http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com Like no place else. Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:39:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 He ran, and the wolves ran alongside him. He leapt, and they leapt, keeping pace with him... or him keeping pace with them. Panting, he threw himself over a toppled tree lying rotten in the path, clutching the fire axe in his hand. The spikes on his left shoulder glittered ... http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/solis-invicti/ Geoffrey Maloney writes on the speculative fiction elements in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Unconsoled. http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/ishiguro-distortions/ As above, so below. In the third part of his extensive essay on the Cathar heresy, Matthew Rossi paints a mind-blowing portrait of 13th-century Europe as a continent tangled in a massive religious conflict where influent characters attempt to re-imagine the nature of the divine so that they themselves ... http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/cathar-3/ Are we but conduits for the thought processes of God? If so, would have the Cathars been trying to influence the mind of the universe? Matthew Rossi continues to explore and speculate about the Cathar heresy in the second instalment of this multi-part essay. http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/cathar-2/ Fantastic Metropolis spotlights Paul Witcover's new book, a novel about growing up, about playing games, about what is and isn't real; a novel of sexual awakening and magical transformation. http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/feature-tumbling-after/ Jeffrey Ford interviews Paul Witcover, the author of Waking Beauty and Tumbling After. http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/witcover/ An excerpt from Paul Witcover's new novel, Tumbling After. http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/jack-jill/ Matthew Rossi introduces Hildegard of Bingen in the first instalment of a multi-part, 22,000-word essay about the Cathar heresy. http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/cathar-1/ Egyptian mummies loaded with cocaine? Surely it must involve the School of Night, assassins and the mysterious disappearance of the Roanoke Island colony. At least according to Matthew Rossi's latest entry in the Encyclopedia of Heresies. http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/sheep-to-the-slaughter/ Everyone has a secret life. Even the most banal individual has some sort of secret life, often a profoundly rich secret life. Can it be said that the more boring the public face of the person, the more fecund their clandestine existence? http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/feature-secret-lives/