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The fantastic appeal of fantasy

The fantasy genre starts where science ends

    Few things can brighten up a dark morning in a Scottish seaside resort during an Atlantic storm. Yet while sheltering in a bookshop from the rain, I had a moment of sunny revelation. Stacked almost as high as my 11-year-old self were copies of The Lord of the Rings, with a cover illustration that promised mystery and magic. That chance discovery started a lifelong love of the fantasy genre¹, both as reader and writer.

    The fantasy genre has had more and more success, but today we’re in the middle of an unprecedented fantasy boom. Sales continue to rise and it is now the biggest genre in publishing. The more rational the world gets, with super-science all around us, the more we demand the irrational in our fiction.

    Fantasy is not simply a case of swords² and sorcery³. Yes, there is that by the shelf. But the genre is as broad as the imagination. The genre starts where science ends.

    “In these modern times, where most of us sit at computers, fantasy books offer a chance to break out of mundane moments,” says Mark Newton, an editor with the genre. “People like to explore themes that go beyond the limited palette that literary fiction claims to offer.”

    A search for the origins of fantasy will usually have academics muttering about Beowulf or Homer’s The Iliad, but they come from a time when all stories were fantasy: gods and monsters and supernatural artefacts with humanity caught in the middle. The first modern fantasy writer is usually considered to be William Morris, in the late 19th Century. But it was the early 20th Century where fantasy really started to gain status.

    Fantasy fiction has always been about visionary ideas. You can get artful words in plenty of literary fiction, but being able to see beyond the boundaries⁴ of the world around us — now that’s a special skill.

    I don’t write fantasy fiction simply to provide a trapdoor⁵ from the real world. For me, the genre is about the reality. But instead of coming up against it, fantasy maps the unconscious aspirations of our modern society through allegory in story- -forms as old as humanity. It’s about turning off the mobile phone and the computer and remembering who we are in the deepest parts of ourselves.

(Mark Chadbourn. www.telegraph.co.uk, 12.04.2008. Adaptado.)

¹genre: gênero. Categoria distintiva de composição literária, como romance, poesia etc.
²sword: espada.
³sorcery: feitiçaria.
⁴boundary: fronteira.
⁵trapdoor: alçapão.

Snakebites: Like having my hand smashed by a hammer

Tulip Mazumdar

    David Williams has been bitten by a snake six
times. “The first time was pretty terrifying because I
didn’t know what to expect. It felt like having my hand
smashed with a hammer,” he says. “My last snakebite
[5] would have been a fatal one, but for the fact we were
carrying an emergency medical kit so we could do
something about it.”
    Dr Williams, an expert on snakebites at the
World Health Organization (WHO) — who travels the
[10] world collecting snake venoms to help develop new
treatments - says most victims “don’t have that lifesaving luxury”.
    The WHO calls snakebites “arguably the world’s
biggest hidden health crisis”, with one person
[15] dying from a bite every four minutes. Hundreds of
thousands of others are left seriously disfigured, with
many needing amputations. Snakebites mainly affect
people living in some of the poorest communities in
the poorest parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
[20] Farmers risk their lives and livelihoods every day
while simply tending to their crops, where deadly
snakes lurk. Children often become victims too.

    So now two major health organisations — the
WHO and the UK’s Wellcome Trust — are taking
[25] steps to tackle snakebites. The Wellcome Trust is
investing £80m into a new programme to invest in
new treatments and better access to effective anti-

venoms. And the WHO is preparing to publish a plan
to halve the number of deaths and disabilities caused
[30] by snakebites by 2030.
    “We’re at a very important point in the effort to do
something about snakebite for some of the poorest
people in the world,” says Dr Williams. “Many already
live in poverty and the consequence of snakebite is
[35] that they are driven further into debt and despair, even
if they survive.”
    Snakebite, though potentially lethal, is treatable.
Wellcome’s director of science, Prof Mike Turner,
says: “With access to the right anti-venom there is
[40] a high chance of survival. “While people will always
be bitten by venomous snakes, there is no reason so
many should die.”

    Dr Philip Price, science lead for snakebites at the
Wellcome Trust, says there is a “spiral of decline” when
[45] it comes to dealing with snakebites. “The treatments
are expensive, the people who need them often can’t
afford them, and in some cases people can’t make it
to the hospital in time.”

    Dr Price said that even when people do reach
[50] hospital, sometimes the doctors are not trained
adequately, and often treatments are not available. He
said patients may instead turn to traditional healers,
meaning they “fly under the radar” so “most countries
aren’t even aware they have a snakebite problem”.
[55]    Anti-venom treatment is made in the same way
that it has been for more than 100 years. The costly
and laborious process sees antibodies harvested
from horse blood to make anti-venom. But even so, it
is estimated that the world produces only a third of the
[60] anti-venom that it needs.
    The horses are given very low doses of snake
venom over long periods of time, so it does not harm
the animal, says Dr Price. “Eventually the blood is
taken from the horse, and the antibodies are purified
[65] out. The antibodies inside that blood then bind and
neutralise the venom. “It’s not without risk to inject this
directly into the patient.”

    These risks mean victims have to be treated
in hospitals, which can take hours or even days for
[70] people to travel to. That is often too late to save lives
and limbs.
    Another major challenge is that many of the anti-

venoms available are not actually effective. Different
types of snakebites need different types of anti-venom.
[75] In Africa, for example, up to 90% of available anti-

venom is thought to be ineffective. There is currently
no authoritative international list that exists of all the
anti-venoms available and what they actually treat.
    Despite the challenges, achieving the WHO goal
[80] of halving deaths and disabilities from snakebites over
the next decade is “not all that difficult”, according to
Dr Williams. He has spent decades working on
improving snakebite treatments and education,
particularly in Papua New Guinea.
[85]     “In 2003 in Papua New Guinea, one in every four
children who were bitten by snakes died. Today it’s
less than one in every 50.” Dr Williams says whilst
this is still too many deaths, the solution is “not rocket
science”.
[90]    “It’s about having safe, effective anti-venoms,
trained health workers, communities that are engaged
in the problem and are taught how better to prevent
snakebite, and what to do when someone is bitten.”
He said a desperately needed spotlight is finally being
[95] placed on this avoidable killer.

Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48281557 Retrieved on: May 18, 2019.

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What does the word nationalist mean? (Part II)

    It's also a word that means different things to different people. "There are different definitions depending on whose nationalism you're talking about," