Stratofanatic's Emporium

So, I just finished reading the  Los Angeles Review of Books  review  of  Bladerunner 2049 . For the record, I loved the film. The themes were intellectually engaging, the score impressive, and it handled its characters with intelligence and respect. All in all, I consider it an exemplary sequel. The writer of the  LARB  review, alas, does not. I should clarify that when I call this a "poor" review, I do not mean in the technical sense. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun clearly has a great grasp of film technique, and her actual writing is lucid and engaging. Instead, what I mean is the refusal to see the film on its own terms -- preferring, rather, to see in one's own ideological/political lens, and then drenching the film in invective. The discussion of  BR2049  on the  IAFA  listserv   actually made many of Chun's main points last month, but she assembled them into a single article, so I'll tackle the review here. Her basic idea is...

As part of my Stephen R. Donaldson, I've been reading some Jean-Paul Sartre -- mostly Being and Nothingness and his novel, Nausea. I'm pretty familiar with Sartre in broad outlines, of course. My first semester in college, I went through a pretty big existentialist phase thanks to my Introduction to Philosophy course, which had a "Existentialism is a Humanism" as one of the optional readings in the back. What self-absorbed, rebellious 18-year-old atheist  wouldn't be captivated by a philosophy marked by "anguish, despair, and forlornness?" I eventually got over that phase, partly because it seemed pretentious and partly because I couldn't (then) understand any of the harder philosophical works, but I still loved Donaldson (whose link to existential thought I hadn't then quite realized).  Anyway, reading Nausea for the first time, and I noticed that it was translated by a "Lloyd Alexander."  "Huh!" I thought. So I checked...

Well, a minor happy piece of personal news this Thanksgiving -- looks like I'll be the new Reviews Editor for Fafnir: A Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research . I actually applied for the open editor in chief position, which I also applied to last year , but I came in a narrow second.  Still, luck was with me. The editorial board had already decided to expand their reviews section (monographs and dissertations both), and they decided to offer me the position before placing any open calls. Well, I love books reviews, so this is really quite good. Plus it won't be as time intensive as the full editor in chief position, so this will provide more time for personal research. It's a win-win situation here. I'm looking forward to starting. Fafnir publishes four times a year, so the current issue is now being laid out. I'll be starting officially in January 2018. In other news, my friend Sarah H. is also about to assume the editor in chief position for...

Just got my order of Mythlore #130 (vol. 35, issue 2) in the mail last night. I've particularly proud of this one (the biggest single issue in the journal's history), as it contains both an article and a review of mine. The article, which I summarize here , is about why Tolkien might have co-nominated E.M. Forster for the Nobel Prize in 1954. The review is of a great biography about Angela Carter, the British fairy tale writer and postmodern feminist.  Incidentally, this may be the first physical issue of Mythlore I've ever handled. All my prior experience with the journal has been through either an online database or through a pdf of an interlibrary loan. Nice looking volume, in all. 

So, the big news last night is that Christopher Tolkien has resigned (retired, I suppose would be a better word) as the director the Tolkien Estate . He'll remain the literary executor, but still, this is pretty big news. This announcement also comes on the heels of the big news from a few days ago that Amazon just acquired the global t.v. rights for a prequel series to The Lord of the Rings, and it's hard to imagine that the two pieces of information are unrelated. Anyway, though, as can be gleaned from the comments section in the above link, Christopher Tolkien's centrality to Tolkien Studies is about as high as you can possibly get, and his influence on the field as great as any scholar, just about, could make to their field. I certainly don't know any comps, especially as C. Tolkien started his work decades before Tolkien scholarship became as prolific as it has been. I wonder sometimes if the fact that he's the son of Tolkien Sr. has partially obscured his sc...

Well, actually, last Thursday night with Chomsky. In celebration of luring Noam Chomsky away from MIT, the U of A had a "discussion" with him at Centennial Hall. Tickets were $15 -- and I don't know if I was outraged they were charging for an academic event, or disappointed that someone at the very pinnacle of academia didn't bring in triple-digit ticket prices! (Regardless, the ticketing website was the most convoluted thing imaginable. Despite that, a pretty nice crowd showed.) Anyway, the discussion itself wasn't much -- just some normal observations about current politics, media, human rights, nuclear war, and the like. Nothing particularly insightful or amazing. Still, the wife and I went for the pleasure of seeing a genius, not any practical or academic benefit, so we were happy. Plus the discussion and following Q&A went about 2 hours long, so we certainly got our money's worth. Afterwards, we went to Chipotle's. Apparently, one of my stud...

Spurred on by that encyclopedia article I wrote about Stephen R. Donaldson and aliens, these last two months I've been hammering away on an article about the relationship between his work and gender violence. With the article entering the final stages, the following opportunity was just too good to miss: the  First Annual Conference on Gender-Based Conference , November 3rd & 4th, hosted here at the U of A. I didn't go last evening since it started at 6:30 pm, and that's perilously close to my bed time (although I hated to miss the keynote address by Brooke Axtell ), but I'm making the Saturday sessions. So far, it's a pretty good conference. It's a bit less academic than I was hoping for, being a bit more practical about how to solve issues of gender-based violence, but I'm learning some valuable things about terminology and the kinds of discussions current in the issue. Even though my interests in the topic are a bit narrower than most people's w...