By: Lauri Lu,
on 8/13/2016
August 13th marks the 150th birth and the 70th death anniversary of legendary science fiction writer H.G. Wells. A prophet of modern progress, he accurately predicted several historical advancements, from the World War II, nuclear weapons, to Wikipedia.
The post The life and work of H.G. Wells: a timeline appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/28/2015
In Kieron Gillen’s talk on Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, Gillen emphasizes themes of time and cyclicality present in Moore’s graphic novel. Temporal symbolism recurs in everything from the Doomsday clock interstitials between chapters to Rorschach’s ever-shifting face to Dr. Manhattan’s past as the son of a watchmaker. Gillen, working alongside artist Jamie McKelvie, colorist Matt Wilson, and letterer Clayton Cowles, emphasizes similar themes of cyclicality in the Eisner-nominated series The Wicked + The Divine.
The work is shaping up to be a structural masterpiece in the vein of Watchmen and the conclusion to the series’ second arc, Fandemonium, releases next week. In honor of this, I’d like to take a moment to explore some of the recurring elements of the series that reexamine where we’ve been and clue us into the future of the series.
The premiere arc of the series is lovingly titled The Faust Act. In it, the team establishes Laura, who is our muggle POV character, and the majority of the gods present for the 2014 Recurrence. Ultimately, we see one of those gods abruptly exit stage left. The source of this arc’s name comes from Christopher Marlowe’s 16th century play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus. In the work, Faustus makes a deal with the devil Mephistopheles: infinite knowledge in exchange for eternal damnation. Throughout the play, Faustus reveals himself to be hapless despite receiving near-infinite power. Mephistopheles dances around the philosophical questions that Faustus poses to him and Faust spends the rest of his time conducting pointless experiments. He is ultimately damned despite begging for salvation.
This basically summarizes Lucifer’s arc in The Faust Act. She receives the gift of godhood and then wastes it by wasting two assassins who couldn’t kill her anyways. Ultimately, she is executed despite begging for forgiveness. While it is clear that Luci killed her assassins, debate has raged within and outside of the text as to whether or not Luci killed the judge that tried her for her crimes. After issue ten revealed that there was no link between the death of the judge and the attempt on Luci’s life, I decided to go back and look for some textual (or should it be panel) evidence that points to the identity of the judge’s killer. I keep coming back to these two pages:
I don’t believe that the WicDiv team is making this connection for giggles. I think Luci killed the judge. In issue 10, David Blake, the organizer of a Pantheon studies convention called Ragnarock, tells Laura that “we’ll never know for sure” who committed the crime, and I’m inclined to believe that that means Team WicDiv won’t ever give us a firm answer to the question. They want us to speculate, and it would certainly fit the Faustian trope if Luci were the catalyst for her own demise. The excerpted page from the first issue symbolizes her sealing her damnation, and the page from the fifth issue represents her begging for salvation.
Why would she do this to herself? Well, throughout the series, we see several gods perform. Amaterasu, Baphomet, The Morrigan, and most recently, Urdr. We never see Luci perform, but during her imprisonment, she feeds Laura this line:
What if Luci’s tragic story was her performance, and The Faust Act her stage? Her guiding principle throughout the comic is freedom, but at the end of the first issue, she allows herself to be arrested. There’s no reason why a few human police should be able to arrest a miracle maker. Later on, Luci demonstrates as much by melting through her holding cell as though it were made of wax. Luci is in control of everything throughout The Faust Act. Everything except for the inevitability of her death.
When Luci becomes a god, the spiritual guide of the gods, Ananke, tells Luci that she will be dead within two years. All the gods will. That’s the cruel joke of the Recurrence: you get the freedom to do anything except stave off your rapidly approaching death. It’s the ultimate encroachment upon one’s freedom, and the only way Luci can see to cheat the inevitable and reclaim that freedom is to die on her own terms. Getting arrested, killing the judge, breaking out of prison, and getting killed were the acts of Lucifer’s performance, and it inspires gods and men alike.
Speaking of cruel jokes, this is the cover of issue one transitioning into the issue’s first page…MCKELVIEEEEEEEEEEE!
Towards the end of The Faust Act, Luci gives Laura a cigarette. After Luci’s death, Laura snaps her fingers like a god, and is amazed to watch the cigarette light. Throughout the second arc, we’ve watched Laura snap her fingers constantly, trying to recreate the magic and take her place as a god. However, when Cassandra is revealed to be the twelfth god, that door is closed to Laura forever. It seems, as this interstitial puts it, that The Wicked + The Divine is:
I love the ambiguous pronoun game.
