All posts by Thaddeus Wert

High school math teacher and fan of all kinds of music, but most of all prog.

Paul Johnson’s Creators – Praise for Artists of All Kinds

May 1, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

Paul Johnson is my favorite historian (my dear friend, Brad Birzer, is my favorite living historian!). Johnson takes complicated subjects, makes them understandable, and he does it in an entertaining way. He’s British, but he has written a fantastic history of the United States, A History of the American People. Other excellent books of his are The Birth of the Modern: World History 1815 – 1830, and Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties. Creators was written after his book, Intellectuals, received some criticism for focusing too heavily on the hypocrisy of some of history’s most famous and influential intellectuals. As he explained, “I defined an intellectual as someone who thinks ideas are more important than people.” I, personally, appreciated learning about the moral failings of Rousseau, Marx, Ibsen, Sartre, and other thinkers who have been lionized by our intelligentsia. It’s the eternal story: “Do as I say, not as I do.” Anyway, Creators is, on balance, a more positive and inspiring collection of portraits. In it, Johnson gives us brief descriptions of Chaucer, Durer, Shakespeare, J. S. Bach, Turner and Hokusai, Jane Austen, A.W.N. Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, Tiffany, T.S. Eliot, Balenciaga and Dior, and Picasso and Walt Disney. Throughout these portraits his admiration for these artists’ work shines clearly. Johnson is the master of providing the interesting anecdote that humanizes and makes real his subject. For example, he writes that the composer Wagner

required a beautiful landscape outside his windows, but when he wrote music, the silence had to be absolute and all outside sounds, and sunlight, had to be excluded by heavy curtains of the finest and costliest materials. They had to draw with “a satisfying swish.” The carpets had to be ankle-deep; the sofas enormous; the curtains vast, of silk and satin. The air had to be perfumed with a special scent. The polish must be “radiant.” The heat must have been oppressive, but Wagner required it. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 9). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Johnson praises Chaucer for creating the very idea of English literature. Before him, all politics and creative arts were conducted in French and Latin. He was the first to proudly use English in his poetry, and his portrayals of various classes of people are unparalleled. In my opinion, Creators is worth reading for his chapter on Shakespeare alone. Johnson does a wonderful job explaining how a man with humble beginnings could attain such incredible heights of literary excellence. Interestingly, he makes the case for Shakespeare not being an intellectual. In other words, for Shakespeare, people were more important than ideas.

He [Shakespeare] rarely allows his opinions open expression, preferring to hint and nudge, to imply and suggest, rather than to state. His gospel, however, is moderation in all things; his taste is for toleration. Like Chaucer, he takes human beings as he finds them, imperfect, insecure, weak and fallible or headstrong and foolish—often desperate—and yet always interesting, often lovable or touching. He has something to say on behalf of all his characters, even the obvious villains, and he speaks from inside them, allowing them to put forward their point of view and give their reasons. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 54). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I also learned that no one has created as many words and phrases that have entered common use as Shakespeare. Some estimate he coined as many as 6700 new words! Like Harold Bloom, Johnson has nothing but praise for the two Henry IV plays and Hamlet. Johnson’s explication of the psychological and moral dilemmas explored in Hamlet is fantastic.

It is characteristic of this stupendous drama that the long passages of heroic reflection, which never bore but stimulate, are punctuated by episodes of furious action, the whole thing ending in a swift-moving climax of slaughter. No one can sit through Hamlet and absorb its messages—on human faith and wickedness; on cupidity, malice, vanity, lust; on regeneration and repentance; on love and hate, procrastination, hurry, honesty, and deceit; on loyalty and betrayal, courage, cowardice, indecision, and flaming passion—without being moved, shaken, and deeply disturbed. The play, if read carefully, is likely to induce deep depression—it always does with me—but if well produced and acted, as Shakespeare intended, it is purgative and reassuring, for Hamlet, the confused but essentially benevolent young genius, is immortal, speeding heavenward as “flight of angels sing thee to thy rest.” It is, in its own mysterious and transcendental way, a healthy and restorative work of art, adding to the net sum of human happiness as surely as it adds to our wisdom and understanding of humanity. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 75). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Johnson’s next subject, Johann Sebastian Bach, was a solidly middle class man who was confident in his extraordinary ability to compose music, even if he wasn’t recognized for it during his lifetime.

Bach was by far the most hardworking of the great musicians, taking huge pains with everything he did and working out the most ephemeral scores in their logical and musical totality, everything written down in his fine, firm hand as though his life depended on it—as, in a sense, was true, for if Bach had scamped a musical duty, or performed it with anything less than the perfection he demanded, he clearly could not have lived with himself. It is impossible to find, in any of his scores, time-serving repetitions, shortcuts, carelessness, or even the smallest hint of vulgarity. He served up the highest quality, in performance and composition, day after day, year after year, despite the fact that his employers, as often as not, could not tell the good from the bad or even from the mediocre. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (pp. 82-83). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

It’s almost a miracle that we have as many works of his today to perform, as they were scattered amongst his descendants after he died. If not for the efforts of Mendelssohn to restage Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1827, we might not have had the revival of his music that we enjoy so much today. Johnson uses this event to share another fun anecdote:

