Erotica, fantasy, and horror writer.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang Alfred A. Knopf, 2019 Ted Chiang is a SFF writer who’s been around for a while but has yet to produce a novel. This collection came out in the early days of 2020 and features his work up to 2019. I checked it out of the Seattle Public Library a …
Atompunk: A retro-futuristic aesthetic centered around the technology of the 1950s extended into the 21st century and beyond. It often depicts “traditionally American” values such as the nuclear family and a suburban lifestyle; conversely, the totalitarian regimes of Communist Russia and its satellites with their emphasis on technological power. I define its heyday as the …
This illustration by Arthur Rackham appeared on the cover of a book of Grimm’s fairy tales given to me by my parents. I forget the name of the story, but in it, the child hero, who is peeking out of the stove at the illustration’s approximate center, is hiding from the ogre. He has been …
Never mind me, just passing through.
The first collections of fairy tales, like Andrew Lang’s Yellow Fairy Book above, were intended for offspring of wealthy consumers. The book itself is sturdily made and sumptuously illustrated with pen drawings in a flowing, Art Nouveau style. More decoration is seen on the spine and cover, which has embossing as well as a two-ink …
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller Ecco, 2018 Look at this cover. Isn’t this one of coolest book covers you’ve ever seen? The black background, the red, white, and blue neon tubes, the circular orca logo surmounted by an Inuit hunter, done in a style harkening to NW Coast Indian art… now this promises excitement! …
Kriss: The Gift of Wrath by Ted Naifeh Art by Warren Wucinich Oni Press, 2019 This graphic novel is the perfect gift for a middle school child of 11 – 12 who is getting into experiencing adolescent angst, heavy metal, Goth culture, and fantasy fiction. The story is a time-worn one: a young orphan and …
The plasticity of fairy tales is demonstrated by these illustrations of Beauty and the Beast from over the years. In the original fairy tale, the Beast is never explicitly described, so artists had to use their imaginations. From the top left, going clockwise, he’s a spotted hyena, a wolf-boar, a very weird walrus-mole hybrid, and …
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