One of the most common criticisms I’ve heard levied against Wic+Div is that Laura, ostensibly the series’ main character, doesn’t actually get much to do. She’s standing, dumbfounded, in the spotlight while all the gods are throwing fireballs and resurrecting people in the wings behind her. To some extent, this is true. Laura isn’t a protagonist in this series like Dream was in The Sandman. However, this is also the point. She’s not there to inspire. She’s there to be inspired. The first two arcs of the story take place over six short months, and Laura is already a dramatically different person. Check out these two layouts:
In the first chapter, Laura is starstruck. Luci is a capital G-O-D god. Laura looks up at Luci as she takes her hand and is led into a world beyond her and the reader’s imagination. She’s dressed up as Amaterasu and actively seeks to become someone else. By the time the fifth issue rolls around, Laura’s no longer hiding. She isn’t playing at being a god. She’s a friend of the gods. Instead of looking up to them, she sees their flaws, and thus is portrayed above Luci.
At one point, Baal makes a telling statement:
The gods don’t change the world. They only appear every 90 years and disappear after two. The gods empower regular people like Laura, and people like her–people like us change the world. Laura doesn’t “do” much because she’s still in the process of being born. As long as the gods are here, her actions will always be visually trumped by the flashy powers of the Pantheon. However, even without powers, she’s managed to drive a great deal of the action in the series and inspire a lot of people. Even David Blake, who once said that she’s “learned so little that [her] opinion is pretty much void,” turns around by the end of the second arc and admits that he was wrong.
Gillen’s writer’s notes on the first issue serve as a piece of extratextual evidence that supports this reading of Laura. In his blog post, he writes that Laura’s name is inspired by the eponymous Bat For Lashes song.
Some choice lines include:
People may hate on Laura, but she is the key to understanding The Wicked + The Divine because she’s going to be the last woman standing at the end of the series. She didn’t inherit the spirit of the gods. She’s inheriting something better: the Promethean gift of their knowledge. What’s left to be seen is what she does with that gift, but I have some ideas…
Ananke utters the same words at the end of the 1920s recurrence and as Cassandra takes her place as Urdr, the last god needed to complete the 2014 pantheon. Ananke is focused on the positive elements of cyclicality in these scenes, looking forward to the future and the beginning of the Recurrence cycles. She neglects to mention the end of the statement.
Once again we return
In two years, her children will be dead. Again. She doesn’t say it, but the sentiment is revealed on her face as she watches the last of the 1920s pantheon die. Interestingly, although Ananke is the constant and undying element of necessity that persists between pantheons, she seems to have aged dramatically over the past 90 years. Now granted, she wasn’t exactly starring in Dove commercials in 1923 (I can’t think of a contemporary joke, sue me), but the last century seems to have worn her down and given her more wrinkles than the time stream of Looper. She says as much in an interview with Cassandra:
Now, this is pretty foreboding. When Laura visits Valhalla for the first time in issue four, one of the major reasons why the other gods won’t help end Luci’s imprisonment is because it could mean the end of all Recurrences. Forever. As Ananke says:
Superficially, one could say that Ananke fears that humans will literally kill the gods. Now, as has been demonstrated time and time again (bullets curve around gods), this is exceedingly difficult. However, what if humans simply stopped believing in the gods’ ability to inspire? Ananke says that the “inspiration will leave the world forever” without the gods, but can she back up that statement? The years have worn on Ananke and the 2014 Recurrence is not going well. Perhaps the fault for that doesn’t lie with any of the gods. Perhaps mankind simply doesn’t need them anymore. To quote Nietzsche (which is always a good idea, I promise):
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers…must we ourselves not become gods…?”
Now, this is the point in the article where analysis-based hypothesizing becomes almost pure extrapolation and guesswork, so be warned. However, I think The Wicked + The Divine is showing us the last Recurrence ever. In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, the author plays with the idea that gods are powered by the strength of human belief. They exist only as long as people need them to. If Team WicDiv is drawing from this particular school of thought, then we could be witnessing the last recurrence ever because the cycle of rebirth has run out its usefulness. The gods were originally created to “light the spark” that allows mankind to beat back an oppressive darkness and begin the construction of civilization. Civilization was constructed. Civilization has lasted. The recurrence is a cycle, a circle, a set of training wheels for mankind. Now it’s time for them to come off. We are witnessing the end of the era of gods as men and the beginning of the era of mankind as gods. Who might lead mankind towards that era? Why, Laura of course.
