CCLaP Fridays: The Secret of Abdu el Yezdi, by Mark Hodder

Today at CCLaP: Mark Hodder, master of steampunk, uncorks a ripping yarn full of airships, occultism, murder, and abduction in his latest installment of the Burton and Swinburne Adventures series, “The Secret of Abdu el Yezdi.” Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: The Secret of Abdu el Yezdi, by Mark Hodder

Rate this:

Commonplace Book: April is the cruelest month …

I. Burial of the Dead April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarden, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out … Continue reading Commonplace Book: April is the cruelest month …

Rate this:

Reviews in Brief: Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture, by Kimberley McMahon-Coleman and Roslyn Weaver

This book proves its usefulness in its good timing. Coleman and Weaver investigate the numerous pop cultural pieces here, analyzing how specific treatments reflect attitudes of society at large. Continue reading Reviews in Brief: Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture, by Kimberley McMahon-Coleman and Roslyn Weaver

Rate this:

CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: The Trilogy, by Samuel Beckett

This week in the CCLaP series “On Being Human,” Karl Wolff analyses Samuel Beckett’s groundbreaking “Trilogy,” where the famed avant-garde writer sought the essence of what it is to be human by stripping away the setting, plot, and characters of three small novels in a row. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: The Trilogy, by Samuel Beckett

Rate this:

CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: Swastika Night (1937) by Katharine Burdekin

This week’s installment of Karl Wolff’s essay series, On Being Human, examines the feminist science fiction novel “Swastika Night”, an alternate history predating Orwell’s “1984” that explores the darker regions of human behavior in a far future Europe ruled by medieval Nazi knights. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: Swastika Night (1937) by Katharine Burdekin

Rate this:

CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: the Culture

Today in Karl Wolff’s CCLaP essay series “On Being Human,” it’s ‘The Culture’ novels by Iain Banks, in which humans, aliens, and machines all live in a post-scarcity utopia. Banks’s novels follow eccentrics and troublemakers in a society where humans can switch gender, become aliens, and even become machines. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: the Culture

Rate this: