Review by Christopher G. Nuttall An Academy for Liars Alexis Henderson Ever since Harry Potter reinvigorated the magic school genre, there have been a number of efforts to present a more adult take on the concept of an outsider going to a magic school and finding out that there was a place where they belonged…
Available today! The Unexpected Year of Rachel Griffin Back in the long-ago dream time of 2011, when I first started writing this series, I decided to stick with the far future dates that the moderator of the roleplaying game this series is based on had chosen for his game. Because of this, The Unexpected Enlightenment…
I am experimenting with a new Substack, several, actually, but one in particular that might be of interest to readers of this website. Defending the Wood Perilous This will cover the actuall Defending the Wood Perilous articles–including the to-be-written conclusion, plus all matters Superversive, musing on writing, and Evangelizing Fandom articles. .
God as Game Master One of the hardest questions for Christians to answer is: if God is in charge, why is there pain? Why is there death? Why isn’t there more joy? It is hard to answer when others ask us. It is also hard to answer when we ask it ourselves. Sometimes, we…
Never Give Up: The Battle Is Not Yours… There are times when we feel as if nothing we attempt will ever succeed. We write books we feel God calls us to write…but they don’t sell. We vote for people we feel God has endorsed…but they don’t win. We pray for things we need desperately…
Monday the state permitted those “from-away” to hunt along with Mainers. Opening season for Mainers began Saturday, awfully spooking the deer who don’t know Halloween except in this form. Awful thing to do to them during the rut when they’d rather concentrate on something better and are so crazed. Or, maybe not crazed but more…
by S. Dorman Going home through Franconia Notch, my spouse and I watched the great Whites rising like an apparition glimpsed between darker mountainous slopes. This whiteness—befitting the name of the range—was rime ice, crusting bold surfaces, before disappearing a day or two later. Then we searched for the telltale contour of Agiocochook, as Native Abenakis…
Alan Snyder, whose works we have linked to here before, has a new book about the effect of C. S. Lewis on modern America. Here is his article talking about, specifically, the influence of Narnia: Narnia for Adults (and Other Maturing People) Dr Snyder February 8, 2020 Nearly every Wednesday evening since last September, I’ve been…
Article by Joshua Young Somehow I assumed that Christopher Tolkien was much younger, but maybe I just formed that image a long time ago. Regardless, it’s sad to hear of his passing. Outside of his father, the famed J.R.R., Christopher is probably the one most responsible for all things Middle Earth. He compiled his father’s notes…
New work of literary criticism by author John C. Wright: Lament of Prometheus in a nonfiction work in which award-winning science fiction Grandmaster John C. Wright sets out to explain the inexplicable: A Voyage to Arcturus written in 1920 by Scottish author David Lindsay, is a fascinating, blasphemous, and magnificent failure. See The Lament of…
Poetry celebrating the beauty of nature and more by poetess, Jenny Bates! If your soul is on a quest to balance the myriad minutia of life in the 21st century, then poet Jenny Bates’ third collection, Visitations, is a must read. Bates’ answers lie in the forest surrounding her home where by night the master vocals…
An interesting article by Dr. Alan Snyder that appears here. In my ongoing preparation for teaching C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia at my church, I’ve now completed five of the seven books, the latest being The Horse and His Boy. This book is unique as being the only one where no one from our world…
By S. Dorman A few years after my beginning efforts at formal creative nonfiction, a high school English teacher informed me that, categorically, there was no creative nonfiction. I supposed he meant nonfiction with fiction sifted into it. I did not argue. However, one may use the techniques of novelists in a totally factual way.…
A fascinating look at an early sf author: Meet Lady Margaret Cavendish. BY NATALIE ZARRELLI SEPTEMBER 16, 2016 Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. (Photo: Public Domain) NO ONE COULD GET INTO philosophical argument with Lady Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and walk away unchanged. Born in 1623, Cavendish was an outspoken aristocrat who traveled in circles of…
What is it about that word? Aroostook. The County, they call it here in Maine. A word is a tiny thing, a written word. It is smaller than a leaf—a word printed on a page. Rarely as big as a blade of grass. Don’t even bother comparing its size to a tree. And yet…. Words…
