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Showing posts from 2019

Being a Kindly *Book* Reviewer -- An author's Material Conditions?

So, returning back to James Gifford's blog ( click here  for my previous thankful post on his comments about blind peer reviewers). This time, he's discussing book reviewers , which, needless to say, as a reviews editor , I found highly interesting. Overall, Gifford offers some pretty standard, but good, commentary, but I was particularly intrigued by his remarks that book reviewers should always keep in mind an author's material conditions -- that is, the job and tenure pressures that affect the overall strength of a monograph. I quote: . . . . fast research during the most pressure-filled years of an academic career . . .  written amidst new course preps and the potentially prickly entrance to the profession. . . . . This is to say, the reviewer really cannot and should not overlook the nature and needs of the book. Books that fulfill career requirements simply cannot be read the same way as those that come after tenure and therefore without the same material deman

Fiction read (July - December 2019)

This is the second half (July through December) of my 2019 reading list -- the first half may be found here . As usual, I'm not including my non-fiction reading & research, mostly because I've gotten so good at "gutting" those texts that page counts are pretty irrelevant. At least with the fiction. I paid pretty good attention to every page. So, without further ado: Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword , 200 pg. Poul Anderson, Three Hearts and Three Lion s, 150 pg Poul & Karen Anderson, The Unicorn Trade , 250 pg. Glen Cook, The Swordbearer, 250 pg. Paul Edwin Zimmer & Jon DeCles, Blood of the Colyn Muir , 250 pg. Lawrence Watt-Evans, The Misenchanted Sword , 250 pg Michael Moorcock, Elric of Melnibone and Other Stories , 200 pg. Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons , 350 pg. Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens , 400 pg. Trudi Canavan, The Black Magician , 400 pg. Karen Miller, The Innocent Mage , 600 pg. T. H. White, The Sword in the

Being a Kindly Blind Peer Reviewer: Promptness

So, after reading A Modernist Fantasy (2018) last month, I've turned into a major fan of James Gifford. And I've recently discovered that he's had a small blog series going where he describes the blind review process . . . . which is helpful because, as he says in one of the posts, academia is notoriously secretive, and my experience with the "blind peer review" genre comes entirely from common sense and the few blind reviews I've received. So, from this post , here was a particularly helpful bit of information: I made a quasi-promise to myself three years ago to resolve that contradiction. When asked to review an article, I either decline or complete the review by the end of the next day. It’s not really a matter of hurrying or spending more or less time – it’s simply when the time is allocated. I could race at the end of the deadline or just read the materials on the train the same day I receive them and send off comments the next morning (sometimes eve

Re-tweeted by Peter S. Beagle!

Well, retweeted by Beagle's publicity team, most likely, but it's still cool. But apparently they were happy to see the new entries ("Peter S. Beagle" & The Last Unicorn ) in The Literary Encyclopedia .

Raking in the Royalties!

I just earned $4.33 in royalties from my entries in The Literary Encyclopedia for 2019. Now, everyone who told me that earning my doctorate in English was a bad investment is eating their words.  Revenge is a dish best served cold. . . . mostly cuz adding heat would take the total price to over $5!

The Self-Professed Radical Academic Left is *really* Radical

In the last month or two, I've been learning to "twitter." The experience has brought one thing home to me: the academic left is truly, honestly radical. For years I've read articles that claimed to be radical, that championed being radical, but somehow never quite grasped how sincerely some writers have meant it. "Revolution" isn't just a metaphor here.  For example, I'm currently reading Mitchum Huehl's After Critique: Twenty-first-century Fiction in a Neoliberal Age (Oxford UP, 2016). Not a radical book in itself, but it's part of my recent interest in the topic of postcritique. And, in the book, I was struck by the following passage: "This is why Latour suggests [in Irreductions ] that reformist politicians, always ready to compromise, negotiate, and reconfigure, as opposed to revolutionaries, armed with their righteous critiques and utopian dreams, embody the ideal form of politics, even of existence itself" (Huehls 21). A

Follow-up to The Literary Encyclopedia

So, I have a total of five entries in TLE -- two on Beagle, two one Stephen R. Donaldson, and one on Le Guin's The Dispossessed . Like most online platorms, too , TLE counts its. The hits for Beagle? Between 60 and 80, which isn't bad for something that came out 2 weeks ago or so. Donaldson? He's been out for over a year, and both entries are in the 400s. Again, respectable. How about Le Guin? So far, there are over 3,000 hits . . .. in under two months . I'm practically dying here.

