Tag Archives: J.R.R. Tolkien

Pacing and Narrative Structure: How The Hobbit and Django Unchained Screwed Up

Posted on January 8, 2013 by

At first glance, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained are fairly dissimilar. One is the tale of a beleaguered young man who is put on the path to a quest by an older, bearded … Continue reading →

Posted in Genre Observations, Movie Reviews, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Thinning and Accusations of Nostalgia in Fantasy

Posted on December 20, 2011 by

The other day I came across a comment somewhere (alas, I don’t remember on what blog/forum) that enjoyment of fantasy stems from a nostalgia for the medieval era when lives were “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” This view is typically … Continue reading →

Posted in fantasy, Genre Observations, Science Fiction, specfic, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

REVIEW: The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 10) by Steven Erikson

Posted on March 2, 2011 by

My apologies for posting this on Wednesday, rather than Tuesday. I know I’m late, but I got caught up with day-job work and so…sorry. Hope the timely review makes up for the delay. Title: The Crippled God: Book Ten of … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, fantasy, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Words on a Fertile Shore: The Evolution of Science Fiction and Fantasy Language

Posted on December 28, 2010 by

While eating delicious (and incredibly over-filling) holiday meals this weekend, I found myself thinking about Google Labs’ new Ngram Viewer. In my day job I deal with statistics, semantics, ontologies, and computational linguistics all day long. Which makes the Ngram … Continue reading →

Posted in fantasy, Genre Observations, horror, Random Thoughts, Science Fiction, scifi | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment