Stratofanatic's Emporium

Well, I don't know how you write your books, but when I write books apparently, I seem to go more than a little overboard. So, as many of you probably realize, I've been researching Judy-Lynn and Lester del Rey , the founders of Del Rey Books and the modern fantasy genre, and it's been several years in the works. This monography is one-half literary biography(s), one-half institutional history, and another one-half argument about how our interpretations of literary texts is based on institutional factors -- i.e., the publishing industry -- that most critics don't know anything about. Working title is The Dark Lords of Speculative Fiction: Del Rey Books and the Making of a Genre Empire . Some of my blog entries for this include: Genre Fantasy Bestsellers through 1990 The Gender of Genre Fantasy during the Del Rey Era Defending Del Rey Books: The Misunderstood Hero How to Market a Genre that Doesn't Exist : Simak's THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE TALISMAN (1978) Three Fant...

Ah, shucks .... another swing and a miss! Once upon a time, years ago, I wrote about " Golden Opportunity Nearly Missed (But Nonetheless Flubbed "), my first application to become a co-editor at Fafnir . As it happened, I re-applied the following year, and although still wasn't selected, the committee liked me enough to make me the journal's first-ever reviews editor, which I happily did for five years. (And we won a World Fantasy Award in the process!) Ever since leaving Fafnir , though, I've kept my eyes half-peeled for further editorial opportunities. Even got an offer from  MOSF Journal of Science Fiction, although I did end up declining that offer because I wasn't interested in doing reviews again .... Been there, done that, as they say. Anyway, last spring, I saw that Paul March-Russell of  Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction was stepping down as editor after a 10+ years, so once again threw my name into the hat. And was very pleasan...

My friend Doug Anderson, who manages the blog Wormwoodiana  on old forgotten fantasy texts, just informed me about an interesting new alliterative development: fantasy author Christopher Paolini, author of the Inheritance trilogy, is coming out with a long alliterative poem called  The Book of Remembrance . It's being funded on Kickstarter , apparently, and will feature seven "in-world" texts on "seven of the major battles throughout the history of Alagaësia." The alliterative poem will cover the fourth battle, "The Ambush at Stavarosk." Although I've never read Paolini, I know he's most famous for publishing  Eragon (2002) when only 19 years old. But much like Terry Brooks, I'm sure he's matured from his early efforts -- dude's been around for over two decades now! Either way,  any long new alliterative poem is bound to set my whiskers a-quiver. Here's an tidbit posted by Paolini on Twitter ( here and here ): So. When our gran...

It's a new year .... so time for the my reading-list recap for 2025. The majority of this cycle's books were Del Rey SF/F novels from the 1980s. (The special surprise was Clifford D. Simak's Mastodonia , which is by far my favorite by him.) I read a few other period-relevant texts, such as Tad Williams's first novel, but yeah, given my deep immersion in researching Judy-Lynn and Lester del Rey, that was my wheelhouse last year. Otherwise, my non-project related reading was relatively sparse. I read one long nonfiction book, A Civil Action , for my Law & Literature class that was cancelled. I read a few books for the ENGL 380: Literary Analysis class that replaced it. And I finally did Percival Everett's novel Erasure, and although some might find this sacrilegious, it's still true: the movie was better. FINAL STATS : Altogether, I read 9175 pages  (or 31 books) this semester. So, that's about the same as my total from last year . As per usual, except for...

Apparently, Elon Musk has just launched Grokipedia , based off GenAI, as a way to compete with wikipedia (which it's probably plagiarizing). But given that the Modern Alliterative Revival is a hobby of mine, I decided to check out Grokky's entry on Alliterative Verse , particularly its sections on the Modern Revival. Everyone knows GenAI is prone to hallucations, so I wanted to see how well it did with something I know well. MY VERDICT : Grokipedia is ... surprising accurate ... but also dangerously  almost  accurate . Solely as a predictive algorithm, Grokipedia said many true things about the Modern Alliterative Revival. (Unsurprisingly, it cites my work frequently, not to mention Paul Deane's website Forgotten Ground Regained. ) In fact, it says enough true things that if Wikipedia were to disappear tomorrow, any lay person might even find Grokky helpful. Nor did I find any outright GenAI hallucinations. I checked every passage of poetry from Tolkien, Lewis, and Auden th...

