Author Archives: Alex R. Howe

About Alex R. Howe

I'm a full-time astrophysicist and a part-time science fiction writer.

Dystopia as an Inverted Hero’s Journey: Act III

Posted on July 16, 2019

Act II Generally, in the traditional hero’s journey, The Ultimate Boon (or its equivalent), will be the climax of the story. What’s left is simply the denouement, and it will be covered very quickly if it is written out at … Continue reading →

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Dystopia as an Inverted Hero’s Journey: Act II

Posted on July 13, 2019

Act I — Act III The second act of the traditional hero’s journey is usually (though not always) the adventure proper, from the time the hero leaves the ordinary world to go on his quest, to his victory over the … Continue reading →

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Dystopia as an Inverted Hero’s Journey: Act I

Posted on July 9, 2019

Introduction — Act II This is the second post in my series analyzing dystopian literature as an inversion of the famous hero’s journey. If you want to know more about what I’m talking about, look at the previous post, but … Continue reading →

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Dystopia as an Inverted Hero’s Journey: Introduction

Posted on July 6, 2019

Act I I’m starting a short series of posts where I analyze dystopian literature in a way that I haven’t seen anywhere else before. Dystopia is a catch-all category for fiction featuring tyrannical governments, post-apocalyptic worlds, or the general break-down … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home

Posted on July 5, 2019

Well, just a few months after Avengers: Endgame, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is back for his European tour. When Marvel’s schedule of movies was revealed, Spider-Man: Far From Home felt like kind of an afterthought to Avengers: Endgame (not to … Continue reading →

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New Year’s Resolutions, Part 2

Posted on June 30, 2019

Previous Post in this series. This year, I tried to be smarter about my New Year’s resolutions, after making just one resolution in 2018 and failing miserably. This year, I made five resolutions, but I tried to calibrate them to … Continue reading →

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Book Review: The Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter

Posted on June 25, 2019

Stephen Baxter is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. I’ve reviewed several of his books before, but one that I haven’t is The Time Ships, which was a sequel to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine authorized by the Wells … Continue reading →

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