Stratofanatic's Emporium

I've been studying Keith Justice's Bestseller Index , which compiles information from two separate bestseller lists -- New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly -- up through 1990, and the results are ridiculously fascinating. For instance, you wanna take a stab at which SFF author has the most individual books appear on a bestseller list? No, it ain't Heinlein, Clark, Herbert, or Asimov. It's not even Terry Brooks or David Eddings. No, the answer is Piers Anthony ... and even if you somehow pulled that name out of thin air, you'll still never guess how truly dominate Anthony was. Up through 1990, Anthony had more than double than number of distinct bestsellers than the next most frequent bestseller, Anne McCaffrey. Whereas Anthony had an astounding  22 different books appear on a bestseller list, McCaffrey had "only" 9.** Now, caveats. These numbers need to be taken with one (or two) grains of salt. For instance, although Anthony had 22 two distin...

Last week, when comparing medieval retellings of the Trojan War to contemporary fan fiction, my reason involved more than there simply being folks like M. Wendy Hennequin around, people for whom medievalism and creative fan activity are deeply entwined. My other reason is that the Middle Ages can seem so distant to my students. Popular culture helps them grasp some aspects of medieval life and culture, albeit often in distorted form, for instance feudalism and chivalry, but otherwise? The instinctive concern for rank, the holy awe of kingship, the ubiquity of religion in daily life … all these things tend to be beyond the everyday experience of college students in the 21 st century. As a teacher, you have to find a bridge. Calling stories about the Trojan War or King Arthur “fanfic” therefore breaks down a historical barrier. Students know what fan fiction is. They understand the conventions. So while it’s easy to be intimidated by a syllabus that contains Dante’s Inferno with the gho...

  The New Poets of Rum-Ram-Ruf:  M. Wendy Hennequin and Fan Fiction In my introduction to Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival , my first section is called “The Story of the Modern Revival.” Every story needs a hero, though, and our story’s unsung hero is undeniably contemporary fandom. Many years ago, I once read an essay by Harlan Ellison praising SF for having so many big-name authors emerge from the ranks of SF fandom. He considered this situation distinct from mainstream, non-genre literature, and while I won’t agree with Ellison completely – as one of my students once told me, she has an older brother named Geoffrey because of how much their mother loves The Canterbury Tales – but still, genre fandom seems special. Astyanax and Andromache Such fandom has been a guiding light for the Modern Revival, too. We’ve already touched upon several revivalists with impeccable fan roots: Fletcher Pratt, Poul Anderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Paul Edwin Zimmer. Noneth...

Newest post in the series ! This one tackles what happens when steampunk poetry meets the medieval alliterative meter.

So, Paul Deane just clued me into a new long alliterative poem, Ulfhildr by Mary Thaler, that's hot off the presses -- published November 10, 2023. I wrote it a positive review on Amazon and Goodreads, because really, we're all in this together. You'll find that review below. However, I was a bit more skeptical about some of Thaler's metrical choices, and since I shared these with the group at Forgotten Ground Regain, I'm posting them here below my review. REVIEW This is an exciting new long poem in a modified form of the Old English alliterative meter. Calling it an "epic" (as the back cover does) is probably a misnomer; Thaler's narrative is quite linear, and it contains few twists or complications. Yet it's also peppered with powerful passages that show exactly what a modern poet can accomplish with an archaic medieval poetics. The heroine's closing monologue is particular strong. In fact, we find a stronger feminist element in her speeches ...