Happy birthday, Philip K. Dick!
Call him mad, praise him as a genius- Philip K. Dick will never fail to mesmerize and entice. It is now twenty five years since his passing, and there is still talk of this author. Compelled by the eternal duality between real and fake, human and android, he continually asked an essential question: What is real? What is Human? Complex questions dealing with human-ness abound in his works. In "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", beings may only appear human when they lack a soul or compassion.
What most (understantably) love about his work is the recurring notion of the impossibility of one reality. “All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality”, wrote Charles Pratt, science fiction author. When he was attending university, Dick proclaimed himself a “acosmic pan-entheist”, perceiving the world as an extension of God. After investigating Plato’s works, he came to the conclusion that the world is not really real and that, moreover, we are incapable of ever telling if it is real or not.
Look for blatant Jungian references and beautifully twisted plots.
Showing posts with label Events. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Events. Show all posts
We celebrate you, Neil Gaiman!
Winner of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals and author of the groundbreaking Sandman series as well as the novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline and The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman stands out in the novelist world for his gift for writing graphic novels and for his use of classical English humor at its very best.
The following showcases his quirkiness at its prime: "Books have sexes; or to be more precise, books have genders. They do in my head, anyway. Or at least, the ones that I write do. And these are genders that have something, but not everything, to do with the gender of the main character of the story."
A heavy mixture of Americana, fantasy and classical mythology, American Gods tells a story of an ex-convict plunged into a maelstrom of conspiracy and magic. The novel puts forth that gods and mythical creatures exist due to the fact that people believe in them. It logically follows that the traditional deities are being replaced by America's new idols: technology, media and drugs. But the Old Ones won't go down without a fight ...
American Gods is a great book to explore for its deft use of mythology and for its complex plot. Read it to discover what happens to the protagonist's wife, Laura. You won't be dissapointed.
Winner of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals and author of the groundbreaking Sandman series as well as the novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline and The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman stands out in the novelist world for his gift for writing graphic novels and for his use of classical English humor at its very best.
The following showcases his quirkiness at its prime: "Books have sexes; or to be more precise, books have genders. They do in my head, anyway. Or at least, the ones that I write do. And these are genders that have something, but not everything, to do with the gender of the main character of the story."
A heavy mixture of Americana, fantasy and classical mythology, American Gods tells a story of an ex-convict plunged into a maelstrom of conspiracy and magic. The novel puts forth that gods and mythical creatures exist due to the fact that people believe in them. It logically follows that the traditional deities are being replaced by America's new idols: technology, media and drugs. But the Old Ones won't go down without a fight ...
American Gods is a great book to explore for its deft use of mythology and for its complex plot. Read it to discover what happens to the protagonist's wife, Laura. You won't be dissapointed.
Iris invites you to a live story-telling and poetry-reading event at the Foreman Art Gallery on Saturday, October 15th, 3PM.
Paper copies of the magazine will be available by donation; proceeds from this issue will benefit the graduating art show.
Love or hate sexually-ambivalent, photophobic antiheroes, The Vampire Chronicles have indubitably left a mark on the neo-gothic imagination. Anne Rice’s fiction is at least interesting in that it sometimes features narration done in the epistolary style, in keeping with the great tradition of Victorian horror.
While modern readers need not be reminded of Tolkien’s contribution to the fantasy genre, they may be interested to learn more about the master’s stance on myth-making. Tolkien’s creative philosophy is most vividly outlined in Mythopoeia, a poetic manifesto addressed to C.S. Lewis some fifteen years before Narnia.
Tolkien's legendarium was expanded in 2007 with the posthumous publication of The Children of Húrin. The introduction of a new cast of credible female characters can be counted as The Children of Húrin's chief literary breakthrough: such characters were arguably absent from the other episodes of the Ring saga.
Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey should make its theatrical debut in early 2012.
One of the fathers of modern science-fiction, Herbert George Wells is perhaps best known for The War of the Worlds.
The Time Machine exemplifies Wells' exquisitely descriptive style: his depictions of Earth’s future, though wildly inaccurate by modern science, raise doubts as to the possibility of a meaningful life in a temporally infinite universe.
Like his fictions, Wells was ahead of his time: he was a socialist and a supporter of the suffragettes. Unlike fellow science-fiction author Aldous Huxley, Wells actually did support eugenics openly, though The Island of Dr.Moreau displays a complex and nuanced appreciation of the promises of the life sciences.
For a good taste of Wells' rich expressiveness, Iris recommends Orson Welles' radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds.
