“Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto, you’re beautiful!”

When you teach Chaucer or 19th-century medievalism, no one clamors for a preview of the syllabus, but when you tell people you’ll pulling together a course on modern fantasy and science fiction, everyone has opinions, questions, recommendations, stories, and gripes—and everyone wants to see the reading list.

So here it is. From the start, I tried to avoid creating one of those “sources and analogues” courses where Poe ballads and old French werewolf yarns implicitly apologize for the presumed deficiencies of modern fantasy. (It’s a valid approach, but spending so much time studying where something comes from leaves little time to study the thing itself.) We’ll talk about Lucian of Samosata, Thomas More, and Mary Shelley, and we’ll give H.G. Wells his due, but we don’t need to disinter their corpses for caryatids; let’s see if recent works can stand on their own. If they can’t, their collapse will at least raise an impressive dust cloud from afar.

This list balances several competing goals: sketching the histories of both genres to 1990; showing their ideological ranges by intermingling fan favorites with academic darlings; assigning works not for their coolness quotient or erstwhile popularity but for their ability to prompt discussion; and selfishly finding slots for a favorite or two of my own.

Plenty of worthy authors, books, and short stories didn’t make the cut—it’s impossible to be comprehensive in thirteen weeks—and this course was, I think, harder to prepare than any of the medieval-lit courses I’ve taught. I’m not used to being so spoiled for choice.

Isaac Asimov, “Nightfall”
Arthur C. Clarke, “The Nine Billion Names of God”
Robert A. Heinlein, “The Roads Must Roll”
Tom Godwin, “The Cold Equations”
Lester del Rey, “Helen O’Loy”
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Samuel Delany, “Aye, and Gomorrah”
Ray Bradbury, “Way in the Middle of the Air”
Frederik Pohl, “The Day After the Day the Martians Came”
James Tiptree, Jr., “The Women Men Don’t See”
William Gibson, “Burning Chrome”
Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild”
Joanna Russ, “The Clichés From Outer Space”
Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Walter Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Liebowitz
Henry Melton, “Catacomb”
* * *
Ludwig Tieck, “The Elves”
William Morris, “The Folk of the Mountain Door”
Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”
James Branch Cabell, “The Thin Queen of Elfhame”
Robert E. Howard, “The Tower of the Elephant”
Robert E. Howard, “The King and the Oak”
Robert E. Howard, “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming”
Jack Vance, “The Loom of Darkness”
Fritz Leiber, “The Bazaar of the Bizarre”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Terry Bisson, “Bears Discover Fire”
Ursula Le Guin, “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight”
Lucius Shepard, “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule”
Gary Gygax, “The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games”
Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”
Italo Calvino, “The Distance of the Moon”

“I sent a dream to you last night from the end of the world…”

I’m not a regular (or even occasional) reader of The Philadelphia Trumpet, the magazine that “seeks to show how current events are fulfilling the biblically prophesied description of the prevailing state of affairs just before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ,” but this cover (brought to my attention by the Great One) impressed me. Good ol’ Karl has a pretty keen eye: His tie matches his suit and the gilded details on his otherwise silver face.

I’ve never tried to picture Charlemagne in a business suit—I’ve never gotten beyond imagining that he looked like a taller, brawnier, less bald version of Dennis Franz—but if modern Christian eschatology intrigues you, then go see what The Philadelphia Trumpet has to say about the forthcoming German elections, because “Germany is about to start World War III—according to your Bible.” The apocalyptic Charlemagne is hardly a new incarnation, but it’s remarkable that such a burly medieval king can still slip so deftly into sharp modern clothes.

UPDATE: Matt Gabriele, who knows tons about Charlemagne and eschatology, has a go at the details of this latter-day prophecy.

“So I don’t feel alone, or the weight of the stone…”

Washington National Cathedral is known for its quirky gargoyles, but recently my friends’ five-year-old spotted a relatively mundane beastie around 35 feet up, wedged among the dragons and monsters that overlook the Bishop’s Garden. I imagine this creature must think rather highly of himself. And so I give you…

A SONNET FROM THE BOARTUGUESE

I ask: Did He who made the squirrel make me?
He shaped the petty weevil, slug, and fly:
For as thou art to them, am I to thee,
When ’round the garden durst thou slouch and sigh.
I grin, and father pestilence on high;
I bristle, and beshrivel every leaf;
I twitch an ear, the goldfish gasp and die;
I blink, and roses beg for sweet relief.
Yet tourist, when thou turnst to tend thy grief,
My holy tusks and tail thou shan’t recall,
Though still I mince thy mind with unbelief;
Between these buttressed groves I govern all.
Let dragons thus proclaim in wyrmish lore:
“Among our roosts there ruled a humble boar.”

(For all the entries in this series, hit the “looking up” tag.)

Hoodoo, voodoo, seven-twenty-one-two…

The weekend comes, and nifty links come close behind.

This is neat: Someone made a short film out of Robert E. Howard’s poem “The Return of Sir Richard Grenville.”

Speaking of Howard, his collected poetry is now in its third printing, and the work of one of his favorite writers, Harold Lamb, is back in print.

Steven Hart appreciates the Robert Silverberg novel Dying Inside and wishes Peter Jackson would film it.