Let’s look back at Laura grasping Luci’s hand in issue five:
Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam is probably one of the most famous paintings in the world. God, on the right, is about the breathe life into Adam, the first man, on the left. Laura, on the right, gives strength to Luci on the left. Laura is the god in this allusive panel. She is the person, “rare and blessed,” who can hear everything that “all the gods have to say,” which makes her the perfect leader for humanity when they’re gone.
How the Recurrence will end and the identity of the ultimate “darkness” that threatens civilization has yet to be seen, but I’m interested to know what you all think of the postulations above. Let me know in the comments or tweet @waxenwings.
As a final thought and not to take away from the gravitas of this moment, but I think it’s funny that Laura’s still wearing a coat in issue 9 even though it’s almost July. Girl is frigid.
By: Linda Aksomitis,
on 12/19/2014
Ebook sales–will they remain stable, go up, or as […]
The post Three Predictions for eBook Sales in 2015 appeared first on aksomitis.com.
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By: bookkm,
on 3/13/2013
I have not read tomorrow's contestants in The Battle of the Kids' Books. They are Endangered! by Eliot Schrefer and Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage. The judge is Kathi Appelt.
Unfortunately for me, the two largest public libraries close to me do not own Endangered! Yeah! I know! It's a National Book Award Finalist, for golly sakes! They both own Three Times Lucky, but obviously the word is out that this is an awesome book because it is on hold at my hometown library and out at the "other" library.
(And, with huge apologies to all the booksellers out there who do such awesome work keeping literature alive, I only buy books that I have learned to love. It's a cheapster thing.)
So I have read a few reviews and I have investigated the judge. And, even though I am totally unqualified to make a prediction, I will! I predict that the small-town girl will beat out the orphaned chimpanzee.
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| Who can resist a message in a bottle? |
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| He looks so frightened. I want to save him, myself. |
By: bookkm,
on 3/12/2013
Over at Battle of the Kids' Books, Bomb has (insert your explosion related verb here) to victory! I have already used one incendiary pun. I can not in good conscience use more.
I had a sneaking suspicion that this would happen but since I have not even been able to get a look at the cover of the winning title, I could not make a reliable prediction. I WANT to read this book.
(Person, who is reading it from my local library, please return it, NOW. Waiting is hard.)
NOTE TO SELF: MAKE VACATION PLANS - WORLD IS SAFE
After reading doomsday scenarios - I'm big on these - it's a relief to read that the 2012 Mayan cataclysmic end-of-the-world scenario has been cancelled. At least according to a new textbook "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" (Oxbow Books, 2010). As much as this news is a relief, there is no correction or re-prediction of when the end will come.
According to the critique which I haven't read, the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar could be off as much as 50 to 100 years. Good. Still time to place my bets in Vegas. Since the Mayan calendar ended in 2012, earthlings interpreted this as an omen or indication that our time was up on planet earth.
In an article published on the Live Science site: ( http://www.livescience.com/culture/mayan-apocalypse-miscalculated-calendar-101018.html) "the Mayan calendar was converted to today's Gregorian calendar using a calculation called the GMT constant, named for the last initials of three early Mayanist researchers. Much of the work emphasized dates recovered from colonial documents that were written in the Mayan language in the Latin alphabet, according to the chapter's author, Gerardo Aldana, University of California, Santa Barbara professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies."
Later, the GMT constant was bolstered by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury, who used data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanac that charts dates relative to the movements of Venus. There is a further explanation focusing on the rationale for reaching this conclusion in the Live Science piece.
Over the years and centuries, there have been numerous end-of-world predictions, obviously all of which have not panned out. The James Randi Educational Foundation, a non-profit organization, "aims to promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas so widespread in our society today." The Foundation offers a $1,000,000 prize to any person or persons who can demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind under mutually agreed upon scientific conditions. This prize money is held in a special account which cannot be accessed for any purpose other than the awarding of the prize.
The site features an impressive list of end-of-world prophecies that have failed over the centuries. For example:
- October 3, 1533, at Eight A.M. Mathematician and Bible student Michael Stifel (known as Stifelius) had calculated an exact date and time for Doomsday from scholarly perusal of the Book of Revelation. When they did not vaporize, the curiously ungrateful citizens of the German town of Lochau, where Stifel had announced the dreaded day, rewarded him with a thorough flogging. He also lost his ecclesiastical living as a result of his prophetic failure.
