UNLESS IT CONTAINS A CRITICISM of what the writer didn’t say, no letters-and-opinion section is complete.
Category: Crit
Examination, interpretation, appreciation.
First Graf: The Lore Of Sail
THE MARITIME SECTION OF MY home library is, like a captain’s yacht, small but well-appointed. I’ve been a ship geek since 1987-88, when I served as a deckhand/docent on a replica of the Golden Hinde, and my taste tends toward…
Touching With Words
THE FIRST TIME I DISCOVERED that my words had an effect on other people was when something I wrote made other people cry. The people were my fellow high-school English students, and the topic was a personal essay we’d been…
“Starbase 33 Minyan”
According to the Official Couch Potato Handbook, each official Couch Potato Viewing Lodge must have its own name. Ours is the “Starbase 33 Minyan,” mostly due to a love of science fiction in general (and Star Trek in particular). The…
The Purist’s Question
HOW MUCH CAN YOU CHANGE something before it no longer resembles the original — yet still call it by the same name?
5 Thoughts: Comic Strips
1. THE MORNING ISN’T COMPLETE WITHOUT checking into the daily comics page and some of my favorite parallel universes. I scan most of what’s there (as my friend Gary Nordstrom says, “If the author went to the trouble of writing…
Words To Bring Back: “Juggernaut”
– Definition: “1 chiefly British : a large heavy truck 2 : a massive inexorable force, campaign, movement, or object that crushes whatever is in its path” – Used in a sentence: “My sister’s new baby is a juggernaut of…
First Graf: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1
THERE ARE BOOKS, AND THERE are books. This one contains “The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America,” and is standard issue to all geeks and geekettes who want…
5 Thoughts: Difficult Cinema
1. ERASERHEAD. THE SECOND TIME I saw David Lynch’s mewling, puking masterpiece, I began to scream as soon as the opening credits rolled. It’s a dark, dark vision into the little world and lonely life of Henry, a printer whose…
Dear Hollywood …
WHY DO YOU INSIST ON MARKETING to us as though we were all ignorant, venal, cynical, cruel, swinish oafs? We at The Metaphorager decry these loutish generalizations and will boycott the offending generalizers: we may not starve you into submission,…
Another “Next Big Thing”
“LOOMING” (N): PEOPLE BEHIND STUFF.
Storyteller’s Knot
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF any story is the point at which it’s attached to the reader.