Afterward, at Zelter’s house, there was a grand dinner of the Berlin intellectual elite. Frau Derrient whispered to Mendelssohn: “Who is the stupid fellow sitting next to me?” Mendelssohn (behind his napkin): “The stupid fellow next to you is the great philosopher Friedrich Hegel!” Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 93). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The chapter on the artists William Turner and Hokusai is very interesting. Both began drawing from the age of three. Turner was somewhat controversial because of his new and unusual way of painting light, but he ended up one of the most popular and wealthy artists in history. Unfortunately, time and bungling “restorers” have kept us from appreciating his radical use of color. Even his contemporaries could see how his paintings faded not long after he finished them. Hokusai never profited much from his prodigious output, always begging benefactors for money. According to Johnson, he pretty much invented landscape art in Japan. He was quite a character:

There was a restless rootlessness to him, reflected in the fact that he changed his name, or rather the signature on his works, more than fifty times, more often than any other Japanese artist; and in the fact that during his life he lived at ninety- three different addresses. The names he used included Fusenko, meaning “he who does only one thing without being influenced by others”; “The Crazy Old Man of Katsushika”; and “Manji, the Old Man Mad about Drawing.” After he fell into a ditch, as a result of a loud clap of thunder, he signed himself “Thunder” for a time. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 108). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Johnson’s chapter on Jane Austen is the slightest one, not because of any fault of Johnson, but because we know so little of Austen. Her family suppressed most of her personal correspondence, and they tried to make her into a Victorian woman, rather than the Regency one she was. However, according to Johnson, we can glean some personality traits from the letters and reminiscences that do exist and conclude that she was fun-loving young woman, which was the source of her genius:

Laughter was the invariable precursor, in Austen’s life, of creative action—the titter, the laugh, the giggle, or the guffaw was swiftly followed by the inventive thought. Once Austen began to laugh, not with the melodramatic novels she read, but against them, she began to look into herself and say, “I can do better than that.” Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (pp. 130-131). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Pugin and Violett-le-Duc were both architects, the former responsible for the Gothic revival in England. We have Pugin to thank for the beautiful Houses of Parliament in London. The chapter on Victor Hugo is a very interesting one. In it, Johnson poses the question,

That Hugo was phenomenally creative is unarguable: in sheer quantity and often in quality too, he is in the highest class of artists. But he forces one to ask the question: is it possible for someone of high creative gifts to be possessed of mediocre, banal, even low intelligence? Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 156). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Johnson does not have a lot of admiration for Hugo, pointing out how contradictory his political opinions were, depending on what party was in power. He also kept many mistresses, well into his eighties! Mark Twain comes in for more respectful treatment. Johnson posits that his genius was as a storyteller – to truly appreciate his work, we need to hear it “performed”. He also had a knack for making great literature out of almost nothing:

His creativity was often crude and nearly always shameless. But it was huge and genuine, overpowering indeed, a kind of vulgar magic, making something out of nothing, then transforming that mere something into entire books, which in turn hardened into traditions and cultural certitudes. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 171). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

T. S. Eliot was a paradox – very conservative in his personal life, yet revolutionary in his poetry:

Eliot was never once (except on holiday) photographed without a tie, wore three-piece suits on all occasions, kept his hair trimmed, and was the last intellectual on either side of the Atlantic to wear spats. Yet there can be absolutely no doubt that he deliberately marshaled his immense creative powers to shatter the existing mold of poetical form and context, and to create a new orthodoxy born of chaos, incoherence, and dissonance. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 204). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The turning point in Eliot’s career came when he met Ezra Pound, who introduced him to lots of European literary stars and convinced him to emigrate to England. He married Vivian Haighwood, but it doesn’t sound like the relationship was much fun:

From the early days of their marriage they engaged in competitive hypochondria. Both became valetudinarians and were always dosing themselves, complaining of drafts, and comparing symptoms. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 213). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

However, this dismal marriage, coupled with his job at Lloyd’s bank in London, spurred Eliot to create his masterpieces, The Waste Land and Four Quartets. As Johnson puts it, The Waste Land‘s strength is its elusiveness:

The greatest strength and appeal of the poem is that it asks to be interpreted not so much as the poet insists but as the reader wishes. It makes the reader a cocreator. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 219). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Four Quartets solidified Eliot’s position as the leading poet of the twentieth century, even though, in Johnson’s words, “they are not about anything”. What they are is evocative of a nihilistic mood that dominated mid-twentieth century western culture. The appalling meaninglessness and slaughter of WWI that led into WWII left a cultural elite with almost no hope Eliot was their spokesman. I wish I could have been present at the gathering Johnson describes below!

The Four Quartets were much discussed when I was a freshman at Oxford in 1946, and they, too, were still fresh from the presses. I recall a puzzled and inconclusive discussion, after dinner on a foggy November evening, in which C. S. Lewis played the exegete on “Little Gidding,” with a mumbled descant from Professor Tolkien and expostulations from Hugo Dyson, a third don from the English faculty, who repeated at intervals, “It means anything or nothing, probably the latter.” Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 223). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

In his chapter on Picasso and Disney, Johnson praises Picasso for his incredible creativity and canny judgment:

… Picasso became the champion player, and held the title till his death, because he was extraordinarily judicious in getting the proportions of skill and fashion exactly right at any one time. He also had brilliant timing in guessing when the moment had arrived for pushing on to a new fashion. Although his own appetite for novelty was insatiable, he was uncannily adept at deciding exactly how much the vanguard of the art world would take. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 253). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

But he also exposes a very dark side of Picasso; how he abused women and men, stabbed friends in the back, and seemed to have no moral sense.

