The importance of heroes.

Everyone has a hero, or sometimes more than one.

Sometimes they lift us to new heights of possibility, and sometimes they disapoint us and leave us wallowing in the depths of dispair.

That's really all I have to say about it.

This will likely be my last post in a very long time. I have a lot of work to do and I need to focus on it.

I love & appreciate all my readers who have viewed my ramblings and rants for the last several years.

Tolkien and Aldo Leopold

As I've recently returned to class, I have already found a new way of appreciating Tolkien's works. In this case, by reading Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac". Leopold was something of a pioneer in the field of ecological conservation, and in his book included a chapter titled 'A land Ethic' in which he laid out his views on ecology, and specifically attacked the "Economic-Ethic" of land management in favor of his own. This lead me to the old standbye for quick, possibly suspect knowledge, Wikipedia. Where I found that there is an entire field devoted to various types of "Land Ethics". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Land_Ethic

As always when it comes to Tolkien, there are a great many people who simply don't grasp the idea that he's not "Anti-progress" or "Anti-Technology" he's simply a proponent of a moral or ethical understanding of nature. So in reading this breakdown of the various ethics of land conservation (or lack thereof) I was struck by how the various groups in Tolkien's world managed their lands. 

The Hobbits are for all intents and purposes very good stewards of the land in the since that they manage it exactingly. They farm, raise draft animals, and food animals, have a mill, but most of their housing is subterranean  using the natural formations of hillsides to provide shelter, though from what we can see they obviously reinforce these structures with internal support.. likely some sort of timber and Wattle and Daub technique.. and wood paneling. Perhaps even horsehair plaster. They take from the land, and manage it to suit their tastes. They have a fairly big footprint though, as mills, even water wheels, and the Hobbits prodigious appetites, and Ale consumption, indicate a large scale food production, though not Industrialized in as much as it is likely there are several very large farmers who likely employ many Hobbits to work for them. I would suggest they have a Utilitarian Land Ethic. Described as having as its ideal that "generally it is the view that a morally right action is an action that produces the maximum good for people", making it an offshoot of the same type of ethic, Economic Land Ethic, which can produce wastelands like Isengard and Mordor, and also the Dwarven kingdom of Moria. Though we are not shown for sure, this is also likely the type of land ethic exhibited by the Humans who live near the Hobbits.. so it probably extends to an extent into the lone lands and Bree. It is, I suppose, possible the Hobbits learned these techniques when they moved into the area from the Arnorians to their north. This would add impetus to the Civil War which devastated Arnor when the Witch-king founded Angmar... a land very similar to Mordor.. and likely espousing the same sort of philosophy that Mordor had in relation to Land Use. This is also an area where we should look at the Dwarves living in the Blue Mountains, and the Elves living in the Grey Havens. Both of those groups, likely purchase large quantities of their food from the remnant human population of Arnor, and possibly even from the Hobbits of the Shire. We don't really know enough about them to make many assumptions. 

The Rohirrim, seem to evidence a Libertarian land Ethic, being primarily agricultural but with HUGE swathes of land turned over to grazing horse herds, and if they are distinctly based on the Anglo Saxons, then likely large numbers of other domestic animals as well.. They seem closest to a Libertarian viewpoint on the land, in as much as they themselves don't take wood from Fangorn, not because of ecological reasons, but simply because they are afraid to go into it to get he wood.. any group of people who are willing to produce vast herds of hoofed animals, and build lots of timber structures, will obviously need lots of timber which will produce their empty grazing land. The "Symbiotic" Dunlendings would probably have also subsisted by raising herds of animals, perhaps goats or cows, and lived a very hardscrabble life, perhaps a bit like the Highlanders of Scotland. We don't really know enough about them to know what sort of farming they would do.. but the landscape they lived in would make it very difficult to see them doing any kind of large scale agriculture. It would seem the people of Esgaroth are similar to this in that they built timber structures on a lake, and made lots of barrels.. as well as having large farming operations in order to supply themselves with food, though their farming was likely even more industrialized when they were also growing enough food to supply the Dwarves of Erebor with as much Ale, red meat and what not as the dwarves would eat.. seeing as the Dwarven appitite is nearly as prodigious as a Hobbits.. one can start to see just how big the farming system built up by the people of Esgaroth must have been... They also produce grapes (which requires a VAST amount of land) and wine (presumably in excess to their own needs) which they sell to the Elves in Mirkwood. The Dwarves of Erebor, who need to be taken as a symbiotic group with the Esgarothians seemed to be very much of a "Haste makes Waste" kind of Dwarf.. my guess is they aimed not to repeat the mistakes of Moria... since they had found out the hard way that there are fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. On the surface they would have had vast slack dumps for the removed material from their mines, though this could in fact be the location where the Esgarothians got the stone to build their town from.. it would likely exist in excess to what they would actually need. 