- 1665 With the Black Plague in full force, Quaker Solomon Eccles terrorized the citizens of London yet further with his declaration that the resident pestilence was merely the beginning of The End. He was arrested and jailed when the plague began to abate rather than increasing. Eccles fled to the West Indies upon his release from prison, whereupon he once again exercised his zeal for agitation by inciting the slaves there to revolt. The Crown fetched him back home as a troublemaker, and he died shortly thereafter.
- October 13, 1736 London was once again targeted for the "beginning of the end," this time by William Whiston. The Thames filled with waiting boatloads of citizens, but it didn't even rain. Another setback.
There is a whole list of failed appocolyptic prognostications listed on the
Caldecott predictions already? But, Susan, it's only August.
Yes, I know. But 2010 has been such a fantastic year for picture books that I want to get my predictions in early, before everyone else starts making them. I've seen one beautiful, poignant, funny, wonderful book after another.
Where to start? Here are some of the ones that have stood out from the crowd for me.
There's the beautiful and touching City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Williams, with amazing watercolor illustrations by John Muth.
There's the funny and spunky Dotty by Erica Perl, illustrated by Julia Denos.
There's Feeding the Sheep by Leda Schubert with wonderful text and exuberant pictures by Andrea U'ren. (Don't write this one off as just another "how something is made" book.)
There's the endearing and deceptively simple How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Hills. (See my review here.)
But, I'm afraid that these books (along with a few others) are going to have to slug it out to see which ones get Caldecott honors.
Because this one blows them all away.
I can hear a question forming on your lips. It sounds something like this:<
By: Rebecca,
on 8/24/2007
A thought for your Friday courtesy of Def Poetry Jam and the wonderful poet Idris Goodwin.
By: Rebecca,
on 7/27/2007
Our second Buffalo installation today is by James Honzik. Turn on the sound!
By: Michele Fry,
on 4/29/2007
I popped into an actual bricks-and-mortar bookstore yesterday (I don't visit them often these days since I get dozens of free books to read and review through the mail, or else I empty the library of their books !) to get a book for someone, and I ended up having a conversation about what I think will happen in the final HP book - the bookseller had a poster up saying "How will it end?" My response of "In death, mayhem and tears" was met with a look of shock from the young bookseller. I then proceeded to make some detailed predictions - and I thought I'd post them here, for future reference - and to invite responses from anyone else who wants to join the Predictions "game" - or argue with me over my predictions (*grins*)
1 - Voldemort will be finally defeated, but Harry won't be responsible for killing him. Peter Pettigrew (Wormtail) probably will be involved in defeating Voldeort, thereby repaying his debt to Harry for saving his life in The Prisoner of Azkaban.)
2 - Harry, Ron and Hermione will all live. And Harry is NOT a Horcrux...
3 - Percy and Fred & George Weasley may all die, Percy after belatedly realising his parents were right about the Ministry of Magic and making a foolish sacrifice.
4 - Snape will die protecting/saving Harry, thereby proving Dumbledore's faith in him was not misguided.
5 - Draco will redeem himself or be rehabilitated, without necessarily joining the side of the Good.
6 - Aberforth Dumbledore, barman at the Hog's Head, will be discovered to have the missing Slytherin Locket that's one of the remaining Horcruxes. (Mundungus was caught by Harry with a lot of stuff from Sirius' house in Hogsmeade and he's known to frequent the Hog's Head pub in Hogsmeade.)
7 - Neville Longbottom may die.
I'm going to be reading Who Killed Albus Dumbledore?
By: Rebecca,
on 4/17/2007
James McCune Smith was one of the foremost black intellectuals in America, 
the first to receive a medical degree and the most educated African American before W. E. B. Du Bois. McCune Smith publicly advocated the use of “black” rather than “colored” as a self-description and he, like James Weldon Johnson and other successors, treated racial identities as social constructions and argued that American literature, music, and dance would be shaped and defined by blacks.
John Stauffer, the editor of The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, has organized McCune Smith’s writings around genre and chronology. Stauffer, along with three other distinguished historians will discuss Smith’s life, work, and legacy at The New York Historical Society on Wednesday, April 18th at 6:30 pm. Below is a video from The Historical Society’s current exhibition “New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War.” The video is of letters written by McCune Smith read by the actor Danny Glover. (more…)
A small note, but I think you’re wrong about Luci killing the judge. The snap shows that her hand is closed, without a pointed finger. It shouldn’t therefore have had any direction, any motive force or vector. All the other instances — certainly in your mirrored example from chapter 5 — the pointer finger is the vector. If Luci did kill the judge, it really would have been a cosmic accident and not her intent. And I can’t believe that there would be so much subsequent investigation as to who really did it for it all to be a red herring. I hope I’m not wrong.