Author: Kathryn S.

Battle of the ironclads, the Merrimack vs. the Monitor

4,699 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

II. Out of Space: Fever

The thickened present manifested also in both a more expansive and a more constricted space during Gothic Science Fiction wars. (more…)

Grahame Baker-Smith’s 2017 Folio illustration for War of the Worlds.

3,882 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Introduction

It was perhaps the most famous description of a (space) alien in English literature. The narrator felt an “utter terror [grip] him” as a thing from a nightmare emerged slowly, slowly from the pit that its smoking spacecraft had cratered in the Earth. As its body “bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.” A pair of huge, fathomless dark eyes regarded him intensely, “steadfastly. (more…)

6,299 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Dante’s Inferno

Dante Alighieri’s conceptual map of Hell also lay at the intersection where biblical and classical ideas about the afterlife crossed. Virgil, fellow Italian poet and ancient Roman author of the Æneid, accompanied him during much of his journey, for Virgil was someone who had imagined his own hero Aeneas successfully navigating the underworld. (more…)

Terror Antiquus, L. Bakst (1908)

6,674 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Prologue: Little Pine Lake

The first time I got lost, it was because of a map. It was Easter in my grandparents’ home of Marshall, Texas, and during that golden-age glow that now suffuses the nineties. (more…)

The Maltese Falcon

4,140 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Battle of the Sexes: Femmes Fatales Walking the Streets and Roaming the Moors

Relationships can bring men and women lots of joy. They can also cause a lot of pain and suffering, and sometimes simultaneously. This section is dedicated to those who have discovered that their worthy opponent was the man/woman they loved. And hated. (more…)

4,647 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

There is a wonderful Ridley Scott film from 1977 called The Duellists, based on a Joseph Conrad short story, “The Duel.” It follows the exploits of two hussars in Napoleon’s Grande Armée as they traveled from 1800 Strasbourg, to 1812 Russia, and back again to France after Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo. Were their enemies the Prussians, or the Russians, or the British? No, their true enemies were one another — (more…)

J. M. W. Turner, Vesuvius in Eruption, 1817-20

6,722 words

It was the summer of 79 AD. The celebrated naturalist and Roman navy admiral Pliny the Elder sat on an outcrop and looked toward the western sea, lit with the fires of a setting Sun as if he was taking stock of a life well-lived, and the once-and-future prospects of his beloved country. To the east, also set briefly ablaze like a torch in the purpling sky, he could see Vesuvius: reliable, peaceful Vesuvius. (more…)

5,813 words

About a week ago a young black employee brought back news from the ghetto (colored folks are now the only reliable and honest sources left when it comes to these sorts of adventures). Earlier that afternoon, “authorities” had placed her high school on lock-down. A student had marched through the front doors with a gun and then began shooting up the place. Only notoriously bad black marksmanship prevented the school from becoming an abattoir. He then turned and fled, hiding somewhere inside the building (supposedly). (more…)

Illustration from J. N. Dolfen’s Darkness Over Cannæ (2020).

7,819 words

And I have in mine owne bowels made my grave, That of all nations now I am forlorn, “I was that citie that the garland wore . . . delivered unto me By Romane victors, which it wonne of yore; Though not at all but ruines now I bee, And lie in mine owne ashes, as ye see.”^[1]

Scipio’s Tears, Scipio’s Oath

There was that memorable scene, played again and again in every age. That vision of ruin at the moment of triumph. So did Napoleon later look out on the vale leading down to the Olomouc Road and see that the hunt after honor had reared a trophy for “devouring death.” (more…)

1,233 words

When I first began frequenting Counter-Currents, I was working at a university as a “writing consultant,” which — stripping away the fancy-sounding title — meant that I was a tutor, or “paper doctor,” as I called it. And as a “paper doctor,” my professional diagnosis was usually that the assignments themselves were lousy — dead on arrival. (more…)

5,993 words

The year was 939 AD, the setting near the city of Simancas. Count Fernán Gonzalez, a commander of free Spain, rode at the head of an army whose mission was to strike a blow against the Saracen invaders of Al-Andalus. Still, they were outnumbered and desperate. Fortune, it seemed, would favor the Moors on this day. But as the Count’s troops prepared to clash with their foe, a miracle occurred. (more…)

3,353 words

It was a sweltering July afternoon at the Malvern Hill battle site — more than 150 years gone since it had been the scene of General Robert E. Lee’s debut in the 1862 Seven Days campaign. It was the conclusion of his defense of Richmond from the numerically-superior Army of the Potomac, led by George McClellan. (more…)

Richard II, the English monarch whose missteps inaugurated the decline of respect for royal authority in Britain.

2,247 words

Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

A “Cony Struggling in the Net”:^[1] The Plantagenets vs. the Plantagenets

 Legendary for its blizzards and blood, the fifteenth-century English conflict known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487) was poetic in name and savage in fighting. Medieval warfare was the most physically brutal form of battle Westerners in their long history have ever fought: huge, murderous fistfights of chaos and close combat in which few were afforded a “clean” death. (more…)