This is funny and a totally appropriate spoof on a recent movie you may have seen. If you haven’t seen it or read any criticism of it, then you will miss half the jokes.
Dude, was I right or what?
All posts by Phil
Is There a Place for "Mature" Christian Fiction?
The Steve Laube Agency has purchased Marcher Lord Press (MLP) (link defunct), “the premier publisher of Science Fiction and Fantasy for the Christian market.” Follow the link for answers to a handful of questions about the acquisition, especially if you didn’t know there was a publisher of SF/F for the Christian market.
Steve Laube has not purchased the MLP imprint Hinterlands, which is defined this way: “to publish science-fiction and fantasy stories with mature content and themes (i.e. PG-13 or R-rated language, sexuality, and violence).” This is the imprint that published A Throne of Bones, which Lars reviewed last year. Apparently, that title raised the ire of a writer’s group that issues a prominent award, which was the motivation for starting the imprint–like zoning a red-light district, I guess.
With the purchase of the press but not the imprint, another publisher could buy Hinterlands or the rights could revert to their authors. Mike Duran asks, does this “signal the end of Christian publishing’s ‘mature-content experiment’?” He suggests that it may be, but two things point away of it:
- Vox Day’s A Throne of Bones was the first and most well-received title. The imprint’s chief says he received “astonishingly few” submissions for publication. Does that mean there isn’t much of an audience for this type of work or that too few authors are willing to go that direction?
- Duran says Day is something of a lightening rod and some authors have refused to be associated with him. He doesn’t say they are right to shun him, but he does point to evidence that they may be doing it. To that end, he wonders whether “the non-acquisition of Hinterlands is more of a renunciation of Vox Day than a rejection of mature content.”
What do you think? You may already read books with this kind of content anyway. Have you read any of these titles (I’m having trouble identifying them).
Men Would Enjoy Good Stories, If They Tried Them.
“If men read fewer books on manhood and more really good stories they’d be much better for it,” Barnabas Piper tweeted sometime last year. He fleshes out his reasoning in this post, saying stories make you want to be better, show you role models and anti-heroes, and get under the surface. If it’s true, he says, that we learn more by what we catch than what we are taught, then good stories are the places where we will catch what we want to learn.
Today's Horror Genre
In a post, reviewing a 1991 book called The Cipher
Loren had high hopes for The Cipher, but found it a bit thick and dismal. “I guess the crux of the matter is this: Horror should seem horrifying, but you need to feel that something worthwhile could be lost during the story for it to become so. Such a sense is completely absent in The Cipher. Things start out badly. They grow marginally worse by the end. In between is 350 pages of mostly senseless, self-inflicted suffering.”
In the comments, a few names and titles are kicked around.
For context on his perspective, Loren discusses all he learned about H.P. Lovecraft in 2013.
What Fiction Do Men Read?
One of our friends, Nick Harrison of Harvest House, asks on his Facebook wall:
“What can we all do to boost men’s fiction? What authors do the men you know read? What are their complaints about the state of men’s fiction (if they have any complaints)? I’d especially like to hear from male readers, but all who can offer some insight are welcome to respond.”
So what do you think? Don’t confine your answer to Christian books. What fiction do you or the men you know read? Answers from the original post include Dale Cramer, Athol Dickson, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, David Baldacci, Vince Flynn, John Hart, John Lescroart, and Lee Child. I mentioned names you’ve seen here, like Bertrand, N.D. Wilson, and Andrew Peterson.
BIG UPDATE in the comments below.
“So the disciples gorge themselves on honey dipped spam”
Here’s another curious poem.
“Jesus Feeds the 5000 Using Various Cutting Edge Recipes from 1950s Magazines”
“So the disciples gorge themselves on honey dipped spam
crowned with the many crowns of identical pineapple rings
as they jostle for spots on the picnic blanket, and the children…”
Idiot Psalms: New Poems by Scott Cairns
Poet Scott Cairns has written some revealing, thoughtful reflections as psalms to the Lord. Clearly, these poems are written for people who are not as awesome as we are. We have claimed our blessing and walk as strong as the Nephilim. We don’t grovel before the Lord, like the man in this poem:
“Idiot Psalm 1”
O God Belovéd if obliquely so,
dimly apprehended in the midst
of this, the fraught obscuring fog
of my insufficiently capacious ken,
Ostensible Lover of our kind—while
apparently aloof—allow
that I might glimpse once more
Your shadow in the land, avail
for me, a second time, the sense
of dire Presence in the pulsing
hollow near the heart.
Once more, O Lord, from Your Enormity incline
your Face to shine upon Your servant, shy
of immolation, if You will.
Dean Koontz on Self-Doubt, Story, and Abuse
Here are some questions Dean Koontz has answered in various forums:
You had an agent in your early years tell you that you’d never be a best-selling writer. Did that discourage you or make you more determined to succeed?
Koontz: I have more self-doubt than any writer I’ve ever known. That is one reason I revise every page to the point of absurdity! The positive aspect of self-doubt – if you can channel it into useful activity instead of being paralyzed by it – is that by the time you reach the end of a novel, you know precisely why you made every decision in the narrative, the multiple purposes of every metaphor and image. Having been your own hardest critic you still have dreams but not illusions. Consequently, thoughtless criticism or advice can’t long derail you. You become disappointed in an agent, in an editor, in a publisher, but never discouraged. If anyone in your publishing life were to argue against a particular book or a career aspiration for reasons you had not already pondered and rejected after careful analysis, if they dazzled you with brilliant new considerations, then you’d have to back off and revisit your decisions. But what I was told never dazzled me. For example, I was often advised, by different people, that my work would never gain a big audience because my vocabulary was too large.
Continue reading Dean Koontz on Self-Doubt, Story, and Abuse
Malcolm Gladwell in Socrates in the City
I’m reading Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Malcolm Gladwell: David and Goliath from Socrates in the City on Vimeo.
The Desolation of Jackson
Gwen Burrow writes about the second Hobbit movie, which she didn’t totally hate:
In fact, the film’s worst faults are the very transgressions which Tolkien rebuked back in the 1950s when another maladroit tried to translate his books to screen. Some of these apply so well to Peter Jackson’s work, it’s downright eerie. I already mentioned a few of these in my critique of the first Hobbit, but here’s another flyby:
“The failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies”…