And, if you're not sure where to start with Swann, I've got the perfect guide for you:

I FOUND HIM!!! For the last month, I’ve been low-key obsessed with Stephen Pond / Adam Corby, the mysterious author of THE DOOM-QUEST OF ARA-KARN, which could have been the most important fantasy series of the 1980s … had the full thing actually been published. Well, after...

Holy cow. I just realized that an entire 1,000-page biography of Random House (the parent company of Del Rey Books) was published earlier this year. It's called NOTHING RANDOM: BENNETT CERF AND THE PUBLISHING HOUSE HE BUILT, and Christmas has basically come early for me this year.

Saw an appreciative post about Judy-Lynn del Rey on fb ... then someone wrote, "You know, somebody really ought to write a biography." Which is music to my ears, ofc. Incidentally, google now lists my Judy-Lynn article as "highly cited." We're in the big time now, baby. ;)

Frank Herbert's CHILDREN OF DUNE, which reached the Publishers Weekly list -- for one week -- a full two years earlier. Drats!

Well, here's a popular piece of misinformation! I've read multiple sources that said that Anne McCaffrey's THE WHITE DRAGON was the first science fiction novel to reach a bestseller list in hardcover. I just realized that it was the *second*. The first? ...

Yeah, that's what I should have said. (I was trying t o exclude theory stuff.) Somehow elsewhere mentioned Harold Bloom's book on Shakespeare, and stuff like that seems like it would be in the running as well.

are more widely read and cited, but for straight works of lit crit? I can't think of anybody with Shippey's popularity and reach.

So here's an interesting question. Is Tom Shippey's THE ROAD TO MIDDLE-EARTH the most read and/or cited work of literary criticism in the 20th century? I kinda wanna say it is. You could argue that certain books of theory (for instance, Jameson's THE POLITICAL UNCONSCIOUS)...

Well done, Will.

I can't claim credit for this one, but there's now a new diagnosis for university professors who blame themselves for not properly teaching their students to avoid AI: "Slopholm Syndrome."

party like it's 1499!

Ah, sweet! This is the one I decided to teach in my Fantasy Fiction class to introduce the kiddos to S&S. Ended up spurring quite a good discussion.

That's the correct response! You get special blood-and-thunder points for today.

So, uh ...... from a Conan the Barbarian story: "His wild blood had been stirred to its uttermost by all that had passed. He ... crushed her lips with his. She made no resistance; the Devi was drowned in the elemental woman. She closed her eyes and drank in his fierce, hot,...

first-person narrator. The writing is good, but .... ... then I got a single paragraph that combines English, German, and Latin with random references to Buddhist concepts followed the narrator's ruminations on what mode of story he's actually telling: