reading of the Gospel would say otherwise. Wasn’t this exactly Pharisee’s prayer in Luke 18:9-14? While the wasn’t the publican, who went with humility and asked for forgiveness, the one who walked out with an experience? And not only in Christianity, since in Tibetan Buddhism, a tulpa is something you have to kill, not foster like an imaginary friend like in some internet circles, contamined with this obsession with experiences.
The way I came to see Joseph Campbell as a man who was so stuck in his own world that nothing could move him out of it. All he wanted to do was this big experience, but in the end it’s as wide as the ocean, but shallow as a puddle. Even when Campbell speaks about having a “cosmic consciousness”, all that New Age jargon, claiming it’s about people discovering they’re not the center of the universe, it’s still so…self-servicing. It addresses a crowd so obsessed with experiences, but wants nothing to do with anything that requires compromise. He quotes the Hindu concept of maya, that life is an illusion, but I wonder how right he is about it.
I want to share this critique, by a researcher in comic studies: “We do not remember The Night Gwen Stacy Died because Gwen’s death reminds us of our own mortality, ‘the destiny of Everyman’, but because the story exposes the fragility of Spider-Man reader’s fantasies. Even icons can die.”
The exposition of the fragility of myths, especially the Hero’s Journey, never happens in Campbell’s work. It never talks about the potential of myths hindering entire societies, causing strife and causing people who can’t fit to become outcasts. Not even the cruel ones, like the Aztec death cult is treated as sublime, ignoring the fact that the Aztec neighbors helped to Spanish because they had enough of the Aztec myth.
I have changed my article. While I will still write on the hero entrepreneur, I’ll take a more critical view. The focus of the entrepreneur as an individual has many issues, because it ignores the role of public investment (necessary for high risk enterprises, like going to the moon or creating touch screens) and it treats with contempt the worked wage. Cambpell also treated with contempt the “masses”, who cannot be “heroes”. The theory on the entrepreneur is the same, treating the entrepreneur as a hero and the waged workers as lowlifes who have nothing to do, but to work, obey and be paid – to the point it feels like some economists treat strikes as crimes worse than murder. Not only that, but they can exploit the worker (see a book named “Do what you love and other lies about success and happiness”, it could be replaced with “Follow your bliss…”).
Campbell wrote in a time that there was no Wikipedia. So his book was the introduction of myths to a lot of people. It helped it was well-written. He considering his approach apolitical, but it’s clear that’s it’s not exactly like that (though this is a reason why Jordan Peterson failed to become the next Campbell, since he’s also a Jungian scholar, but he tried to become a conservative guru and this was his downfall). And, nowadays, Campbell is still inevitable in the circles that his themes matter, unlike Freud and Jung. Read it, but be aware of its problems, because it has already influenced what you consume.
10 notes · View notes
buzzdixonwriter · 4 years
Text
The Four Gospels Of Sci-Fi
The “canon” of science fiction is in the news again in the wake of the recent Hugo awards, and since I’m nothing if not opinionated and I also want to load up my posting queue before diving into my next big project, this struck me as an apt topic to write on.
So settle back; we’re going to touch on the history of sci-fi, the influence of its old guard, how it pertains to religious literature, and perhaps even delve a little bit on Christianity itself at the end.
First off, a quick recap of Christian scripture for those who aren’t read up on the subject.  Vacation Bible School veterans can skip this part.
. . .
The foundational works in the Christian New Testament are the four gospels:  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The first three are referred to as the synoptic gospels because they tell basically the same story in the same beats, differing in style and detail, but essentially the same.
Mark is considered the oldest of the three and the primary source for Matthew and Luke (boy howdy! Am I ever streamlining a lot of Biblical scholarship here but bear with me; I’m doing this to make a point about sci-fi, not religion).
The common Christian reading of the three synoptic gospels are that Mark is the basic story, Matthew (because of its focus on Old Testament prophecies) was written with a Jewish audience in mind, Luke was written for gentiles.*
John is the gospel that sticks out.
To grossly oversimplify, the biggest difference is that the synoptic gospels mainly record what Jesus said and did, John focuses more on the who and why.
And that’s all we need to know at this moment…
. . .
The four gospels of sci-fi are Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury.
(Before we go further, let us stipulate this applies only to those who came to the genre prior to Star Wars -- indeed, an argument can be made it only applies to those who were fans before Star Trek.)
Sci-fi’s synoptic gospels are the oeuvre of Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke; Ray Bradbury is the oddball.
I say they are the synoptic gospels because truth be told, you can only tell them apart by style, not content, certainly not by point of view.
If all three exchanged story ideas and plot outlines, the end results would be different only in tone and vocabulary, not theme or character.
Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke were all technically trained and worked professionally as engineers or chemists when not writing; Bradbury was a gosh-wow! fanboy.**
If Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury are the gospels of sci-fi, their John the Baptist was another John:  John W. Campbell
Campbell is a problematic figure in sci-fi, so let’s just get him out of the way ASAP.
He was a good but not outstanding writer, but when you write “Who Goes There?” (basis of the various film versions of The Thing From Another World) you’ve earned your place at the table.
He was a visionary editor and under his helm Astounding / Analog set the gold standard for sci-fi for decades to come.
He was a white supremacist of the paternalistic bent, and while on the one hand that’s better than being an outright hate monger, on the other it’s more insidious since it presupposes a correct worldview without challenging that assumption.
He was a male chauvinist of the same stripe, not particularly open to female writers but willing to publish the occasional story with a female protagonist…written by a male.
He was a crank who believed a bunch of goofball ideas, from psionics (ESP, telekinisis, etc.) to dowsing to the Dean Drive to the Hieronymus Machine (a device so wonderous that even a schematic drawing of it would work!).***
Campbell by all accounts was not a bad individual and the field is still replete with those who knew and loved him, but like the cranky patriarch**** who refuses to divulge the contents of their will, forcing everyone in the family to kowtow to them, Campbell’s position atop the highest paying / most prestigious market in science fiction shaped much of the genre around him.  (Full disclosure:  One of the greatest highlights in my writing career was finally placing a story in Analog after fifty years of trying!)
Writers would typically aim at Astounding / Analog first, and failing to sell there, the Campbell rejects would start a long, laborious trudge down the stairs to the cheaper markets.
This held true even in the 1950s when sci-fi magazines of a more literary bent (Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy in the US, New Worlds in the UK) started attracting stories written for them, not Campbell hand-me-downs.
As Jeannette Ng observed in her acceptance speech for the 2019 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer*****:  “Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction, [Campbell] is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day.  Sterile.  Male.  White.  Exalting in the ambitions of imperialists and colonisers, settlers and industrialists.”
Campbell’s absolute faith in science and technology to solve all our problems (including the ones created by science and technology) while ignoring the very real problems that plague humanity since time immemorial (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride) coupled with his prime market position led to a genre that unquestionably accepted those settings as the only viable ones.
Campbell certainly held more direct sway over the writings of Heinlein and Asimov than he did Clarke, but Clarke’s earliest sci-fi sales were to Astounding and nothing he wrote in his first decade as a writing professional fell outside the big cushy box Campbell crafter for the genre.
And even though Heinlein and Asimov broke off for cushier writing gigs elsewhere (Heinlein in novels, Asimov mostly as a popular science promoter), they remained steadfastly loyal and respectful -- as did Clarke -- to the ends of their lives.
And on a personal, individual level, that’s a good thing -- we all need friends who will stick by us.
But Bradbury never got invited to the party.
Which is not to say he didn’t try to crack Astounding -- he did, on four occasions, two of them humorous short-shorts for the magazine’s “Probability Zero” feature, one run of the mill magic-shop-disguised-as-super-science-store tale sold in the middle of WWII when Campbell’s best writers were on active duty, and the last in 1950 when he was no longer Ray Bradbury, fanboy, but Ray Bradbury, Important American Writer!!! and Campbell published an excerpt from The Martian Chronicles.******
. . .