He would create situations in which one mistress angrily confronted another in his presence, and then both rolled on the floor, biting and scratching. On one occasion Dora Maar and Marie-Thérèse Walter pounded each other with their fists while Picasso, having set up the fight, calmly went on painting. The canvas he was working on was Guernica. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 256). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Walt Disney, on the other hand, comes in for quite a bit of praise. I really enjoyed Johnson’s detailed explanation of just how revolutionary Disney was when it came to combining sound and animation in a film. Practically all animated content we enjoy today owes a debt to Disney. What was his strength as a creator? According to Johnson,

Whereas Picasso tended to dehumanize the women he drew or painted. Disney anthropomorphized his animal subjects; that was the essential source of his power and humor. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 258). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The final chapter, Metaphors in a Laboratory, addresses the idea of scientific creativity. Johnson argues that through the use of metaphors, scientists are able to communicate their ideas and spur others to innovate. A lot of this chapter rehashes persons and topics he covers in The Birth of the Modern – how Wordsworth and the scientist and inventor Humphrey Gray were great friends and shared ideas with each other, how the engineer Telford transformed the British landscape with canals, roads, and bridges of simplicity and beauty. Creators is a wonderful celebration of one of the greatest human characteristics: the ability to create. Even though some of the creators were not the nicest people who lived (such as Picasso), their works survive to inspire others.

LITERATURE

John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes: Deep Sea Dystopia

April 21, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

The Kraken Wakes (1953) is John Wyndham’s sixth novel and the first to follow his masterpiece, The Day of the Triffids. Like its predecessor, The Kraken Wakes is the story of an apocalyptic event that threatens the survival of humanity. In this case, it isn’t mass blindness and carnivorous, mobile plants, but rather an unseen yet enormously powerful alien presence that makes its home in the deepest sections of our oceans.

Wyndham begins his tale with the two main characters, Mike and Phyllis Watson, watching icebergs in the English Channel slowly drift past them. Wait, what? Icebergs in the English Channel? Yes, and it isn’t until nearly the end of the book that we learn why that’s the case.

The story is told through the eyes of Mike Watson, a scriptwriter and journalist for the EBC (English Broadcasting Corporation). He divides his account into three large sections, Phase One, Phase Two, and Phase Three.

Continued here.

LITERATURE

Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? Another Victorian Classic

April 8, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

Ever since I read Charles Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers, I have been a fan of Victorian literature. Anthony Trollope was a contemporary of Dickens, and an incredibly prolific writer. Can You Forgive Her? is the first novel in his Palliser series. It begins with the dilemma facing Alice Vavasor: “What should a woman do with her life?” For an upper-class woman in Victorian England, the options were limited to marrying or living with relatives the rest of your life.

Alice is engaged to a man everyone (including her) acknowledges is a perfect catch. John Grey has a substantial estate in Cambridgeshire, he is definitely in love with her, he is intelligent, handsome, and doting. Yet, Alice looks upon a future with him with apprehension – she only sees herself trapped in a boring country estate with no intellectual or social stimulation. As she explains to her aunt McLeod,

People always do seem to think it so terrible that a girl should have her own way in anything. She mustn’t like any one at first; and then, when she does like some one, she must marry him directly she’s bidden. I haven’t much of my own way at present; but you see, when I’m married I shan’t have it at all.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE. Can You Forgive Her? (Kindle Locations 564-566). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

It doesn’t help that she previously was in love with her cousin, George Vavasor, who cheated on her. He fancies himself a bohemian who is above such mundane institutions as marriage, and he and his sister, Kate, waste no time convincing Alice to break off her engagement with Grey.

Alice convinces herself she is unworthy of being John Grey’s wife, but to her consternation, he refuses to accept her rejection of him and insists she is still betrothed to him. He isn’t ugly or forceful in any way, he is simply confident that, given time, she will come to her senses and return to him.

Kate Vavasor is also unmarried, and she has an extended visit with her aunt, Arabella Greenow. Mrs. Greenow has recently lost her fabulously wealthy older husband, and Trollope’s account of how she flirts with two men – the boring but well-off farmer Mr. Cheesacre and the dashing but penniless Mr. Bellfield – while observing the proper mourning rituals is hilarious.

Yet another cousin of Alice, Lady Glencora Palliser, invites Alice up to her estate to spend a few weeks. Lady Glencora is very rich, very young, and recently married to Plantagenet Palliser, a very dull man who greatest ambition is to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. She once loved a dissolute young man, Burgo Fitzgerald, but her family intervened and made her marry the much more suitable Palliser. He doesn’t give her much attention, and she is fairly miserable.

Burgo is friends with George Vavasor, and he hopes to elope with Glencora to Italy. George doesn’t encourage him to do this, but he doesn’t discourage him, either. George is basically amoral, and he pursues whatever path will give him the most pleasure. He breaks up Alice and John Grey’s engagement, because he gets a kick out of it, not because he is in love with Alice. So the stage is set for all kinds of social intrigue and shenanigans; in other words, a perfect setting for a Victorian novel!

