Kaplan, Carter
Entry updated 26 February 2024. Tagged: Author, Critic, Editor.
(1960- ) US academic and author of Critical Synoptics: Menippean Satire and the Analysis of Intellectual Mythology (2000) which – over and above its unexpected conflation of Menippean Satire and the philosophical investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) – interestingly questions the ascendency of academic criticism-from-above over more intimate – what he calls synaesthesiacal – criticism on the part of critics who begin with the texts themselves, and focus on the complexly questioning relationship of texts to the world into which they are embedded and with which they interact.
His novel, Tally-Ho, Cornelius! (2008), is of sf interest for its transaction of the Jerry Cornelius quarter of Michael Moorcock's Multiverse, with Jerry Cornelius reappearing in the unlikely guise of an Anglican theologian in twenty-first-century New York. Diogenes (2011) is a story in the form of a play, set in Atlantis and hinting that the Greeks knew something of Genetic Engineering. The Invisible Tower Trilogy beginning with Echoes: The Adventures of Bronson Bodine (2018) situates on a mysterious planet a series of gonzo Space-Operatic adventures in which the highly-sexed Bodine more than once saves civilization. There is at least one Mad Scientist in the mix.
In 2011 Kaplan founded the Emanations Original Anthology sequence beginning with Emanations (anth 2011). Each volume typically contains a combination of fiction, poetry and speculative nonfiction, the latter section including several essays by Donald M Hassler, who along with Moorcock and others was on the editorial board from its inception. A repeated self-descriptive tag – "A Journal Dedicated to the Art of Ecstasy and the Ecstasy of Experiment" – does not fully represent the range of transgressive and/or dithyrambic material on offer (see Fantastika; Postmodernism and SF). Some figures whose careers began with the 1960s New Wave, including Michael Butterworth and Robert Meadley (1947- ), have contributed stories to the series.
Fantasy Worlds (anth 2014) is a reprint anthology aimed at college and university students, whose contributors include (in contents-list order) Homer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Orwell, H G Wells, H P Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. [JC/DRL]
Carter Kaplan
born Lexington, Kentucky: 15 April 1960
works
series
Invisible Tower Trilogy
- Echoes: The Adventures of Bronson Bodine (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2018) [Invisible Tower Trilogy: pb/Lee Talley]
- We Reign Secure: The Adventures of Bronson Bodine (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2023) [Invisible Tower Trilogy: pb/Lee Talley]
- The Sky-Shaped Sarcophagus: The Adventures of Bronson Bodine (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2023) [Invisible Tower Trilogy: pb/Lee Talley]
individual titles
- Tally-Ho, Cornelius! (Hyde Park, New York: Mustard Lid Press, 2008) [pb/Kai Robb]
- Diogenes (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2011) [introduction by E L Riches: pb/from Ugo da Carpi]
nonfiction
- Critical Synoptics: Menippean Satire and the Analysis of Intellectual Mythology (Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000) [nonfiction: hb/from Gustave Doré]
works as editor
series
Emanations
- Emanations (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2011) [anth: fiction/poetry/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/Kai Robb]
- Emanations: Second Sight (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2012) [anth: fiction/poetry/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/Kai Robb]
- Emanations: Third Eye (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2013) [anth: fiction/poetry/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/Kai Robb]
- Emanations: Foray into Forever (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2014) [anth: fiction/poetry/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/Kai Robb]
- Emanations: 2 + 2 = 5 (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2015) [anth: fiction/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/Ruud Antonius]
- Emanations: I Am Not a Number (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2017) [anth: fiction/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/]
- Emanations: Chorus Pleiades (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2018) [anth: fiction/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/]
- Octo-Emanations (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2020) [anth: fiction/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/]
- Emanations: When a Planet Was a Planet (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2021) [anth: fiction/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/NASA]
- Emanations: Zen (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2023) [anth: fiction/nonfiction: Emanations: pb/]
individual titles as editor
- Fantasy Worlds (Brookline, Massachusetts: International Authors, 2014) [anth: stories, essays and verse: pb/]
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