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Books by D.J. Butler
Tag Archives: J.R.R. Tolkien
The Queer and the Strange
“But the queer and the strange, the unrestrained, the grotesque is not only interesting: it is valuable. It is not always necessary to purge it out altogether in order to attain to the Sublime. You can have your gargoyles on … Continue reading
Posted in Quotation
Tagged Gargoyles, Greek Temples, Grotesque, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kalevala
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Bookshelf: The Children of Húrin
I’ve just read Tolkien’s recently-published story The Children of Húrin. I don’t have a lot to say about it: in tone and voice, it’s somewhere between The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, so if you liked The Silmarillion you … Continue reading
Posted in Bookshelf
Tagged Elric, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, The Children of Húrin, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion
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More or Less Connected Legend
“[O]nce upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story — the larger founded … Continue reading
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See it on YouTube — come find me at SLComicCon to discuss.
Westercon 67 (FantasyCon I)
Every con starts like this. Every con ends like this, too. In between, the rooms fill up with people, stories, and performances. My performances started on Thursday with a brilliant and ambitious but ill-starred presentation on steampunk and audiobooks with … Continue reading
Posted in Conventions
Tagged B. Daniel Blatt, Bear Putnam, Bob Defendi, Carter Reid, David J. West, Deanna Holland, Deena Campanile, Deren Hansen, Fantasycon, Filk, Graham Bradley, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Batchelor, James Wymore, Jason King, Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury, Kathy Mar, Kevin Anderson, Larry Correia, Lisa Mangum, Nathan Shumate, Peter S. Beagle, Peter Wacks, Rasputin, S.A. Butler, Sarah E. Seeley, Scott Taylor, Tom Durham, Vince Campanile, Westercon
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Convention Highlights: FanX 2014
I admit I entered into my first panel with some trepidation: the idea of litigating zombie civil rights is hilarious, but I greatly feared that I was going to do a bad job. And, as it turned out, I lost. … Continue reading
Posted in Conventions
Tagged Aliens, Blake Casselman, Bob Defendi, Brad Torgersen, C.S. Lewis, Carter Reid, ComicCon, Craig Nybo, Dan Willis, Dystopian Fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, FanX, H.P. Lovecraft, Hero's Journey, Howard Tayler, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jaleta Clegg, John Steiner, Joseph Campbell, Kevin Anderson, Larry Correia, Lisa Mangum, Michael Collings, Michaelbrent Collings, Nathan Shumate, Orson Scott Card, Paul Anderson, Peter Wacks, Robison Wells, Robots, S.A. Butler, Sarah E. Seeley, Scott Taylor, Steampunk, Stephen King, Steven L. Peck, Zombies
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Magic, Hard and Soft
There is a distinction you will sometimes hear made by writers and readers of fantasy fiction between hard magic and soft magic. Soft magic is magic that just does what the author wants it to do in every case, with … Continue reading
Posted in How to Write
Tagged Gandalf, Harry Dresden, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jim Butcher, Kvothe, Magic, Patrick Rothfuss
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The Lure of the Secret World
I think one of the things I find most attractive in any novel is the feeling that it is telling me secrets about the world I live in. You see this simply and pretty clearly in a lot of middle … Continue reading
Posted in How to Write
Tagged Harry Potter, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Chabon, Rick Riordan, Thomas Pynchon, Umberto Eco
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The Hobbit
I just finished (re-)reading The Hobbit, out loud to my kids (this is their second reading of it, and they know the Rankin/Bass film well). We’ve been reading out of the big hardback illustrated by Alan Lee, which is just … Continue reading