We’re going to take a sidebar here to discuss one of Al Ries’ immutable laws of branding.
Ries long observed there are only two models for any brand category:
A single dominant top brand with a distant second place competitor then a host of niche brands (Microsoft then Apple then everybody else)
Two big rivals fighting for first place with a competitor placing a distant third then a host of niche brands (Coke vs Pepsi with RC Cola trailing third then everybody else)
The way to break through in branding is not to waste time and effort trying to knock out a dominant brand but to create a new category to dominate!
That’s what Bradbury did in the late 1940s and early 1950s:  He stopped aping the default Campbell / Astounding style and began writing more lyrical / less techno-focused sci-fi.
Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke were no dummies and soon they too branched out more consciously to mainstream audiences.
But as successful as they were, none of them ever fully shook the influence Campbell weighed down upon them.
That is why telling people today they must read the old masters results in eyerolls.
Too often the old masters trafficked in cleverness, not as Faulkner observed “the human heart in conflict with itself.”
Heinlein managed to transcend the genre a few times, but finding the gems in his work requires a lot of effort.  
Clarke remains dry and antiseptic:  it speaks volumes that his best known character is HAL 9000.
And Asimov just isn’t that goof in either concept or execution.  His Three Laws of Robotics demonstrates a failure of nerve and imagination:  Humans won’t build robots programmed not to harm humans because the first thing humans will make robots do it kill other human beings!
So there’s our canon: Mostly irrelevant, often impenetrable. 
The last author standing is the least technology oriented of the lot and Bradbury’s stories continue to work and delight because he doesn’t lecture on weights and measures but allows the reader to imagine along with him.
. . .
Okay, short Christian content now; if you came just for the sci-fi you can either stop reading or skip ahead to the footnotes.
Any field of human endeavor that does not constantly re-examine itself and challenge previous assumptions is doomed to irrelevance.
This does not mean established works need to be rejected out of hand, but we do need to ask what those works mean to us right now.
Truth is indeed timeless, but the package has a sell-by date and the contents do no one any good if they aren’t periodically taken down from the shelf and examined.
Modern Christianity -- in particular mainstream American protestantism -- has failed to closely examine the contents for quite some time.
While the field of sci-fi brims over with exciting new voices, we’re still straining to listen to the cracked / garbled / low fidelity wax cylinders of theologians long dead.
We need fewer Christians.   We desperately need better Christians.
Instead of demanding those outside or struggling with the faith must read things the way we were taught to read them, understand them the way we were taught to understand them, follow along the way we were taught to follow along, perhaps we should show faith in the material and let those who will read and re-imagine the text in the light of their own experience a fair hearing.
The old canon in sci-fi fails today because it is too dated, too rooted in the mindset of a bygone era.  The exception -- Bradbury (he himself a Christian and it shows in his stories) -- stays vibrant and alive and appealing because he doesn’t tell us what to think, he walks with us as we discover things for ourselves.
  © Buzz Dixon
  *  Acts Of The Apostles is a sequel to Luke and while Jesus appears briefly in the beginning in almost a flashback fashion, that book focuses on what his disciples did afterwards.
** An interesting trait Bradbury shared with Harlan Ellison was that despite their fanboy origins, both were one helluva lot more savvy to the business of writing and publishing than anyone else in the genre, and both skillfully created public personas that served them well (Bradbury’s better than Ellison’s, granted) while they guided their careers through the treacherous shoals of gatekeepers and public fancies.  Bradbury has written of his fanboy epiphany when he asked himself if he was satisfied being a fan / autograph hound or if he really wanted to be a creator, and immediately began directing his career in a fashion that could only be described as ruthless were it not attached to such a charming gentleman.  Wannabees are urged to study his career and how he did it if they want to be truly remembered.
***  All well and good as fodder for sci-fi stories, not so good in reality.  As the movie They Might Be Giants states:  “[Don Quixote] carried it a bit too far.  He thought that every windmill was a giant.  That's insane.  But, thinking that they might be... well… all the best minds used to think the world was flat. — But, what if it isn't? — It might be round — and bread mold might be medicine.  If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.”
**** To stretch our Biblical analog to the breaking point, if Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury are the New Testament gospels and John W. Campbell is John the Baptist, then sci-fi’s Old Testament has patriarchs such as Swift, Verne, and Wells plus the matriarch Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, a major prophet in Hugo Gernsback, and a host of minor prophets in various pre-WWII niche media including comics.
*****  An acceptance speech which in turn won a 2020 Hugo for Best Related Work -- how cool is that? ******  Basically, Bradbury was perceptive enough to recognized he turned a creative corner in 1944 with “The Lake” and broadened his submission range to include far more prestigious slick magazines such as The American Mercury and Mademoiselle and Collier’s and The New Yorker and when tipped off that Warner Bros. planned to plagiarize “The Foghorn” as the basis for The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms he didn’t waste time or money suing but sweetly judo leverage this to get his name prominently displayed on the movie posters as “Ray Bradbury…Saturday Evening Post” writer and then holy %#@& he was a Major American Writer!  I loved Ray, but his gosh-wow sweet exterior camouflaged one of the most brilliant strategists I’ve ever met.
17 notes · View notes
aion-rsa · 3 years
Text
Reading beyond the veil: Paranormal book Recommendations From the Pros
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
Don’t cross the streams. Never take your hands off a Ouija board without first saying “Goodbye.” The undead has to be invited in. Kill it with fire. Shoot it in the head. Wolfman’s got nards.
When it comes to the entertainment of the unexplained, or paranormal pop culture, humans live in a world(s) populated by all manner of preternatural, supernatural, otherworldly, and extradimensional phenomena. But entertainment also tells us there are rules that bring order to the abnormal – whether it’s a ghost or demon, alien or sasquatch, werewolf or vampire, or even a troll or fairy.
Yet behind every silver bullet solution that makes it into a script, there is typically a wealth of academic study that’s both complicated, and sometimes contradictory. From folklore to grimoire, anthropology to parapsychology, researchers have attempted to document and take a serious look at topics slightly askew from the norm. They are the real-world counterparts of Dr. Spengler, Dr. Van Helsing, and Father Merrin.
(And, perhaps unlike those fictional “experts,” many researchers would likely tell you the more they read up on these topics, the clearer it becomes there is more unknown than known, and more theories than rules.)
With that in mind, we reached out to a few notable figures and esteemed colleagues within the paranormal community to offer reading suggestions that go beyond what pop culture tells us about the unexplained. The following list is a guide for those inspired by the movies and TV shows to take a longer look through the veil, under the bed, at the stars, and into the forest.
Amy Bruni
(Host/Executive Producer, Travel Channel’s Kindred Spirits; Author, Life With The Afterlife):
ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologist’s Handbook by Loyd Auerbach
“While I think it’s highly important to have a library of paranormal books, and to form your own research and investigative methodologies, I almost always recommend Loyd Auerbach’s ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologist’s Handbook as a must have. 
It was published in 1986, and is widely cited as one of the books that inspired many of today’s most well-known investigators to investigate the way they do. A good number of Loyd’s methods and theories still ring true, as well as his healthy dose of skepticism. It’s not the type of investigation you see on television, that’s for sure, but it’s got some great ideas to help distinguish between what could be an actual haunting vs a perceived haunting.”
