CHRONICLES archives the successive newsletters.
Or Diligently Seeking Sidney Sime Anyone recall Sidney H. Sime? I have to confess I didn’t, but his name came up, as the saying goes, the other day. In a book by H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a great inventer of mythical (and generally long-lost, terribly distasteful...
Or An Alliterative Throwing-In of the Towel Every now and then, a person just gets too busy to think. So, I confess. The following is an admission of failure - and a newsletter with little or nothing to say. (Which, it must be said in passing, has never been a reason...
Or Wishful Thinking, Mythological Science and Easy Money The other day, as I was reading Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve, something stuck in my mind - the name of Anna Fang’s airship, the Jenny Haniver. Naturally, something stuck in one’s mind requires prompt...
Or Empires Within, Empires Without Yes, I realize the title sounds like the name of a lacrosse team (but it’s only to insure that my compatriots read this.) Nevertheless… A summer ago, I spent a few days in Toronto giving a little talk at IdeaCity and shooting a...
SAINT’S HALOES AND MOUSE’S EARS PART IV Or Northern Lights, Baroque Solutions and Back To The Future Painters of the Northern Renaissance for the most part seemed to have continued as before or simply dropped haloes altogether, rather than trying to adapt them to...
Or Reconciling the Irreconcilable (Or At Least Trying) The transformation of the halo signals the end of medieval art and the spread of the Renaissance view far more clearly than more commonly examined factors, perspective foremost amongst them. It accompanies the...
Or Keeping One’s Halo While Losing One’s Head Back to saints. Given that one of the essential acts of sainthood is an untimely and occasionally gruesome demise, usually in a vigorous and imaginative fashion, the question arises ; what happens to the halo when the head...
Or Putting A Few Things in Perspective The things we accept visually, rapidly and at face value, are legion. All those things we recognize, that “jump the synapses directly as a code” (as the folks in advertising just love to say), make up probably the majority of...
Or the Ins and Outs of Tolkien Fandom Meeting Tolkien fans is invariably an engaging experience - occasionally delightful, sometimes moving, often a little scary - but never ordinary. It’s not that they form an always identifiable body, like Trekkies - who I find a...
Or a Few Words From Someone Else About Dragons Forging Dragons will be out towards the end of the month. Here’s the preface, with the kind permission of the editor, so you won’t need to read it on the way to the checkout. “SVNT DRACONES” In the original draft of...
Or Most Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Dragons (Or At Least a Certain Amount) A new book coming out is always fun, generally as it means the editors involved are happy to coax me from my lair to go sign copies in some far-flung clime.* FORGING DRAGONS:...
Or An Unexpected Window on the Renaissance Upon the discovery of America by the Europeans, an extraordinary document was copied out and carried by Spanish expeditions on their treks into the wilds of the New World. It was called “El Requerimiento”. Read it through....