The Gondorians seem to fall somewhere between the Hobbits and the Esgarothians. Considering the sort of top down military structure in evidence with Gondor, I'd suggest that while they clearly are not an Egalitarian Culture, they practice an Egalitarian-Utilitarian hybrid land ethic. They take charge of the land in order to make sure their military is well supplied, thus ensuring their people are protected from Mordor. We know they have orchards since they eat apples, and they have cows since they eat cheese, but they also have to supply what is, seemingly a VAST military apparatus, and keep the city of Minas Tirith supplied in case of seige, it being a fortress and all. They buy a lot of horses from Rohan, so probably do not devote as much land to grazing, instead devoting more of it to things which can be easily stored for long periods of time. Beer, Hard Bread, Apples, Cheese, Etc. 

The Elves of Lothlorien, Rivendell, and Mirkwood, and likely of the grey havens, seem to be the only race in middle earth which practice an Ecological Land Ethic. They are very densely populated in areas which for the most part are allowed to grow wild around very small pockets of intently managed landscape.. I would imagine that rather than the Hobbits who likely would think nothing of cutting down a copse of trees to plant something, the elves would merely prune the trees, much like a Japanese Banzai, in order to have an area with enough sunshine to grow their crops without removing the trees. They of course being immortal, are allowed the luxury of this incredibly inefficient type of land use. 

Then we of course get to Mordor and Isengard. Home mainly of Orcs, though obviously some humans live in these areas as well side by side with the orcs (How weird would that be? To be an Easterling and have to live near Orcs? Ugh.) The evidence both these places had large scale farming is found in the fact they had VERY large standing armies, and simply put, orcs have to eat something (Maggoty bread, and vile tasting liquor both tell us something.. they had Mills (possibly bone meal, since the perpetual darkness that shrouds Mordor would make it hard to grow a lot of plants.. but not impossible to grow herds of animals) and distilling.. which does take either fruit or grain or honey. We also know that Mordor had vast slave populations.. perhaps making their economy in the East and South akin to the South Eastern US plantation economy prior to the US Civil War... Simply put, these places are not nice places to live.. and it's really no wonder why the men of Khand and Rhun would be so anxious to get ahold of the lands of Gondorians and Rohirrim. We also know they built a sizable navy, in order for the "Corsairs of Umbar" to be Corsairs.. and clearly had NO problem at all of simply clear cutting vast swathes of Forest, or excavating and polluting vast tracks of land to smelt the Iron they needed to build their war machines and assorted other war materials. Mordor clearly had a purely Economic, and extremely mercenary, approach to land management.. in fact I wouldn't even suggest they had any conception of "Land Management" except extract every last drop of blood you can until only stones remain behind. Isegard sought to copy this view, switching from the Utilitarian view they had previously (Evidenced by the manicured lawns and orchards which dotted the interior of the ring prior to their destruction at the hands of Saruman's Orcs). 

This is such a fascinating idea to me, that, should I get the opportunity to write a paper for this class, I may just use this as it's basis. 

Of Malazanites and Others.

Yup, just doing an obligatory first post in the new year. I don't really expect to be updating either of my blogs that frequently over this year as I'm taking a very full class load at school, trying to earn as many credits as I can at the cheaper commuter school before transferring in August.

Last year I set myself a goal of 75 books, down from the 150 I had set myself the year before. Both times I've managed to meet or exceed those goals, but both times were also a bit of a stretch to achieve. This year I've set the several very modest goals. 1) I intend to read as many books as I can this year. 2) I plan to finish Erikson and Esselmont's massive (It's like, sagans* in length) Malazan series to all finished volumes. 3) Finish the Wheel of Time with the publication of "Memory of Light" next week. 4) I would also like to finish reading all of the remaining works in Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion sequence. And with that, I think I've just about filled in all my free time, we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully will be going to Paganfest 2013 to see Tyr and Heidevolk and others provided they have a show in Atlanta or Greenville..

And then in August I'll be moving, which I'm excited about and scared to death about at the same time.

*sagan definition

jargon 
 /say'gn/ (From Carl Sagan's TV series "Cosmos") Billions and billions. A large quantity of anything. 

