Emily Strand, with whom I co-edited Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away and Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier (both from Vernon Press in 2023), is a cosplayer and costumer extraordinaire. Check out her latest essay!
A Defense of Dressing Like a Bad Guy
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In my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast, I discuss Library of America’s recent “Back to The Future Is Female!” event and some of the works of science fiction related to it.
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Soon, very soon, Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier (2023) will have a sibling: Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away (2023).
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Dark Academia novel: All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth (2018)
Quote:
There was a story on campus about a student who had died many years ago—so long ago that no one remembered anymore what his name was or how he had died exactly, but there were reports every now and again of a sighting of his ghost. Some said he’d hanged himself in the showers of the senior boys’ dormitory over a broken heart; others said he’d overdosed on pills and fallen into an eternal slumber in his dorm bed over a failing exam grade. It was bad luck if you saw him, a harbinger of terrible things to come. Bryce Langston had reported seeing the ghost on his way home from the library one night. The next morning, he got a rejection letter from Harvard. Everyone had thought he would be a shoo-in, and he hadn’t even gotten on the waiting list. The next year, Amanda King supposedly saw the ghost right before she got in a fatal car accident. I always thought about the ghost when I was walking around campus at night by myself. I imagined seeing a white smear in the corner of my vision, but every time I turned my head, there was nothing there.
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I had a fantastic time talking with brilliant hosts Ashley Thomas and Mike Slamer of the WE ARE STARFLEET podcast about the new anthology STAR TREK: ESSAYS EXPLORING THE FINAL FRONTIER, which I co-edited with Emily Strand. Thanks so much for a wonderful chat! 🖖
Listen to the episode here.
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Dark Academia novel: A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid (2023)
Quote:
And Effy had walked right into the center of it, into this sinking house at the edge of the world…. When Effy was able to move her numb legs again, she ran down the stairs and hurled herself out the door, into the blackness of the night, heart pounding like church bells. She was not afraid of the ghost. But she was horribly, wretchedly afraid of whatever had killed the woman it had once been.
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Dark Academia novel: Don’t Forget the Girl by Rebecca McKanna (2023)
From the cover:
We never remember the dead girls. We never forget the killers.
Quote:
Sometimes it seems like an answer – any answer – to what happened to Abby that night is what Bree needs to move on.
… for one second, she sees the moment in exact detail: Abby crying under the statue of the Black Angel in her Hermione Halloween costume, snowflakes collecting on her coppery hair. Chelsea and Bree watching her, not putting their arms around her, letting her walk away. Her footprints in the snow leading down that blacktop path. The last trace of her they ever saw.
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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Speculating about our AI Future with Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells. After registering
This promises to be a terrific online event! Thursday, January 11, 2024.
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Book Review - Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier
Thanks to Jarrah Hodge and Women at Warp for this in-depth review of our new book Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier!
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Dark Academia novel: The Sea of Lost Girls by Carol Goodman (2020)
Quote:
Every year the coast guard holds an assembly about the dangers of crossing the causeway that only seems to increase its appeal.
When I get out of the car I can hear the dense pines that stand sentinel over the peninsula creaking in the salt-laced wind… and something else.
A sound like a girl crying.
I freeze and listen. It could just be the wind in the trees or the mournful sigh of the tide retreating over the rocks below the coastal path, but then, peering through the fog, I catch a glimpse of something white that looks like a girl running… I remember the ghosts who are said to haunt these woods.
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Dark Academia novel: The Ravens by Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige (2020)
From the cover:
These sorority girls are real witches.
Quote:
That was when she noticed the single tarot card positioned nearly at the head of her bare mattress, as if placed there by a careful hand.
It was the Death card her mother had given her.
The skeleton leered up at her with a gruesome smile, and for a moment, it almost looked like the eyes glowed red. Vivi shivered, despite knowing that it was a trick of the light. I told you. Westerly isn’t a safe place, not for people like you…
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ACAFANS: The Rigorous Study of Star Wars
It was a delight to join my co-editor Emily Strand to talk about our new anthology Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away with Josh of Trash Compactor: A Star Wars Podcast.
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I’m delighted to share that both of my co-edited academic anthologies with Vernon Press are now available: STAR TREK: ESSAYS EXPLORING THE FINAL FRONTIER and STAR WARS: ESSAYS EXPLORING A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY.
They are both available at major bookstores and can be requested via libraries in hardcover or ebook formats. The coupon code CFC10822213C4 provides a 24% “new release!” discount for both at the Vernon Press website.
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Vernon Press - Authors
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Everyone is invited on September 9 at noon Eastern for this free online event hosted by the The Digital Cultural Studies Cooperative!
Join us for a Book Talk with the editors of the new anthology STAR WARS: ESSAYS EXPLORING A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY. We’ll be joined by the co-editors and contributors to discuss this exciting collection of essays that offer a compelling new take on the familiar and not-so-familiar corners of the Star Wars universe and media megatext.
Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away | Book Launch
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Interview: New collection of Star Wars essays informs and inspires
Many thanks to Eric Clayton and Dork Side of the Force for sharing this kind review of — and interview with my co-editor Emily Strand and me about — our new anthology of essays on Star Wars!
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My latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment is the first of a two-part review of the anthology AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines, edited by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. It’s now up on the new episode of the StarShipSofa podcast.
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Current mood: listening to Shirley Jackson’s daughter sing the murder ballad “The Grattan Murders,” which appears in Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House, as her mother sang it to her.
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It’s almost October, which means it’s almost time to start my annual re-reading of one of my all-time favorite books, A NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER by Roger Zelazny. With 31 chapters, one for each day of the month, it is a fantastic mash-up of creepy seasonal goodness wrapped into a compelling story, a kind of literary advent calendar for Halloween.
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