WBH Weekly Digest 2024-01-06: The Color of the Gods

Gemini Destroyer Book Review

This is the end. Gemini Outsider was an end. This is the end. The end of the Gemini Man story, the ultimate culmination of everything that happens. Which makes it interesting that the Gemini Man hardly appears in it. We will instead follow a petty criminal, a former follower of

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

With Both Hands: Gemini Destroyer Book Review

This is the end. Gemini Outsider was an end. This is the end. The end of the Gemini Man story, the ultimate culmination of everything that happens. Which makes it interesting that the Gemini Man hardly appears in it. We will instead follow a petty criminal, a former follower of Nieto, and a kid who is dead inside from irony poisoning. And it's both awesome and satisfying.

John J. Reilly might have considered this kind of deep rooted cultural assumption as a "cultural insistence".

Gwern: Richard Scarry

The inestimable Gwern has archived this article on Richard Scarry. I find both the man himself fascinating, and the way in which his commercial success was held against him in the publishing world.

Northrop Frye on Heroic Modes of Action

In this post, I’ll isolate one specific part from Northrop Frye’s Phase Space so that we can look at it in more detail. Let’s turn to Frye’s model of the mode of heroic action. Frye surveys literature over time, and he classifies it according to a principle he borrows from

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

With Both Hands: Northrop Frye on Heroic Modes of Action

A longish post detailing Frye's model of heroic action.

A thread on the symbolism of the serpent among the Uto-Aztecan peoples of the Southwest.

The Turquoise Serpent

Alexander Palacio’s The Turquoise Serpent is R. E. Howard’s Conan transposed into a demon-haunted pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and it is awesome. I imagine a certain fraction of my audience will know exactly what that means without elaboration, but for the rest of you let’s dive in and see why this works

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

With Both Hands: The Turquoise Serpent

Alexander Palacio's The Turquoise Serpent pulls from this same strand of Uto-Aztecan mythology.

Burning Tower Book Review — With Both Hands

by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle $7.99; 655 pages I reviewed Burning Tower along with Burning City a year ago . I recently re-read them both, so this seemed like a good time to expand upon my rather cursory review of Burning Tower . Burning Tower picks up a year after Burning City conc

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

With Both Hands: Burning Tower Book Review

Pournelle and Niven had a great story about the Urheimat of the Uto-Aztecans too.

King of the World’s Edge by H. Warner Munn Book Review — With Both Hands

King of the World’s Edge by H. Warner Munn [Amazon link] is truly a pulp era story, first serialized in Weird Tales in September of 1939. A bold tale with massive scope, this is an alternative history of both the Americas and the last remnants of Romano-Britain that works in myth and legend from

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

With Both Hands: King of the World's Edge

H. Warner Munn linked King Arthur to the Aztecs in this banger of a novel.

‎I Might Believe in Faeries: Blood of the King & Our Lady of Guadalupe (ft. Lydia Lei) on Apple Podcasts

‎Show I Might Believe in Faeries, Ep Blood of the King & Our Lady of Guadalupe (ft. Lydia Lei) - Feb 15, 2023

Apple Podcasts

If you want to know what the color of the gods is, I suggest this episode of Aaron Irber's podcast, I Might Believe in Faeries.