I continue holidaying, and thus write only now and then. Here’re four things to occupy yourself with.
- Music. Kristoph Klover, Fire in the Sky. A piece of filk or sf/f folk music. Prometheus they say, brought gods’ fire down to men, and we’ve got it tamed and trained since our history began, and soon we’re returning the fire to the skies with Apollo flights. The only better filk performance that I, with my admittedly amateur knowledge of the subject, know of, is Tom Smith singing Hope Eyrie, also a song of Apollo, of all the things courage can do.
- Book. The New Shadow, or ten pages of an sequel for the Lord of the Rings, in the Peoples of Middle-Earth, the final part of the unfinished and/or abandoned writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Just ten pages, but… ah, Tolkien himself said that tale would have been just a thriller in the Fourth Age, but what a thriller it would have been! A sinister name, philosophical debate, rumors of a Satanic sect, orc-deeds and deviltry in Gondor!
- Music. Pandora’s Box (the band), Original Sin (the album, 1989), Good Girls Go to Heaven (a track on it). Jim Steinman’s girl group with their only disc, and one of its best tracks. And Youtube has it! The same is better known as sung by Meat Loaf — but it’s much better, and that’s a lot, when sung by women. Besides, says the freethinker in me, it’s hard to not hum to good girls go to heaven, but the bad girls go everywhere!
- Book. Melinda Snodgrass, The Edge of Reason. An atheistic book of fantasy! Jesus Christ-Allah-Yahweh as a foul-mouthed bum! Lucifer-Prometheus as a hero! Better background philosophy than any novel I’ve ever read! A flap quote comparing it to Illuminatus! and the Golden Compass! Impossible to resist! Exceedingly exclamation-mark-worthy! Good fun! Still reading it, but I dare to recommend it already.
