Patrick Moran – författare

Despite publishing endeavours such as the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series in the 1970s and Fantasy Masterworks in the early 2000s, the canon of modern fantasy is still very much in flux. This Element examines four key questions raised by the prospect of a fantasy canon: the way in which canon and genre influence each other; the overwhelming presence of Tolkien in any discussion of the classics of fantasy; the multi-media and transmedia nature of the field; and the push for a more inclusive and diverse canon.

Despite publishing endeavours such as the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series in the 1970s and Fantasy Masterworks in the early 2000s, the canon of modern fantasy is still very much in flux. This Element examines four key questions raised by the prospect of a fantasy canon: the way in which canon and genre influence each other; the overwhelming presence of Tolkien in any discussion of the classics of fantasy; the multi-media and transmedia nature of the field; and the push for a more inclusive and diverse canon.

Parker buries his loyal yellow Labrador retriever in a century-old and long-neglected pet cemetery in the Wine Country of Northern California, only to find that the graveyard itself is scheduled to be plowed under to make room for an upscale Pinot Noir vineyard.Nearing the end of his own life, Parker vows to keep vigil over his beloved companion until he himself dies or the owners relent. His vow to stay beside his pet until she can rest in peace attracts cohorts from near and far.It is their combined devotion that is the fulcrum upon which this story of one man’s undying love for his best friend balances.

Rhianna’s lifeless body lies splayed atop a salt spire on the south shore of Mono Lake. A sapling oak rises from inside the young woman’s abdomen. Murder by tree hugger? Or something more complicated? On the eve of his arrest, the confessed killer walks up to an aspen tree and disappears into it. Heed is his name. A genetic interloper between flora and fauna. A shape shifter. Thus begins the mystery confronting Rhianna’s ex-husband Marlyn, a transgender man, to uncover how a murderer could take the life of his beloved, and how he can bring himself to rationalize those same choices as his own.

Caleb Calder is a cartographer. While out cycling one day, he is hit by a car and suffers traumatic brain injuries. An outgrowth of this is that his ability to feel emotions is rewired in a way that allows the part of his brain he utilizes as a cartographer to become concatenated with the affective part. That is, he discovers that--borrowing from Descartes’s dictum—I map, therefore I am--that mapping is perception captured like an eddy in a stream in which each and every perception is a map of another map.Caleb is a man whose search for meaning hones in on the idea of querencia, a Spanish word that means: belonging to a place that nourishes you. It is on his journey to find such a place for himself and his young family that Caleb becomes enmeshed in a web of internecine intrigue that threatens to destroy everything he has worked for. In the end, he learns that no matter how the heart is mapped, it beats in rhythm to the touch of the land.

August 1945: A Victory Train bound from Chicago rumbles through the Sierra Nevada stuffed with soldiers celebrating the end of WWII. One is Daniel Rose, scion of a legendary movie studio. Moral turpitude has ended Daniel’s service to his country. In L.A. Daniel meets Cutter, a man fleeing from military service guarding a uranium mine. Their dream is to put the military behind them. A year later they purchase a “coffee-pot” radio station. It is an instant success. They buy a retreat they call Mystic Mountain. But their success brings trouble, and they soon discover a mysterious financial arrangement funded with money smuggled out of Europe in 1939 is threatening to ruin everything they’ve achieved. The two learn that the fund is a scheme to make the world safe for atomic weaponry, and that their Place of Promise has been bought by the same currency of murder, duplicity, innocence, generosity and greed that made post-war America so prosperous.

Norma Christianstead is the first person raised from conception to adulthood in zero gravity. The year is 2200. She is a temporal savant. The goal is to determine how micro-gravity interacts with physical, intellectual, social and psychological development. Fifteen years later a CRISPR-spawned plague is overtaking Earth. Norma learns there is another goal to the experiment: to respond to the divinations of a secret artifact—a beacon—of an ancient civilization that vacated the Tharsian region of Mars a billion years earlier when the planet’s seas evaporated. The response to the beacon demands nothing less than an epigenetic evolutionary alteration in Norma, for theTharsian genomic code is genophotonic: a hybrid consisting of physical and photonic parts.In this, Patrick Moran’s fourteenth novel, the author comes to grips with how and why gravity and perception are related. In Zero Gravity Girl he weds the two in a tale that redefines the meaning of love and life, time and space.

When Keith Busby published his field-shaping Codex and Context in 2002, the work was referred to as ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘monumental’. It prompted scholars of medieval literature to return to manuscripts in their droves. However, Busby’s Codex and Context would also enact another, more gradual movement. His formulation of the term ‘medieval Francophonia’ to describe the presence, power and effect of French outside France would filter steadily into academic enquiry. The term and concept are now widely recognised and applied in global scholarship, including in multiple major projects dedicated to the topic. This volume brings together a series of cutting-edge studies of medieval Francophonia, covering in one place and for the first time the fullest scope of the concept’s remit, with contributions on history, historiography, language, literature, culture, society and authority. At the same time as offering a timely contribution to the field, this volume pays tribute to Busby’s life work not only to pioneer medieval Francophonia, but also, and moreover, to encourage the study of the medieval through material philology. Each of the studies here, written by Busby’s friends and colleagues, thus roots its approach in a material context.