Harry Potter
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Harry Potter and the Crisis of Sorting
It’s safe to say that Harry Potter blazed many paths. It brought life to a dying publishing industry, it launched the young adult and children’s…
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The Poor Teaching Practices of Professor Dumbledore
Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was a great man. A champion of wizard and muggle rights, defender of the innocent, genius, scholar, warrior, philosopher,…
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Say that Again? – The Trouble with Translation in the Speculative Genre
Tom Marvelo Riddle is a great anagram for “I am Lord Voldemort”. In English, that is. I often get surprised looks from people when I…
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Impractical Immortality: Do You Really Want to Live Forever?
Well, do you? Really? The idea of immortality, in one form or another, comes up frequently in speculative fiction: elves, Timelords, divine beings, cursed humans,…
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The Giants Made Me Eat My Spinach: From Then to Now
Giants. From the English fairytale “Jack and the Beanstalk” to the most recent iteration in the anime and manga Attack on Titan, giants are a…
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My Human Library: How I Started Reading My Friends
My Human Library: How I Started Reading My Friends If I had a super power it would be the ability to read people like books.…
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Mentally Ill Monsters: Mental Illness in Horror
There are a few well-trodden settings for horror stories: the haunted house, the carnival, the ghost town, and—my area of interest—the asylum. This last setting…
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Getting Dragons on Screen: The Cycle of Readers and Viewers
At its birth, the literary elite refused to accept fantasy as a legitimate genre. Fire-barfing dragons, scantily clad elves, and steel-swinging hunks could not possibly…
The Spectatorial 