Grant Wilson
(Host/Executive Producer, A&E’s Ghost Hunters):
Morphic Resonance & The Presence of the Past: The Memory of Nature by Rupert Sheldrake
“Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., and former research fellow of the Royal Society, guides us through his journey to discover if our memories exist outside ourselves, and how that idea could affect our view on how the entire universe operates. Sheldrake gently opens the mind to this idea with solid thinking, educated speculation, and sound experimentation. More than just a mental exercise, his theory proposes that all self-organizing systems, from crystals to human society share a common memory which guides their collective form and behavior. Basically, the more people learn something, the easier it is for others to learn. Which, if true, would have huge implications in the field of paranormal research, not to mention the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, and sociology. If our memories are collectively shared and stored outside our own brains, are ghosts simply some sort of manifestation of shared memories? I recommend this book to anyone looking to draw their mind out of the box we so comfortably live in and reshape how we think about well, pretty much everything.”
Jeff Belanger
(Author, Writer/Researcher, Ghost Adventures; Host, New England Legends podcast, and TV series):
Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter by Harry Price
“Published in London in 1936, this is a must-read to see how far paranormal investigation has come (and how little it’s actually changed in almost a century). In the book, Harry Price (1881 – 1948) explores some of his favorite cases, how to test a spirit medium, spirit photography, and he delves into his methods of investigating including equipment, trigger objects, interviews, and theories. Harry Price is the original ghost hunter.
Read it for free online here: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.218596/page/n9/mode/2up
Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond by Hans Holzer
Parapsychologist Hans Holzer (1920 – 2009) helped usher the paranormal into the mainstream with his many books and media appearances. Originally published in 1997, Holzer profiles some of his favorite cases and the first-hand experiences encountered by the witnesses he interviewed. By 97’, Holzer had reached the age and point of his career where he believed he pretty much had everything figured out. Though I don’t agree with all of his theories or ideas on the afterlife, I tip my hat at his confidence on spelling out the unknown.”
Bryce Johnson
(Actor; Co-host, Bigfoot Collector’s Club podcast):
Where the Footprints End, High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon Volume I: Folklore by Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner
“What in the hell is really going on with Bigfoot? Is this just a flesh & blood creature like most think, or is there something more “paranormal” taking place? It’s a great question, and one that Cutchin and Renner (both outside-the-box thinkers) tackle head on. It’s hard to deny that these guys are onto something, and after having read it, I don’t think that I can ever go back to thinking that Sasquatch is just an unconfirmed North American Wood Ape. Instead, what if the big guy/gal is more like a wilderness poltergeist? A “Wildnesgeist” if you will. A term coined by the authors. And while the term does not exactly roll off the tongue, it certainly could help explain the strange lights and orbs, sudden dematerialization, telepathic mind-speak, and the countless varieties of size, shape and colors reported with Bigfoot sightings. Books like the aforementioned are an integral piece of the puzzle if we ever wish to get to the bottom of what is really taking place on this strange planet of ours, and perhaps what Vallee did for the UFO phenomenon, Cutchin & Renner could do for the Bigfoot Phenomenon. Overall Rating 4 Bigfeet out of 5!”
M. Belanger
(Comparative religious studies author, The Dictionary of Demons; Paranormal Investigator, Paranormal State, Portals to Hell):
Poltergeist by Colin Wilson
“For those doing research into ghosts and the paranormal, Colin Wilson should be on your bookshelves right next to Hans Holzer. In addition to his landmark eponymous survey, The Occult, Wilson produced numerous books exploring psychic and paranormal phenomena over his decades-long career. My personal favorite is Poltergeist, which explores the concept of destructive hauntings. Extensive, cross-disciplinary research is a hallmark of Wilson’s work, and this book is no exception. Poltergeist includes theories about what these “noisy ghosts” really are, explores psychological and supernatural implications of their manifestations, and recounts numerous documented cases of the phenomena from the ancient through the modern world. Throughout the book, Wilson blends perspectives from psychology, anthropology, folklore, and mythology together with dedicated reporting of modern experiences. I keep my copy next to Harry Price’s book on the same subject.
The Phantom World by Augustin Calmet
“For a deeper dive into the folkloric roots of many of our modern beliefs about ghosts, hauntings, and even vampires, it is worth the search to score a copy of Augustin Calmet’s treatise on the apparitions of spirits and on vampires, often titled simply The Phantom World. This chunky tome covers a wide variety of hauntings, retelling experiences as they were relayed to Calmet himself, often through other members of the clergy. As a French Benedictine monk, Calmet was viewed as an authority on the supernatural and the miraculous, and although he does not apply much in the way of critical analysis to the stories he receives, the fact that he was able to record and publish these tales at all makes up for what modern readers might consider a fairly superstitious nature. As with Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus, it is important to keep in mind that clergy effectively filled the role of paranormal investigators during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, collecting, verifying, and disseminating the accounts of their parishioners. Without their writings, credulous as they may in hindsight seem, we would have little access to any record of these strange and frightful encounters. Calmet’s work is of special value because it is one of the fist treatises to collect a wide variety of European vampire encounters, including some of the stories that have proven seminal to vampire folklore as we understand it today.
Demoniality by Lodovico Sinistrari
The final volume I would recommend for modern investigators is a slim treatise produced by another member of the European clergy, this time a Franciscan priest by the name of Lodovico Sinistrari. Sinistrari is arguably where we derive most of our beliefs about incubus and succubus demons, and he collects both his theories on these creatures and several compelling tales in his book, Demoniality. It is a quick and fun read — if, like me, learning about demons is your definition of fun.”
Margee Kerr, Ph.D.
(Sociologist; Author, Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear):
On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears by Stephen T. Asma
“Hailed as “a feast” (Washington Post) and “a modern-day bestiary” (The New Yorker), Stephen Asma’s On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters — how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future.”
Richard Estep
(Author, Haunted Healthcare; Travel Channel’s Paranormal Night Shift):
This House is Haunted by Guy Lyon Playfair
“In a field that’s chock full of sensationalist books, Guy Lyon Playfair’s This House is Haunted is a breath of fresh air. One of the few comprehensive accounts of a poltergeist-type haunting that runs from the very first incident through to the end, Playfair’s book is a masterclass on how to investigate the paranormal. There’s no drama, no theatricality; seasoned investigator Playfair and his partner, Maurice Grosse of the Society for Psychical Research, examine the strange goings-on in a small house in Enfield with a critical eye, always seeking out rational explanations and debunking whatever they can. This House is Haunted works as a page-turning narrative, but also contains a wealth of information for today’s paranormal enthusiast. As such, it deserves a much wider audience.”
Brian J. Cano
(Paranormal Investigator; Travel Channel’s Paranormal Caught on Camera):
The Encyclopedia of Ghost & Spirits by Rosemary Ellen Guiley
“To me, this is a must-have in any serious paranormal library. It references an impressive amount of material, and I use it often. There may be a name or concept that sounds familiar to me and when I need a refresher, it’s the first tome I reach for. Invariably, as I turn the pages, I get sucked in, and end up delving into many other entries.  It’s like an academic supernatural “choose your own adventure”!
How to Hunt Ghosts: A Practical Guide by Joshua P. Warren
“This gem of a guide is perfect for anyone looking to get their feet wet in paranormal investigating. It is thoughtful, comprehensive and delivers the necessary information for anyone to begin doing the work while walking the fine line between skepticism and belief. I’ve recommended it many times over the years and the guide has held up to this day.”
Buy How to Hunt Ghosts: A Practical Guide on Amazon
Ryan Sprague
(Author, Podcast Host, Somewhere In The Skies; Co-host of Mysteries Decoded on the CW):
Communion by Whitley Strieber
“In the 1980s, author Whitley Strieber was best known for his horror novels such as The Hunger and Wolfen. But below the surface of his fictional works was a story so visceral and bizarre, that it would change the course of his career thereafter. This was the 1987 best-seller, Communion. Many are familiar with the now-famous book cover of a beige-colored alien with big, black orbital eyes. But the contents of the book is what truly stays with readers. The story of a man struggling with fractured memories of being taken in the night by what he calls “visitors” and experimented on. The raw and traumatic string of events is what packs the biggest punch in the book. But even stronger are the bigger questions to be asked of this supposedly true story: If we are not alone, and we are being visited, what do these visitors want, and to what lengths will they go for their true agenda? Communion is well written, brutally honest, terrifying, beautiful, and profound in the most alien of ways. It ushered in the alien abduction controversy for many years to come and has ingrained itself into the annals of both pop culture and UFO history forever.”
