Topics this week include imperial and economic collapse, the true value of a college education, our troubled shift from physical to digital media, the nature of consciousness, a mysterious marine mammal die-off, the nature and quirks of the human religious instinct, and a new UFO documentary.
Tag: Books
On learning to read Joe Pulver’s ‘Portraits of Ruin’ by writing the introduction to it
Today I stumbled across the first full review, or at least the first one I’ve seen, of Joe Pulver’s imminent new book Portraits of Ruin (due out next month from Hippocampus Press) at Hellbound Times. The book will arrive with an introduction by me, and I was surprised to see the reviewer not only mentioning…
Published: Ebook edition of ‘Divinations of the Deep’
During the past couple of years, I’ve been receiving requests for an ebook edition of Divinations of the Deep with increasing frequency, and today I’m pleased to announce that the wait is over. Divinations, the ebook, is now available in both Kindle and ePub formats (the latter for Nook, Kobo, and other ereaders). You can…
William Peter Blatty on rewriting ‘The Exorcist’ for its 40th anniversary
This month, the second annual installment of The Dark Mirror, the horror film festival that I created in Waco, Texas, will culminate with a screening of The Exorcist. (See the article I published about it just two days ago at the festival’s blog: “‘The Exorcist’ and the modern Western zeitgeist.”) So it’s entirely appropriate that…
The Motley Fool invokes zombies and Lovecraft to describe booksellers’ financial woes
You’ve seen me talk here before about the delicious rise of monster metaphors, specifically zombies and Frankenstein‘s monster, to describe the apocalyptic economic troubles of the past few years. Now a writer for The Motley Fool — always a useful and amusing site for its combination of investment advice and cheeky humor — has invoked…
A New Golden Age of Horror Fiction?
We just may be living through a new golden age of horror fiction. That’s my diagnosis as I survey the range of wonderful books that have recently appeared, and that have been appearing for the past few years, and that are set to appear in coming months. I make this claim in full awareness that…
The value of good books and films to human souls and societies
I want to versify the following words, set them to music, and print them in hymnals to be sung in churches. Either that, or have them accompany the national anthem at school assemblies and baseball games. [W]here does one go, exactly, to cultivate âthe capacity of imaginationâ and âthe exercise of imaginationâ? Where, in other…
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos actually *gets* books and their value
I’ve been quite enthusiastic about the Kindle and the e-reading revolution ever since buying a Kindle DX last year. I’ve also been pleased at the way Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos continues to say things that demonstrate his authentic commitment to positioning the Kindle as a device that doesn’t destroy the reading experience but instead preserves…
Published: DARK AWAKENINGS
The wait is over. The stars are right. Some rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born, and my long-awaited Dark Awakenings collection is now loosed upon the world. Publisher: Mythos Books Date: May 2010 Length: 319 pages Table of Contents: Available at MattCardin.com Click here to purchase the book directly from the publisher and…
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…