Tag Archives: fantasy fiction

Happy Lord of the Rings Day

Posted on March 25, 2025 by

I recently started reading a book entitled The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is historical fiction, immaculately detailed, with three excellent protagonists surrounded by a band of almost as admirable allies navigating a middle-era Spain in which three powerful … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Life notes | Tagged fantasy fiction, fiction, Guy Gavriel Kay, JRR Tolkien, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson, The Lions of Al-Rassan, The Lord of the Rings | Comments Off

Happy Lord of the Rings Day

Posted on March 25, 2024 by

War is on all our minds these days. There is a war happening in Ukraine and something barely resembling a war (because it’s a genocide) in Gaza. Governments have been fond of casting our collective responses – such as they … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Life notes | Tagged fantasy fiction, JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings day, Malazan Book of the Fallen, military fantasy, Steven Erikson, war | Comments Off

Lord of the Rings Day

Posted on March 25, 2021 by

Here’s wishing you a Happy Lord of the Rings Day! (Previous editions: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014.) On this day in the book, Frodo, Sam and Smeagol (with help from Gandalf, Aragon, Gimli, Legolas, Faramir, Eowyn, Theoden, Eomer, Treebeard and … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Life notes | Tagged Dungeons & Dragons, everything is fiction, fantasy fiction, fiction, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings day, Mount Doom, One Ring | Comments Off

Some good books I read recently

Posted on March 4, 2021 by

Since January 2020 Read Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin’s Sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko Every Creature Has a Story, Janaki Lenin The Writing Life, Annie Dillard Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist, Frank Close Shoes of the Dead, Kota … Continue reading →

Posted in Life notes | Tagged books, Carmen Maria Machado, Diane Ackerman, fantasy fiction, Helen Lewis, Janaki Lenin, Kota Neelima, Neha Sinha, NK Jemisin | Comments Off

Lord of the Rings Day

Posted on March 25, 2020 by

A happy Lord of the Rings Day to you! (Previous editions: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014) Every year I pen a commemorative piece about Lord of the Rings, and share something about the books and films that I think about … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Life notes | Tagged Black Leopard Red Wolf, Deepanjana Pal, Denethor, Discworld, ergodic, fantasy, fantasy fiction, Faramir, Gautam Shenoy, inventiveness, JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson, Supriya Nair, Ted Chiang, Terry Pratchett, Thomas Manuel | Comments Off

The calculus of creative discipline

Posted on October 27, 2019 by

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building. World-building is dull. World-building literalises the urge to invent. World-building gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). World-building numbs … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Op-eds | Tagged classical mechanics, creative discipline, critical points, Dan Shechtman, differential calculus, EPR paradox, fantasy fiction, Imre Lakatos, JK Rowling, Karl Popper, literary criticism, M John Harrison, Malazan Book of the Fallen, mathematical analysis, nerdism, Niels Bohr, Paul Feyerabend, Philosophy of Science, quasicrystals, replication crisis, smooth functions, Steven Erikson, Thomas Kuhn, Viriconium, world-building | Comments Off

Hard sci-fi

Posted on September 29, 2019 by

Come November, I will be at the Bangalore Literary Festival in conversation with Sri Lankan sci-fi author Navin Weeraratne. I am told Navin – “like you,” according to one of the organisers – is a proponent of hard sci-fi, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture | Tagged fantasy fiction, first principles, Gautam Shenoy, hard sci-fi, Navin Weeraratne, science fiction, soft sci-fi | Comments Off

Happy Lord of the Rings Day!

Posted on March 25, 2018 by

The Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series exhibited a rabid yet desirable iconoclasm, through which its author Steven Erikson elucidated every trope of epic fantasy and then shit on it. I came out of reading the series feeling like … Continue reading →

Posted in Life notes | Tagged fantasy fiction, gateway drugs, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings day, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Manitoba shlimbo, reading, Steven Erikson | Comments Off

‘Mantra sciences’ is just poor fantasy

Posted on January 5, 2018 by

I don’t know how the author of a piece in the Times of India managed to keep a straight face when introducing a school based on Vedic rituals that would “show the way” to curing diseases like cancer. Even the … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged bitcoins, cancer, cognitive dissonance, cryptocurrencies, epic fantasy, fantasy fiction, Hogwarts, infinite predictability, magic system, not even wrong, Ponzi scheme, Rajasthan, Research Institute of Mantra Sciences, Vedas, Vedic studies | Comments Off

Some notes and updates

Posted on July 5, 2016 by

Four years of the Higgs boson, live-tweeting and timezones, new music, and quickly reviewing an Erikson book. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 750 GeV particle, Albert Kuvezin, CERN, Fall of Light, fantasy fiction, Higgs boson, Huun Huur Tu, Large Hadron Collider, live-tweeting, Steven Erikson, throat-singing, timezones, UTC, Yat-kha | Comments Off