Booklist has weighed in with a starred review of my Horror Literature through History: The fan and the scholar alike will find much of use in this fun, well-organized two-volume reference set. Cardin (Mummies around the World, 2014) looks at horror literature with the broadest lens possible, considering not just its history but also its…
Author: Matt Cardin
Teeming Brain founder and editor Matt Cardin is the author of DARK AWAKENINGS, DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP, A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO THE INNER GENIUS, and TO ROUSE LEVIATHAN. He is also the editor of BORN TO FEAR: INTERVIEWS WITH THOMAS LIGOTTI and the academic encyclopedias MUMMIES AROUND THE WORLD; GHOSTS, SPIRITS, AND PSYCHICS: THE PARANORMAL FROM ALCHEMY TO ZOMBIES; and HORROR LITERATURE THROUGH HISTORY.
Brilliant: This one-minute short film about a prepper’s dream coming true
This one-minute film by neophyte French filmmaker Gaspar Palacio is just brilliant. And I don’t use that word lightly. It’s like a master class in cinematic microfiction. Here’s how Palacio describes it at Vimeo: The one minute tale of a survivalist. When the siren rings in the distance, a family has to get inside the…
My interview for This Is Horror – Part Two
Here’s the second and final part of my recent interview for the This Is Horror podcast. Co-hosts Michael David Wilson and Bob Pastorella conducted the whole thing skillfully, so hats off to them. Readers who have followed the saga of the birth of Horror Literature through History may be especially interested to hear that I…
“Matt Cardin on Horror and Spirituality, Thomas Ligotti, and Alan Watts” – An interview for the This Is Horror podcast
I was recently interviewed by the good folks at This Is Horror for their popular podcast. Here’s the result, published today as the first of two parts. The conversation with TIH mastermind Michael David Wilson and co-host Bob Pastorella turned out to be extremely wide-ranging. We talked about my Horror Literature through History encyclopedia plus…
Horror encyclopedia updates: An interview at Rue Morgue, a positive review from Kirkus
Today Rue Morgue magazine published an interview with me at their website. It basically serves as an online supplement to their recent feature story about Horror Literature through History in the print magazine. Here’s a taste: What is the primary aim and purpose of this book? To quote from the publisher’s description, which is of…
Teeming Links – Halloween 2017 Edition
3D illustration by Quince Media During the past couple of years, I haven’t had any time to pull together the expansive lists of links to recommended reading that I used to post here regularly. This situation may continue for some time. But in honor of the current Halloween holiday, here are some recently published…
“Horror Literature through History” an unexpected Amazon bestseller
Much to my surprise, a two-volume encyclopedia priced for institutional purchase by academic and public libraries has become a bestseller at Amazon. I don’t know the actual sales figures, and I’m sure they’re pretty small in terms of absolute numbers, since the book’s category (the history and criticism of horror and supernatural literature) is a…
Your smartphone is built to hijack and harvest your mind
At the beginning of each semester I tell my students the very thing that journalist Zat Rana gets at in a recent article for Quartz when I deliver a mini-sermon about my complete ban on phones — and also, for almost all purposes, laptops — in my classroom. A smartphone or almost any cell phone…
The tragedy of Rome and the farce of America
I’m confident that what follows is the best paragraph I’ll read this week. I daresay it may be the best one you’ll read, too. Unsurprisingly, it’s from James Howard Kunstler’s blog. For me, it provides both a substantively and a tonally accurate description of what I’ve been seeing, hearing, and experiencing around me in recent…
Art, creativity, and what Google doesn’t know
From an essay by Ed Finn, founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University: We are all centaurs now, our aesthetics continuously enhanced by computation. Every photograph I take on my smartphone is silently improved by algorithms the second after I take it. Every document autocorrected, every digital file optimised….