This is the first novel by Trollope I’ve read, and I’m impressed. He is very different from Dickens, though. Where it was always clear from his works that Dickens had a heart for the poor and downtrodden in Victorian England, Trollope obviously moved in a higher social setting. He chronicles the issues and conflicts facing the British governing class in the mid-nineteenth century.

Can You Forgive Her? is primarily concerned with the limited options available to upper class women of that time. Alice is principled (to a fault) and wants to make a difference in English society. Her only option, since she can’t vote – let alone run for Parliament – is to ally herself to someone who can run for office. That is a major reason why she breaks off her engagement to John Grey; he is quite happy to live a quiet and prosperous life in Cambridgeshire, taking no interest at all in politics.

Lady Glencora is forced into a marriage with the up and coming Plantagenet Palliser, and even though it is her fortune that makes possible his political career, she has no interest. She is the most interesting character in the novel. She yearns to be free of stuffy Victorian conventions, and she delights in tweaking her poor husband’s sensibilities. She’s never in danger of getting into any scandal, but she is very funny whenever she decides to do what she wants.

More serious is George Vavasor. Initially, he is a somewhat sympathetic character, in that he wants his former love, Alice, to renew their relationship. He is very clever in the ways he manipulates her and his sister, Kate, to get what he wants. As the novel progresses, he becomes more and more trapped in a downward spiral of greed, deceit, and fury. By the end of the book, he is truly evil.

Plantagenet undergoes character growth in a positive way, learning how to be a good husband to Lady Glencora restoring proper perspective to his life. He and Cora will return in later Palliser novels, and I look forward to seeing their marriage mature.

Aunt Greenow also develops into a worthy character. At first, she is comical in her flirtations with Mr. Cheesacre and Captain Bellfield, but when her niece Kate needs her, she is there with excellent advice and moral support.

The main negative of the novel is the indecision of Alice when it comes to accepting John Grey’s standing offer to resume their engagement. She drags her feet for increasingly poor reasons, and it gets tiresome to read of her inner struggles when there really isn’t much reason for them. However, as a portrait of upper class Victorian England, Can You Forgive Her? is a detailed and fascinating glimpse into a long gone era. I will definitely read the next novel in the series, Phineas Finn.

Music

Glass Hammer’s Rogue: Joy in the Midst of Regret

April 2, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

Glass Hammer has returned with a new album, Rogue – due out April 11, 2025. Not surprisingly, given the history of this group, it is a stark departure from their previous several albums. Where the Skallagrim Trilogy rocked very hard, and their most recent work, Arise, was an exercise in space rock jamming, Rogue is jumps out of the gate with a burst of pure melodic bliss.

After listening to Rogue nonstop for four days, I am put in mind of some of Glass Hammer’s most enjoyable musical moments, such as Life By Light (Culture of Ascent), Having Caught a Glimpse (The Inconsolable Secret), and The Curse We Weave (Three Cheers for the Broken Hearted), among many, many others. I am tempted to say Rogue represents a return to form, except Glass Hammer has never fallen out of form – each release of theirs is a self-contained gem of excellence. Instead, let’s just say Rogue is a joyful celebration of beautiful melody.

What If, the first track, sets the stage as the protagonist decides to leave his cold and gray home in the north and head south to find a long-lost love – he is hoping to reignite an old romance that he ended years ago. It is a bouncy song that conveys the hopefulness of our hero as he sets out.

Summer! He’s weary of sleet and snow
Summer! Come now and do not go
He’s heading south to the land of his dreams

The Road South is where reality begins to set in. Has he made a mistake leaving his home? Is that a storm ahead? Musically, this song is reminiscent of classic Alan Parsons Project to me. Oliver Day’s lap steel guitar is outstanding – graceful and fluid without sounding shrill.

Tomorrow is one of the most beautiful songs on the album. As our hero wrestles with the memories of all the wrongs he has committed in the past, a voice reassures him,

All will be fine
God is watching over all you do
His eye is on the sparrow and on you

The accompanying melody is appropriately soothing and calming.

Pretty Ghost and Sunshine feature the gorgeous vocals of Olivia Tharpe, along with another pair of winning melodies. On Sunshine, Fred Schendel gives an outstanding performance on lap steel guitar.

Next up is my favorite track on the album, I Will Follow. This is a driving, upbeat, infectious song with an unshakeable earworm for a melody. It’s one of the best songs in the entire Glass Hammer catalog, featuring layered harmonies that should be listened to on headphones to be fully appreciated.

The Wonder Of It All has a synth-driven opening that I find very appealing. One thing I’ve enjoyed over the past few albums has been Glass Hammer’s incorporation of Tangerine Dream-like interludes that feature very cool rhythmic elements. Lyrically, this song seems to be a turning point for our hero:

Oh, I’m weary, yet I’m blessed
For all you’ve given me
The wonder of it all, I’d have to say
That I was here at all
I’ve done so little to deserve
This life you gave me

One Last Sunrise is a terrific instrumental, and Babb really shines on bass and Taurus pedals. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Steve Babb is one of the most inventive bassists working in music today.

