Picture a cold, damp hut, surrounded by mischievous crows, on the banks of a swollen river, against the backdrop of a smoky, nineteenth-century city awash in crime lifted straight out of a penny dreadful. Add this to the miserable squalor: that the resident of said hut, one Robin Sparrows, serves as office clerk to a predatory law firm whose motto, Lupi pastores erunt, …
Continue reading The Miseries of Mister Sparrows by Matthew A.J. Timmins
John Crowley's Aegypt Quartet asks the question, "What if there was more than one history of the world?"; David Walton's Quintessence, on the other hand, actually explores one of these alternate histories. It is set in a world that follows the rules of known science in the sixteenth century--which means the world is flat and …
Elizabethan England's most celebrated poet and playwright, in underground kind of way, was Christopher Marlowe, although he was soon eclipsed by Mr. Will Shakespeare, whose popular plays would define the mainstream for centuries to come. It was the 90s. The 1590s to be precise. Marlowe was at the height of his powers, writing the politically …
Continue reading 5 Reasons Why Christopher Marlowe is an Elizabethan Hipster Poet
Perusing the books on sale at MythCon 45 at Wheaton College in Norton, MA this summer, I stumbled across a most peculiar historical fantasy novel. It was the long-lost masterpiece of Kenneth Morris, The Chalchiuhite Dragon. Well-known, if not actually famous, for his modern Celtic fantasies such as The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed …
The first of the two legendary panels that happened on Sunday--just before my own presentation, which was the last before the banquet and awards ceremony--was entitled "Fantasy and Faith." Chip Crane moderated, and Carl Hostetter, Sorina Higgins, and Lynn Maudlin were discussing the Inklings. What is the place of faith in the fantasy genre? What …
Continue reading MythCon 45 Day 4: Faith, Myths, and Archetypes
Sunday morning at MythCon, and I took it easy, only getting to "Harry Potter as Dystopian Literature" for 10:00. Kris Swank framed Harry Potter not only in terms of the latest dystopian craze in YA fiction (Divergent, The Hunger Games), but also with the dystopian tradition of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. The Dolores Umbridge-corrupted …
The sequel to John Crowley's Aegypt (The Solitudes), Love & Sleep continues the story of Pierce Moffet's quest to write his history of histories, a book that in which he will propose that there is more than one history of the world. He must decide what to do with the posthumous, unfinished manuscript of historical …
Pierce Moffet wants to find a compelling book idea for a nonfiction history book. He discovers that the reason we think gypsies can tell fortunes is not because they came from Egypt (or even India for that matter), but because our ancestors thought gypsies came from Aegypt, a dream-Egypt sprung from the European imagination. In …
You may know Guy Gavriel Kay as a historical fantasy novelist, author of River of Stars, a book that continues to be nominated for various awards. But did you know that he is also a poet? Beyond this Dark House is that obscure volume of poetry you might have remembered seeing just before the title …
J.R.R Tolkien, born this day in 1892, would be 122 if he were alive today, one of the oldest people in the world. Alas, his physical body perished 2 September 1973, even though his textual body lives on, with much thanks to the continued labours of Christopher Tolkien, his son and editor. I would love …
Continue reading Are Tolkien’s Ideas Still Alive in Our Postmodern Twenty-First Century?
Matthew Rettino 