Tag: essay
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The Importance of Adventure Fiction by Joshua Fagan (Orion’s Belt Essay – August 2024)
Until the twentieth century, “romance” as a genre did not necessarily refer to a love story. It meant something much closer to The Lord of the Rings than Romeo and Juliet. The term survives, albeit in semi-obscurity, in the phrase “chivalric romance,” which suggests the general connotations of the idea. Romance meant travel and wonder, the interaction…
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Orion’s Belt Year-End 2023 Anthology
Patrons only receive our year-three compilation for free! Enjoy! The lyrical and ethereal works we published in 2023 synthesize intimate examinations of individuals and relationships with expansive and philosophical scenarios. With a literary focus on the specific and subtle details of life, they reach toward wonder and strangeness. Comfort and complacency disintegrate to reveal mysterious…
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Cyberpunk, Hopepunk, and Beyond
Stories pursue truth. A narrative that feels sentimental and cloying, portraying the triumph of the pure and just over heartless, cackling evil will not resonate beyond an audience of schoolchildren because it does not convey truth. The same is true of a narrative that portrays humanity as universally corrupt and heartless, caring only for material…
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A Cosmonaut’s Prospectus
Writing about literary trends and tendencies from the narrow viewpoint afforded by the present has never been easy. In “How It Strikes a Contemporary,” Robert Browning creates as an allegory of the poet-figure an enigmatic observer, attempting to understand the beguiling networks of secrets and circumstances unfolding themselves in the enigmatic corners he observes. That…
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Why We Need Myth
The word “myth” has too often become synonymous with mere misconceptions or errors. We talk about the myth of Columbus discovering the New World or the myth that no one bathed in the Middle Ages. Some myths can be harmful, such as the idea of colonists and Native Americans living peacefully and sharing a Thanksgiving…
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The Necessity of Strangeness
The absence of strangeness is sorely felt in American media. That your average Marvel blockbuster is predictable is a given. What is worse is that it never feels genuinely strange. There might be moments of weirdness, but these are largely ornamental and have little bearing on the outcome of the film. The same is true…
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The Importance of Re-Reading
The idea of re-reading is a strange one, profoundly out of place in a consumerist society. Those who re-read discuss how the experience helps them remember the first, implicitly more memorable time they read a book. Those who don’t re-read talk about how they don’t have the time. Instead of retreading the same material, they…
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In Praise of Difficult Literature
No one has ever convinced a friend to read a book by talking about how difficult it is. Check the fiction bestseller list and you’ll find cozy mysteries, spy thrillers, and sweet romances. We talk of “beach reads” or “airport novels,” books that exist to fulfill a specific function, rather than being valuable for their…
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The Star-Dappled Puddle: Reflecting on Poetic Practice
The night is violet moonless— a creamy banquet of pirouetting stars dapples a hilltop puddle. Plunging my head into the placid water, I hope to taste the light. Writing poetry is not harder than prose fiction, but it is a different kind of hard. Fiction is an adventure to a distant land, planned out with…