Barsoom and Mars Life on Mars Percival Lowell’s theory of Martian life and the famous canals of Mars influenced a huge number of science fiction writers. Whether one believed that the canals really were proof of life on the red planet, the theory certainly offered plenty of scope for fiction. read more…
Popular Culture
Episode 5: Canals on Mars
Percival Lowell, Science Fiction, and the Canals on Mars (c) ESO / M. Kornmesser Artist’s impression of Mars about four billion years ago. For as long as humans have been looking at the night sky, the planet Mars has fascinated us. But while astronomers had charted the movements of read more…
Genrefication & Popular Literature [Article]
“Genrefication”? Did you just make that up? Episode 4 of Words To That Effect (listen here) explores the world of popular and literary fiction. One of the ideas that comes up is that of “genrefication”, the concept that the traditional boundaries between “literary” and “genre” (or popular) fiction are read more…
Episode 4: Popular Literature
What is popular literature? Walk into most bookshops and you will find fiction categories like “Crime”, “Science Fiction”, and “Horror”. You will also tend to find a section called “Literature”. But how does a book get placed here? Is there really such a thing as “Literature” (with a capital “L”), read more…
“He’s always going to be the guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes” [Article]
When Authors are Overshadowed by their Creations: A Frankenstein Tale When Dr Victor Frankenstein brings his famous creature to life in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), it is not long before he has lost control of his creation. The creature is bigger, faster, and stronger than his creator and so, when read more…