Read this year.

Yup, I know the year's not over yet, but it will be by the time I finish the last couple that I'm working on, so I thought I'd post the obligatory list for everything I've read this year, I'll mark them in bold if I read them for school.



1. Gardens of the Moon - Malazan: Book of the Fallen #1 - Steven Erikson *****


2. Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson ****
3. Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Neitzsche ***
4. The Maker of Universes - World of Tiers #1 - Phillip Jose Farmer ***
5. The King and the Cowboy - David Fromkin **
6. The Gates of Creation - World of Tiers #2 -Phillip Jose Farmer ***
7. Pigeon Feathers - John Updike ***
8. Quag Keep - Andre Norton ***
9. A Private Cosmos - World of Tiers #3 - Phillip Jose Farmer ***
10. Deadhouse Gates - Malazan: Book of the Fallen #2 - Steven Erikson ***
11. The Things they Carried - Tim O'brien ***
12. Beyond the Walls of Terra - World of Tiers #4 - Phillip Jose Farmer **
13. The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan **
14. The Rise of the West - William Hardy Mcneil ****
15. The lavalite World - World of Tiers #5 -Phillip Jose Farmer **
16. In Love and Trouble - Alice Walker **
17. The Oracle Betrayed - Oracle #1 - Catherine Fisher ****
18. World War One British Poets - Candace Ward ***
19. 1421: The Year China Discovered America - Gavin Menzies *
20. A Vocation and a Voice - Kate Chopin ***
21. Magician: Apprentice - Riftwar #1 - Raymond E. Feist ****
22. Red Orc's Rage - World of Tiers #6 - Phillip Jose Farmer *
23. Memories of Ice - Malazan: Book of the Fallen #3 - Steven Erikson ****
24. More than Fire - World of Tiers #7 - Phillip Jose Farmer **
25. Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones ****
26. Tolkien and the Great War - John Garth ****
27. House of Chains - Malazan: Book of the Fallen #4 - Steven Erikson ***
28. Landscape and Memory - Simon Schama *****
29. Carnage and Culture - Victor Hansen ***
30. Conan the Relentless - Roland Green **
31. Mr. Midshipmen Hornblower - Horatio Hornblower #1 - C.S. Forester ****
32. Midnight Tides - Malazan: Book of the Fallen #5 - Steven Erikson ***
33. Magician: Master - Riftwar #2 - Raymond E. Feist **
34. Cannibal Culture - Deborah Root **
35. Blood Follows - Bauchulain and Korbel Broach #1 - Steven Erikson **
36. The Lees of Laughter's End - Bauchulain and Korbel Broach #2 - Steven Erikson **
37. The Healthy Dead - Bauchulain and Korbel Broach #3 - Steven Erikson **
38. Crack'd Pot Trail - Bauchulain and Korbel Broach #4 - Steven Erikson **
39. Night of Knives - Tales of the Malazan Empire #1 - Ian Cameron Esselmont ****
40. Youth in Revolt - C.D. Payne ***
41. Lieutenant Hornblower - Horatio Hornblower #2 - C.S. Forester ****
42. The House of the Wolfings - William Morris ****
43. The Bonehunters - Malazan: Book of the Fallen #6 - Steven Erikson ****
44. Conan the Savage - Leonard Carpenter **
45. Hornblower and the Hotspur - Horatio Hornblower #3 - C.S. Forester ****
46. Imaro - Imaro #1 - Charles Saunders ****
47. Hornblower during the Crisis - Horatio Hornblower #4 - C.S. Forester ****
48. Hornblower and the Atropos - Horatio Hornblower #5 - C.S. Forester ****
49. Conan the Defender - Robert Jordan ***
50. Beat to Quarters - Horatio Hornblower #6 - C.S. Forester ****
51. Conan the Triumphant - Robert Jordan ***
52. Ship of the Line - Horatio Hornblower #7 - C.S. Forester ****
53. Return of the Crimson Guard - Tales of the Malazan Empire #2 - Ian Cameron Esslemont ****
54. Flying Colours - Horatio Hornblower #8 - C.S. Forester ****
55. The Polysylabic Spree - Nick Hornby ***
56. A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan ***
57. Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional life of boys - Dan Kindlon ****
58. Conan the Gaurdian - Roland Green **
59. Shadowdale - Avatar #1 - Richard Awlinson **
60. Conan at the Demon's Gate - Roland Green **
61. Manhood for Amatuers - Michael Chabon ****
62. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Steven Chobsky (See Insert)
63. Maps and Legends - Michael Chabon ****
64. King Dork - Frank Portman ***
65. Reaper's Gale - malazan Book of the Fallen #7 - Steven Erikson ***
66. The Passion of the Western Mind - Richard Tarnas ****
67. Albert of Adelaide - Robert L. Anderson ****
68. Me: The People - Kevin Bleyer ***
69. The Essential Rumi - Rumi ***
70. Bongwater - Michael Hornburg ***
71. The Persian Book of Kings - Ferdewsi ****
72. A History of the Ostrogoths - thomas S. Burns ****
73. Tantras - Avatar #2 - Richard Awlinson **
74. Doctor Faustus - Christoper Marlowe ***
75. I'm Proud of You - Tim Madigan ***
76. The Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson ***
77. Conan The Gladiator - Leonard Carpenter **