Encyclopedia Entries on Beagle and Le Guin

Recently just had three good-sized encyclopedia entries published in The Literary Encyclopedia : The Dispossessed [by Le Guin] Peter S. Beagle  [bio] The Last Unicorn [book by Beagle] If anyone would like to see the entries but doesn't have institutional access to TLE , just send me a message, and I could forward a pdf.

Mentioned in the "Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2016"

Ah . . . . I've made my first appearance(s) in "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies," the literature review published each year by Tolkien Studies . Personally, I love "TYW." As a grad student who knew very little about the secondary scholarship on Tolkien when he hit ABD, this bibliographic essay was a life-saver -- an exhaustive treatment of all the relevant scholarship since 2001.** ( TS began in 2004, and the TYW does three years in the past.)  So, my mentions: #1 My first essay in Tolkien Studies , which argued that The Silmarillion should be read as a unified text rather than a compilation. The reviewer, John Magoun, whose work I've not previously encountered, was rather ambivalent. On one hand, he said the article is an "extended and clever brief" (206), and it "semi-plausibly" defends its viewpoint. He did, however, think my final section was "rather weak." Still, what really stings is this: "Ignoring questi

Addendum to a previous post: A Happy Ending

So, in my next-to-last post , I related the rather mind-boggling incident of a young-ish academic who, submitting a review to me, had plagiarized my own review on that same book. Well, I'm happy to report that this situation will apparently have a happy ending. After a few sternly worded e-mails, it looks like the reviewer in question will work diligently to produce a new, better review. I won't know for sure until it's actually submitted, but I'm hopeful. As I mentioned in my earlier post, this was a teachable moment-- that's always my gut reaction in these kinds of cases, whether I'm dealing with undergraduate freshmen or more advanced academics. Sure, it astounded me that a doctoral student could believe I wouldn't notice the plagiarism. But everyone has to learn sometime, and one's first foray into professional academic discourse can be intimating. And while I'm more than willing to use my meager institutional authority strategically to employ

Fafnir -- an up and coming journal!

I'm ridiculously happy that I've managed to latch onto Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research . Last July, after a fair bit of legwork, I managed to get us enrolled in the Directory of Open Access Journals, a nice piece of street cred that will raise our profile and grant greater exposure to our articles. Now, we're busy in the process of earning our DOAJ Seal of Approval for following best practice in open access publishing. There's a lot of steps involved in this, but one of them is liberalizing our copyright so that authors, not Fafnir , retain it without restrictions. Esko just sent our the information e-mail out to our editorial board, and it just strikes me as immensely cool that I'm involved in something that requires e-mails to an editorial board.

All the Things I Never Expected as a Reviews Editor

When I first became reviews editor for Fafnir , there were a number of things I never anticipated. Late reviews, for one thing -- we give people three months for their review, but I still have to chase up over half of our volunteers, which is a colossal waste of my time, as well as simply being unprofessional. Also surprising are all the reviews -- a majority of them, in fact -- that require moderate to heavy revision. Maybe that shouldn't shock me, but it does. And then, of course, there was the case of the experienced Big Name academic who sent us a review both incompetent and unpublishable, and got huffy when politely asked for a re-write.** The weirdest case, though, is what happened to me yesterday -- I was sent a review that clearly plagiarized a previously published review. The catch? The review they were plagiarizing was my own . Not even joking. The reviewer was smart enough to have written all the words themselves (typos included). But the ideas, specific analysis a

A New Teaching Opportunity (almost!)

One of our professors is sadly unable to finish out the semester, so the last 5 weeks of his senior-level course in "Travel Fiction / Travel Narrative" was advertised through out departmental listserv. I jumped at the chance -- it would have been a fantastic new line on the c.v., plus doesn't it just sound fun? And I had the qualifications for it, too, with a doctorate in contemporary British and American literature. Only catch was that I don't formally know much about travel narrative or Latinx and minority literatures (this professor's emphasis). I told our Undergraduate Director that, of course. . . . and they ended up going with someone else. Oh well. Would have been awesome, though.

