notanotherbookreview

 Is magic fantasy, theory, science or lunacy? I was entranced by  M agician and Fool,  the first fantasy novel in Susan Wands' Arcana Oracle Series (Spark Press.) I recently   finished   High Priestess and Empress (April, 2024), the second novel and look forward to the third. Though not a regular reader of fantasy novels nor ones about magic, it's the history, characters and sheer imaginative leaps that I enjoy in this work.   The series, projected to cover the creation of the entire tarot deck, is a challenge. History is the bedrock for this series, enriching the fantasy with depth and plausibility. Then there's the characters, who would be fascinating in any time.  Pamela Coleman Smith (1878-1951) is the artist who created the famous Rider-Waite tarot deck, perhps the most used in the world. Her inspired designs are on display in the collection at NYC's Whitney Museum of Art, as are her colored prints of ocean waves with female spirits. Th...

  Where does fact meet fantasy in a history of the information age, and in a fantasy novel of  magical systems? Fancy Bear Goes Phishing:The Dark History of the Information Age in Five Extraordinary Hacks by Scott J. Shapiro (Macmillan) confirmed my suspicions that the online world is more chaotic and dangerous than I expected. What happened to computer science, once a visionary frontier of knowledge? In the beginning academia and the defense industry fostered the new area.  The idea was thinking machines would enable human advancement and make our nation safer. With unique access to talent and technology, computer science departments were galvanized for an exciting future. So where did the hackers come in? Author Shapiro (Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale and Director of the Yale Center for Law and Philosophy, as well as Yale's Cyber Security Lab) explains how "hacker" was once a complimentary term, meaning a rare creative thinker able to write code to make somethi...

The Presentation at I.R.T. 3 nights Dec 2019, was to be the first step before a showcase.  With Covid, opportunities didn't exist. Now since Theater is back, I am open to a production of this play in hybrid or traditional theater forms. There are special videos not completed except for the final night, using the monitor that frames this story in our media world. There are marvelous puppets of Houdini in water closet and other magic moments that add a dimension of hyper reality to stage magic.  The play was without these elements and the story alone moved people. If your theater would like to explore work with this show, leave a comment here and I will contact you. The video below is edited from the original presentation which was about two hours in length.  Thanks, Susan I. Weinstein link to video of Ether presented in a Residency Workshop at I.R.T. Theater (copyright)    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56d8Qtjyu_U Script available on request, full-length or...