Last week -- September 1st, to be exact -- saw a  very  successful conference completed, " New Perspectives on Alliteration in Poetry and Cultural History ." Many of the  Forgotten Ground Regained   crew were there, including Paul Deane, who reviewed his recent researches into the Modern Revival, plus Joe Hoffman, a digital humanities guy who also studies Tolkien. As an example of his work, he just posted his conference paper, " The Hunt for Alliterative Melody " (it's very readable), plus a more general  conference report . For yours truly, in honor of my book,  Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival ,  which came out in paperback last week, I presented my new discovery: i.e, we've been reading one of Tolkien's alliterative poems wrongly for the last 70 years. Since my article's still out for review, mum's the word, but keep your eyes peeled. But before getting to Tolkien's honorary membership in the Icelandic Literary Societ...

So I'm going through several old 1980s fantasy novels, primarily from Del Rey Books (DRB), and wanted to jot down thoughts on a few. Here, we'll be tackling three different books: one surprisingly good, one surprisingly real  good, and one terrible awful bad  book that could have used a few more rewrites. 1983 Del Rey Edition So which is which? For that, my friends, read on. The Surprisingly Good Katherine Kurtz, High Deryni (1973). Okay, this one's cheating slightly: Kurtz was discovered by Betty Ballantine, not Lester del Rey. But he inherited Kurtz, and her line of non-mythopoeic high fantasy certainly aligned with his editorial tastes. For my part, I wasn't quite sure what to expect with High Deryni . Back as a kid, I read either  Camber of Culdi (1976) or Saint Camber (1978), but it didn't leave much impression. Later, I remember Kurtz being politely criticized for her pedestrian prose by Ursula K. Le Guin in "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" .... and ex...

So yeah .... although embarrassing, this is my first fiction reading list since, um, 2021 . And, granted, this is my 2024 books, and we're already eight months into the new year. But I'm posting because, basically, this is the first time I've read enough fiction to qualify for a good "fiction reading list" in over three years. Sure, I read tons of non-fiction during that time. But fiction? Alas, not so much. Mainly it was an issue of research and writing. But it was also due to my duties as Director of Undergraduate Studies, which, during my final year of that ordeal, was truly terrible. Regardless, my fantasy fiction class, ENGL 378, bolstered my 2024 stats significantly. I did oodles of reading in prep for that course, covering holes and gaps in my knowledge and so on. Also, I've included poetry books in my reading list, although, as per usual, non-fiction has been excluded. (I do read constantly, even if these numbers don't quite reflect that!) FINAL ST...

After gaining some good traction on how Del Rey Books brilliantly marketed a so-so fantasy novel, I’ve figured out that blog posts on long forgotten novels are the key to internet fame. So, let's milk this cow dry! Today's entry: Dr. George L. Knapp and  The Scales of Justice  (1910) . For the record, this is not an SFF novel ... but, naturally, it has a heavy biographical connection to fantasy. You see, George Knapp was uncle to Lester del Rey -- and a hugely influential uncle, at that. In 1931, Uncle George offered to finance his nephew's education at George Washington University, even putting the kid up in his own house, despite (probably) never having met Lester in person. Nor was George Knapp especially close to his half-brother, Lester's father Wright, either. (**If you're wondering at the names, Lester was originally "Leonard Knapp.") But Uncle George wasn't just extremely generous. During his time, Dr. Knapp was a highly prominent public fig...

Since I know everyone's been clamoring for a review of an early Del Rey fantasy novel nobody's ever heard of, well, I can hardly refuse. But besides pure orneriness, there's a special reason I'm reviewing Clifford D. Simak's  The Fellowship of the Talisman . Granted, this book isn't terribly good ... but that isn't the point. For me, the real question is always one of literary history, and  Fellowship  serves as a fascinating test case for how Del Rey Books (DRB) managed to achieve success in its earliest days. Cuz here's the thing: if you're going to create a popular genre from scratch (as Lester del Rey most definitely did), then a useful item to have in your arsenal is, well,  fantasy authors. Except there weren't any. Not then. Sure, you had Terry Brooks and Stephen R. Donaldson in 1977, but both people fell magically into Lester's lap. They found  him,  not the other way around. Short of sacrifices to the Editorial Gods, however, how...

