Diane Auer Jones, who in addition to being the president of the education-oriented policy institute Washington Campus is a former assistant secretary for postsecondary education in the U.S. Department of Education, recently wrote a blog post for The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Brainstorm blog (“Straddling 2 Centuries,” April 29) that should be required reading for…
Narrative frames and perceptive reviewers
The creator of the online fiction review site A Story a Day Keeps Boredom Away recently reviewed all of the stories in the new Dark Faith anthology. He had this to say about my story “Chimeras & Grotesqueries”: I love the type of story that starts with a preface declaring that what follows was found…
Peak Oil, Propaganda Emails, and the Bakken Formation
Recently I said (in “Peak oil: Time to shut up as the conversation goes global“) that I don’t plan on talking about peak oil anymore despite my several years of doing so, because in the past year, and especially the past few months, the cultural conversation about it has become so mainstream and prominent that…
The Rise of “Zombie Walks”: Is the human race finally embracing its true identity?
So have you heard of zombie walks, ladies and gentlemen? I’m talking about those increasingly ubiquitous events where groups of respectable everyday folk get in touch with their inner zombie by dressing up in costumes and makeup as the named monster in its modern mass entertainment incarnation — that is, as reanimated, flesh-eating corpses who…
Cthulhu’s Reign: It’s the End of the World As We Know It
A few days ago I received my contributor’s copy of Cthulhu’s Reign in the mail. It’s a themed anthology whose approach is stated concisely by the description at Amazon: Some of the darkest hints in all of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos relate to what will happen after the Old Ones return and take over the…
The Reanimation — and Rehabilitation — of Walt Disney
Like so many of my fellow Gen-X-ers, I led a childhood that was significantly Disneyfied. The first movie I ever saw, as relayed to me by my parents (since it occurred at an age far too young for me to remember), was Disney’s Cinderella. Beginning at the age of four, I took several trips with…
Peak Oil: Time to shut up as the conversation goes global
Okay, I officially don’t have to talk to anybody ever again about peak oil. Today U.K. energy minister Lord Hunt made the whole thing an official topic of front-table discussion: Energy minister will hold summit to calm rising fears over peak oil Lord Hunt calls UK industrialists together to discuss government response to any early…
There are no words
I mean that both literally and figuratively, the former because the “lyrics” to this song consist mostly of jolly, wordless vocalizing, and the latter because . . . well, just have a look. I’m speechless and giddy all at once, and also strangely aroused and disturbed by delirious visions of a reality I’m not sure…
Interview: “Dark Awakenings and Cosmic Horror” (Lovecraft News Network)
I’ve just been interviewed by the Lovecraft News Network: Interview with Matt Cardin: Dark Awakenings and Cosmic Horror The title does a good job of conveying the overall gist. The LNN’s Jacob Hodgen did a fairly amazing job of coming up with detailed, fascinating, and carefully targeted questions, so hats off to him.
Lovecraft, Meet Yahweh: The Biblical Book of Isaiah as a Horror Story (Interview)
A new interview with me about my academic reading of the biblical book of Isaiah as a cosmic horror story has just been published at TheoFantastique: Matt Cardin — “Gods and Monsters, Worms and Fire: A Horrific Reading of Isaiah” The “Gods and Monsters” paper itself appears in my imminent next book, Dark Awakenings. Topics…