March 2017

What Have I Been Enjoying Lately?

Earlier this week, I rattled off a very brief post talking about Sylvia Moreno García's efforts at capturing Latin Americans in SFF. I may decide to write more about this at some later date, but for now I wanted to go over the things I've been enjoying recently. Fleabag I started watching this series through Amazon. It is a fascinating experiment in perspective, as the entire show is told exclusively through Fleabag's point of view. The fourth wall is often broken, as the audience is both confidant and accomplice in what Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character is going through. Fleabag is a mess, and the show is funny, crass, sly and--at times--heartbreaking. Legion Currently being aired on FX. Daniel Haller has problems, one of them being that what he thought to be mental illness is actually the by-products of his superpowers. Full disclosure: I had to watch the first episode more than once. This was my...

Thank you, Sylvia Moreno Garcia

On her blog, Sylvia has started to list Latinx authors in English Language SFF. I'm glad she decided to start this project, since I've written about this before. If you have any favorite authors, feel free to fill out the form included....

“Fahrenheit 451” and the Problems of A Single Story

A few nights ago, I took to Twitter to respond to all those articles I've seen urging people to read George Orwell's "1984" (or, alternately, "A Brave New World"). To which I said--and continue to say--"Hey, great books!" However, for me the book to study is Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." The reasons I can see for this are: "1984" inhabits the mindscape of Stalinist Soviet Union: hulking gray buildings framed against gray skies, far removed from how someone from the U.S. views their country. "A Brave New World," while prescient in certain ways, is too bizarre an environment for today's readers Styles change, and while I find "1984" to be much more modern-sounding than "Brave New World", Fahrenheit 451 is written in allegorical and poetic language which lends it a timelessness.   [embed]http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-IcPx9uD0U[/embed]  Don't want to read the rest of the post? Thug Notes video to the rescue!   Bradbury's book is by far the shortest of...