America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their…
Category: Culture
Spotlight: Trust and Obey
Faith Blum has a new book. And it’s not a Western. It is a fairy tale retelling set during the time of King Saul. Read on to learn more about the book. About the Book A wicked priestess, a morally corrupt king, and two children stuck in the middle… Hadassah and Gidal love their parents…
Show Your Hand
When I first heard of Triplanetary, recommended as one of science fiction’s great space operas, I caught the copyright year 1997. When I actually got the book in my hands, I realized 1997 was the copyright renewal, 1948 was the original copyright, and much of the book had run as a serial in 1934. Triplanetary…
A Christian Twist
(I am going to state right here that this is not my finest work. But I wrote it under the influence of a summer cold, and this is as good as it’s going to get, people.) Christian speculative fiction, as a whole, has evolved along distinct lines from secular speculative fiction, acquiring its own…
Review: The Charlatan’s Boy
It’s a sad day in Corenwald when no one believes in feechies anymore. Specifically, it’s a sad day for Floyd Wendellson and his boy, Grady. The paying crowds pay them no longer. After making a living for years by pretending to be a feechie expert and a genuine feechie boy, they may have to get…
Uncommon Knowledge
Once I made what is, I fancy, a common mistake in college and registered for an elective English class. At one point in the course, the professor told us to make allusions that our audience would understand, and furthermore to consider our classmates our audience. To illustrate what our audience would not understand, he asked…
The Worthless World
Stories that are at their core cynical about the world present two different visions. The first is a vision of a world without heroes. The second is a vision of a world that doesn’t deserve heroes. These visions may easily be combined and sometimes are, but each can and does go alone, too. Together or…
Blitz: Beyond a Darkened Shore
On Tour with Prism Book Tours Release Blitz for Beyond a Darkened Shore By Jessica Leake Beyond a Darkened Shore by Jessica Leake Young Adult Historical Fantasy Hardcover & ebook, 384 pages April 10th 2018 by HarperTeen The ancient land of Éirinn is mired in war. Ciara, princess of Mide, has never known a time…
Coming Back, Going Forward
Of all the good old literary games, one of the most well-respected is Find the Archetype. It consists of taking a character, proving that he is like other characters who filled similar roles in their own stories, and declaring him an Archetype. It’s a simple game – there are only about six stories ever told,…
Bad Religion
If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. The release of A Wrinkle In Time has brought this quotation to the surface. It sounds profound and is, I think, deeply wrong, but I don’t want to attack a lone, disconnected sentence. It would be better to return the sentence to its…