Terminal Lucidity, at 10:19, is the longest track, and it is primarily instrumental. Synths, electric piano, and electric guitar weave a seductive web of melody that draw the listener in before an energetic jam gets going. Eventually, it becomes clear that our hero is on his deathbed: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust/I can hear them calling me”. It was a stark and chilling moment when I first realized the true journey being taken!

Rogue closes with the triumphant and joyful All Good Things. Another uplifting melody (underpinned by Babb’s terrific bass work) brings the story to an emotionally satisfying ending:

This life you gave me
I’ll bring it home, you know
Sunshine in the morning sky
Descending from on high

It seems that, for all intents and purposes, Glass Hammer is now primarily a Steve Babb project. He handles some lead and backing vocals, bass, keyboards, Taurus pedals, guitars, and percussion. Longtime musical partner Fred Schendel plays guitar on Tomorrow and lap steel guitar on Sunshine. Babb has collected a stellar cast of supporting musicians: Thomas Jakob and Olivia Tharpe on vocals, Reese Boyd, David Walliman, and Atillio Calabrese all take a turn on lead guitar, and Oliver Day does a phenomenal job on guitar and lap steel throughout. Ariel Perchuk contributes some excellent synth solos, while Randall Williams and Evgeni Obruchkov provide drum work.

Rogue is one of the most ambitious albums Glass Hammer has attempted, and they pull it off with ease – it is an unalloyed triumph in all respects: conceptually, lyrically, and musically. Taken as a whole, this set of songs is the most satisfying Glass Hammer has provided in many years. I can’t stop listening to it! Meanwhile, the concept of a man wrestling with the demons of his past as he faces death would be daunting for anyone to tackle, but Glass Hammer does it with grace and hope. I can’t recommend Rogue enough to listeners who appreciate and are looking for melodic rock that has depth. It’s my favorite album of 2025, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Republic of Letters

The Citadel of Fear – Classic Dark Fantasy

March 22, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

Francis Stevens is the pen name of Gertrude Barrows Bennett. The Citadel of Fear was her first and most famous novel, published in 1918. It features a “lost city” in Central America, along the lines of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. However, where the main threats in Doyle’s adventure were dinosaurs, Stevens’ tale features a lost civilization – the ancient city of Tlapallan – which is inhabited by peoples who still practice human sacrifice and worship the ancient Aztec gods.

You can read the rest of my review here.

LITERATURE, Music

The Fantastical Prog of Terra Incognita (Uncharted Shores)

March 15, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

Hello, Spirit of Cecilia readers! Kevin J. Anderson has a Kickstarter campaign up and running for a gorgeous reissue of his Terra Incognita trilogy of fantasy novels and accompanying music that includes a new album from Roswell Six – Terra Incognita: Uncharted Shores. Brad Birzer, Rick Krueger, and Tad Wert share their thoughts on it.

Tad: Brad and Rick, I understand this is the third Terra Incognita album, but they haven’t been on my radar. What’s the story behind this group, and how are they connected to author Kevin Anderson?

Rick: Tad and Brad, it’s great to join you two for a roundtable at long last! I’m sure Brad knows a lot more about this project than I do. But I first came across Kevin Anderson when he and Neil Peart wrote a novel based on the Rush album Clockwork Angels. That one led to two more novels in the CA universe over the years, Clockwork Lives and Clockwork Destiny; all three of them were delightfully true to Peart’s concepts, with lots of clever Easter eggs from the Rush canon and enjoyable plot twists. The only other novel of Anderson’s I previously read is The Dark Between the Stars, the first part of a science fiction trilogy that was nominated for a Hugo award back in 2015 – solid, sprawling space opera fun. I’ve just downloaded his latest, Nether Station and am racing through it; he’s got that ever so slightly pulpy, lickety-split writing style down. it’s about a deep space expedition that, little by little, gets kinda eldritch . . .

But that really just scratches the surface of what Anderson has done. He’s most famous for continuing Frank Herbert’s Dune saga with Herbert’s son Brian; he’s also produced tie-in novels in the Star Wars, X-Files and DC universes; he’s an extremely prolific writer overall, whether it’s sci-fi, fantasy, horror or any combination of those genres – by his count, about 180 novels to date. On top of all that, he and his wife Rebecca Moeste run their own publishing company, WordFire Press.

Through Brad’s connections with Anderson, I’m on WordFire’s mailing list, so I’ve noticed that he’s run a few Kickstarter campaigns over the years. His latest campaign is a reissue of Terra Incognita, a fantasy trilogy originally published in 2009-2011. The thing that’s different about these books, though, is that the first two had soundtracks; apparently, Anderson has had a lot of contact with the music world over the years. And maybe that’s where I should let Brad take over.

Brad: My dear friends, Tad and Rick, so great to do this with you guys! And, to talk about one of my all-time favorite human beings, Kevin J. Anderson. I’ve been reading Kevin’s works for years, but I only got to know him for the first time about 11 years ago. I had a one-year position at the University of Colorado-Boulder (2014-2015 academic year), and that position came with some funding to bring speakers in. As soon as I arrived in Longmont (where we lived for the year), I contacted Kevin (whom I had never met) and Dan Simmons. I never heard back from Simmons, but Kevin immediately agreed to come speak for me. He and his lovely (and equally talented) wife, Rebecca, came to Boulder, and Kevin gave an excellent speech on the art of writing fiction. He called it his “pop-corn theory,” explaining that ideas happen all over the place. I loved the speech.