One Less Item on My Academic Bucket List

Exciting news: my article on Glen Cook, history, and picaresque epic fantasy has just been formally accepted for publication in The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts , and it'll appear in about a year or so. This acceptance means a lot. Not that I don't feel like a real academic, but it's always important to get these affirmations, especially in a profession like ours where the major markers of success -- passing prelims, the dissertation defense, publishing articles -- arrive so few and far between. With this recent acceptance, my work now appears in 3 of the 4 most respected journals relevant to SF and fantasy: JFA , Extrapolation, and Tolkien Studies . The fourth journal, of course, is Science Fiction Studies , but since I don't really do SF criticism, I might simply have to adore that journal from afar. It's also really nice to publish something on Glen Cook, who for years has been the writer most personally addicting for me. And this will also be the fir

The Upcoming Novelization of Peter Jackson's THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

So, I've been doing some background research on Peter S. Beagle for an encyclopedia article, and I found the following gem of a story while browsing through this interview: Aaron [interviewer] : I’ve actually seen this so I know that this is true—when the original L ord of the Rings movie came out, The Fellowship of the Ring , the Peter Jackson version…somebody, one of the publishing houses, commissioned a writer to do the novelization of the movie. Peter [ S. Beagle ]: I heard that story! Aaron : And got seven chapters in before somebody said, “You do know it’s a book, right?!” And I’ve read those seven chapters, and they’re terrible…! Connor [Cochran, PSB's business manageer : I have not heard that story! That’s wonderful. That’s absolutely wonderful.  That's the main Tolkien-related bit; the whole long interview is here . It's actually a pretty fascinating account of the financial side of contemporary book publishing and licensing. Beagle, apparently, despite his

Just Got Reviewer Two'd

Just had an article returned back to me with a classic case of academic schizophrenia. You know what I mean -- one reviewer plays Good Cop, the other plays Bad Cop. One loves me, the other loves me not, etc. In this particular case, the first reviewer thought highly of the article. Although they had some recommendations for improvement, as a good reviewer should, the phrases "groundbreaking" and "well-written" nonetheless did make an appearance. Reviewer 2? Alas, not so much. They opened their commentary with, and I quote, "I dislike this essay on a number of fronts." And, 500 words later, that was still the nicest comment they had to give. The whole experience leaves me somewhat bemused, I must say. Don't get me wrong -- in the past I've received reviews, incompetent or negative or both, that really have angered or irritated me. This one, not so much. Part of that, simply, is Reviewer 1 being -- clearly! -- a brilliant and percipient scholar

My first Online Course Module Completed!

So, last spring, I was given a development grant to convert my ENGL 160D course on Monsters, Ghosts, Aliens, and Others to an online version. I'd just begun teaching online the previous semester, so while I grasped the basics, teaching literature is still a vastly different kettle of fish from teaching composition. Thankfully, I had my lesson plans from my face-to-face course, and some D2L content carried over. Anyway, I finished Monsters Online yesterday -- one whole day to spare, even, before classes begin on Thursday. All told, my best guess-timation puts my total work on the course anywhere between 110 and 120 hours . . . or about $25 per hour, given the development grant was a flat $3k. All that work  came in about 13 or 14 days of effort (the last seven of them in one brutal yet continuous stretch), so I didn't miss out on too much "real" academic work, i.e. research and writing.  Would I do another online course? Sure, if asked. But mad respect to those

Academic Efficiency

"Academic efficiency" is my internal term for maximizing the use of one's time. Oftentimes, I think the people who succeed best in our world are those with a knack for self-organization, not to mention self-motivation. For a graduate student, this means juggling classes, both teaching and taking, thinking about your next step in the program, and dealing with graduate school's needless and seemingly mandated endemic poverty. For an early career academic, efficiency means constantly -- and I mean constantly -- thinking of new additions for one's C.V. Since I've finished up my encyclopedia entry for The Literary Encyclopedia on Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed , I've been pondering "academic efficiency" once again.** The chain of events leading to this entry is pretty awesome and amazing, but think about this -- out of that one Paris conference on Le Guin, I've squeezed out the following publications: 1 conference presentation (plus