Still in Progress
78. Waterdeep - Avatar #3 - Richard Awlinson
79. Cosmos - Carl Sagan
80. Toll The Hounds - Malazan Book of the Fallen #8 - Steven Erikson

This year I didn't get nearly as many books finished as I would have liked. This is due to it being my first "Full" year of school, taking classes all 3 semesters, and 2 of those being English Classes. My World Lit class during Fall had far more than just The Essential Rumi, but basically I had already read all the rest of them and didn't see any reason to include them. Among those that I re-read during my World Lit class were:

The Enuma Elish
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Orestia by Asychleus
Plato's The Apology and Allegory of the Cave
The Song of Roland
Einhard's Life of Charlegemage
Dante's Divine Comedy
Machievelli's The Prince

As you can see I nearly made it to the end of the Malazan series, but the later books in the series have simply gotten so bogged down in Minutae as the series crawls to a conclusion that it's taking me longer and longer to get through it, I also started and nearly finished the Hornblower series, the only thing holding me back is that I just don't have the money to buy the remaining few in the series since they are 15$ a piece. I need to check my local Library. I read the first Imaro book, which I bought when Night Shade was having a sale, but haven't yet gotten the remaining 3 in the series from Mr. Saunders. I also started reading the Riftwar Series by Raymond E. Feist, and as interesting as Samurais riding giant insects are as villains.. I'm just not sure I will be continuing to read the series.. It didn't grab hold of me the way it does some people.. i didn't even finish the first "Trilogy" of 4 volumes. And lastly I've now made it to just shy of the halfway point in my massive Conan Read. Next year I plan to finish up Malazan, and get a start on two big series, Michael Moorcock's The Eternal Champion (Which I've read a few of, so will include some re-reads) and Arnold J. Toynbee's " A Study of History" which clocks in at about 11 or 12 volumes.. but which I found my local Library had copies of just recently, Once I've finished that I can safely say i will have read both the Pesimistic view of Historical Theory (Spengler) and the Optimistic View of Historical Theory (Toynbee). Between Moorcock and Toynbee and the remains of Erickson, it works out to be nearly 60 books just there.. add in I don't know how many I will have to read for school, and it sounds as if I have a busy year ahead of me.


Insert: Essentially I cannot rate this book due to the fact that it is so tied up in my current problems revolving around a person who had become an extremely important part of my life and then chose to extricate herself from it entirely. She had me read the book, and we went to see the film together, and the book was massively important to both of us as a result due to our similar experiences growing up, and due to the fact that we used it as something of a letter back and forth, both taking turns underlining passages before giving it back to the other. The Book itself is phenomenal, and if you want to actually taste what it is like to be alienated and alone in your most formative period, and see what it's like to absolutely hit rock bottom due to emotional trauma, regardless of the fact that you have friends and family to help you through it.. then the book is for you. I absolutely am glad I read it, I just don't think it would be fair on my part to rate the book in my current mental state. If you have children, I cannot recommend reading it enough because it hits all the warning signs of what to look out for to make sure your child doesn't hit the lows that Charlie does in the book.

They still refuse to see it!

Yet again, yet another writer has hacked out yet more words trying to claim that Tolkien & Fantasy in general, hate Technology.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/fall-mortality-and-the-machine-tolkien-and-technology/260412/#

The article starts out all right I suppose, but it quickly falls apart as soon as it mentions "The last Ringbearer".. Simply put, they keep missing the point of Lord of the Rings (and truth be told, so do a lot of fantasy writers who seek to emulate it).. These writers are too literal with their approach to technology for one thing, they see Technology only as industrial machinery, be that steam trains or Abrams tanks. These writers are overlooking the fact that Crop Rotation is a Technology, Charcoal making, black smithing, brewing, the gunpowder in Gandalfs fireworks, and the walls of Minus Tirith are all TECHNOLOGY.