And, I also loved Kevin and Rebecca. We hit it off at dinner at an Indian restaurant right before Kevin’s talk. He then invited us to his famous New Year’s Eve party for 2015. Dedra and I happily drove to Monument to see Kevin’s impressive and rather Arthurian house! Crazily enough, my car slid down his steep driveway and almost crushed the natural gas vein! Thank the good Lord that disaster was averted and New Year’s Eve was a different kind of blast. One of the great things about Kevin is he knows how to form communities. He’s a natural leader.

We also really bonded over his friendship with Neil Peart. In fact, it was Kevin who suggested I write the book about Peart’s lyrics, Cultural Repercussions, for his WordFire Press. I was deeply honored to do so not just because of my love of Rush, but also because of my respect for Kevin.

And, Kevin has deep roots in the prog rock community. Indeed, I can’t imagine a current writer who has greater or more legitimate ties to prog than does Kevin. Rush’s Grace Under Pressure inspired Kevin’s first novel, Resurrection, Inc., and Kevin’s never been shy about his inspirations: Rush, Kansas, Styx . . . .

Rick, you brought up Clockwork Angels and its surrounding universe. Admittedly, I love the Clockwork trilogy–the novels, the audiobooks, the graphic novels–and I think that Kevin really offered new insights into Rush and, frankly, into music. To me, Clockwork Angels is Chestertonian, and I don’t understand why it’s not been made a Netflix series!

When I first encountered Kevin’s music project, Roswell Six, I was understandably impressed by the scope as well as the execution of the vast project. Kevin has a great entrepreneurial spirit, but always with the artistic soul. Roswell Six perfectly blends Kevin’s many loves and expertises. I’ve been proudly listening to the first two CDs since they were first released, and I happily include them among my all-time favorite albums. I’m especially taken with the first CD, 2009’s Beyond the Horizon.

When Kevin first announced this Kickstarter project–hardback editions of Terra Incognita as well as a re-release of the first two Roswell Six CDs, AND a brand-new third CD, I was absolutely thrilled. I pledged during the second hour of the campaign. And, that campaign has done exceedingly well. Initially hoping to hit the $10,000 mark, the Kickstarter project, as of this writing, is at the $51,000 mark with 399 backers! Incredible. And, so well deserved.

So, what do you guys think of the music?

Tad: Okay, both of you have much more experience with Anderson’s work than I. When I saw that there was a companion novel to Rush’s Clockwork Angels, I immediately read it and enjoyed it very much. The Roswell Six albums slipped under my radar, though.

That said, I really like this third album, Terra Incognita (Uncharted Shores). To my ears, it’s pretty much straightforward, classic progrock. Fans of Kansas, Styx, Spock’s Beard, Threshold, Arena, et al. will love it. The fact that there are so many different vocalists brings to mind an Arjen Lucassen project – especially when the beautiful voice of Anneke van Geirsbergen appears in track 3, “A Sense of Wonder”.

I like the acoustic, Celtic sounding “Haunted and Hunted” a lot. “Lighthouse” is another highlight for me, with its chugging rock riffing and excellent guitar soloing. “The Ballet of the Storm” is an instrumental that has a very nice intro played on violin that transforms into a warm piano/electric guitar duet underpinned by some excellent bass.

“The Key to Creation” features the return of Anneke, and it has a fun 80s vibe to it – it’s got a relentless beat with a wall of synthesized sound. As a matter of fact, I think this is my favorite track on the album. It has a nice hook in the chorus that sticks in my ear.

“Unexpected” keeps the musical quality high with, I believe, Dan Reed handling the vocals. I feel like these songs will take on more meaning when I have the chance to read the accompanying novels. They obviously follow a storyline. In many of the tracks, I can hear sounds of the sea, which makes sense, given the Uncharted Shores title!

Rick: Brad, what you said about Anderson’s connections in the music world helped me get my bearings for listening to Uncharted Shores; it definitely has that American heartland prog vibe with some nifty touches of funk (but also touches of European theatricality, as Tad pointed out). KJA gave an interview this week with Michael Citro of Michael’s Record Collection where they go into the background behind the music; the basic tracks are written and performed by Bob Madsen (bass), Billy Connolly (guitar), Jerry Merrill (keys) and Gregg Bissonette (drums) – all artists working under the umbrella of The Highlander Company Records. (Madsen’s band The Grafenberg Disciples announced themselves to the world a few years back with a tribute to Peart, “No Words”, that caught Anderson’s attention.) And all that excellent violin work is by Jonathan Dinklage – he led the Clockwork Angels string section on those 2012 & 2013 tours. Rush connections aplenty!

