At The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik writes about The Lord of the Rings and its influence on young adult fantasy, how Tolkien’s fusing of the epic and the familiarly domestic brought us Eragon and Twilight. “Kids go to fantasy not for escape but for organization, and a little […]
At the excellent Bookview Cafe, Ursula K. LeGuin writes a fairytale of unemployment. My favorite line? “The Works Fairies are not functioning at present.”
R.I.P, Anne McCaffrey (lots of great tributes online today: at Whatever, Io9, and Tor among them). Update: everyone seems to be using those fantastic Michael Whelan covers, but McCaffrey had her share of not-so-wonderful covers.
Enter you speculative fiction in the inaugural Friends of the Merrill Collection Short Story contest! The Merrill Collection is the Toronto Public Library’s excellent collection of science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction. The 3 winners will receive cash prizes. Find out more, and enter, here.
Take heart writers and procrastinators, Norton Juster wrote his masterpiece, The Phantom Tollbooth (illustrated by Jules Feiffer), when he should’ve been writing something else. Juster tells the story here.
Lovely felt animation of skeleton love at the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore by Olympia Le-Tan, Spike Jonze and Simon Cahn. Scroll down from the video to read an interview with Spike Jonze about the project. Thanks, Denis!
Find t-shirts, mugs, totes and more at our new Guttermart location at Teepublic!
The Cultural Gutter 