Stratofanatic's Emporium

Frederick Pohl's one of those names in science fiction who's frequently referenced (he's a grandmaster, after all) but whom I know virtually nothing about. Recently, I gave him a try after reading his Huge-winning short story "Day Million," the awesomeness of which motivated me to try some of his other work. First I tried The Space Merchants, one of sf classics that Pohl co-wrote with C.M. Kornbluth. It's clearly a riff on the rising of post-WWII American advertising and consumerism, and of course I kept making unfair comparisons to  Mad Men . Even without that complications, however, I can't say that the novel itself impressed me too much. It had a nice premise (i.e, in a world dominated by advertisers, one company is tasked with getting colonists up to the inhospitible planet Mars), but it had that slapdash quality that marks so much early sf. The writing in the second half in particular had that hurry-up-and-let's-get-this novel-over-with quality ...

Well, the first day of classes is tomorrow. Am I nervous? Not about the teaching, at least. Although it's been about a year and a half since I've been in the classroom, once you've done it enough, stage fright is no longer really a factor. Plus, I've done plenty of conferences and presentations (and dissertation defenses!) in the meantime.  I'm actually more nervous that I've minded all the relevant Ps and Qs in my syllabus; the modern syllabus is akin to rocket science, and I keep frantically double-checking things to make sure all the required tidbits are there. But I'm already half in love with my new program -- and, needless to say, we've just met. I hinted at this before, but the UA Writing Program is really doing some wonderful things. Many of the pedagogical practices they've incorporated, as might be expected, reflect some of the best current theories and practices of rhet/comp theorists. On a more nuts & bolts level, our college'...

Actually, this was an optional meeting, but I wanted to acclimatize myself to the university as quickly as possible. The department textbooks advocates a genre-based, rather than a process-based, approach to writing, so that's a bit out of my comfort zone & I needed as much info as possible before composing my syllabus.  Anyway, a few observations: 95% of the people there were GTAs -- only 5 new lecturers. Should have expected that, I suppose, but I didn't. Speaking of the GTAs, they're quite the young pups. Given that my doctoral program had a slight higher average age for incoming grad students, I'd forgotten what 23 / 24 year old grad students looked like! People are really friendly. I'm really going to enjoy here, I think. (But I already knew that!) Much of the pedagogical and rhetorical information on which this writing program is based is familiar to me from MTSU's teacher training. So, while they're'll be a learning curve, it's goi...

Now that I've received the official word, I'm pleased to announce the appearance in the fall of Mythlore  of my essay, "J.R.R. Tolkien and the 1954 Nomination of E. M. Forster for the Nobel Prize in Literature."  As you can probably tell from the title, my theme is that mysterious case of why Tolkien would have nominated Forster -- whom we never knew he admired -- for literature's highest prize. To my knowledge, only two scholars have even discussed that situation at any length, both bloggers: Jason Fisher here and John D. Rateliff here . Basically, I have two contentions. The first revolves around possible literary reasons for Tolkien's nomination. Verlyn Flieger has previously posited that Tolkien could have been influenced by Howards End , but I'm placing my money on A Passage to India . Although postcolonial issues did not occupy much attention in Tolkien's own writings, he certainly knew about such things himself (having been born in S. Africa...

Backpacks and shoes live a hard life when they hook up with me. I'm murder on them, walking on average 30 miles a week and always carrying 20-40 pounds of stuff. Alas, it's time to retire my current faithful backpack with a commemorative post. He was originally a Christmas present from Martina seven years ago. Despite a lifetime guarantee, he's pretty beat up and close to falling apart, and it's time to find a new stuff-holding companion as I embark on my journey to Arizona. He's been quite a few places with me, including London & Barcelona & Paris & Prague, as well as all throughout my doctoral program, and he's held my stuff pretty much everyday since I got him. Old backpack, I salute you!!

The 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is coming up. In preparation for an article I'm hoping to write, I've been reading up on her. My main target thus far is her other science fiction novel, the apocalyptic  The Last Man (1828). It's . . . . well, it's not that good. Part I describes the narrator's friends, clearly based on Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, plus all their tedious love affairs and marriages. That's to be expected from a novel from that period, I suppose. Part II describes some politics stuff, plus the beginnings of a vast plague. Part III is where the plague finally wipes everyone out. Where the novel does well is: Nice portraits of Shelley and Byron. Unfortunately, that doesn't help The Last Man succeed as a novel. The trepidation of the plague as it begins to sweep over the world. Powerful sense of doom, only slightly ruined by the excessive verbiage in which Shelley likes to say things. On a relate...

With my big move to the U of A in Tucson just over a week away, the MTSU nostalgia's starting to hit me pretty hard. It's odd -- I don't get particularly attached to places, and I don't have much "school spirit" for any of the institutions I've attended, at least with the exception of Lycoming College, where I spent three semesters immediately after high school. Still, I've been reminiscing how fortunate I've been in the opportunities given me by MTSU's doctoral program, and how little confidence I had in that program when I first arrived. When I was applying to graduate programs in late 2011, I found MTSU entirely by accident -- unsure of where to go for a program that emphasized fantasy and science fiction, I browsed  The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts looking for professors, and I found one that taught at MTSU, which I had never heard of before. Looking through their faculty page, I saw several professors had similar interests to me,...

The peer review process is infamously slow. Everyone knows the familiar slog: you poor blood, sweat, and tears into writing an article, send it off to a journal, and 4-6 months later (sometimes more!) you hear a response. In theory, there's no reason the process needs to take so long -- it's only a couple hours of work for the reviewer, maybe more if the submission's worth the effort. But peer review is a thing where very busy academics are doing volunteer labor that, in the grand scheme of things, does very little to advance their careers. Reviewing articles is a service to the field, but it's ridiculously easy to put one off when you're teaching, grading, writing, researching, serving on committees, attending conferences, and all the other hosts of things you must do as an academic. Hence, you can only imagine how impressed I am with the speed with which I've gotten peer reviews from the various Tolkien journals. Thus far, I've offered submissions to Tol...