Rusty Schweickart came back from the Apollo 9 mission in 1969 with a profoundly altered sense of relationship with our planet. As he lat...

Lovecraft's prose is empurpled, histrionic, so over the top that it is therefore perfect for capturing what he sought to capture: the im...

First, the lobster and the canary thank all of you who sent comments about last week's posting (on fairy tales, film, and income inequal...

Fairy tale remakes, the old gods resurrected, the fabulistic and super-heroical in many shades and sizes have dominated American cin...

One of Lobster & Canary's favorite places is the " Fragonard Room " at the Frick Museum in NYC. ( Click here for t...

The Thames that housed the prison-hulk holding Magwitch, the Trave along which the fate of the Buddenbrooks unfolds, the Seine that bisects ...

I remember staring at the vistas painted by Tiepolo in the Residenz at Wurzburg, yearning to float up and join the jolly, sleek figures...

* Peering back to the Big Bang... Last week astronomers announced in Science that they have found what might be the oldest object ever o...

[The lobster & the canary will be moving their physical abode to Manhattan's Lower East Side this week, so may be a little delayed i...

Lobster & Canary heartily recommends to you the fantasy/science fiction extravaganza that is Arisia , a four-day, entirely fan-run conve...

Dear friends, I am thrilled to say that my artistic collaborator, the designer and woodcarver Deborah A. Mills (who is also my wife), app...

Lobster & Canary will be at Arisia in Boston this weekend. Arisia claims to be "New England's largest and most diverse scie...

1.1 million words...1.1 million words! That is the total English-language lexicon estimated last month by The Cultural Observatory at Ha...

Welcome to a new year, another revolution around the star that warms us, another 5.3 million intakes of breath, another 36.8 million heartb...

Our final post for 2010...another gleaning of reasons to be cheerful as we enter 2011. The Shahnameh (the Persian Book of Kings ), co...

Following on December 24th's "Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part One," here is "Part Two." So much Beauty to celebrate, s...

'Tis the season for thoughtful happiness, and giving thanks for beauty discovered, re-discovered, and won. Here are a few of the many t...

So much doom-laden talk in 2010 about The End of Publishing and The Death of Books and The Demise of Reading...obviously much is afoot, with...

So many stories yet to swim in... Three more that I must get to before (before, before), at least judging from their opening lines: "I ...

A few fish plucked from the oceans... David Anthony Durham , The Other Lands (2009). See my full review here October 17th, which begins: ...