Tolkien isn't against Technology, he's simply against the soulless INDUSTRIALIZATION of the world.  If you want to see representations of Mordor, look at London in the 1900's, look at Detroit in the 70's, look at the hole in the O-Zone layer thanks to CFC's Look at the slag dumps outside of African, South American and Chinese mineral mines, look at the clear cut, blasted, hell landscape of the former mountains of the Appalachian chain which have been completely removed.

Tolkien isn't arguing against technology, he's arguing against the fact that we don't use it responsibly. The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep, They awakened the methane gas explosion that is the balroq. Sauron and later Sauruman sought to dominate life, and they are rewarded with the dim, selfish, spiteful and malformed Orc. The Dragon Smaug's greed lead him to take by force two entire kingdoms, Esgaroth and Erebor, simply so he could horde gold to retire to Boca.. err I mean sleep on.

Think of it this way, the act of inventing the automobile was in itself not particularly bad. But once you factor in the marketization of the automobile, selling them, thus needing a constant supply of them, not to mention the oil drilling, road building, and ugh.. Suburbia.. who doesn't begin to feel a little put upon by them? Especially when you read stories about what happened in the US and Britain to their already firmly built, though no less ecologically problematic, (remember, even the attempt to use the weapon of the enemy for good, can still cause evil) public transit systems. In the 40's and 50's it was not uncommon for US automakers and oil companies to collude with cities to purchase vital segments of the public transit system and then dismantle them.. thus forcing people to have no choice but to buy a car and pay for gas. That's Mordor thinking. One car to bring them all, and in the ring-road bind them.

Everyone has been stuck in a traffic jam, you cannot tell me that if just a little be more civic responsibility had been in evidence during the planning phases that that problem couldn't have been conceived of and dealt with? The South-East US is littered with middle turn lanes, called morbidly "Suicide lanes", which account for a vast number of traffic fatalities.. there are entire towns where there are no sidewalks and no crosswalks, let alone bike lanes or any attempt at providing some alternative to the automobile. They see no reason to build any of that because everyone (who counts anyway) lives too far away from town, secluded in the suburbs and exoburbs and planned communities and gated communities to warrent building anything except more roads to bring in yet more traffic to yet more big box stores and strip malls and fast food joints to pour yet more money into the never satisfied gaping maw of corporate greed.

The US didn't crack the atom to provide clean, cheap power to the masses of the world, it cracked the atom to kill people, and for 60 years afterwards Nuclear Energy was a distant second place to the never ending quest to a bigger and better bomb. Eventually the Soviet Union, what more of a Mordor could you want than a country ruled by technocrats and engineers, crafted the Ultimate in the enormous Tzar Bomba. I'll excuse you while you go and chant GROND! GROND! GROND!.. okay, back? good.

Gandalf could have used his gunpowder to make rockets to fire at the Orcs, but he didn't he used it to make beautiful displays of light and colour to amuse and entertain a bunch of fat drunk hobbits. The Dwarves used their knowledge to make toys and jewelry and the Elves.. well now that's an interesting viewpoint as you can see the same impulses which Sauron and Sauruman had.. in Feanor and the Silmarils.

No, the Elves I think are the one example in which Tolkien may have created a group of beings who either nearly did or entirely did abstain from most technology.. and guess what.. they are declining and slipping away into the past to be replaced by those pesky humans who aren't afraid to harness the weapon of the enemy, hopefully to try and use it for good.  To build solar panels and sea walls and hospitals and high speed electric rail to connect all the little villages and hamlets to magnificently planned urban centers groaning with parks and industry which sequesters it's emmisions and appropriately sources it's raw materials.

Tolkien was a man who had seen the absolute worst of what human ingenuity could concoct. Poison Gas, The Tank, Machine Guns, Grenades, Artillery capable of turning a human into a fine red particulate from a hundred miles away, there is a reason why that war lead to the Geneva Convention.. which itself, in it's attempt to restrain the insanity, simply made humans more ingenuitive  If they can't use poison gas, lets just use cluster bombs, lets coat our bullets with white phosphorus, anti-coagulants, or make them out of depleted uranium.  Let's do all these horrible things because it's easier than finding common ground and working together, sharing a bite and sup and a song and then going for a walk along the hedgerows, or through the park.