Buy Communion on Amazon
Lynne S. McNeill, Ph.D.
(Folklorist; Author, Legend Tripping: A Contemporary Legend Casebook):
Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live and Lucifer Ascending by Bill Ellis
“These two books present a folklorist’s perspective on the kinds of traditions and phenomena that paranormal investigators are interested in. His perspective highlights that folklorists aren’t looking to debunk or prove anything — they simply want to understand the cultural role that these ever-popular topics are playing.”
Buy Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live on Amazon
Ty Gowen
(Paranormal Investigator, Haunt ME):
Ghost Hunter by Hans Holzer 
“This may not be an obscure text in paranormal circles, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Holzer existed in a liminal time for the paranormal, when the obscure community was in the direct center of a century-long shift between the popularity of the Spiritualism of the late-1800s, and its Hollywood resurgence in the mid-2000s.
This book chronicles some of Holzer’s cases while researching in NYC, as well as providing his commentary. This commentary is particularly important to those studying the field. We’re able to get a snapshot of what early research and curiosity were like, before it was tainted by the entertainment industry. It can be a bit dry, but that is part of the appeal; the book isn’t meant to dazzle or secure ratings. It might not be for everyone, but it was definitely a gateway book for me.
Honorable mention (because it’s fiction) is Ghost Stories by Roald Dahl. He read 749 short stories and narrowed it down to 14 for his book, and they’re great! Who knew the guy who wrote BFG was so macabre!” 
Buy Ghost Hunter on Amazon
Aaron Sagers
(Creator, ParanormalPopCulture.com; Paranormal Journalist, Paranormal Caught on Camera, Paranormal Lockdown; Co-Executive Producer/Host, Paranormal Paparazzi; Co-Host, NightMerica Podcast):
The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel
“Journalist John Keel remains a giant in the paranormal field, and for me personally, he was the first person whose work I discovered that connected the dots between multiple phenomena. He’s described by some as a UFOlogist, but I think he’s so much more. Before it was a 2002 movie that did wonders for the Chapstick brand, The Mothman Prophecies was Keel’s 1975 book that documented strange sightings around Point Pleasant, West Virginia – which culminated with the lethal collapse of the Silver Bridge in 1967. Yes, this book discusses the winged thing (Cryptid? Demon? Alien? Ultraterrestrial?) eyewitnesses described in Point Pleasant, and gives historical and folkloric context to it, but Keel goes deeper into the story. Though he does have his own conclusions, the author’s journalistic approach, and open-mindedness, served as an inspiration and starting point to me within this strange world. For a second helping of Keel, I’d recommend Operation Trojan Horse.
Buy The Mothman Prophecies on Amazon
A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters by Peter Aykroyd
cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });
Notice that last name? Yes, Peter Aykroyd is the father of Dan Aykroyd, aka Ray Stantz, Ghostbusters co-writer, UFO aficionado, and entrepreneur of the metaphysically themed Crystal Head vodka. Dan inherited his love of the paranormal honestly, coming from a family of prominent Spiritualists, and in this book, his father discusses the Aykroyds’ role in the belief system popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though it can be a dry read at times, and is not a collection of spooky ghost stories, History takes the reader on a tour of an era of living room seances, mediums, charlatans, eccentric characters, and famous names. I also think there are a lot of parallels to the age of Spiritualism, and the one we’re in now, where reality-TV paranormal programming continues to be a popular genre, and many people seek life answers in the supernatural world.”  
Buy A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters by Peter Aykroyd on Amazon
The post Reading beyond the veil: Paranormal book Recommendations From the Pros appeared first on Den of Geek.
from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3dPUT0V
7 notes · View notes
epochxp · 3 years
Text
Epoch Xperience Interviews Nordic Weasel Founder, Ivan Sorensen
Tumblr media
Mr. Sorensen needs no real introduction to many miniature wargamers. His company, Nordic Weasel Games, has taken the historical miniatures gaming world by storm, and he’s become the force on Wargames Vault. His formula of “substance over flash” has produced good games for a very reasonable price, and he has taken full advantage of PDF technology to produce a quality product one can buy and have in your (virtual hands) the next day. 
Without further ado, I give you Ivan Sorensen:
Biography
My name is Ivan Sorensen, and I am a game designer and self-publishing writer of miniatures games, as well as the odd role-playing game. Under the moniker of Nordic Weasel Games, I have worked as a game writer for close to 7 years. 
I am an avid player of board games, miniatures games, role-playing games, video games, and anything else I can get my hands on. I have spent half my life on this planet in Denmark, where I was born, and half in the United States, where I currently reside. I am married, have one kid and two cats named Scruffy and Lancelot. 
Unlike a lot of historical games writers, many of my formative miniatures gaming experiences actually came from science fiction games, so I suppose that has given me a little bit of a different perspective.
So, how did you get started in writing rules? Was there an “aha” moment, or did you fall into it?
Tumblr media
At the risk of sounding cheesy, I have basically always created little dice and board games for myself, using Lego pieces or other things that we had available, usually based on video games I had read about in magazines or other ideas like that.
Tumblr media
When I was 12 or so, I remember getting a copy of White Dwarf magazine from a local gaming club I had joined, and it blew my mind. We had some limited exposure to the idea of space marines and all these things from the Milton Bradley Hero Quest and Space Crusade board games, but the idea of battle games played without a board, using miniatures and dice was too much to resist. I knew I had to get into this, and as I had no money for it, I sat down to write a game I could play with my Space Crusade figures, which would look as much like what I imagined Warhammer 40.000 would be like.
Since then, I had pretty much always been the “rules guy” in the gaming groups I was part of, whether we were playing miniatures games or RPG’s, so it just came naturally over time, I suppose. As I got access to the internet and later got access to ordering things from the UK or US, I devoured every game I could get my hands on and was even remotely interested in. 
The start to writing games that were any good was my own attempt at creating a World War 1 game system (titled Trench Storm). I had shared it online, and to my great surprise, it began catching people’s attention and got a (very) small following, with people even purchasing miniatures to play it. Eventually, I was contacted by the US distributor for IT Miniatures, who offered to print it to promote their 20mm figure range. The rest is, as they say, history. Once in a great while, a copy of that game still pops up on eBay, it seems! 
How did Nordic Weasel Games come to be? 
So that story took place right around the time I moved to the United States. After moving, I had a lengthy period where I did not have my work permit yet, so game writing seemed like an obvious distraction, resulting in Fast and Dirty, a sci-fi rules set that you still see mentioned online here and there.
Tumblr media
As the years went on, I kept tinkering and building things but mostly for my own enjoyment. Sometime during the fall of 2013, I started seriously working on a new game system for WW2 skirmish actions that I felt had some real potential to go places. At the time, I worked at a relatively dead-end middle management job at an incredibly toxic information technology company. You know the sort of job, where you have been there for too long, and you hate every minute of it. 
Come the spring, I decided to take a gamble that I could make enough money from game sales to make it worth pursuing and quit. I figured if I could find a way to do it without putting money on the line, then if it all bombed, I could just walk away and find something else to do in life.
Consequently, Five Men in Normandy was released on June 15, 2014, and as of today, we are still here! 
Tumblr media
What is in the future for Nordic Weasel?
Hopefully, many big things! The biggest priority for 2021 specifically is to get into print books, though there are a lot of stumbling blocks in terms of layout requirements and so on.
