DESIGN IN FICTION: BETWEEN ‘WORLDBUILDING’ AND ‘SPACE’

In his famous, but rather absurd, essay “The Death of the Author” (1968), Roland Barthes ranted about the impending dismissal of authors from literary criticism, to be replaced by a sort of totally objective super-reader that would focus on the text as if sprung from language itself, with no active mediation from the author. The […]

THE EDITOR’S JOB: SOME CONSIDERATIONS

I attended yesterday the talk at Barcelona’s Festival 42 by US horror author Grady Hendrix, a man who looks disconcertingly like actor Brady Cooper’s brother or cousin. Hendrix has made a name for himself as an author who combines the gruesome, the shocking, and the humorous in his novels, though I must confess that I […]

A KIND OF MAGIC: ON AUTHORS’ RELUCTANCE TO DISCUSS IMAGINATION

Citing Queen and the wonderful Freddy Mercury is always a good idea, though their song “A Kind of Magic” does not really refer to what I have in mind. Written by drummer Roger Taylor for the film Highlander in 1986, this song speaks of transcending time as the immortals in the movie’s fable do. However, […]