Fantasy For Our Time

Today, I continue my examination of time in fantasy and sci-fi literature. What is time? Is it a line, a circle, or some combination thereof?  Historically there are many ways to view it and interact with it; modernity seems to be much more concerned with managing it than experiencing it. Our current approach to time seems to be a revival of stoicism with a twist of fatalism.  The 2016 movie Arriv...

Today, in this old recording from 2019, I present an honest look at the concept of time as I reflect on a few pieces of fantasy literature. More specifically, we look at the idea of cyclical time and how it presents a highly depressing worldview where there is little to no way to redeem your own personal journey or that of your society, race, or anything. One where you are doomed to repeat past mi...

Here's another throwback episode where I have an absolutely fascinating conversation with my friend Christian Cameron. Together we discuss a wide swath of topics including medieval cooking, wrestling, weapons, pilgrimages, pastries, armizare, and plenty of other fascinating stuff.  We also dig into our shared love of history and some insider writing tips. Perhaps what makes this conversation so ti...

What does it mean to be human? How do we interact with the Divine or find meaning in a universe that sometimes seems completely devoid of meaning?   It used to be that fantasy was the genre that most aptly responded to these monumental questions, yet I've realized that this is no longer the case!   I've found that it is actually the contemporary, secular, anti-Christian storytellers who are doing...

When is the violence we see on our screen or read in our books too much? There is no denying an increase in violence in our world and the usual scapegoat for such a thing is the media we consume; but, is modern media truly more violent than that of the past, or is it just of a different kind altogether? For example, The Iliad has more than its fair share of violent dismemberment, but it is conside...

Whatever happened to the good old days when we recognized that some things are ugly, some things are monsters and you can't fix them? In this episode, I address the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of cute monsters in fiction and why it is a symptom of a more significant breakdown of a concrete worldview in society. Monsters without teeth are really just a way to say that there is no such thing a...

Should we avoid violence in media? Are certain portrayals of violence in media better for us than others?   This week I continue our discussion on violence as I examine Mat Reeves’ The Batman. Every iteration of Batman is an expression of very different eras of American history, from the campy, sometimes silly Batman of the 60’s to the bleak and, dare I say, hopeless Batman of 2022.   We live in a...

Time, despite my best efforts to conquer it, has, yet again, conquered me! In all of my busyness, I wasn't able to sit down and record my next podcast so, in lieu of a fresh episode this week, I figured I would take this opportunity to share an audiobook chapter from my Raven Son series.   Here is a description of the book:   An evil omen clouds the sky. A song of power returns. Can one man's ques...

Isn't empathy a good thing? Well, yes. In moderation. But we seem to live in a world where immoderate empathy is causing widespread victimhood. And our stories are reflecting this strange reality.

In this throwback episode, I officially get publicly and loudly angry about The Last Jedi. Seriously, though, paying homage to those masters who came before you is probably a better strategy than... whatever the heck the Last Jedi was... But this is more than Star Wars, people. I'm talking about the best new Sci-fi series I've read in a long time, the thing I WISH Star Wars would be more like. It'...

In this wide-ranging conversation with YA author Vesper Stamper, we talk about the power of story, the ways trauma can lead to suffering, but how it can be a gift and can make the sufferer a gift to others. We talked about falling into stories you never expected to write, about the wisdom of children in dark times, and about dealing with distraction and learning to be present for creativity. Belie...

Generally, I like to focus on the ways that fantasy stories help form us and make us into better humans; but, is it possible for certain types of fantasy to be bad for us? In this episode, I unpack a recent trend to abandon the traditional hero's journey of pleasant catharsis for a new embracing of the beautiful chaos of reality - specifically, I focus on this trend in the film, The Green Knight. ...

Let's be honest: it's a golden age for speculative fiction. The most fantasy and sci-fi streaming shows in ages! But then again, there's the Last Jedi and Star Trek: Discovery... Thank goodness for books. And one of the best new series I've read in a long time is Christopher Ruocchio's Sun Eater. In this interview, we talk about his influences, why sci-fi is such an important genre for our time, w...

C. S. Lewis's final novel Till We Have Faces is a novelization and adaptation of the Roman myth "Cupid and Psyche." Rather than tell the story from Psyche's perspective, Lewis tells it from her sister's, a character with no name in the original myth. In this multi-layered and very difficult novel, the main character hears a strange pronouncement about her fate from the god of love. "You are also P...

In this episode of "Fantasy for our Time," fantasy author Nicholas Kotar tackles the difficult task of addressing the war in Ukraine. As a creator of epic fantasy stories inspired by Russian fairy tales, and as someone with deep Russian roots, the complex narrative of the conflict has served to be a point of extreme internal tension.  How can we resolve such internal tensions in a society of isola...

In this first episode of "Fantasy for our Time," fantasy author Nicholas Kotar explains his premise for the podcast. This isn't a review podcast, though there will be discussions of fantasy books old and new. Using a framework developed on the Science Fiction podcast by Damien Walter, Kotar critiques works of classic and new fantasy (and occasionally, sci-fi) rather than reviews them. In other wor...

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