2nd Summary of the Le Guin Conference

So, early last month, Fafnir published my conference report on the Legacies of Ursula K. Le  Guin, a 3-day conference in Paris, France at the Sorbonne over the summer. Incidentally, there's a book coming out of that conference, and I just submitted my revised presentation for that 2 days ago. Anyway, though, I was randomly trawling the interwebz, and I discovered another summary of that confererence ! It's written by David Creuze, a professor at the Université de Lille, whom I remember chatting with briefly right before the big shindig began. Whereas mine is mostly creative non-fiction (which is what we encourage for Fafnir **), though, David's is a more bare-bones descriptive summary of the various papers. Pretty fair summaries, too, I might add. And he summarizes all the presentations, too, whereas I skipped quite a few for space. -------------------------- ** And by "we," of course, I mean "I", since I seem to have been put in charge of the con

Academic publishing is so, so slow. . .

As I was updating my CV for the upcoming academic jobs season, I came to a stunning realization.** Currently, I have nine articles published (7 refereed, 2 non-refereed) . . . and nine articles pending. In other words, exactly half of my finished work, over two years of pencil-breaking effort, still isn't available publicly to other scholars. Two are forthcoming, and the others are a mix of "under review" or "revise & submit." And the main culprit, of course, is the drastic slowness of academic publishing. One of pending pieces, for example, was listed as "accepted and forthcoming" for three years before I finally pulled it and submitted it elsewhere, where it's now under review again. Both my currently forthcoming articles were written for the Baum Bugle two years ago, but the editor has been holding on them.*** Another article has been in circulation for a year. I still have faith in it, though, since it was passed over by three different

Fafnir makes the DOAJ

Well, here it is -- Fafnir: A Nordic Journal of SFF Research is now officially on the Directory of Open Access Journals ! Apparently, we've been a member since July 19th. I filled out the application last April or early may; a rep contacted me with some questions in mid-July, but I though we'd get a confirmation e-mail of acceptance or something. Nope. So we've been a member for two months, but I've only just noticed.  Still, this is pretty cool. The DOAJ is a good, volunteer-run directory for journals who follow good practice in open access publishing, and it's nice that we have that academic cachet now. Next step: the DOAJ Seal of Approval , which is awarded to OA journals that follow best practice in open-access publishing. That'll take some added steps, including deep archiving and some changes to our copyright policy, which'll probably require approval by the editorial board, but we'll make it.

On Stephen R. Donaldson's Website. . .

. . . and by "on" SRD's website, I mean that I personally am on his website ! So, a cool thing that happened. I know SRD, slightly, from ICFA 39 -- he goes every year, and in 2018 I foolishly gave a paper on him during the conference. He came, of course, and we chatted briefly afterward. Although Martina insists that I didn't embarrass myself, I'm less sure. It certainly felt incredibly weird to actually talk with someone whose books have been a mainstay of my life since the 7th grade,*** and I'm not good with normal chit-chat, so I exited the situation perhaps too hurriedly. Yet he, personally, was quite the gentleman -- and "gentleman" is certainly the right word here; I've rarely encountered who radiated courtesy in quite the same way. At any rate, before I chickened out, he gave me his e-mail, we exchanged a few messages, and that was that for a while. Then, last August, my article on SRD, feminism, and sexed violence was published in Ext

Issue 6.1 of FAFNIR just published!

If you've been wondering when FAFNIR (vol. 6.1, 2019) would be published, well, it's out! There's 155 pages of academic SF&F goodness.  We have material from Adam Roberts and Stefen Ekman, plus peer-reviewed research on Ray Bradbury, C. M. Kornblurth, Hayao Miyazaki, Knights of Sidonia, Lovecraft, Tolkien, and comic book Golems. There's also two conference reports -- one by Paul Williams on ICFA 40 , and another by myself on the Ursula K. Le Conference held in Paris from June 19th-21st. Rounding out the issue are four book reviews: Audrey Taylor's Patricia A. McKillip and the Art of Fantasy World-Building Dale Knickerbocker's (ed.) Lingua Cosmica: Science Fiction from Around the World   J.P. Telotte's Animating the Science Fiction Imagination   William Davies's (ed.) Economic Science Fictions Lot of hard work went into this issue and, I gotta say, this is my third issue, but it seems like Fafnir is getting better all the time. Congrats

