Tag: Fabulous Ones
By Doug Merrill in Cyberpunk, Doug, Dystopia, England, Fabulous Ones, Science Fiction
Like the protagonist of Neuromancer, William Gibson is an artiste of the slightly funny deal. In The Peripheral the first slightly funny deal is between some people in England who hire some other folks in a small-town part of Appalachia in the US. The English contingent wants the people across the pond to fly a …
Cyberpunk, Doug, Dystopia, England, Fabulous Ones, Science Fiction, William Gibson
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/12/23/the-peripheral-by-william-gibson-2/
By Doug Merrill in Doug, Fabulous Ones, Fantasy, Poetry
Bro! As has been said before, Beowulf is a poem that forces translators to show their style from the very first word. That word in the original is "Hwæt," an Old English attention grabber, and how translators render it tells a lot about what's coming in the rest of the poem. Will the version lean …
Doug, Epic, Fabulous Ones, Fantasy, Maria Dahvana Heaadley, Poetry
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/12/06/beowulf-translated-by-maria-dahvana-headley/
By Doug Merrill in Autobiography, Doug, Essay, Fabulous Ones, History, Politics, Race, Racism
I read Between the World and Me a lifetime ago, in early summer when it was strange to leave the neighborhood again after so many weeks of stillness. It is a hard book, not because of the difficulty of language or of its concepts, but because of the hardness of its subject: how to live …
African-American History, Autobiography, Doug, Essay, Fabulous Ones, For the Horde, History, Politics, Race, Racism, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/15/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/
Invisible Planets edited and translated by Ken Liu
By Doug Merrill in Doug, Fabulous Ones, Science Fiction, Short Stories
With his smashingly successful translation of Liu Cixin's The Three–Body Problem, Ken Liu introduced modern Chinese science fiction to a large English-speaking audience. The reception of the rest of Three-Body's trilogy, one translated by Joel Martinsen and the other by Ken Liu, showed that it was not a one-book phenomenon, and that English-speaking science fiction …
Doug, Fabulous Ones, Ken Liu, Science Fiction, Science Fiction with Chinese Characteristics, Short Stories
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/05/invisible-planets-edited-and-translated-by-ken-liu/
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
By Doug Merrill in Doug, Fabulous Ones, Fantasy
The magic is still there, in The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. More than half a century after its publication, it's still lodged partly in a timeless yet post-WWII America and partly in places whose times and locations are much more suspect, nearly pure mythical settings of village and unhappy kingdom and enchanted castle, …
Doug, Fabulous Ones, Fantasy, Peter S. Beagle
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/19/the-last-unicorn-by-peter-s-beagle/
Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
By Doug Merrill in Doug, Fabulous Ones, Poetry
Ideally, of course, I would take the time to live with Death of a Naturalist for a good long while, absorbing the images, being surprised by new readings, seeing more levels of meaning on re-reading, having some poems shift from mild interest to true favorite, having others fade only to be rediscovered later and seem …
Doug, Fabulous Ones, Poetry, Seamus Heaney
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/05/death-of-a-naturalist-by-seamus-heaney/
The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hämäläinen
By Doug Merrill in Doug, Fabulous Ones, History, Politics
Pekka Hämäläinen gets right to the point: "This book is about an American empire that, according to conventional histories, did not exist. It tells the familiar tale of expansion, resistance, conquest, and loss, but with a reversal of the usual historical roles: it is a story in which Indians expand, dictate, and prosper, and European …
American History, Comanche, Doug, Fabulous Ones, History, Pekka Hämäläinen, Texas
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/15/the-comanche-empire-by-pekka-hamalainen/
The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key
By Doug Merrill in Children's, Doug, Fabulous Ones, Science Fiction
Re-reading The Forgotten Door was a gift to my third-grade self. It's the first book of any length that I remember reading, and the cover was still lodged in my brain after all of these years, not that I would judge a book that way, no. I remembered the barest bones of the story: a …
Alexander Key, Children's, Doug, Fabulous Ones, Science Fiction
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/04/04/the-forgotten-door-by-alexander-key/
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O'Driscoll
By Doug Merrill in Autobiography, Doug, Fabulous Ones, Poetry
So now I want to read all of Seamus Heaney's poetry. I want to start with Death of a Naturalist and see what set him apart from other poets getting started. I want to follow him up North to see how he both did and did not address the Troubles of his native Northern Ireland. …
Dennis O'Driscoll, Doug, Fabulous Ones, Ireland, Nobel Laureate, Poetry, Seamus Heaney
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/02/stepping-stones-interviews-with-seamus-heaney-by-dennis-odriscoll/