New Sci-Fi Fiction: Sesame Credit, USA
By Tamara Wilhite
I woke up on time this morning, hitting the alarm on the first ring. I had slept OK that night according to my fitness tracker. I didn’t need it to tell me I normally slept badly, but the social workers wouldn’t let you get healthcare under the limited government programs if you didn’t wear it.
I stared at my phone on the charger for a while. The device was a cheap, minimal unit. I could say it was environmentally friendly for being recycled or low energy usage. In reality, I wanted as little tracking as possible. I couldn’t afford more points against me. It was in sleep mode, but it would always get feedback from the network because state functions had priority.
Canadian Culture Creators And The Intellectual Dark Web
Deconstructing Canadian Culture, Part 15: Jordan Peterson Rising
By Josh Lieblein
Henceforth, we break with the kitschy and safe government-approved forms of Canadian culture. It’s all rebels, mavericks, and misfits from now on. Some of these culture creators are famous and “acceptable”, and still others are infamous and “dangerous”. But they all have one thing in common – Canada was too small to contain them. They were either too talented, too controversial, or both.
Filmmaker David Cronenberg, who we’ll be covering next week, is one of these outsiders who you might have heard of – possibly because The Simpsons parodied one of his films, possibly because of those Rick and Morty episodes which feature body-horror abominations known as Cronenbergs, or because you have used that .gif from Scanners of the balding man whose head explodes. For those who have no familiarity with this wild world, I’ll ease you in with a quick analysis of a group of admittedly strange people you have definitely heard of: the Canadian members of the Intellectual Dark Web.
PreTeena: February 4 – February 10, 2019
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected] Check out Allison Barrows’ new PreTeena blog here.
3 Shots from the Columbia River Gorge
By Mark Ellis
*Submit your photographs of nature and the outdoor life to [email protected] to participate in this weekly feature exploring the natural world.*
When Short Shows Beat Movies for Short Stories
By Tamara Wilhite
There has been a long trend of moving books to the big screen. We’re out of best-selling books that will sell well in movie theaters, so we’re mining short stories for movies instead. To me, it is rare that the two hour movie based on a short story is both good as a work in its own right and a faithful representation of the material. “Predestination,” based on the short story “All You Zombies,” stands out as unusual for adding another layer to the original story, providing rich depth to a short story by extending it to a movie, and creating a novel ending that doesn’t throw the original one out with the bathwater. This exception, however, proves the rule that when you have a short story, it is best left to a half hour or hour long episode instead of stretched out into a movie.
Definitely Christian in Spite of the Distortions
Great Moments in Chaos and Order, Part IV
By Fred Tribuzzo
My title is a twist on Mr. Spock’s announcement to the enterprise crew that the ugly creature that had attacked them was still a human being: “Definitely humanoid in spite of the distortion,” says Spock in a first season episode of Star Trek, titled “Miri” where the landing party on a faraway planet remains shocked by the hideous creature still babbling inanities after being subdued. Likewise, the American Left is Christian to the core, in spite of the distortions, and no matter how often they attack Christians in film, politics and education.
As the children of the French revolution, Karl Marx, and 19thcentury American progressivism, today’s Left hold dear the heart of the New Testament, Love thy Neighbor, while discarding the rest of the Bible, including love for an old guy named God. Like a skilled arranger, they spot the hook in a great score, a musical hook that lovingly insists to help the poor and the oppressed. That accomplished, they deep-six the rest of the Holy Book and anything greater than the state (Check out Diane Feinstein’s remark to judicial appointment Amy Coney Barrett for the most recent example.)
‘His mattress was slashed to ribbons and human feces defiled his leather recliner.’
Check out this excerpt from page 161
By Michael Sheldon
Pick up one of Liberty Island’s first releases, The Violet Crow: A Bruno-X Psychic Detective Mystery by Michael Sheldon.
Check Out Cinder Q, the New Literary Quarterly from Taliesin Nexus
By Liberty Island Links & Excerpts
Visit www.CinderQ.com for a host of fiction and non-fiction gems.
Douglas Coupland And The Hopeful (?) Future Of Canadian (?) Culture
Deconstructing Canadian Culture, Part 14: Generation X Origins
By Josh Lieblein
If someone was to ask me what the future of Canadian art and culture looked like, I would point them to the work of Douglas Coupland, the influential author, playwright and visual artist. How influential is he? Chances are you know a Generation X-er, or that you are one. If so, you can thank Coupland, because he invented the term.
Unlike the other authors I’ve introduced, however, Coupland doesn’t exactly belong at the commanding heights of High Canadian Culture, because he is an obsessive chaser of the zeitgeist, and like many of the Canadian directors, actors, musicians and other personalities I will introduce going forward- he keeps one foot on either side of the 49th parallel. As such, he has been (somewhat justly) accused of lacking depth, but he more than makes up for that in accessibility.
PreTeena: January 28 – February 3, 2019
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected] Check out Allison Barrows’ new PreTeena blog here.
