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Visionary Future.

October 1, 2021 by Exangel

When the Newport Public Library suggested I do a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, I was delighted. Of course. But I also had a secret hope for it. The present Emergency calls for as many of us who can to envision a way forward to a better world to get together and get going. And my secret agenda for EAP was always to seek out people who were striving, each in their own way, to understand what it is best for an individual to do, what is best for us to do. What our meaning is. What action that meaning requires.

So my hope was that I would get to meet a lot of EAP contributors and members, at least via Zoom, and that we could talk over the way things were, the way things are, and the way things could be. I wasn’t disappointed. Tim J. Myers was great to talk with in the first session. Chris Farago enlivened the second. But the third in the series was the best. We started out sad with what is out there in the world right now, but by the end, the energy quickened and soared, and we were all heartened to be together, pulling in the same direction. I know I was.

That session was a lot of poets, a couple of independent publishers, and then, of course, the people who’ve built EAP from the start: historian Brian Griffith, creative director Mike Madrid, poetry editor Marissa Bell Toffoli, and Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. Indies were articulatedly represented by Christina Ward of Feral House, and Steve Scholl of White Cloud Press. Poets. . .well, poets burgeoned, the way poets do: David Bolton, Barry Vitcov, and EAP’s favorite essayist David Horowitz. It was everything I’d hoped for and more.

This issue, too. Welcome to Peter Onelio, whose “The Christ Ultimatum” called up a response in me. And to Paul Jones, who has written a wonderful novel about a boy in foster care in Liverpool that is heartrendingly realistic—an excerpt is here. Also EAP’s resident philosopher Bruce Thompson has done a great job with ‘Yes, But’, bringing Peter Abelard back to deserved notice in “Sic et Non.” Welcome to Mark Benedict and his creepy “Bright Vicious Past,” and welcome back to Clarinda Harriss–we missed you.

Finally, if you want to know just what I think is truly important, and I bet you won’t be surprised to know it involves dogs, have a look at my “The Peace of Dog.”

Meantime, peace. Health. Safety. And onward together. Onward.

Welcome back.

Filed Under: Todblog

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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