Stratofanatic's Emporium

So, this really bucks me up .... I discovered a random blogger, Joe Hoffman, whom I discovered through a recent mention o n Brenton Dickieson's own excellent website  A Pilgrim in Narnia , and I saw that Hoffman was interested in Poul Anderson. "Cool!" I thought. "I'm working on Poul Anderson too." Then I noticed that among Hoffman's keyword categories was "Alliterative Verse." Growing excited at seeing someone else interested in this same thing, I clicked the link .... and, right off the bat, immediately saw a   highly laudatory reference (and link) t o my own paper published last year in Studies in the Fantastic , “Antiquarianism Underground: The Twentieth-century Alliterative Revival in American Genre Poetry”. The link used by Hoffman was to the version on Humanities Commons.  It seems like Hoffman was also familiar with Jere Fleck and the Markland Medieval Mercenary Militia, two groups important in the Modern Alliterative Revival. It...

Well, this was a pleasant surprise .... I've just received my first official invitation to contribute to an edited collection. The book is called Tolkien on Screen (Kent State UP), and it's a history of cinematic adaptations of Tolkien edited by Thomas Honegger, Hamish Williams, and Lukasz Neubauer. Unfortunately, I'm already completely swamped with writing projects up through the next year, so I had to decline, but I wish them the best of luck on the collection.

Just back from my first Mythcon! Well, my first in-person  Mythcon .... I attended the virtual one in 2021, which was my first year as Awards Steward. This year's event was held in Albuquerque, which isn't that far from Tucson, and the wife and I were doubly excited because of our admiration for Breaking Bad . By sheer coincidence, the city was unveiling statues of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman on the day of our arrival, and the actors, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, were in attendance. We missed the statue unveiling, but we twice tried to reach the Convention Center to see the statues. The first time, the Center was closed (it was a Saturday), and the second time it had closed temporarily due to "lockdown" -- certainly, a weird thing. Who calls a threat to a Convention Center? Luckily, our first Uber driver told us that the actors were throwing out the first pitch in the Albuquerque Isotopes game, i.e., the Triple-A minor league affiliate for the Colorado Rockies, a...