I always keep a list of projects I would like to do, though I try not to talk about them too much in case they fall through. I am the sort of guy who always starts with 20 ideas, so by the time the unworkable ones have been weeded out, there are 2 or 3 left. 
What I can say is that I am actively looking at fantasy miniatures battles, and I would love to do more WW1 and Black Powder era gaming material. 
The real big question is that I am also very much at a point where there are just too many things to do it all alone. I cannot write 4 or 5 new games, support an entire back catalogue, and update old titles all by my lonesome, so I look forward to trying to solve that in the future. I suppose this is a good problem to have, but it is certainly also an intimidating one!
Is there a period of history you want to write rules for but have not?
We have worked extensively with the two world wars and the black powder era in general, as well as 20th century-to-modern era battles, and with Knyghte, Pyke and Sworde we even delved into medieval warfare.
Tumblr media
The one that stands out as something that would be fun to do is World War 1 air combat, complete with goggles and scarf flapping in the wind. A little romanticized sure, but great fun, and there is a lot of fantastic models available.
For a historical era I have not touched on at all, I would say that while I have done games that cover it among other 19th century conflicts, a dedicated American Civil War set is something I would be very keen to do.
There are a lot of fantastic rules out there for the period, of course, but I feel like the “Weasel” approach of being solo-friendly and campaign-oriented could carve out a nice space of that market. Plus, I find the era quite fascinating. Growing up in Denmark, I was never really raised with a particular view of the conflict, but having married into a proud Vermont family, it is, of course, unavoidable. 
Can you tell our readers what goes into rules writing?
I think this is something that is intensely personal, and the rationale for writing something can be varied: It may be due to sensing an opening in the hobby space that does not seem to be catered to currently. It may be that I have a personal passion for a given setting or era, or it may simply be that I have a clever game mechanic and want to build a game around it.
The process for me usually starts with sketching out a page or two of keywords, mechanics, and things I’d like to hit on a notepad. Then I work on building it out with simple sketches for the main areas of the mechanics: Activations, movement, shooting, morale, and so forth. Basically, carving out the cornerstones of the game system. At this stage, it is entirely possible it feels like it’s not going anywhere, and it goes in the bin. 
If the core idea seems to have merit in this skeleton form, it’s time to test it out with some generic troops and see if it actually feels fun on the table. From there, you just build out from it: Get other people to read and play it, read it out loud to yourself, etc. Figure out what parts need ironing out and improving and which are good. 
It is really all an iterative process. Once I know the game has legs to stand on, I start writing out the table of contents in advance, so I can “fill in the blanks” as I go. If I know I am going to have a section later for off-map support, I can keep that in mind when I am developing each piece of the mechanics and so forth.
Eventually, any project hits “The Suck (TM).” This is whatever part you hate doing the most, whether it is layout or proofreading or points systems or whatever. For me, it is terrain rules, funny enough. I never read that section of a rulebook, and I never enjoy writing it, but you must. “The Suck” is where your game will probably die because if you let it overcome you, you will put the book down, and every time you click on the word processor, you will immediately be faced with it. The best way to defeat “The Suck” in my experience is caffeine and not letting up: When it starts rearing its ugly head, it is time to keep going and don’t stop until you are through with it. 
Has desktop publishing and PDF only supplements changed the face of the hobby? Has it affected the quality of the product we see today?
Absolutely yeah. It’s not that long ago that a game being available in PDF was a novelty, whereas today, if a game is NOT available in PDF, you are going to lose sales. 
I think the barrier of entry has also dropped dramatically. Even a basic word processing package can churn out a PDF document that you can distribute online or sell. Of course, with proper page layout software, you can achieve much greater results (as some of my friends are rarely missing a chance to tell me), but you need to examine what your skill limit is. Any tool has a skill cap, to borrow a video game term. If you are not currently good enough at what you do to push up against the limitations of your software, burning 200 dollars on new apps will not make your books any better.
It is funny, though, because the wargaming field is so diverse in the type of things we see. You can pick up relatively big-name games that are incredibly plain-looking: Black and white, no art, rudimentary layout. Then right next to it, you see a PDF that is full-color, original artwork, and gorgeous. And the two can be viewed as equal value to the audience. 
Of course, eye candy DOES sell, but I think once you are beyond the Warhammer circles, gamers become a lot more content-focused. 
What are your favorite historical periods and why?
The 19th Century, the two world wars and the Russian Civil War. 
Tumblr media
Really, the whole era from circa 1910 to 1925 or so is fascinating to me: It is, of course, the transition of the old, romanticized world to the world of modern warfare, as well as being incredibly diverse in the sort of things you can see. The Russian Civil War sees tanks and armored cars, partisan bands, nationalist militias, Red and White guards, Cossack cavalry armies, Anarchists, and anything else you can shake a stick at. It is really a wargamers heaven for finding odd units to model up on the gaming table.
Honestly, my love of history, in general, comes from one source: “All Quiet on the Western Front.” I think anyone with a passion for history has that moment where they realize that history is not about abstract concepts and kings and dates but is about real people who lived and breathed and had dreams and hopes. “All Quiet” was that for me, and it left a life-long impression on me when I read it as a teenager a few years from the age of the characters in the book.  
What do you see for the future of historical miniature wargaming?
Oof, that is a dangerous question. I think I managed to predict the rise of “Warband” level games (games where you play a small force in skirmish actions and with some level of character progression between games). Right now, that idea has set the fantasy and sci-fi miniatures scenes on fire, with everyone churning out their own version of the concept. 
In historical gaming, there are elements of it, but it has not been embraced to the same extent, possibly due to the grognard bias against skirmish games. I think if I had to put money on something, I would say watch out for historical skirmish games with campaign aspects or character progression in the next year or three.
I also think solo gaming is going to continue to gain in popularity and respectability, with more games developed primarily or even specifically for solo play. I am super excited to see this field because there is a lot of things that can be done here with how enemies arrive on the table, fog of war, and so forth, which is not possible in a conventional opposed game.
Tumblr media
Playtesting, how important is it?
Very, but it’s also very misunderstood. I see people post all the time on forums about how they have been testing their game rules for 5 years. That sounds very impressive, but if you are only getting together 3 or 4 times a year in that time frame, you are basically starting over each time. Additionally, just playing the game with your own group is fine to iron out the basic problems of a game, but it will lose its value very quickly. 
Tumblr media
To get actual feedback, give the game to people who cannot ask you questions and let them figure it out. Now your text must stand on its own feet and must work without you being there to explain the intentions. That is the real test. I would say three games played by strangers is worth more than ten games with your usual Saturday group. 
Of course, tracking down people who can understand the rules, will play the game, [and] report back to you, AND aren’t crazy is a challenge. If you post online, 50 people will say they would love to, and of those, two will read the book. Once you find reliable people who can give you good feedback, cling to them for dear life. 
 What are the benefits and pitfalls of self-publishing your own wargaming rules?
The biggest advantage is, of course, that you are in charge. What you want in the book goes, if you want a supplement, it will happen, and so forth. Additionally, your game will reflect what you wanted it to be. I think in [self-publishing], you get a lot clearer creative visions and indie gamers tend to gravitate towards that: A game that has something to say on the topic is extremely attractive, even if you disagree with a particular conclusion.
I try to do as much myself as I can, though, of course, I do rely on outside sources for things like artwork, feedback, etc. Part of that is that this way, I know I can support the product down the road: If I want to fix a rule where we came up with a better way of doing it, or I want to add a new section, I can do that. 
The downside, of course, is that you are on your own: Your art is as good as your own wallet can make it, your book looks as good as you can make it (unless you pay for it), and so forth. You also must promote it yourself. If you are writing for something like Osprey, they have marketing power and money to put behind the project. 
Anything else you would like to say to our readers?
