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
At the beginning of another MythCon, this one in Colorado Springs--where I am now, giving a presentation--it is fitting to review the book of the first MythConer with whom I ever struck up a conversation. This is one of the only cases where I knew the author before I knew he was an author. I found him waiting …
Does magic exist in the contemporary world? Charles de Lint's mythic fiction brings supernatural beings into the context of the everyday and Forests of the Heart explores the contact between ordinary people and what he calls Mystery. Bettina and Adelita are sisters, both partly Mexican, partly Indios, and raised by their grandmother to see la époco del …
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 …
Day 2 of MythCon began Saturday morning. After breakfast, I really came to appreciate how many people had come to Wheaton College. In addition to seeing many of the faces I saw on Friday, Corey Olsen, the Tolkien Professor, was there. Allow me to explain one thing about this guy: I first listened to his …
What if dragons and their riders formed their own corps of soldiers adjacent to the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars? You get Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, the first novel of which, His Majesty's Dragon, I have just finished reading on my Kobo. William Laurence, a Royal Navy captain engaged in the Napoleonic Wars, captures …
Matthew Rettino 