As written by Lewis, the Talking Beasts of Narnia cover a wide range of species. The Magician’s Nephew, which was the third book Lewis wrote (but the 6th published) gives a good depiction of their genesis: they bubble up from the earth itself like bubbles of gas through hot lava. There’s an elephant, big cats, …
Speaking of Prince Caspian, the book contains one of the most memorable of all the series’s peripheral characters: Reepicheep the Mouse, short in stature but long on bravery. To me he was the Narnia equivalent of Scrappy-Doo, Scooby-Doo’s more eloquent little nephew: annoying. He does introduce, however, the Narnian way of naming mice: three-syllable names …
Artist Sabine Feliciano’s fabric rendition of a biology lesson.
Talktotransformer is proving to be a potent tool for me. I usually have to run things through a few times, and fine-tune and collate the results, but am mostly assured of a fecund list. By which I mean a list that makes the mind wander, cooking up possibilities (and story ideas) for people, places, and …
As I demonstrated last Wednesday, it’s pretty easy to come up with a name for a novel species of carnivorous mammal. Now let’s turn to the feline world, and the naming conventions of big cat hybrids. The “big four” Panthera species (lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars) are all capable of interbreeding with each other, as …
Narwhals: Arctic Whales in a Melting World by Todd McLeish University of Washington Press, 2013 [Challenge # 22 : A book taking place mostly or all on water.] My first choice for this category, Blackfish City, didn’t work out, so I subbed Narwhals one after noticing I had saved it to my Seattle Public Library …
Exotic mammalian carnivores are heavily featured in SFF literature. William Rice Burroughs had his eight-legged, lion-like banth in his Barsoom series, and more recently Tomi Adeyemi took up the trope with her lionaires and leopardaires in Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance. Prehistoric carnivores like the sabre-toothed tiger and short-faced …
One of the most bizarre Christmas decorations I’ve ever seen. Who would make this? Who would buy it?
Put a dollar in my coffee jar for all
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