I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed. New Girl tries to be many things: a situational comedy about what it’s like being the only female roommate; a PG-rated version of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia; a will-they-won’t-they romantic comedy, featuring three guys; a representation of a school teacher amidst millennial doomer culture. On many of these fronts, I think it succeeds. For instance, New Girl plants Jess in the lives of…
In many ways, Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash reads as though it’s describing the modern-day. It has business franchises spreading like viruses, mafia-controlled mega-corporations, boats of refugees lashed together and fighting to escape their homeland while the West tries to push them back into the ocean. The unrelenting presence of capitalism grips each page of the novel. Hiro delivers pizzas for the Mafia with the skill of a getaway…
The judge presiding over the courtroom massages his temples. He’s old. Old enough to have seen it all before, so the skin on his face moves easily under his fingertips. “The plaintiff will present their case,” he says with a nod to me. I stand, spilling paperwork from the table as I hurry to rise. “Your honour,” I begin. “The Arctic Monkeys have committed a terrible crime. Not a crime…
Telling a narrative through song is by no means a recent invention. In fact, one could argue the original purpose of both songs and poetry, in a pre-paper world, was to convey stories and information in a way that would be more readily remembered by the listener. Recently, however, I’ve noticed a lyrical gem tucked away in several songs I enjoy (where storytelling is the focus). I’m not educated enough…
Credit to Star Trek: The Next Generation | Season 4 Episode 25: In Theory (Written by Joe Menosky & Ronald D. Moore). In Theory is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which has been relatively panned by critics. To be fair, it’s an episode of Star Trek with zero exploration. Not only that, but it’s a romantic episode, without any romance. Despite these flaws, however, I continue to…
I have only read one story by E. M. Forster, the author who also wrote the novel Passage to India. However, The Machine Stops has quickly cemented itself as one of my favourite stories. In fact, it was one of the pieces of fiction that inspired me to begin this blog. Forster’s writing is emotive, and in many ways disarmingly prophetic. He penned the story in 1928, and in it…
A Prelude to Star Wars Fiction Throughout my lifetime I’ve perhaps read forty or fifty books based in George Lucas’s Star Wars universe. This literary canon spanned a few hundred years of fictional history (until it was jettisoned by Disney executives), with several long-running series planned out by some seminal authors. Of these, it was the X-Wing series that I most adored. Let me pitch them to you: these books…