Jake Seliger writes intriguingly about The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

“Her lips were full, sultry or sulking, her expression unblinking; she seldom smiled. Yet the reeds held fond memories of her friend Hedges, her companion in slinky swimming until she, or he, was carried away in 1998 by the waters of the River Nene.” No, it’s not an Ursula Le Guin story; it’s one of the better obits of the year.

Happy birthday to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe! The old boy would have turned 260 today. In his honor, here’s someone reading his poem “Prometheus,” and here’s “Quid Plura?” favorite France Gall singing “Ein bisschen Goethe, ein bisschen Bonaparte.” (You know you want to.)

“There’s talk in the houses, and people dancing in rings…”

So I guess when a neighborhood’s most obvious medieval-ish draw is a gigantic new Gothic cathedral, it’s understandable that one might tromp up and down the street, possibly for years, and not notice, just two blocks away, the house with a gargoyle on the roof and a dragon in the front yard.

I don’t know who lives here, but they’re my new favorite neighbors. I hope they have trolls ’round the back.

“I never talk to my neighbours, I’d rather not get involved…”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is perched on the gable,
It searches and lurches, befickled by fable.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten the cat!”
“And what shall we do about that, my child,
What shall we do about that?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is stalking our roof,
Its claw-pricks primeval, primordial proof.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten dear brother!”
“And why can’t we get us another, my child,
Why can’t we get us another?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, alights in the hall,
Its grindings and growlings begrizzled by gall.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten poor father!”
“And why must you be such a bother, my child,
Why must you be such a bother?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is greedy for gore,
Befouled and bedeviled, beframed by the door.
The gargoyle, Mother, is coming for you!”
“And what do you dream I can do, my child,
What do you dream I can do?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, has eaten you whole,
Its hellmaw begobbling you, body and soul.
The gargoyle, Mother, is spitting you out!”
“And why did you have any doubt, my child,
Why did you have any doubt?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, bespews its hot breath,
Its burning and burbling betoken my death.
The gargoyle, Mother, has torn me in two!”
“And why must you mourn only you, my child,
Why must you mourn only you?”

(For all the entries in this series, hit the “looking up” tag.)

“Success or failure will not alter it.”

Managing workloads, suffering fools, wishing the days could be longer—medieval people lamented these problems just as often as we do, but they soldiered on. “A thousand skeptic hands won’t keep us from the things we plan,” Charlemagne famously insisted, prompting Alcuin to quip: “unless we’re clinging to the things we prize.”

That’s my favorite passage from Einhard’s Vita Karoli; it invigorates me every time I’m slogging through an endless morass of work. In that spirit, here are links to smart and interesting people whose efforts you can reward simply by reading them.

With all due punctilio, Steven Hart appreciates science-fiction and fantasy writer Jack Vance.

Do you dawdle? Are you stalled? Jake Seliger reads books about learning to focus.

Neil Verma wonders about separating artists from their art.

Dear publishers, Scott Nokes implores you: Stop putting the monk Eadwine on book covers.

Open Letters Monthly reviews The Natural History of Unicorns.

Red in tooth and claw, OLM also steps into a literary feud over the annotated Wind in the Willows.

Enough cromulent problematizing! Vaulting and Vellum grumble at academic language that locks others out.

Bibliographing gets to know Abelard and Heloise.

“You got your manly, economic prose in my pipeweed!” “Your got your pipeweed in my manly, economic prose!” Lingwë asks: “Hemingway’s Silmarillion?”

What might be right be you may not be right for Ephemeral New York, who shows you buildings from the opening credits of “The Jeffersons” and “Diff’rent Strokes.”

Finally, smooth down the epaulets on your Members Only jacket and dance to this: the full-length commercial for the 1985 Plymouth Duster.

“…’cause the only thing misplaced was direction…”

The books are tired: They let themselves yellow, they reek of teenage habits, and they laze around the shelves as if they own them. Stone-faced, you say: You there, all of you: Goodbye. With soft groans, they sprout little legs, stumble down the stairs, and march away. You admire their sense of duty; you commend yourself for knowing how to treat them.

You wonder where they went only years later, when an email asks: “Would you like to teach Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction?”

Thus begins the blur: creeping through library basements, climbing over warehouse piles, swinging a sun-bright shopping basket where books replace groceries in long, looming rows. Look: A spaceship reminds you of a long-lost friend, the guy who once loaned you this book. Over there is the novel you never quite got; its crude, trippy cover still mocks you. A fantasy trilogy leaps from a shelf, desperate to be held again; years ago, you all spent a week at the beach. Paperbacks peep and cry out sideways, and people gawk as titles start to blur: Axaxaxas mlö, dhcmrlchtdj…

You bring them home in plastic bags.

That face you make as you drive? It’s the thousand-year stare, the result of looking too long at the Middle Ages. The cure is a holiday, a summer spent sniffing ’round the future—but when you come home and toss those bags on the floor, they rustle, and you look down. Some books squeak and hide under the sofa; others dance and do flips before clambering onto your shelves. In the chaos, you catch a whiff: musty, sure, but sweetly familiar, and you know that you’re not in the future at all. You draw a deep breath and you think, Well, I’m back.