Pretentious, Verbose, and Dull -- A Lament on Samuel R. Delany

My blog post title gives me a vague feeling of guilt. I know, I know -- we're supposed to like Delany. He's both LGBTQ+ and African-American, especially at a time when SFF desperate needed the diversity. Even more importantly, he's probably the most theory-orientated major writer of science fiction and fantasy out there, and thus there's just oodles of material in his writings that causes literary theorists to salivate. Still, my intense dislike for Delany's fiction is hard to express -- only slightly alleviated, I must admit, by Delany owning one of the all-time great beards .  Case in point: I recently forced myself to digest the first two books in his S&S fantasy series, Return to Nevèrÿon . I entered into these books with mixed hopes. On one hand, it's virtually the only S&S -- thanks to Delany's Marxist, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist leanings -- to get serious academic respect. On the other hand, I have encountered Delany before.

The Green Dragon Pub is closing

Sadly, I just heard the news: the Green Dragon, a Tolkien-themed pub in Murfreesboro, is closing . For someone doing a dissertation on Tolkien at Middle Tennessee State University, one might expect me to have visited the Green Dragon oodles and oodles of times. In fact, it was only two. As a non-driver (and non-drinker) living on a grad student's stipend, I never went out, especially not to bars 4 to 5 miles away on foot. Hence, the first time I visited the Green Dragon was part of a day-long adventure just after Martina had permanently re-located to the U.S. We made the trek, had lunch, and then proceeded to the cinema, where I believed we saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Star Wars: Rogue One. Since this was just before Thanksgiving, we bought two turkeys, saving one for our eventual Christmas meal (our first as a married couple). Then we Ubered home. All in all, a good, good day. Our second time at the Green Dragon was much less memorable. We visited the pub on

Book proposal review

Well! Out of the blue, I was contacted by a publisher a few days ago with a request to review a book proposal. Obviously, for reasons of anonymity, I can't give any details, but the mere request itself floored me -- someone, somewhere, must have given them my name -- someone competent to judge such things.** As one might imagine, though, I had absolutely no idea how to do a competent book proposal review; they're not one of those genres of writing you ever encounter as a graduate student. Luckily, googling "How to do a book proposal reviews" brings up a ton of advice articles and whatnot, including this one put out by Cambridge UP . Anyway, finished up the review over the weekend,and the publisher seems quite happy with it. I'm also surprised at how much fun doing this review was -- focused my attention on a number of things in the field I've only paid passing attention to before. ------------------ **From what I'm gathering online, it's not un

Finding Monsters (a case of serendipity)

When hunting for books to be reviewed in Fafnir , I realized that the University of Minnesota Press has been doing some good work in weird fiction and monster studies. One of their forthcoming books is The Monster Theory Reader (2019), edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, incidentally the reviews editor for JFA , and one of the reader's notable inclusions, at least according to the advertising blurb, is "Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s foundational essay 'Monster Theory (Seven Theses).'" Well! I've been teaching that essay each of my two semesters for ENGL 160D: Nonhuman Subjects: Monsters, Ghosts, Aliens, and Others . You see, when I first got the class, I had no clue about anything in Monster Studies as a field, so I did a quick search in the library. Cohen's essay was basically the first thing I found -- and that's how I chose it for my course. Yes, I know, not a rigorous methodology . . . but, now that I know that, by pure luck of the draw, I've been

Piers Anthony & the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense

So, here's a memory that takes me back -- during my research trip to UC Riverside, I read many issues of Star*line , the official newsletter (and poetry publication) of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. This association was founded by Suzette Haden Elgin, so, as one might imagine, I saw her editorial work and poems everywhere. Quite an interesting figure, too -- after raising a family of 5 kids, she went back to school to get a PhD in linguistics, and her efforts in speculative poetry all came towards the latter part of her career. Also wrote a fair number of SF novels, too. Anyway, one of her side projects was a book called The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-defense (1980). What makes that title interesting is that, amazingly enough, I remember hearing about that book back in high school . The connection is the SFF writer Piers Anthony. I used to really like Anthony -- A Spell for Chameleon was the first fantasy novel I ever read. All told, I read about 30 or 40 of his book

