Of all the bits of Avalon, the failure of the ‘main’ antagonist is at once the most surprising in retrospect and the clearest. Surprising, because I can remember how dangerous Morgian seemed, how appropriately threatening and powerful; clear, because when
I have now read Dune. I first conceived the ambition more than a year ago, and at last I have done it. So, do I recommend it? Well, yes, but not without reserve. Dune is written with undoubted skill and
In philosophy’s halls, relatively few provide reason to be remembered as artists, not just philosophers. Solomon, Plato, the author of Job, these have that distinction. The second half of the nineteenth century brought its own candidate: Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche, unlike
Beowulf is a poem famous for, among other distinctions, having no faithful film adaptations—famous, also, for its connection to J.R.R. Tolkien, who both revolutionized the Beowulf scholarship of his day and incorporated copious influences from it into his little-known The
What is realistic? Many a story is alleged by those who read it to be ‘unrealistic,’ for all sorts of reasons. Some of these complaints are perfectly correct, in theory, if not always in application. Characters can strain past the
I’ve no familiarity at all with the work of Wyndham Lewis, this article’s partial subject, or Dr. Gilfedder, its author, and my knowledge of Shakespeare is small. men against darkness, published in Islander #5 doubtless possesses certain interests for the
The primacy of different types of order [Note: I wrote this in January 2025 while contemplating a new format for Creational Story but never posted it.] The difficulty of defining poetry is in drawing a line which keeps everything poetic on one
Eowyn stands as perhaps my favorite female character in all of fiction. A few there are which stand near her- Harriet Vane, for instance- and a few I will acknowledge as being, to my experience, as well written- Orual (Till
Hollywood stories have been getting a bad reputation- ‘Hollywood’ being a catch-all for the big money film industry, here. The Rings of Power show, for instance, possibly had greater cultural impact in how its critics pulled it apart than in
We’re doing two articles today. Today we’re doing two articles from Islander V. The first article is interesting in itself, but I don’t have the need to respond to it in depth. It’s an examination of how various cultures, from