Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum
Tag: Italy
Weird #41: “A Woman Seldom Found” by William Sansom (1959)
Man meets woman--but this tryst's got a twist
Weird #11: “The Vegetable Man” by Luigi Ugolini (1917)
The story of a little green man.
Endless Things by John Crowley
If you arrived at a crossroads, would you take the right or the left fork? We are faced every day of our lives with choosing a path. Once our decision takes us onward, we cannot return. The past that once was--and the path we might have chosen instead--grows more and more distant with each 'Y' …
Demon Hunter Severian: Lady of the Night Gates by Giovanni Anastasi
Milan during the time of Bishop Ambrose and Emperor Theodosius in 394 AD was the new centre of the Roman Empire, a cosmopolitan city home to Christian and pagan alike--the perfect setting for demon hunt. A young girl and an elderly priest are found dead in their beds under similar circumstances, after a night of …
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Venetian Dragon
Today I will share a set of images I drew and painted of a Venetian dragon. This is part of my series on Renaissance dragons in urban settings. I will, as in my post on Florentine Dragon, take you through the process of painting it. I'm still practicing my skill, but that's how you improve. …
Aegypt: The Solitudes by John Crowley
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 …
Ancestral Memory Point of View Experiment
Over the summer, I was debating what kind of new short story I should write, when I found myself gravitating towards the technical challenges and experimentalism that the Assassin's Creed franchise might inspire in fiction. What really got me thinking was how to represent the experience of entering an Animus in fiction. The Animus machine …
Machiavelli and the Problem of Memory in Tigana
"Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul." -Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana . Alessan's mantra for his beleaguered nation, erased from history by the tyrant sorcerer Brandin of Ygrath, forms a central node in the theme of exile and memory in Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana. A novel set in the …
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Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
A group of editors gets together to write a parody of a conspiracy theory. What if the parody ends up becoming perceived as the source of ultimate truth for an actual underground group that styles itself after the Templars and Rosicrucians? The answer lies in the pages of Umberto Eco's intellectual thriller Foucault's Pendulum. In …
Matthew Rettino 