Goh's The End: Surviving the World through Imagined Disasters—a brilliant and fun exploration of (post)apocalyptic narratives across a range of subgenres and political concerns—is academic in rigor, creative in style, journalistic in accessibility, and activist in energy.
Author: sonofsagan
Watching “No One Will Save You” (2023)
Brian Duffield's directorial debut, No One Will Save You, is a brilliant film that utilizes conventions from several genres, including alien horror and home invasion thrillers, to play out the psychodrama of a character whose isolation and unspoken traumatic past call out for audience identification.
Reading “Redshirts” by John Scalzi
John Scalzi's Redshirts is a sometimes smart, mostly fun, and occasionally critically interesting novel that sits rightfully, and awkwardly, at the center of recent debates about the origin, aesthetics, and political value of so-called "squeecore" genre fiction.
Fall 2023 University Press Recommendations
A curated list of recommended books published by university presses and academic publishers in fall 2023. Recommendations tend toward my own interests and books that I think can help make a better world.
Spring 2023 University Press Recommendations
A curated list of recommended books published by university presses and academic publishers in spring 2023. Recommendations tend toward my own interests and books that I think can help make a better world.
Reading “Shadowdale” by Richard Awlinson [Scott Ciencin] (Forgotten Realms / Avatar 1)
The Forgotten Realms novel Shadowdale marks the beginning of a major event in the franchise's storyworld and, despite it being somewhat of an eye-rolling chore to read, it offers some promising elements for the rest of the series.
Reading “Juniper” by Monica Furlong (Doran 1)
Monica Furlong's Juniper is a beautiful, powerful novel of girlhood and community in ancient Cornwall that transcends its position as middle-grade fiction and demonstrates why Furlong's magical fictions of the ancient Celtic world, told from the perspective of women's experiences, deserve another look.
Fall 2022 University Press Recommendations
A curated list of recommended books published by university presses and academic publishers in fall 2022. Recommendations tend toward my own interests and books that I think can help make a better world.
You Want to Work in Academic Publishing: What Next?
This is a guide to thinking about the transition to working in academic publishing for academics, designed especially for graduate students and recent postdocs looking to move out of the tenure-track-or-bust rat race.
Reading “Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey” by Gordon Doherty
Gordon Doherty's novelization of the Assassin's Creed: Odyssey video game wonderfully demonstrates everything aesthetically and narratively wrong with so much franchise fiction.