The guest vocalists take the whole thing up a notch as well. Michael Sadler from Saga sings on the title song. “Hunted and Haunted” and “Lighthouse”; he’s played one of the “lead roles” for all three albums. Like you said, Tad, Ted Leonard and Anneke give it their all on their feature tracks. But the big surprise for me was Dan Reed, who takes the villain role on “Mortal Enemies” and “Unexpected”; for a minute, I thought Steve Walsh had emerged from retirement! Reed has this grizzled timbre, but a real purity of tone and expression underneath, and he absolutely sells the part. And The Grafenberg Disciples vocalist Hans Eberbach brings it all home on “Not In My Name” – gutsy and soulful by turns, and consistently dramatic (with Tull’s Doane Perry contributing a spoken-word cameo as a capper)! I think that’s the track that’s my favorite so far.

But there isn’t a duff song on the new album, and it definitely grew on me the second time through. I agree with you, Tad, that knowing the Terra Incognita storyline better will probably help, but the core emotions and throughline of the story come across loud and clear. According to the Anderson/Citro interview, all the albums are being released through Sony (on InsideOut?) in the fall, but I decided not to wait; I’ve pledged for the ebooks and the digital albums, so my summer reading and listening are already lined up. And when the CDs go to broad release – who knows? It’d be far from the first time I’ve bought music twice!

Brad: Tad and Rick, so well stated! And, yes, I pledged to buy all three albums as well, even though I already own the first two. If you’ve not listened yet, I especially recommend the first track on Beyond the Horizon: Ishalem. Incredible prog metal. Very much in line with Ayreon or Dream Theater.

For those out there not totally familiar with Kevin, he has, as noted above, written extensively in the Star Wars, Dune, and X-Files franchises. My favorite of his own books (that is, those not set in another mega genre/universe) are Nether Station (a sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness) and Stake (a completely original novel questioning the existence of the supernatural).

Again, all praise to Kevin for bringing together so many beloved things: fantasy, science fiction, and prog rock!

Tad: Kevin Anderson’s Kickstarter link is here, for those interested!

fiction, LITERATURE, Music

SciFi/Fantasy Meets Prog (and the result is glorious)

March 10, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

Acclaimed author Kevin J. Anderson, is beginning a Kickstarter campaign tomorrow (March 11, 2025) to reissue his three-volume Terra Incognita project. The books have been previously published in paperback, but have been out of print. Anderson plans to rerelease them as a deluxe set of hardcovers in a slipcase.

Accompanying the books is a trio of albums featuring the cream of progressive rock. Just check out the lineup for the soon-to-be released third album, Uncharted Shores:

• Michael Sadler (SAGA)
• Dan Reed (Dan Reed Network)
• Doane Perry (Jethro Tull)
• Ed Toth (Doobie Brothers, Vertical Horizon)
• Jonathan Dinklage (Rush Clockwork Angels, Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand)
• Greg Bissonette (David Lee Roth, Ringo Starr All Stars)
• Anneke van Giersbergen (European vocalist)
• Ted Leonard (Spock’s Beard, Pattern-Seeking Animals)

Be on the lookout for an in-depth review of this album soon. Meanwhile, check out the Kickstarter campaign – it will be the only means of acquiring this historic literary/musical project, and it only runs from March 11 through April 4!

[This post was updated to reflect the fact that all three novels have been published in paperback, and the personnel for the third Terra Incognita album was incorrect. The post now has the correct lineup.]

LITERATURE

The Day of the Triffids: Classic Dystopian Fiction

February 16, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

I have been slowly reading John Wyndham’s works, and I finally hit paydirt! His earlier efforts, Foul Play Suspected, and Planet Plane, were not very good. However, his fourth novel, The Day of the Triffids, is a classic dystopian tale. It’s been made into a movie and TV miniseries, and even though it was published in 1951, it hasn’t aged one bit.

It is told through the eyes of biologist Bill Masen, who has made a career out of studying some strange plants called triffids. They grow to be 8 to 10 feet tall, they produce very useful and nutritious oil, and they are able to move about on their three main roots. Unfortunately, they are also carnivorous and have lethal stingers they can whip out and lash their victim with. It’s possible to “dock” a triffid – i.e. cut off it’s stinging lash – but that reduces the quality of its oil, as well as the yield of its seeds.

No one knows for sure where they came from, but they suddenly appeared all over the world at pretty much the same time. Masen believes they are the result of Soviet genetic engineering. Their benefits outweigh their risks, and Masen works for the main developer of triffid products. One day on the job, he is glancingly stung in the face and temporarily blinded. This accident turns out to be a Godsend, because while he is the hospital bandaged up and recovering, an extraordinary, bright green meteor shower occurs one evening. Everyone on earth is awestruck by its beauty, and Masen has to listen to his nurse describe it in great detail.

However, the next day, when he is scheduled to have his eye bandages removed, no one comes by his room. He calls for breakfast, and there is no reply. He takes the bandages off himself, and he soon realizes that everyone who watched the cosmic pyrotechnics is blind. What follows is a clear-eyed account of what would happen if 99% of humanity suddenly went blind, and there is a strange species of ambulatory plants that seem to be sentient and can kill.

You can read the rest of my review here.

LITERATURE

Charles Williams’ All Hallows Eve – Stranger Things Meets Rosemary’s Baby

February 12, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

All Hallows Eve is Charles Williams’ seventh novel, and one of his best. In 2024, I began working my way through all of the novels of this member of The Inklings, the famous literary group of friends that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Williams’ fiction is definitely darker and more philosophical than the writings of either of the his more well known colleagues.