Before you write a game, ban yourself from reading any game on the same topic for a few months. If you are writing a WW2 tank game, put all your WW2 games in a box and do not open it. You should be spending that time immersing yourself in the topic in the form of books, music, documentaries, or anything else. Never ever another game.
Also, it cannot hurt to blast some metal albums, at least in my experience. 
--
At Epoch Xperience, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch Xperience’s service on our parent site, SJR Research.
--
(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)
1 note · View note
harrelltut · 3 years
Photo
Tumblr media
SPIRIT Mama T [Queen Tiye]… JEHOVAH OCCULT BIBLE [JOB] WITNESS ME [iTUT®] IN:side My Historically ANCIENT [HA = HARRELL] ROYAL DEATH TOMB of SIRIUS Astronomically Intelligent ANUNNAKI [AIA = AMÚN] SUN GOD [RA] PHARAOH MENES… who Originally Established Our FIRST… Highly Official… U.S. Ancient [USA = PREHISTORIC] Ægyptian American [ATLANTEAN] DYNASTIC [A.D.] Communication [D.C.] Tomb Records of Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Hieroglyphic INSCRIPTION [HI = HITTITE] ART [HA = HARRELL] Languages... Fluently Spoken by Ægyptian RAMESES who Originally Established Our Lost American [L.A. = NEW Atlantean] PTOLEMAIC KINGDOM with AMENHOTEP’S TOLTEC [KAT = SPHINX] PHARAOHS [GODS] from MAYA’S Ancient [MA] MU LAND [MOTHERLAND] MILITARY.gov of Underworld SOVEREIGN [U.S.] DEATH GOD OSIRIS… who Prophetically Wrote about Our Ancient Subterranean Earth of Afterlife [SEA] HUMAN SOULS [EXTRATERRESTRIALS] from Our Now [NWO] FUTURE… Eternally Living DEEP IN:side MAYA’S Highly Classified… U.S. Ancient [USA = PREHISTORIC] Ægyptian American [ATLANTEAN] SUN ATLAS of Globally Expanded [SAGE] Subcontinent Territories within Ancient MESOAMÊRICA’S SUN_KING [SUNKEN] DOME Colonies [D.C.] of Northern & Central America [CA]… since iDynastically [I.D.] BEE Ægyptian RAMESES' Highly Official… U.S. Ancient [USA = PREHISTORIC] Ægyptian American [ATLANTEAN] SON [RAMESES III]… Legally Registered Privately Under My Historically AUTONOMOUS [HA = HARRELL] Underworld [HU = HURRIAN] SUN_KING [SUNKEN] DOME Confederate [D.C.] Military EMPIRE [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] NAME of the Imperial HITTITE REICH of the BLACK SUN @ My Highly Official... U.S. Ancient [USA = PREHISTORIC] Ægyptian American [ATLANTEAN] SUN_KING [SUNKEN] DOME Confederate [D.C.] Military MONARCHY of MAYA'S Ancient [MA] Subterranean Earth King [SEK = SEKHMET] TUTANKHAMÚN in 2021 [V] https://www.instagram.com/p/COi3_d5BQwu/?igshid=1bt1sl7ae0fwq
1 note · View note
tenaciousyouthnacho · 3 years
Text
(PDF) Download A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences ####
(PDF Kindle) [Download] A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences EBOOK FREE DOWNLOAD
[EPUB & PDF] Ebook A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD
by Bernhard W. Bach Jr..
Tumblr media
Ebook EPUB A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD Hello All, If you want to download free Ebook, you are in the right place to download Ebook. Ebook A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD in English is available for free here, Click on the download LINK below to download Ebook A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences 2020 PDF Download in English by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. (Author).
Read more : https://sdgert-978.blogspot.com/?book=1107640482
Download link : https://sdgert-978.blogspot.com/?book=1107640482
Description
Why study infinite series? Not all mathematical problems can be solved exactly or have a solution that can be expressed in terms of a known function. In such cases, it is common practice to use an infinite series expansion to approximate or represent a solution. This informal introduction for undergraduate students explores the numerous uses of infinite series and sequences in engineering and the physical sciences. The material has been carefully selected to help the reader develop the techniques needed to confidently utilize infinite series. The book begins with infinite series and sequences before moving onto power series, complex infinite series and finally onto Fourier, Legendre, and Fourier-Bessel series. With a focus on practical applications, the book demonstrates that infinite series are more than an academic exercise and helps students to conceptualize the theory with real world examples and to build their skill set in this area.
Tag the PDF
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. Ebook PDF
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. PDF Download
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. EPUB
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. EBOOK
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. PDF Online
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. E-BOOK Online
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. PDF
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. ebook library
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. pdf document
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. pdf reader
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. ebook creator
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. ebook deals
A Student's Guide to Infinite Series and Sequences by Bernhard W. Bach Jr. ebook kindle
Tumblr media
Let's be real: 2020 has been a nightmare. Between the political unrest and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it's difficult to look back on the year and find something, anything, that was a potential bright spot in an otherwise turbulent trip around the sun. Luckily, there were a few bright spots: namely, some of the excellent works of military history and analysis, fiction and non-fiction, novels and graphic novels that we've absorbed over the last year. 
Here's a brief list of some of the best books we read here at Task & Purpose in the last year. Have a recommendation of your own? Send an email to [email protected] and we'll include it in a future story.
Missionaries by Phil Klay
I loved Phil Klay’s first book, Redeployment (which won the National Book Award), so Missionaries was high on my list of must-reads when it came out in October. It took Klay six years to research and write the book, which follows four characters in Colombia who come together in the shadow of our post-9/11 wars. As Klay’s prophetic novel shows, the machinery of technology, drones, and targeted killings that was built on the Middle East battlefield will continue to grow in far-flung lands that rarely garner headlines. [Buy]
 - Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief
Battle Born: Lapis Lazuli by Max Uriarte
Written by 'Terminal Lance' creator Maximilian Uriarte, this full-length graphic novel follows a Marine infantry squad on a bloody odyssey through the mountain reaches of northern Afghanistan. The full-color comic is basically 'Conan the Barbarian' in MARPAT. [Buy]
 - James Clark, senior reporter
The Liberator by Alex Kershaw
Now a gritty and grim animated World War II miniseries from Netflix, The Liberator follows the 157th Infantry Battalion of the 45th Division from the beaches of Sicily to the mountains of Italy and the Battle of Anzio, then on to France and later still to Bavaria for some of the bloodiest urban battles of the conflict before culminating in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. It's a harrowing tale, but one worth reading before enjoying the acclaimed Netflix series. [Buy]
 - Jared Keller, deputy editor
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff
If you haven’t gotten this must-read account of the September 11th attacks, you need to put The Only Plane In the Sky at the top of your Christmas list. Graff expertly explains the timeline of that day through the re-telling of those who lived it, including the loved ones of those who were lost, the persistently brave first responders who were on the ground in New York, and the service members working in the Pentagon. My only suggestion is to not read it in public — if you’re anything like me, you’ll be consistently left in tears. [Buy]
- Haley Britzky, Army reporter
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry
Why do we even fight wars? Wouldn’t a massive tennis tournament be a nicer way for nations to settle their differences? This is one of the many questions Harvard professor Elaine Scarry attempts to answer, along with why nuclear war is akin to torture, why the language surrounding war is sterilized in public discourse, and why both war and torture unmake human worlds by destroying access to language. It’s a big lift of a read, but even if you just read chapter two (like I did), you’ll come away thinking about war in new and refreshing ways. [Buy]
 - David Roza, Air Force reporter
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor
Stalingrad takes readers all the way from the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to the collapse of the 6th Army at Stalingrad in February 1943. It gives you the perspective of German and Soviet soldiers during the most apocalyptic battle of the 20th century. [Buy]
- Jeff Schogol, Pentagon correspondent 
America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich
I picked up America's War for the Greater Middle East earlier this year and couldn’t put it down. Published in 2016 by Andrew Bacevich, a historian and retired Army officer who served in Vietnam, the book unravels the long and winding history of how America got so entangled in the Middle East and shows that we’ve been fighting one long war since the 1980s — with errors in judgment from political leaders on both sides of the aisle to blame. “From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift?” the book jacket asks. As Bacevich details in this definitive history, the mission creep of our Vietnam experience has been played out again and again over the past 30 years, with disastrous results. [Buy]
 - Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief
Burn In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer and August Cole
