Tag: essay
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Meditations on Immortality, Part 6: The Lotus Gambit
Welcome back to this series on immortality and perfection! If you haven’t read the previous articles, check them out below: Part 1: The Paradox of Perfection Part 2: Fractals & Infinity Part 3: Swordsmanship & Perfection Part 4: Alchemy & the Magnum Opus Part 5: The Horrors of Eternal Life In Part 5, we talked…
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Meditations on Immortality, Part 3: Swordsmanship and Perfection
Welcome back to this article series on perfection and immortality! In Part 2, I talked a lot about fractals, repeating, self-similar patterns that have a complex relationship with perspective and infinity. I noted that the more one delves into fractals, the more often one encounters paradoxes, such as the Coastline Paradox. As you might remember…
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The Narrative and Worldbuilding of Bloodborne: Part 2
If you haven’t read Part 1 of my Bloodborne analysis, read it here. In it, I give an abridged summary of Bloodborne’s plot and take a closer look at the key elements of the narrative, including the Hunters and the Great Ones. To restate, much of this analysis is rooted in The Paleblood Hunt, but…
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New Essay in Clarkesworld Magazine: “Frodo is Dead: Worldbuilding and The Science of Magic”
I’ve said this before: magic should not be science. Magic can be systematic and internally consistent, but it shouldn’t be reduced to a human tool, like astronomy or chemistry. A lot of writers and worldbuilders don’t seem to understand the difference–didn’t Arthur C. Clarke famously say that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?” But there is a…
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My New Essay in Clarkesworld Magazine: Paradise Lost
Yesterday my new essay, Paradise Lost: A History of Fantasy and the Otherworld, was published online in the July Issue of the Hugo Award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine! This marks the culmination of a conversation that started four or five years ago, when I was standing in my driveway at night with my friend Joel Clapp. We had just finished…