Posts by author
Lyz Lenz
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Gandolf Would Not Imbibe Pumpkin Spice
According to Pobst, who worked on the Xbox version of 2002′s The Fellowship of the Ring adventure game, initially there were going to be pumpkin patches in the Shire and “the Tolkien Enterprises people went nuts about it,” to the…
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Part of the Journey
The New Inquiry interviewed Okwiri Oduor, winner of the Caine Prize. She says about past stories: I think they’re the kind of stories that would be published in an anthology by the UN about women’s rights or something. That’s not…
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Weekly Geekery
Smart phones are tracking your perfect student. The important warnings of sci-fi’s dystopian tales. Because you are interested in the Loch Ness monster. Online rumors and lies and the science of stopping them. Making hard choices? There is an app…
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Fiction is Threatening
Hilary Mantel wrote a story imagining the death of Margaret Thatcher. Predictably, people went nuts. Luckily The Daily Mail was on hand to remind us all of the real values of Britain. The newspaper described how Mantel’s story has “provoked…
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Batman Saves More than Gotham
What does it take to transcend your medium into the stuff of literary value? Batman. 1986, the year both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were first published, can be seen as a turning point for the comic book in…
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The Ugly Side
At The Toast, Caitlin Keefe Moran writes about the difficult women in the long-forgotten work of Nancy Hale: The Prodigal Women, now sadly out of print, is a strange, giant, wonderful book, full of desperate, sad, sometimes wicked, sometimes pitiable,…
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Weekly Geekery
Requiem for a pigeon. Fiction meets reality in space. Our Lord and Savior, science fiction. The right to know vs. the right to be forgotten. The proliferation of nerd. How technology is changing the spoiler.
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The Non-Fiction Dilemma
Ever wonder how to write about other people without getting sued? Well, here are some answers. Another flavor of invasion of privacy is called false light. Suppose you post a photo of a criminal arrest. Jane Doe, a bystander, appears…
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The Essayist Must…
Despite the horror and hopelessness (see below) that moves through the world, the essayist must have, even if it is well-buried under the most convincing costume of misanthropy, a deep and abiding love of humanity. Essayists set up beacons, send…
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Weekly Geekery
The most powerful imaginings of science fiction aren’t the technological devices. Insert Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind reference here. Despite the Internet, Millenials are out-reading you. You should feel ashamed. The difficulty of online conversations. The science of studying…
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Ladies Are Taking Over Crime
Laura Miller opines that male-authored crime novels are a bit too predictable. Instead… I’ve found instead that the crime novels I open with the keenest anticipation these days are almost always by women. These are books that trespass the established…
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Reading Incompetent
Are we right to be nostalgic for a time before the internet when we could just read? Katy Waldman, writing for Slate, wonders if we might be misremembering things. I also realize, typing this confession of pathological distractibility, that I may…