Tolkien wasn't saying not to use technology, he was simply saying to advance technology responsibly and with as little negative impact to the surrounding world, and preferably without killing anyone or destroying anyone's home. Tolkien wasn't telling us to become neo-Luddites huddling around tallow candles or to become subsistence farmers.. He was simply telling us that there are better things in life to strive for than greed and death.

An Attempt at Organization. Mark 1.

To preface; I own a LOT of books. Somewhere in the realm of 5000+ individual volumes in a variety of formats, not including about another 1500 E-Books. For the Fiction books, finding what I want is simplicity itself, Anthologies come first, alpha by editor, and all the rest are alpha by author. Art books are the same way, alpha by artist. The Non-Fiction books however are a trickier proposition. Though they are mostly Social Sciences (History, Anthropology, Archeaology, Biography, Sociology, Comparative religion, Political theory) I also have Geology, Geography, Natural history, theoretical physics, and lastly and I'm not ashamed to say, a sizable metaphysics section on Ancient astronauts and the like (it's bogus, but fun!).

There are a few paths one can go by, but in the long run, you can only choose one road which to walk upon. (Led Zeppelin, yeah!) Primarily you have three main choices in the United States.

First, the Library of Congress system which organizes book not by strict subject categories but rather by Publication and Publisher data, since it is primarily a repository of works published in the United States, thus making it rather oddly laid out since you will wind up with books about automobiles next to books about birds. On the plus side, it's easy to find out the LOC# for your specific book.

Second, the Dewey Decimal system, which is extremely easy to navigate and easy to find out where your books go, with one caveat. It's proprietary, and expensive. You have to purchase a silence to the catalog in order to find the multi-digit code for your specific books.

Neither of these options was really that good, for one, I didn't want a book on the Migration Age to be sitting next to a book on Alestair Crowley, and for two, I didn't have the money to buy a lisence and a hand scanner to put my books into the DD system, and three, I simply don't have enough books to make all those extra categories necessary. Since in the grand scheme of things, I have so few areas of interest I opted to simply make my own.

It has 22 Categories, each with a number of Sub Categories and Sub-Sub Categories depending on the scope and depth of my collection.

       I.        Antiquity
    II.            Classical Age
 III.            Late Classical Age
 IV.            Migration Age
    V.            Early Middle Ages
 VI.            High Middle Ages
VII.            Late Middle Ages
VIII.            Renaissance
 IX.            Historical Outlines
    X.            Anthropology
 XI.            Comparative Religion
XII.            Psychology
XIII.            Sociology
XIV.            Archeology
XV.            Geology & Geography
XVI.            The late Victorian & early Edwardian Age
XVII.            World War I
XVIII.            World War II
XIX.            The post war world
XX.            Science
XXI.            Language
XXII.            Metaphysical 

I'm hoping to start actually putting the books into order, making citation/abstract pages for each one, over the winter break from school. Hopefully pictures of the final product will also be included. 

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? 

The Scott-i-verse.

Recently there have been a number of articles floating around on the internet revolving around some Easter eggs off of the new Prometheus DVD. Specifically the a journal entry where Weyland relates a conversation with Tyrell from Blade Runner. Their conversation is related to whether Tyrell's Replicants or Weyland's Androids are the wave of the future in terms of artificial humanoids.

This is to me, precisely the sort of thing that makes me get excited.. I love stuff like the Wold Newton Universe and Comic Book Crossovers.. I felt that what Marvel pulled off with the Avengers films, and is likely to amplify with future releases, was really cool. I love it when a plan comes together.

So, to see Ridley Scott at least playing around with the idea of his movies tying into one another at least in a thematic way is rather exciting.

When taken together, Scott's films tend to deal with common themes, especially dreams and what it means to be human, and what i means to have faith in something. Prometheus, Alien, Blade Runner, but also Legend deal with the major themes of Humaneness and Dreams..

 Certainly if we consider the theory presented that the reason the Engineers were planning to destroy humanity with the black slime was related to an engineer, supposed savior of humanity, being nailed to some planks of wood and then fought over for 2000 years, Really changes the view of the historical epics that Scott made.. though I'm not saying that his historical epics should be included.. but I could certainly see an argument for it...

What if all of his movies, mainly just his Sci-fi/Fantasy films, are actually connected? What if Legend is just a dream in the mind of a replicant? What if Tyrell corporation was an early competitor with Weyland industries...


I suppose we might eventually find out if the proposed sequel to blade runner gets off the ground..