In Burn In, Singer and Cole take readers on a journey at an unknown date in the future, in which an FBI agent searches for a high-tech terrorist in Washington, D.C. Set after what the authors called the "real robotic revolution," Agent Lara Keegan is teamed up with a robot that is less Terminator and far more of a useful, and highly intelligent, law enforcement tool. Perhaps the most interesting part: Just about everything that happens in the story can be traced back to technologies that are being researched today. You can read Task & Purpose's interview with the authors here. [Buy]
 - James Clark, senior reporter
SAS: Rogue Heroes by Ben MacIntyre
Like WWII? Like a band of eccentric daredevils wreaking havoc on fascists? Then you'll love SAS: Rogue Heroes, which re-tells some truly insane heists performed by one of the first modern special forces units. Best of all, Ben MacIntyre grounds his history in a compassionate, balanced tone that displays both the best and worst of the SAS men, who are, like anyone else, only human after all. [Buy]
 - David Roza, Air Force reporter
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
The Alice Network is a gripping novel which follows two courageous women through different time periods — one living in the aftermath of World War II, determined to find out what has happened to someone she loves, and the other working in a secret network of spies behind enemy lines during World War I. This gripping historical fiction is based on the true story of a network that infiltrated German lines in France during The Great War and weaves a tale so packed full of drama, suspense, and tragedy that you won’t be able to put it down. [Buy]
Tumblr media
Katherine Rondina, Anchor Books
“Because I published a new book this year, I've been answering questions about my inspirations. This means I've been thinking about and so thankful for The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender. I can't credit it with making me want to be a writer — that desire was already there — but it inspired me to write stories where the fantastical complicates the ordinary, and the impossible becomes possible. A girl in a nice dress with no one to appreciate it. An unremarkable boy with a remarkable knack for finding things. The stories in this book taught me that the everydayness of my world could become magical and strange, and in that strangeness I could find a new kind of truth.”
Diane Cook is the author of the novel The New Wilderness, which was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Read an excerpt from The New Wilderness.
Bill Johnston, University of California Press
“I’ve revisited a lot of old favorites in this grim year of fear and isolation, and have been most thankful of all for The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Witty, reflexive, intimate, queer, disarmingly occasional and monumentally serious all at once, they’ve been a constant balm and inspiration. ‘The only thing to do is simply continue,’ he wrote, in 'Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul'; ‘is that simple/yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do/can you do it/yes, you can because it is the only thing to do.’”
Helen Macdonald is a nature essayist with a semiregular column in the New York Times Magazine. Her latest novel, Vesper Flights, is a collection of her best-loved essays, and her debut book, H Is for Hawk, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction and the Costa Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.
Andrea Scher, Scholastic Press
“This year, I’m so grateful for You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson. Reading — like everything else — has been a struggle for me in 2020. It’s been tough to let go of all of my anxieties about the state of the world and our country and get swept away by a story. But You Should See Me in a Crown pulled me in right away; for the blissful time that I was reading it, it made me think about a world outside of 2020 and it made me smile from ear to ear. Joy has been hard to come by this year, and I’m so thankful for this book for the joy it brought me.”
Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of five romance novels, including this year’s Party of Two. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Time.
Nelson Fitch, Random House
“Last year, stuck in a prolonged reading rut that left me wondering if I even liked books anymore, I stumbled across Tenth of December by George Saunders, a collection of stories Saunders wrote between 1995 and 2012 that are at turns funny, moving, startling, weird, profound, and often all of those things at the same time. As a writer, what I crave most from books is to find one so excellent it makes me feel like I'd be better off quitting — and so wonderful that it reminds me what it is to be purely a reader again, encountering new worlds and revelations every time I turn a page. Tenth of December is that, and I'm so grateful that it fell off a high shelf and into my life.”
Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series and the Carve the Mark duology. Her latest novel, Chosen Ones, is her first novel for adults. Read an excerpt from Chosen Ones.
Ian Byers-Gamber, Blazevox Books
“Waking up today to the prospect of some hours spent reading away part of another day of this disastrous, delirious pandemic year, I’m most grateful for the book in my hands, one itself full of gratitude for a life spent reading: Gloria Frym’s How Proust Ruined My Life. Frym’s essays — on Marcel Proust, yes, and Walt Whitman, and Lucia Berlin, but also peppermint-stick candy and Allen Ginsburg’s knees, among other Proustian memory-prompts — restore me to my sense of my eerie luck at a life spent rushing to the next book, the next page, the next word.”
Jonathan Lethem is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Motherless Brooklyn. His latest novel, The Arrest, is a postapocalyptic tale about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Riverhead
“I’m incredibly grateful for the magnificent The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer. This book — a mélange of history, memoir, and reportage — is the reconceptualization of Native life that’s been urgently needed since the last great indigenous history, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s at once a counternarrative and a replacement for Brown’s book, and it rejects the standard tale of Native victimization, conquest, and defeat. Even though I teach Native American studies to college students, I found new insights and revelations in almost every chapter. Not only a great read, the book is a tremendous contribution to Native American — and American — intellectual and cultural history.”
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is author of the novel Winter Counts, which is BuzzFeed Book Club’s November pick. He is also the author of the children’s book Spotted Tail, which won the 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Read an excerpt from Winter Counts.
Valerie Mosley, Tordotcom
“In 2020, I've been lucky to finish a single book within 30 days, but I burned through this 507-page brick in the span of a weekend. Harrow the Ninth reminded me that even when absolutely everything is terrible, it's still possible to feel deep, gratifying, brain-buzzing admiration for brilliant art. Thank you, Harrow, for being one of the brightest spots in a dark year and for keeping the home fires burning.”
Casey McQuiston is the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, and her next book, One Last Stop, comes out in 2021.
"I'm grateful for V.S. Naipaul's troubling masterpiece, A Bend in the River — which not only made me see the world anew, but made me see what literature could do. It's a book that's lucid enough to reveal the brutality of the forces shaping our world and its politics; yet soulful enough to penetrate the most recondite secrets of human interiority. A book of great beauty without a moment of mercy. A marriage of opposites that continues to shape my own deeper sense of just how much a writer can actually accomplish."
Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright, and his latest novel, Homeland Elegies, is about an American son and his immigrant father searching for belonging in a post-9/11 country. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Vanessa German, Feminist Press
“I'm most thankful for Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether. It's a YA book set in 1930s Harlem, and it was the first Black-girl-coming-of-age book I ever read, the first time I ever saw myself in a book. I appreciate how it expanded my world and my understanding that books can speak to you right where you are and take you on a journey, at the same time.”
Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. She is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Read a story from The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
Philippa Gedge, W. W. Norton & Company
“As both a writer and a reader I am hugely grateful for Patricia Highsmith’s plotting and writing suspense fiction. As a writer I’m thankful for Highsmith’s generosity with her wisdom and experience: She talks us through how to tease out the narrative strands and develop character, how to know when things are going awry, even how to decide to give things up as a bad job. She’s unabashed about sharing her own ‘failures,’ and in my experience, there’s nothing more encouraging for a writer than learning that our literary gods are mortal! As a reader, it provides a fascinating insight into the genesis of one of my favorite novels of all time — The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as the rest of her brilliant oeuvre. And because it’s Highsmith, it’s so much more than just a how-to guide: It’s hugely engaging and, while accessible, also provides a glimpse into the mind of a genius. I’ve read it twice — while working on each of my thrillers, The Hunting Party and The Guest List — and I know I’ll be returning to the well-thumbed copy on my shelf again soon!”
