October continues in the New Worlds Patreon with the corporeal undead! Of which there are many kinds — more than you tend to see in the zombie-and-vampire landscape — and nearly as many things they can represent, from disease to sexuality to the Vietnam War.
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From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
This week on the New Worlds Patreon, we’re talking about ghosts! Welcome to October . . .
This week on the New Worlds Patreon, you are not permitted to read what I have written — just kidding. Let’s talk about censorship!
This week on the New Worlds Patreon, a topic near and dear to my heart: the printing press! (Without which I would have no career, because it’s bloody difficult to make your living off the written word when the only way to make copies is by hand.) Its history is more complex than I was taught in school, and much more interesting.
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This week on the New Worlds Patreon over at Book View Cafe, we discuss handwriting: calligraphy, cursive, chicken scratch, all kinds, and the things those styles say about the people and societies that use them.
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This week on the New Worlds Patreon, literacy! Something every reader of these essays possesses . . . but whether that ability is common or rare depends on a lot of factors.
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One of the funding goals for the New Worlds Patreon was a fifth essay in the months that have five Fridays, focused on techniques or underlying concepts rather than specific details of culture. This month over on Book View Cafe I rant about monolithic worldbuilding: fictional societies where something (religion, fashion, sports, whatever), is exactly the same for every single person, with no regional, historical, class, or other variations.
If you’ve been enjoying these essays and aren’t yet a patron, now is a lovely time to become one! (My birthday is tomorrow.) Patrons get photos, ebooks, bonus essays, the opportunity to request topics — even direct feedback on their own work at the higher levels. We aren’t too far from the funding goal that would add a regular Google Hangout for patrons in which we can discuss worldbuilding more generally (on a rotating schedule to accommodate people in different time zones).
Another week, another New Worlds Patreon post! There are five Fridays in this month, so next week you’ll get a “theory post,” but today we wrap up this pass through religion with the question of religious specialists: shamans, priests, monastics, diviners, and so forth.
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I might be at Worldcon, but the New Worlds Patreon continues! This week it’s religious texts, looking at the different types of thing that get venerated as scripture, and how such things get marked out from secular material.
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From the sites of religion, the New Worlds Patreon continues onward to the practices of religion, from prayer to asceticism to sacrifice to hallucinogens.
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