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Adventure

The Mills of the Gods by Tim Powers

The Mills of the Gods by Tim Powers

Tim Powers has returned to the classic form of the adventure with The Mills of the Gods. Or perhaps I should say, his classic form of the adventure, which is a secret history so compelling that it threatens to displace mundane history altogether. Post-Great War Paris, roasting of famous artists,

L. Sprague de Camp and Literary Convention

L. Sprague de Camp and Literary Convention

Twitter/X user The_Lord_Otter recently opined that L. Sprague de Camp was instrumental in preserving and promoting the work of Robert E. Howard, but that de Camp's own work was merely okay. I endorse this view, but I wanted to take a tangent into what I

The Great American [Adventure] Novel

The Great American [Adventure] Novel

Last week on X/Twitter I offered some suggestions in Travis Corcoran's thread about science fiction that belongs in the canon of Great American Literature. Lots of other people I know chimed in with good suggestions, but I wanted to step back from science fiction in particular in

The Uses of Convention

The Uses of Convention

Nick Cole's Strange Company 3 is coming out April, so I started reading the first Strange Company again this week. And that got me to thinking about the use of convention in telling stories. We cannot truly understand literary genres without understanding the conventions that comprise them. Yet

Adrian Cole's The Dream Lords

Adrian Cole's The Dream Lords

The 50th Anniversary Edition of Adrian Cole's The Dream Lords will release on Amazon on January 15th, 2025, and you, my loyal readers, simply must pick this up, because this is the book for anyone who wanted Dune to be a comedy instead of a tragedy. If you

WBH Digest 2025-01-03: Welcome to the Party Pal

WBH Digest 2025-01-03: Welcome to the Party Pal

Welcome to 2025! When I started my commentary on Northrop Frye's The Anatomy of Criticism, I thought to myself that I could write about it for a year at least. That has absolutely come true, with the first post coming just over a year ago now, and I&

Frieren and Dungeon Meshi: Beyond Romance's End

Frieren and Dungeon Meshi: Beyond Romance's End

The society emerging at the conclusion of comedy represents, by contrast, a kind of moral norm, or pragmatically free society. Its ideals are seldom defined or formulated: definition and formulation belong to the humors, who want predictable activity. We are simply given to understand that the newly-married couple will live