Like a supernova, Giordano Bruno burst onto the Renaissance ideosphere, shocking and captivating his peers with the explosive literary ejections of his supermassive intellect. He wandered across Europe, dividing his time between meetings with royalty and seminars amongst literati in cities like Oxford and Paris. Although he was most famous for his system of memory and his works of…
Marsilio Ficino: Florence’s Dumbledore
Marsilio Ficino’s ascendancy was the result of an unlikely meeting of minds. In 1439, Florentine banking magnate Cosimo de’ Medici started attending philosophical lectures by Gemistos Plethon, a Byzantine Platonist. Although Plethon was part of an official envoy of Greek officials who had been meeting to discuss the future of the Christian church, he might have also been one…
Fantasts in Focus: The London Dreamtime Family
Nigel Hoyle and Vanessa Woolf are the power couple behind several London folk acts. In her role as a raconteur and cultural educator, Vanessa is the presiding spirit of London Dreamtime. She speaks and performs in classrooms, collaborates with artists and historians, and resurrects folktales under the shadow of the night; taking her audience to London’s riversides,…
Fantast in Focus: Daniel Merriam
Like a Narnian portal, Daniel Merriam’s work is one of transport. Without the flick of a wand, his fairies carry you off to carnivalesque and ‘Peter Pan-ish’ neverlands. Merriam was born and raised in the United States and spent his early years working in architectural design. Merriam is also the founder and owner of Bubble…
Fantast in Focus: Tim Addey of The Prometheus Trust
Tim Addey is the co-founder and chair of The Prometheus Trust, a UK charity that supports scholarship in the Platonic tradition. Just like the ancient Academy, the group meets throughout the year and engages in discussions on and readings of Plato’s dialogues. Unlike other philosophical organisations, the objective of the trust is the promotion of Platonism as…
Fantast in Focus: Mike Jay
FANTAST IN FOCUS: MIKE JAY Mike Jay is a cultural historian who hounds the maddening stories of the people who ventured to bizarre borderlands of consciousness. Praised by the Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesmen, Mike has written about nineteenth-century drug culture, the Illuminati, and the earliest claims of machine-based brainwashing. Mike currently curates…
Fantast in Focus: Emilia Kabakov and the Ship of Tolerance
The Ship of Tolerance spans countries, religions, and race. First conceived over ten years ago, the project was created by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov as a collaborative artwork for children around the world. Both Kabakovs are artists and have had their works displayed at places such as the Pace Gallery, The Saatchi Gallery, The Serpentine…
Interview with artist John Harris
Carl Sagan, eminent astronomer and populariser of science once said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” His words ring true in the atmospheric art of John Harris, whose illustrations have been featured in both science and science-fiction media for over thirty years. His book covers have given visual life…
Interview with author Marie Brennan
Marie Brennan is a novelist, folklorist, and martial artist. The author of several works of fiction including the Doppelgänger duology, The Lady Trent series, and over forty short stories, Brennan has a writing style that evokes the reports of mythic lost worlds during The Age of Discovery. She’s been featured in Io9 and Tor, and her…
Fantast in Focus: Essie Fox
FANTAST IN FOCUS: ESSIE FOX Essie Fox is a British illustrator, speaker, and author of three riveting Victorian Gothic mystery novels: The Somnambulist, Elijah’s Mermaid, and The Goddess and the Thief. Her latest book, The Goddess and the Thief is scheduled to be re-released in paperback later this month and features a curious and enchanting plot which pays homage to nineteenth-century Spiritualism and the…