Stratofanatic's Emporium

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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...