Lucy Foley is the New York Times bestselling author of the thrillers The Guest List and The Hunting Party. She has also written two historical fiction novels and previously worked in the publishing industry as a fiction editor.
“The books I'm most thankful for this year are a three-book series titled Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend. Walking a fine line between comedy and horror (which is much harder than people think), the books follow Jack, an employee at a gas station in a nameless town where all manner of horrifyingly fantastical things happen. And while the monsters are scary and more than a little ridiculous, it's Jack's bone-dry narration, along with his best friend/emotional support human, Jerry, that elevates the books into something that are as lovely as they are absurd.”
T.J. Klune is a Lambda Literary Award–winning author and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinaries.
Sylvernus Darku (Team Black Image Studio), Ayebia Clarke Publishing
"Nervous Conditions is a book that I have read several times over the years, including this year. The novel covers the themes of gender and race and has at its heart Tambu, a young girl in 1960s Rhodesia determined to get an education and to create a better life for herself. Dangarembga’s prose is evocative and witty, and the story is thought-provoking. I’ve been inspired anew by Tambu each time I’ve read this book."
Peace Adzo Medie is Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2020). His Only Wife is her debut novel.
Jenna Maurice, HarperCollins
“The book I'm most thankful for? Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. My mother and father would read me poems from it before bed — I'm convinced it infused me not only with a sense of poetic cadence, but also a wry sense of humor.”
Victoria “V.E.” Schwab is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Vicious, the Shades of Magic series, and This Savage Song. Her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, is BuzzFeed Book Club’s December pick. Read an excerpt from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
Meg Vázquez, Square Fish
“My childhood best friend gave me Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle for Hanukkah when I was 11 years old, and it's still my favorite book of all time. I love the way it defies genre (it's a political thriller/YA romance that includes a lot of scientific research and also poetry??), and the way it values smartness, gutsiness, vulnerability, kindness, and a sense of adventure. The book follows 16-year-old Vicky Austin's life-altering trip to Antarctica; her trip changed my life, too. In a year when safe travel is almost impossible, I'm so grateful to be able to return to her story again and again.”
Kate Stayman-London's debut novel, One to Watch, is about a plus-size blogger who’s been asked to star on a Bachelorette-like reality show. Stayman-London served as lead digital writer for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and has written for notable figures, from former president Obama and Malala Yousafzai to Anna Wintour and Cher.
Katharine McGee is grateful for the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Chris Bailey Photography, Firebird
“I’m thankful for the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. I discovered the series in elementary school, and it sparked a love of big, epic stories that has never left me. (If you read my books, you know I can’t resist a broad cast of characters!) I used to read the books aloud to my younger sister, using funny voices for all the narrators. Now that I have a little boy of my own, I can’t wait to someday share Redwall with him.”
Katharine McGee is the New York Times bestselling author of American Royals and its sequel, Majesty. She is also the author of the Thousandth Floor trilogy.
Beth Gwinn, Time-Life Books
"I am thankful most for books that carry me out of the world and back again, and while I find it painful to choose among them, here's one early and one late: Zen Cho's Black Water Sister, which comes out in 2021 but I devoured just two days ago, and the long out-of-print Wizards and Witches volume of the Time-Life Enchanted World series, which is where I first read about the legend of the Scholomance."
Naomi Novik is the New York Times bestselling author of the Nebula Award–winning novel Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and the nine-volume Temeraire series. Her latest novel, A Deadly Education, is the first of the Scholomance trilogy.
Christina Lauren are grateful for the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Christina Lauren, Little, Brown and Company
"We are thankful for the Twilight series for about a million reasons, not the least of which it's what brought the two of us together. Writing fanfic in a space where we could be silly and messy together taught us that we don't have to be perfect, but there's no harm in trying to get better with every attempt. It also cemented for us that the best relationships are the ones in which you can be your real, authentic self, even when you're struggling to do things you never thought you'd be brave enough to attempt. Twilight brought millions of readers back into the fold and inspired hundreds of romance authors. We really do thank Stephenie Meyer every day for the gift of Twilight and the fandom it created."
1 note · View note
agentnico · 4 years
Text
Union of Salvation (2019) Review
Tumblr media
Perks of being in Russia for the week: I get to see a Russian movie at the cinema! 
Plot: A group of officers of the Russian Imperial Guard prepares a revolt in December 1825, when about 3,000 officers and soldiers refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar.
As a Russian myself (if you didn’t know), I have been generally quite displeased with how Russian cinema has been in the past decade. The lack of quality and originality was in full showcase, and it seemed like the entertainment industry in Russia was trying to copy European and American filming styles rather than keep it their own and making use of their own culture. Gone were the days of Soviet cinema, when some of my favourite films of all time have come out. Hey, I’m not saying I'm a communist, I’m just saying they made decent films back then. Those two factors are completely unrelated. Modern Russian films, on the other hand, have been a huge disappointment for me, minus the animated movies that have had some marginal success. That being said, in the past year or so I have noticed vast improvements. There is still a lot of rubbish that comes out, for example, the just newly released film Invasion by director Fedor Bondarchuk is one of the most generic (and messy) science fiction flicks I have ever seen, but on the other hand Legend of Kolovrat (2017), Three Seconds (2017), T-34 (2018), and the recent comedy The Peasant all have their charm to them. Heck, even the Chinese/Russian co-produced fantasy epic Viy 2: Journey to China that came out back in September brought us the amusing showdown between Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger! So Russian film studios are getting back and slowly finding their own, and this new released historical epic Union of Salvation (in Russian Союз спасения) is an example of that.
Union of Salvation is a large scale historical study that describes some of the more difficult pages of the history of the Russian Empire. The revolt of the Decembrists had to show the emperor that the old rules and laws were no longer able to restrain the empire from collapse, and although the rebellion was suppressed, it became a special precedent that brought the country under global historical changes. This is a very difficult subject to take on, however, director Andrey Kravchuk makes the wise choice of not taking any sides, and instead telling us this story fact by fact, letting the audience themselves decide who was right and who was wrong, for there are many ways to interpret the righteousness of the entire matter. So the choice was made to cast actors with very likeable faces in all the roles, and the way each character is presented is one that makes you understand their motives well, and see that none of them were particularly bad people, at least not in this version. 
Extra marks to the film for making use of an instrumental version of the song “Progulki po Vode” by the band Nautilus Pompilus from the Perestroika times (a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s). Rather fitting to the subject matter as a symbolical comparison, and worked strongly as a musical accompaniment to what was happening on screen. In fact, I think the entire score in this film worked to grand effect. Really added the right amount of urgency and tension to the scenes. In fact, technically speaking, this is one of the more gorgeous looking Russian films I have seen in recent years. The scenery is rich with colour (captured expertly by the stunning cinematography), the costumes stand-out and are accurate to the time, and the large scale battle sequences are impressive with some very slick visual effects for a film that is not a Hollywood movie. 
As a whole Union of Salvation is a very impressive feat, that might bore some due to having many scenes revolving around characters simply talking and the film jumping from year to year basically re-telling historical facts, however, if you are interested in history as well as seeing a good Russian movie, try and seek this one out. I mean, to be honest, the film has only come out in Russia and nowhere else so far, so I guess I can only recommend this to Russian people or tourists that have come to visit Russia for the New Year celebrations. In any case, it’s a good movie, I think I have put my point across.
Overall score: 8/10
Tumblr media
16 notes · View notes