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Tag Archives: fantasy fiction
Happy Lord of the Rings Day
I recently started reading a book entitled The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is historical fiction, immaculately detailed, with three excellent protagonists surrounded by a band of almost as admirable allies navigating a middle-era Spain in which three powerful … Continue reading
Happy Lord of the Rings Day
War is on all our minds these days. There is a war happening in Ukraine and something barely resembling a war (because it’s a genocide) in Gaza. Governments have been fond of casting our collective responses – such as they … Continue reading
Lord of the Rings Day
Here’s wishing you a Happy Lord of the Rings Day! (Previous editions: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014.) On this day in the book, Frodo, Sam and Smeagol (with help from Gandalf, Aragon, Gimli, Legolas, Faramir, Eowyn, Theoden, Eomer, Treebeard and … Continue reading
Some good books I read recently
Since January 2020 Read Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin’s Sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko Every Creature Has a Story, Janaki Lenin The Writing Life, Annie Dillard Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist, Frank Close Shoes of the Dead, Kota … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged books, Carmen Maria Machado, Diane Ackerman, fantasy fiction, Helen Lewis, Janaki Lenin, Kota Neelima, Neha Sinha, NK Jemisin
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Lord of the Rings Day
A happy Lord of the Rings Day to you! (Previous editions: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014) Every year I pen a commemorative piece about Lord of the Rings, and share something about the books and films that I think about … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Life notes
Tagged Black Leopard Red Wolf, Deepanjana Pal, Denethor, Discworld, ergodic, fantasy, fantasy fiction, Faramir, Gautam Shenoy, inventiveness, JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson, Supriya Nair, Ted Chiang, Terry Pratchett, Thomas Manuel
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The calculus of creative discipline
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building. World-building is dull. World-building literalises the urge to invent. World-building gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). World-building numbs … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Op-eds
Tagged classical mechanics, creative discipline, critical points, Dan Shechtman, differential calculus, EPR paradox, fantasy fiction, Imre Lakatos, JK Rowling, Karl Popper, literary criticism, M John Harrison, Malazan Book of the Fallen, mathematical analysis, nerdism, Niels Bohr, Paul Feyerabend, Philosophy of Science, quasicrystals, replication crisis, smooth functions, Steven Erikson, Thomas Kuhn, Viriconium, world-building
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Hard sci-fi
Come November, I will be at the Bangalore Literary Festival in conversation with Sri Lankan sci-fi author Navin Weeraratne. I am told Navin – “like you,” according to one of the organisers – is a proponent of hard sci-fi, the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged fantasy fiction, first principles, Gautam Shenoy, hard sci-fi, Navin Weeraratne, science fiction, soft sci-fi
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Happy Lord of the Rings Day!
The Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series exhibited a rabid yet desirable iconoclasm, through which its author Steven Erikson elucidated every trope of epic fantasy and then shit on it. I came out of reading the series feeling like … Continue reading
‘Mantra sciences’ is just poor fantasy
I don’t know how the author of a piece in the Times of India managed to keep a straight face when introducing a school based on Vedic rituals that would “show the way” to curing diseases like cancer. Even the … Continue reading
Some notes and updates
Four years of the Higgs boson, live-tweeting and timezones, new music, and quickly reviewing an Erikson book. Continue reading