A friend just sent me a youtube video "guaranteed to piss me off" (as he says) ... and boy oh boy, was he right. Now, I don't wanna dunk too hard on a random, passionate, sincere fantasy fan with a youtube channel. Since I'm writing a book on this exact topic, though, it's worth spelling out the myriad things problematic with " This is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings ", a 30-minute hit job on Del Rey Books by a young youtuber named Hilary Layne, whose handle is "The Second Story". First, though, let me state for the record I think Layne makes a relatively solid attempt at research, at least for a non-academic. For the most part, she gets historical facts right, and she clearly put some legwork into tracking down sources. (She even briefly screenshots my article on Judy-Lynn , albeit without addressing my arguments.) Nonetheless, how Layne interprets her historical facts -- that is, the story she tells -- is what should raise red flag...

The perils of research! So, I just spent the last hour browsing a website called SLEAZE , which specializes on pornographic books from the 1960s. It has listings, covers, and all that good bibliographic information. My foray really is  research, too. One of the Futurians who never much amounted to anything, John Michel, wrote several porn books   in the early 1960s under the name "Louis Richard". They had titles like And Sex is the Payoff (Beacon, 1962) and Artist's Woman (Beacon, 1963). According to  Damon Knight in The Futurians , Michel got this gig through the Scott Meredith Literary Agency (SMLA). That's important because SMLA is the most important agency to ever represent sciene-fiction writers. And according to Barry Malzberg's Breakfast in the Ruins , the FBI even started investigating Meredith for his role in the porn trade (pornography then being illegal). Except they didn't have a picture of Meredith, so he told his employees to lie about him being ...

Exciting news from the world of the Modern Alliterative Revival! So, the poetry of Pat Masson , who died in 1994, was re-discovered by Paul Deane, who subsequently published all her alliterative poetry -- much of it for the first time -- in his online journal Forgotten Ground Regained . He only discovered her because of something he'd seen in  Withywinde, a journal for the Old English Companions. Then after scouring the internet (one of Paul's specialties), he eventually dug up a scan of a booklet her mother had put together for her funeral containing all poetry and short stories on ancestry.com, where one of Masson's relatives posted it. Most had never before been published.  The only other comparable story is Ron Snow , a SCA poet who passed away in 1997. He never had any of his alliterative poems published during his lifetime, but I'd tracked down his widow, who gave me his unpublished collected poetry, including his long drapa "Blardrengir Saga", which end...

So, what's the REAL difference between mainstream academic literary critics, and scholars who focus on fantasy literature? Let me hereby propose the RONA JAFFE test, which I've discovered from recently reading (way too much) traditional literary criticism on postwar American literature. If you hear Jaffe's name and think about her best-selling 1958 novel, The Best of Everything , well then, you're a traditional mainstream literary criti. But if you think, "Wait, you mean that opportunistic nut-job who contributed to the mid-80s Satanic panic with Mazes and Monsters in 1981?", your fantasy credentials are assured.

Well, shucks ... if this ain't a nice thing to wake up to in the morning! About a year back, I reviewed an article for Science Fiction Film & Television .... and just this morning, Liverpool University Press (who publishes SFF&T ) send me an email, letting me know that the journal's editors nominated me for their 2024 Awards for Outstanding Journal Reviewers . Now, this isn't an exclusive honor, mind you. Each LUP journal apparently has two awardees each, but still, each journal sends out a lot of articles for review, and it's still an honor. Plus these unexpectedly surprises are always the best. Much like my Mary Kay Bray award from SFRA Review two years back, I didn't even realize this one existed.  Moreover, when one agrees to do a review, you agree just because you ought to, but it's really cool to see a random mark of appreciation like this.

I'm a big believer in using data to improve teaching, and, having just finished the midterm for my World-building class, ENGL 178 , I was curious to see, among other things, how much of the assigned reading my students did. So I created an anonymous survey. Here are some results. So this .... wasn't quite as bad as I feared, actually. According to one study, only about 20-30% students do the required reading . My students did a good deal better than that. Now, granted, there's a selection bias here. Only students who attended class today took the survey, and one might suppose non-attenders would, on the whole, tend to be non-readers as well. So I'll mentally subtract 10% from each book. At the same, my linked study studies a different population ("hospitality and tourism" majors), and I don't know how that would compare to students taking a 100-level General Education course. DISCUSSION Some positive results. Out of 65 respondents, 72% read The Hobbit. To ...