Other Worlds

Author: Donna Royston

  • Green Tea (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, 1869)

    It’s been a rough week, in terms of having time for blogging. I’ve still been reading new stories, but haven’t written about them. A ghost story or two each night… I’ve had some unsettling dreams, and one story in particular (“Madame Crowl’s Ghost” by Le Fanu) I would not recommend to anyone else for that…

  • Wandering Willie’s Tale (Sir Walter Scott, 1824)

    This one was new to me, and it’s a fine tale. Sir Robert Redgauntlet, 17th century Scottish laird under Charles II, is an enthusiastic persecutor of Covenanters (Scottish Presbyterians, see this): Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, nor cave, could hide the puir hill-folk when Redgauntlet was out with bugle and bloodhound after them, as if…

  • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, 1820)

    I was jotting a list of ghost stories to read in October — or revisit, if a favorite — and for that purpose I also found a short history of the genre. It seems that Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is a landmark in the early development of the ghost story. (That’s not…

  • Season of Mists and Hauntings

    When the days are getting chilly and the nights long, I start turning to ghost stories. The time has to be right: it must be dark outside, and fairly late, and I in bed, with one bedside light. And then, in the quiet, I open an M. R. James volume, or Le Fanu, or Blackwood……

  • The Hobbit’s 75th anniversary

    The Hobbit was published on Sept. 21, 1937 — 75 years ago today. Among all the penetrating and insightful tributes that have been written about this masterpiece, what can I add? Well, I am going to address the neglected question of “Do hobbits wear shoes?” They don’t. Our authoritative source says flatly: they “wear no…

  • “Ambidextrose” by Jay Werkheiser

    “Ambidextrose” by Jay Werkheiser is from the October 2012 issue of Analog. It builds its situation from a problem of chemical incompatibility between human settlers of an alien planet and the exobiotic native life, useless to Earth organisms because the organic molecules are chemically wrong-handed. Wrong-handed sugars are nutritionally inert for humans, the amino acids…

  • “Nell” by Karen Hesse

    “Nell” is a new story up on Tor.com this week. Read it here. (It’s reprinted from an anthology, What You Wish For, published by Book Wish Foundation, 2012) The story is told from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl who’s been 12 for about a hundred years, but in different bodies: One winter night in…

  • Star Trek added a term to literary lexicon

    Today — as I realized from Google’s doodle; I didn’t actually have the date marked on my calendar! — is the 46th anniversary of Star Trek. It premiered Sept. 7, 1966. The Christian Science Monitor (here) points out the show’s contribution to civil rights (Martin Luther King, Jr. was a fan and told Nichelle Nichols…

  • Star Trek Google Doodle

    OK, be sure to check out today’s Google doodle, and click on the bridge doors, then the redshirt, and then the transporter, and then the thingamajig on the rocks. If you need a link, https://www.google.com/. Enjoy!

  • “Star Soup” by Chris Willrich in Asimov’s

    I’m currently reading the Sept 2012 issue of Asimov’s, and I haven’t gotten through the whole issue yet, but I’ve gone back to read “Star Soup” by Chris Willrich. I find it a highly pleasurable story. I was a little surprised to like it so much, because after the first two pages my expectation was…