Tag Archives: folklore

Patricia A. McKillip’s In the Forests of Serre

Posted on 4th January 2022 by Robert M. Tilendis

Patricia A. McKillip does something in In the Forests of Serre that I don’t think I’ve ever noticed her doing before: there are recognizable elements of traditional folklore in the story. In fact, they are critically important parts of the … Continue reading →

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Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold’s Lord Demon

Posted on 27th October 2020 by Robert

Roger Zelazny is one of the few writers in any genre that I think honestly deserves the sobriquet “visionary.” My first contact with Zelazny was “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in … Continue reading →

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Alex Irvine’s The “Supernatural” Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls

Posted on 8th October 2017 by Robert

I seem to be faced with another one of those television spin-offs, this time from the series Supernatural, about two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester, who hunt demons and other nasty customers not entirely of this world. For those who, … Continue reading →

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Steven Brust’s The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

Posted on 28th July 2017 by Robert

Steven Brust’s The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars is a strangely deceptive novel. It seems, at first, fairly straightforward – a narrative about a group of artists trying to make it, interspersed with sections of a folk tale – … Continue reading →

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Avram Davidson’s Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends

Posted on 21st April 2017 by Diverse Voices

I have had the distinct pleasure through the years of being in line for a number of reissues and new editions of works by some of the great writers of the Golden Age of science fiction and fantasy. Maybe it’s … Continue reading →

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Alex Vernon’s On Tarzan

Posted on 23rd March 2017 by Robert

Tarzan is one of those icons of popular culture that has taken on a resonance that runs from the personal to the mythic. One of the ironies that underlies Alex Vernon’s On Tarzan is that old question that I confront … Continue reading →

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Laura Shamas’ We Three: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters

Posted on 20th December 2016 by Robert

Forest, trees: there is a certain brand of scholarship that tends to focus on minute examinations of trees in the attempt to discover a forest. I am the last to decry the idea of analyzing parts in the hope of … Continue reading →

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Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice’s Greek Street: Cassandra Complex

Posted on 2nd October 2016 by Robert

I’m sure you’ve heard the song “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate. Well, in the case of Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice’s Greek Street, it should go “Brush Up Your Aeschylus.” And Sophocles. And Euripides. Because you’re going … Continue reading →

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Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice’s Greek Street: Blood Calls for Blood

Posted on 2nd October 2016 by Robert

Greek Street: Blood Calls for Blood is the first compilation of the individual numbers of the comic series. It offers another retelling of the Greek myths, translated to the seamy underbelly of a contemporary city — in this case, London’s … Continue reading →

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Josepha Sherman and T.K.F. Weisskopf’s Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood

Posted on 27th February 2016 by Diverse Voices

Pamela Murray Winters contributed this review which ran first on Mostly Folk. It’s been 10 years since I bonded with my new office mate over the issue of a children’s song. It must have been a slow day in the … Continue reading →

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