Research Trip to the Eaton Collection of SFF -- A Mixed Success

Well, just returned home after a 10-day research trip to the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at UC Riverside. All in all, results were something of a mixed bag. On one hand, I have a much better sense of the conversations that surrounded Poul Anderson's efforts in 20th-century alliterative versecraft -- formerly seen as only the province of Tolkien, Auden, Lewis, and a few other Brits.  On the other hand, I had hoped to find vast secret treasures troves of alliterative verse lying forgotten in various poetry mags and fanzines. Alas, not so much. I did uncover a few such works that I hadn't before known about . . . maybe, maybe , enough to squeeze a second article out of my research trip. Nothing I found, however, will likely shatter the heavens in terms of breath-taking original finds. Oh well. Even no information is some information, as they say (or at least I do). Still, the lack of success wasn't for lack of trying. Excluding dead time, overall I spen

Research Trip to Eaton Collection of SFF

About to leave for Riverside, CA, so I can begin my 10-day research trip to the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy archives housed at UC Riverside. . . . trip is coming courtesy of the R. D. Mullen Postdoctoral Fellowship sponsored by Science Fiction Studies . (Click here for the description of my research project on the Fellowship website -- in short, it's about Poul Anderson and his role in the American alliterative revival.) I'll be on my own completely for 4 days. Then Martina is coming down -- not much to do in Riverside, from what I hear, but she has friends in the area, so we'll be having dinner and whatnot. But I'm excited to finally dive into these archives. Maybe I'll find a lot, maybe I'll find a little, but it's all bound to be fascinating. Alas, the archives themselves are only open 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, so I'll have to be much more ruthless with my time management that I might otherwise have wished. (I.e., no linge

Pulling an essay from an edited volume

Advice manuals for people in graduate programs often say, "Avoid edited collections like the plague!"* Submit articles only to peer-reviewed journals, they continue, and don't let some editor get your dissertation chapter for some forgettable new collection. This is good advice, and I know it, but I broke it anyway some four years ago. Saw a CfP for a peer-reviewed collection of essays, and wrote a dissertation chapter with that volume specifically in mind. At the time, the decision made sense. After all, I was currently writing the dissertation, the terrors of the academic job market were looming, and publications are a good line on the CV (or at least better than no line on the CV). Nor did I plan for this dissertation/book chapter combo to survive into my eventual monograph. Hence, I wasn't really "wasting" my research on an inferior publication venue. Alas, 3 1/2 years after submitting the original manuscript, I've finally pulled that book chapte

Lawrence Watt-Evans's The Misenchanted Sword

As I was doing my research on evil, possessed, vampiric demon swords (#scholarlife), I came across Lawrence Watt-Evans, whose sword Wirikidor from The Misenchanted Sword (1985) clearly falls into the tradition of Moorcock's Stormbringer, Anderson's Tyrfing, and Tolkien's Anglachel. Somehow, amazingly, I've never heard of Watt-Evans before -- even though he's been publishing since before I've been born and has over 50 books or so in print. Anyway, it's always nice to find nice, easy-going read from a previously unknown author. In fact, unlike gloomier sword-and-sorcery novel types, The Misenchanted Sword both more light-hearted and better written than many of its peers. Although purely entertainment (& it was odd to see so many major political characters continually not giving two figs about a magical sword that cannot be defeated), The Misenchanted Sword was fun. Certainly, I liked it more than the Stormbringer stories I've been reading lately; El

A surprisingly good SF poet? Karen Anderson.

Although her husband, Poul Anderson, is by far the better known, I've recently been reading The Unicorn Trade (1984), a mix of poetry and prose co-written by the Andersons, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how good a poet Karen is. Initially, I went into the volume hoping to discover more alliterative poetry of the sort that Poul often translation from Old Norse sagas and such forth. Alas, Karen is hardly an experimental in form; lots of rhymed syllabic verse, sonnets, haiku, and the like. But she certainly creates some quite clever & striking images. For example, take the following sonnet, Conjunction (Venus and Jupiter, Februrary 1975) How pale is Venus in the lingering light When sun is set, but day is not yet done; While in the thronging lights of middle night Great Jupiter has splendor matched by none. But watch them now, as in the western sky Along the paths for them aforetime set He night by night strides lower, she more high, Until the stars of Pow

