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Totally Not a Course on Bigfoot
Via the Idaho State Journal:
In the upcoming semester, Idaho State University professor Jeff Meldrum will be teaching an experimental course titled The Relict Hominoid Inquiry. Part of that inquiry will address scientific theories on Bigfoot, alongside other links in the human evolutionary chain.
“It’s not a course about Bigfoot,” Meldrum said. “What I’m trying to do is address a shift in perception that’s been gaining traction in the anthropological community.”
That shift involves looking at human evolution as a tree in which scientists are discovering new branches all the time.
“Each year it seems like there are more discoveries,” Meldrum said. “The phylogeny is becoming bushier and bushier.”
The theory is that offshoots of human evolution are recent and could still exist, roaming the earth undiscovered. Therein lies the course’s connection to Bigfoot. Discussion about the Yeti is also referenced in the course syllabus.
Annalee Newitz’s Review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Remember when Peter Jackson announced he was splitting J.R.R. Tolkien’s slim volume The Hobbit into three movies? Even with Jackson’s OCD attention to detail, that seemed too much — and the entire internet worried that it would be all bloat and no heart. Well, the internet was right, at least about the third movie.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies has none of the character-building moments, nor the sense of grim forboding, that made The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug the best of this trilogy. Like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, it’s incredibly uneven, often pointless, and full of fight scenes that lack any sense of gravitas because they are so emotionally decontextualized. Ultimately the problem here isn’t the acting or directing. It’s quite simply one of the most clearcut cases I’ve ever seen of a trilogy that failed because it should have been a single movie.
Personally, I’m holding out for a fan-edit that pares the whole thing down to the single movie it should have been from the beginning.
Warfare in Iron Age Britain
Looking ahead to some plot points in later books in my Into the Wonder series, I’ve needed a bit of background on ancient tribal warfare that could be tweaked into something suitable for armies of Fair Folk. I’ll definitely be looking at Sue Carter’s thoughts on Warfare in Iron Age Britain preserved at the Celtic Myth Podshow blog.
History Makes Fantasy Cool
So Nicole Singer at Fantasy Faction:
I’m a history major at heart, so one of the things I love seeing in fantasy is how authors draw on real-world history to fuel their worlds. Whether it be historical events, people or cultures, it always keeps me intrigued. Fantasy, perhaps more so than any genre besides historical fiction, has a chance to delve into history, play with it, and make it a powerful factor in storytelling. Here are some of my favorite examples of how history gets woven into science-fiction and fantasy.
Another aspect of history-within-fantasy that I especially enjoy is the “secret history” trope. In worlds with some sort of “masquerade,” where wizards, vampires, gods, or whatever are secretly walking among us, what additional insight could they shed on the history we think we know? What really happened in Siberia in 1908? Who really built Stonehenge, and why?
One example of this is found in Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels, where Bram Stoker’s Dracula was actually commissioned by a group of vampires in order to undermine a rival group by exposing all their weaknesses. Though not strictly fantasy, just about every episode of the TV show Quantum Leap revealed the protagonist interacting with real-world history in surprising and entertaining ways.
What do you think? How else can fantasy make history cool?
How to Find a Book in a Medieval Library
According to medievalist Erik Kwakkel, they used a sort of low-tech GPS system:
A book was tagged with a unique identifier (a shelfmark) that was entered into a searchable database (a library catalogue), which could subsequently be consulted with a handheld device (a portable version of the catalogue).
And now I want one.
Irish Fairy Tales
Irish Fairy Tales by Edmund Leary is now available in the public domain. According to the Celtic Myth Podshow,
The author of the tales contained in this volume was one of the brightest and most poetic spirits who have appeared in Ireland in the last half century. It is needless to say that he was also one of the most patriotic Irishmen of his generation–patriotic in the highest and widest sense of that term, loving with an ardent love his country, its people, its historic traditions, its hills and plains, its lakes and streams, its raths and mounds. Like all men of his type, he lived largely in the past, and his fancy revelled much in fairy scenes of childhood and youth. So reads the introduction to this book, originally published in 1906 and containing some great Fairy Tales.
You can read or download Irish Fairy Tales at Project Gutenberg.
Faeries and Folklore, Part Three
Leo Elijah Cristea’s third post on Faeries and Folklore at Fantasy Faction discusses some famous faeries from folklore and literature.
A New Coptic Spellbook
Coptic isn’t exactly “Ancient Egyptian,” as it is called in this Atlas Obscura post title, but this is still an interesting development. A Coptic spellbook from the 7th or 8th century AD has recently been translated into English.
Researchers in Australia have decoded an Ancient Egyptian ritual codex containing spells to cure demonic possession, treat black jaundice, and find success in business and love. The complete 20-page illustrated parchment booklet, thought date to the 7th or 8th century, contains 27 spells and “a lengthy series of invocations that culminate with drawings and words of power.” The translation, by Macquarie University professors Malcolm Choat and Iain Gardner, is called “A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power.”
According to the publishers,
This volume publishes a new Coptic handbook of ritual power, comprising a complete 20 page parchment codex from the second half of the first millennium AD. It consists of an invocation including both Christian and Gnostic elements, ritual instructions, and a list of twenty-seven spells to cure demonic possession, various ailments, the effects of magic, or to bring success in love and business. The codex is not only a substantial new addition to the corpus of magical texts from Egypt, but, in its opening invocation, also provides new evidence for Sethian Gnostic thought in Coptic texts.
Sadie Kane, call your office!
In Praise of Beta Readers
Julian Saheed praises beta readers as the unsung heroes of literature, and I heartily agree!
Beta readers are there to take a look at our story from the viewpoint of our consumers. They take a much broader look at our writing and provide us with feedback on themes, plots, character development and interactions. They explain to us how our story made them feel, at which points they cried, at which points they laughed. Most importantly, they tell us what they did not like. Their feedback is provided from the mindset of a reader, not the mindset of an editor, whose approach is much more technical. This is precious feedback. Feedback that can help you avoid displeasure in your fans, something we all strive towards.
The Fairy Investigation Society
I may have to check these folks out. I’ll definitely be taking their online survey of faery beliefs.
The Fairy Investigation Society (FIS) was founded in 1927 by a British man named Quentin Crauford. Attracting mostly Theosophists who believed that fairies were elemental beings, the Society continued sporadically through the 20th century until finally disappearing in the 1990s.
In 2013 the Society was re-booted by Simon Young, an English historian living in Italy. While membership in the original Society was limited to people who believed in fairies, the current society is open to “all those who have an interest in fairylore, be they believers or ultra skeptics.” I’m proud to be a member myself!
Darrell J. Pursiful 