All Hallows Eve begins with a startling scene: a young woman, Lester Furnival, is standing on a street in nighttime London, and there are none of the usual sounds and traffic around her. She soon realizes that she is dead. She and a friend, Evelyn Mercer, were supposed to meet each other for a get-together, but they were killed by a plane crashing into the area. It appears that Lester and Evelyn are in some sort of purgatory – they can interact with each other, but they do not perceive any other beings. The only way they know it’s night is when the lights come on in the houses around them. There is no sun or moon, just a diffuse, gray light.

Back in the land of the living, Lester’s grieving husband, Richard, visits his artist friend, Jonathan Drayton. Drayton is a talented painter who shows Richard his latest work: a painting of a charismatic religious leader who goes by the moniker Simon the Clerk, or Simon Leclerc. It has been commissioned by Lady Wallingford, a devoted disciple of Simon. Jonathan Drayton is in love with her daughter Betty, but she will not allow them to get engaged.

Lady Wallingford drops by to view the painting, and she is extremely disappointed. In her eyes, Simon looks malevolent, and the people in the congregation look like insects. Later, Simon himself visits Drayton to view the painting, and he proclaims it a masterpiece that captures him perfectly.

What follows is a very dark tale of necromancy and all-consuming greed for power. Simon was conceived and born during the French revolution, and he has plans for world domination that involve breaking through to the spiritual plane where Lester and Evelyn are. Lady Wallingford’s daughter, Betty, is the hinge through which this will happen. Things get very creepy as the story unfolds – I was put in mind of Rosemary’s Baby as the pieces fell into place.

As a favor to Jonathan, Richard Furnival agrees to attend a meeting of Simon’s followers, and see if he is legitimate. Simon uses some sort of spell to put everyone under his will. At the end of the meeting, Simon speaks to Richard, and Richard recounts their disturbing conversation to Jonathan:

“He [Simon] said: ‘I won’t keep you, Mr. Furnival. Come back presently. When you want me, I shall be ready. If you want your wife, I can bring her to you; if you don’t want her, I can keep her away from you. Tell your friend I shall send for him soon. Good-bye.” So then I walked out.

He lifted his eyes and looked at Jonathan, who couldn’t think of anything to say. Presently Richard went on, still more quietly: “And suppose he can?”

“Can what?” asked Jonathan gloomily.

“Can,” said Richard carefully and explicitly, “do something to Lester. Leave off thinking of Betty for a moment; Betty’s alive. Lester’s dead, and suppose this man can do something to dead people?

CHARLES WILLIAMS. All Hallows’ Eve (Kindle Locations 1850-1855). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

As the story unfolds, there is a contrast between the characters who grow and mature, and the ones who degenerate. Betty, who is initially a slave to Simon’s will, gradually comes into her own and is able to resist him. Lester also matures spiritually as she learns to navigate the purgatory she is in. Both she and Richard remember their brief marriage, regret the mistakes they made, and come to a much deeper love than they had when she was alive. Even Jonathan’s art takes on a life of its own, becoming more transcendent.

On the other side, Lady Wallingford becomes less and less of an individual with actual agency, Evelyn undergoes a horrific degeneration into petty hatred, and Simon Leclerc reaps the rewards of his dark magic.

All Hallows Eve is one of Williams’ most accessible reads, as well. In a few of his earlier novels, particularly Descent Into Hell, his prose was very dense and unwieldy, and his dialog hard to follow. Every conversation in All Hallows Eve is terse and to the point. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, even though it creeped me out at times. I wonder if the creators of Netflix’s Stranger Things are familiar with it, since there are definite similarities in the basic premise of both tales. Anyway, for fans of fantasy with a very dark edge (but a happy ending), I highly recommend All Hallow Eve.

Music

New Album In the Works from Glass Hammer

February 7, 2025 Thaddeus Wert

GLASS HAMMER GOES ROGUE WITH April 11th RELEASE

Glass Hammer’s “Rogue” spins the tale of one man’s fateful, final journey. “He leaves everything he knows behind,” explains composer Steve Babb. “And thinks he’s returning to a place where he once knew happiness, but in reality, his odyssey will sweep him away to somewhere completely unexpected.”

Babb explains that the ten-song album explores themes of regret, heartache, and the mortal salience that comes with age. “Life is fleeting,” he continues. “It’s a heavy topic for an album, but the music isn’t as heavy as our last few releases. Rogue is much more like the Glass Hammer albums our fans refer to as “classic.”

And who’s in the lineup? “It’s no secret that Glass Hammer reinvents itself every few albums,” says Babb. “It’s happened again! This time with a lot of new faces.”

Rogue features performances by Fred Schendel, Reese Boyd, and David Wallimann (GH guitarist 2006-2010). Vocalists Thomas Jakob (Netherlands) and Olivia Tharpe (USA) are new to the band. They’re joined by guitarist Oliver Day (UK), keyboardist Ariel Perchuck (Argentina), drummer Evgeni Obruchkov (Poland), and others. “It’s an international cast of characters,” Babb points out. “A super-talented group that our fans are sure to love.”

The hour-long Rogue is Glass Hammer’s twenty-second studio album. Fans can pre-order autographed copies, t-shirts and downloads on the band’s website. www.glasshammer.com