This is why I never became a poet

Been working furiously since coming back from Europe, getting ready for my research trip to the Eaton Collection in UC Riverside in two weeks. So far, my main topics of study: Old Norse sagas Old Norse and Old English meters in alliterative poetry Evil possessed vampiric demon swords (EPVIDSs)™ in sword and sorcery. It's all related. In other related news, if there's any poets out there looking for inspiration -- the Norse mead of poetry seems like a winner. "The Norse account of how the gods came to secure the mead of poetry—a heady brew of blood, spittle, and honey—tells how the god Odin stole it from a giant . . . by drinking it, and then flying back to Asgard in the shape of an eagle.The giant pursues him, and though Odin manages to vomit [!] most of it into containers which the other gods provide, in his panic he defecates a little [!!!] before he reaches Asgard; this is the comparatively meagre and grossly degraded drink which human poets have for their i

Haunting Lines from Literature

My dissertation advisor just posted a facebook meme asking for "haunting or life-changing lines" from literature. The following is more than a little depressing, but it's the first thing I thought of (and I haven't thought about A Tale of Two Cities in years and years): Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. Charles Dickens on his character Sydney Carton, A Tale of Two Cities

Two Reviews Published

In less than a week, two book reviews of mine have gone live. The first is a film review for Science Fiction Film and Television on the movie Okja directed by Bong Joon-ho -- alas, it requires a subscription. It was cool writing for SFF&T since I doubt I'll ever write anything else suitable for them, and I'm happy with the review itself, but I also realized that I just don't have the disciplinary background necessary to pull off really first-rate film reviews. Because of that, writing the thing was a real bear. So, that's the last one of those! The second review is more up my alley: Sub-creating Arda , edited by Dimitra Fimi and Thomas Honegger, a book on world-building and J. R. R. Tolkien. That's live now from the open access Journal of Tolkien Research . Interesting, though, how different the publication schedules for different journals can be. The Okja review was written two years ago, right during that limbo summer period between defending my disse

IMC Leeds, 2019

Wrapping up the IMC (International Medieval Congress), here at Leeds. All in all, things were fantastic. Although I didn't attend the Monday panels, mostly because of excessive registration fees and extra hotel charges, the Wednesday panels were highly productive and worthwhile. In the first paper panel, Andrzej Wicher asked about how Christian LotR was. (Answer: very). William James Sherood, a grad student, gave a good talk on Tolkien's Romanticism from Keats via William Morris. My own talk was on methodology and the usefulness of a Strauss lens when studying Tolkien.  Alas, despite about 50-60 audience members, which incidentally meant that I fell drastically short of handouts, the Q&A ended somewhat early. Such things happen. As for the following round table, it was me, Anahit Behrooz (a grad student, some of whose essays I'd seen elsewhere), and an independent scholar, Michael Flowers, whom I remember seeing present at the Tolkien Seminar 4-5 years ago. This w

Ursula Le Guin Conference in Paris

Well, this one's in the books -- there's a few panels today, but they're in French, so that counts me out. Just completed two days of the The Legacies of Ursula K. Le Guin: Science, Fiction and Ethics for the Anthropocene conference here in Paris, the City of Light, and it was pretty awesome, as one might suspect. I'll write up a full conference report for Fafnir later, but here are some preliminary impressions. There was initially some trouble with acoustics -- we were in an old, domed, converted anatomy theater at the Institut du monde anglophone where the echoes were awful, and, until we learned how to deal with them, the first few presentations were unfortunately simply unintelligible. Similarly, the hard wooden benches and tables were extremely uncomfortable, but maybe that's just European?  Anyway, though, once we worked out the echoes, many of the papers were fascinating, and it really hit home that I'm missing a big chunk of Le Guin's career by

And another link (exemplary book proposal). . . .

And here's another link to Robertson's blog, which I'm posting mostly to remind myself of it: his book proposal to Johns Hopkins UP for a really exciting-looking book on genre fantasy. Can't wait for it to come out.

History of Fantasy Scholarship

Very good blog post, by Benjamin J. Robertson, on the history of fantasy scholarship . He's also noted elsewhere on his blog how badly the fantasy genre needs theorizing , so I think I'm turning into a major fan. Basically, fantasy criticism has focused on four topics: the literary history of fantasy, its antecedents in folklore, fairy tales, epics, the romance, the pastoral, etc.; the question of the impossible the distinctions and relationships between fantasy and the fantastic the rhetorical strategies through which fantasy achieves its ends. This list is basically a variation of the more Tolkien-focused list of topics that I'll be presenting at Leeds IMC in a month. In addition, fantasy criticism's excessive concern with definition has also been a major hurdle.  And I'm pleased to note that I've read all the books Robertson discusses -- including recent ones by Farah Mendlesohn, Michael T. Saler, Stefan Ekman, Brian Attebery, and Helen Young. Good

Fiction read (January - June 2019).

