Dirk Flinthart's Blog, page 10

A Call For Help

I’m a writer. That means I’m articulate, able to put complex ideas into words for my readers. A lot of you reading this are writers too. Some of you are also editors and publishers. We have abilities — in terms of communication — that aren’t available to most people. We need to start using those […]

Why Should High School Students Read William Gibson’s Neuromancer?

I’m orchestrating a study group for advanced readers at the local high school. I’ve encouraged them to tackle Gibson’s famous Neuromancer, and when we’re done with that we’re going on to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. (There are plenty of reasons to put the two texts side by side, so to speak. I’ll leave it […]

End Of An Era.

I’m not one of those who will mythologize their pets, coo and crow over them as if they were children. Mostly, I’ve owned — is that the right word? — cats, but there’s been the odd dog and python in my life too. Currently, my daughter has a rabbit variously referred to as “Buddy”, “Count […]

Battling Giant Monsters — Or Windmills, I Guess.

First, an apology — of sorts. Yes, I’ve been off the air. You see, last year we were supposed to get an NBN (National Broadband Network, for those of you from over the seas) tower in line-of-sight to Chez Flinthart. That would have brought my family into the 21st century, and we were really looking […]

Wrestling Dinosaurs. And a new Night Beast story.

I’m not actually wrestling dinosaurs. It just feels that way. I’m doing a Masters Degree in creative writing, you see. In particular, I’ve been looking into Steampunk. Now, one of the things I wanted to do was incorporate a more-or-less timeline of events and publications in the history of the steampunk genre. The thing is […]

Genre versus Lit

I’ve been thinking a lot about genre and fiction lately… no great surprise, since that’s more or less the topic of my MA. But one of the things that’s come out of the mix of thought, conjecture, research and irritating postmodernist pontification is something of an insight into the process of writing genre-situated fiction. You […]

Language Is Sneakier Than You Might Think.

As promised, I’m going to talk a little bit about the other side of that arts/science divide that I keep seeing. Notice, please, that I’m not going into any particular depth here. I’m just trying to illustrate what I see as a genuine problem: that the people who handle language well aren’t communicating with the […]

Information, Meaning, and the Myth of the Text

I’m going to be uncharacteristically thinky in this post. But to get there, I need to explain a bit. About me, about my brain. I have a degree in science. That doesn’t make me a scientist. It does, however, make me a person interested enough by science to make the effort to understand some of […]

Review: Bloody Waters by Jason Franks. (Possible Press)

In 1987 at what was arguably the height of his run on Marvel Comics X-Men, writer Chris Claremont branched out and tried his hand at producing a novel. Like many people I knew at the time, I enjoyed what Claremont was doing with the X-Characters (he ended up handling a LOT more than just the […]

Review: I, Frankenstein

Eeyyewww. Frankenshit. (Yes. That’s the entire review. The film’s so bad I’m leaving the Italian version of the poster just in case reading the English credits might cause distress.)