If you missed the December 2016 issue of Analog and thus didn’t get to read my story “Prodigal,” now’s your chance: it’s online at the magazine’s website in PDF form for the present. That’s because it was a finalist in the AnLab reader’s poll, which means you can check out a metric ton of great stories on the website: 2016 ANLAB READERS’ AWARDS FINALISTS More happy writing news in a day or two, I promise, when I get a chance to catch my breath.
Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXI
This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. Also, since the table of contents that my post series plugin creates has gotten far too unwieldy to include at the top of each post, I’ve gone ahead and made an index of the Cantos I’ve discussed, with links to each post. I’ll try remember to update it as I continue with this project. That index is here. The index is new, so I …
Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LX
This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. Also, since the table of contents that my post series plugin creates has gotten far too unwieldy to include at the top of each post, I’ve gone ahead and made an index of the Cantos I’ve discussed, with links to each post. I’ll try remember to update it as I continue with this project. That index is here. The index is new, so I …
Bruno Overload
This post deals with some recent readings I’ve done on the subject of Giordano Bruno. It’s divided into three parts: Recent Readings covers the books I read, and my reaction to them, with a special emphasis on the system of artificial memory (that is, how Bruno modified the classical art of memory/memory palace system) that was one of Bruno’s biggest claims to fame in his own time. Side Note: The Temples? plays Six Degrees of Separation between Bruno and Jonathan Swift. I’ve narrowed it down to five degrees, too, which surprised me, but maybe it shouldn’t: Europe from 1580 to 1680 was a pretty small world, and …
Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LIX
This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. Also, since the table of contents that my post series plugin creates has gotten far too unwieldy to include at the top of each post, I’ve gone ahead and made an index of the Cantos I’ve discussed, with links to each post. I’ll try remember to update it as I continue with this project. That index is here. The index is new, so I …
Hothouse (1962), by Brian Aldiss
So, what in the world is going on in Brian Aldiss’ Hugo Award-winning 1962 stories that eventually got collected as Hothouse? Note that I wrote in, not with. I just finished the book the other day, though it took me ages to get through it and that’s given me a lot of time to ruminate on the parts I’d already read. The book is strange, in ways that I found both fascinating and frustrating. (But, honestly, the reason it took so long has more to do with my son’s newly developed Spider Man-like climbing abilities than the book itself.)
More Prodigal News… and a Blowfish in a Pear Tree
With the intensive courses I’ve been teaching, I haven’t had time to reflect much on 2016, or all the stuff that happened last year. (And since today’s my wedding anniversary, I won’t be doing it now.) I’ll have a little time for things like that soon—after my courses end and I get the grades uploaded, sometime next week or early on during the week after—but for now, some happy news: I’ve finally received my contributor’s copy of the December 2016 issue of Analog! Pretty exciting. I’ve actually had it for about a week, but have been too busy to mention it here. In …
Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: More on Canto LVII, and Canto LVIII
This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. … aaaaand, we’re back. This post marks my second return to this blog project, the first one having been abortive (it ended after just one post, the previous one in this series). There’s good reasons for that: I was focused on some writing projects, and trying to use my time wisely while I had a lot of it. In the time since, a …
The Music of Jo Hyeja: Now on DVD!
I couldn’t be prouder of my wife, whose first short film, “The Music of Jo Hyeja” is now available on DVD, as part of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival Classics Vol. 1 Short Film Collection. Well, technically it’s been out a little while, but a week or so ago, I think it was, she received her contributor copies of the DVD. How spectacular: images from all the films adorn the cover, but hers take a prominent place. What’s more exciting to me is: this is South Korea’s first Lovecraftian adaptation to the screen, and it did really well in that capacity. …
Prodigal Reviews
So, some positive reviews so far for “Prodigal,” which is nice to see. (Not everyone has the ability to totally ignore or dismiss critics and reviews so wholeheartedly encouraged by Miles Davis.) The highlights so far? Well, Greg Hullender’s review Rocket Stack Rank has this to say: “Moving, thought-provoking exploration of animal uplift. (…) as a metaphor for losing a loved one to a cause, it’s dynamite.” There’s an uncredited review at SFRevu that praises the story, too: “Sad story. Very well done.” And finally, Chuck Rothman over at Tangent has high praise: “[The issue] starts out with a bang with “Prodigal” by Gord Sellar… This …