Well, for the first six months of 2019, my reading hasn't been too skimpy. Alas, about half of this occurred in January and February, when I breezed through the final books of The Wheel of Time . The latter four months I spent much more time reading nonfiction & literary criticism, which isn't included here. Overall, there's 9,250 pages of fiction here (arguably less, since I used the paperback versions of the Jorden/Sanderson). That's an average of about 51 pages per 182 days . That's just a tad less than the final six months of 2018 (viewable here ), and less than the first six months of 2018 (see here ). Alas. Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, The Gathering Storm , 1100 pg Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, The Towers of Midnight , 1200 pg Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, A Memory of Light , 1300 pg Robert Silverberg, ed. Legends 3 , 400 pg. Robert Silverberg, ed. Legends 2 , 350 pg Robert Silverberg, ed. Legends 1 , 300 pg. Glen

A Snafu of Peer Reviewing. . . .

Well, this is a new one for me. I'd sent out an article for review about 3 1/2 months ago. The other day, the editor responds that the article had been rejected, which is fine, but no explanation was given -- and no reader's reports. So I wrote back, asking about them. Since the journal had the article for nearly four months, I assumed such reports existed. The sub-editor wrote back: We leave it to the discretion of our readers and editors whether to include the readers’ reports with the verdict. While it is uncommon that both readers decline to share their reports, it does happen. While I am not privy to the specific circumstances of your case, readers typically decline to share if they think that their anonymity is compromised by their comments. Likewise, if the editors feel that a report is unhelpful—for any number of reasons—for the author, they will not include it. So, huh. For my part, I can't really see why the first reason (compromised anonymity) would apply

Tolkien Biopic

Well, every blogger is writing about the recent Tolkien biopic, so I might as well get in on the action. I really wanted to like it, especially as several reviews of the film by other Tolkienists have been suspiciously harsh. And there were parts of it that I certainly did enjoy. All the parts with the TCBS, both young actors and older ones, were well written -- funny, witty, charming, precisely the sort of good male companionship I imagine Tolkien cherished. Everything else . . . well, not so much. Most of the problem is simply how hard it is to portray literature and literary men on the silver screen. In order to capture audience attention, you need some sort of physical action or correlate to show, but it's really hard to depict language invention dramatically. There was a dining scene between Tolkien and Edith where the writers and director sure do their darnest to make a discussion of language come alive, and other places as well. For example, Tolkien's mother reads a

Mullen Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

A bit of good news! Just heard word that I've won a R. D. Mullen Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from Science Fiction Studies .  It's small, only up to $3,000, but it'll fund a 10-day research trip to the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at UC Riverside. There, I'll be delving into the archives to uncover anything I can about the "pulp" alliterative revival. I discovered that this was a thing when I was looking at Paul Edwin Zimmer's alliterative poetry (published last November in Mythlore ). Zimmer explicitly credited Poul Anderson as well as Tolkien for being his alliterative poetry guru . . . which is interesting cuz I've never heard anyone else mention Anderson as a part of the 20th-century alliterative revival. C. S. Lewis, Auden, and Seamus Heaney are always the people mentioned alongside Tolkien. Even more interestingly, Zimmer also says that he knows (but leaves unnamed) a number of other poets trying to follow in the allitera

Copyrights! Licensing! Academic Publishing!

So, our latest project with Fafnir has been retrofitting our new layout and design to our two 2018 issues (i.e., the issues since Laura and I joined the team); part of the job has entailed creating a new -- and the first -- cover design, front matter, plus a Table of Contents template. In addition, I've taken on the self-appointed task of registering Fafnir with the Directory of Open Access Journals in the hopes of raising our academic street cred and visibility. Well, the process has been eye-opening. First off, all due credit to the people who originally founded Fafnir , who prepared much of the information being directly required by the DOAJ. That makes things radically simpler. As I'm going through their lengthy application, though, I'm discovering that there's so many things I had no clue could be a part of academic publishing, especially for open access journals.  For example: The name of our platform or hosting service. (Our what?) any software/spider