“Lammas Night” by Katherine Kurtz

[amtap book:isbn=0345295161]

His­to­ry: I’ve known about Kather­ine Kurtz as an author since my col­lege days: not only was I attract­ed to her writ­ing for her “Deryni” nov­els, but also to her own back­sto­ry. Before she turned to pro­fes­sion­al writ­ing, she was a mem­ber of the ear­ly Soci­ety for Cre­ative Anachro­nism, even­tu­al­ly becom­ing its first Seneschal (the equiv­a­lent of being the nation­al chair­man of the orga­ni­za­tion) as well as being award­ed the title of Duchess (mean­ing that she had been Queen of the King­dom of the West twice.) She also pub­lished a fanzine called “Deryni Archives: The Mag­a­zine” which con­tained a wealth of sup­ple­men­tary infor­ma­tion and sto­ries that helped affirm my fas­ci­na­tion for the Deryni.

Since then, she has devel­oped into a pop­u­lar and pro­lif­ic fan­ta­sy writer, known pri­mar­i­ly for her “Deryni” nov­els and her con­tem­po­rary fan­ta­sy “Adept” series in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Deb­o­rah Turn­er Har­ris. She edit­ed a col­lec­tion of Deryni sto­ries and oth­er short sto­ry col­lec­tions, also wrote numer­ous short sto­ries and stand-alone nov­els, one of which is “Lam­mas Night”.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““Lam­mas Night” by Kather­ine Kurtz”

September 12th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Fiction | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)

“The God Machine” by Martin Caidin

[amtap amazon:asin=B001YU5XZC]

[amtap book:isbn=0671698273]

His­to­ry: When I was in junior high school, I worked as a vol­un­teer in the library, because I was an avid read­er and loved the access to books this posi­tion gave me. I was also becom­ing a fan of sci­ence fic­tion, tran­si­tion­ing from my ear­li­er love of mys­ter­ies. And, most impor­tant­ly, even in my ear­ly teens I had a deep inter­est in the sub­ject of hyp­no­sis, so I was hunt­ing for books on the sub­ject: I was already read­ing the books on hyp­no­sis I could find in the local library, pri­mar­i­ly the Melvin Pow­ers books but a few sim­i­lar ones. I used the local library because, as might be expect­ed, books on hyp­no­sis were not to be found in the school library.

How­ev­er, I was mis­tak­en, at least in think­ing hyp­no­sis-relat­ed books were only to be found in the non-fic­tion sec­tion: one of the SF nov­els I dis­cov­ered there in the school library was “The God Machine” (1968) by Mar­tin Caidin. Caidin is best remem­bered for one nov­el, which not only became a tele­vi­sion series (which in turn spawned a spin-off series) but it was one of the few pro­grams to immor­tal­ize a sound effect in the pub­lic con­scious­ness. That nov­el, “Cyborg”, became the TV pro­gram “The Six Mil­lion Dol­lar Man”. How­ev­er, Caidin was a very pro­lif­ic author, with over 50 nov­els to his cred­it, includ­ing “Marooned” which became the basis for the movie of the same name, as well as being an avid avi­a­tor, air­plane restor­er and non-fic­tion author.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““The God Machine” by Mar­tin Caidin”

September 5th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: Fiction | One comment - (Comments are closed)

Welcome!

Wel­come to the Hyp­no­sis in Media blog!

I have long won­dered what I was going to do with the Hyp­no­sis in Media web­site, since the Wiki was tak­ing too much effort to main­tain as I envi­sioned it. But about a month ago I decid­ed to do some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent with it.

There­fore, start­ing next week and (hope­ful­ly) every week there­after, I will be select­ing one item from the Hyp­no­sis in Media col­lec­tion and blog­ging about it. Giv­en the num­ber of items in the col­lec­tion, I esti­mate that it will take rough­ly four or five years for me to get through them all, assum­ing I don’t add any­thing to the col­lec­tion dur­ing that time. And, when the sit­u­a­tion aris­es, I will blog  about media hyp­no­sis items and events as they occur. 

As for the Wiki, I plan on restor­ing it and using it pri­mar­i­ly to hold fic­tion and non­fic­tion entries that are no longer cov­ered by copy­right. That’s the next big project. 

So, next week: I will be writ­ing about one of the ear­li­est hyp­no­sis-relat­ed pieces of fic­tion I remem­ber discovering. 

August 28th, 2010 | Category: Website Information and Maintenance | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
« Newer Entries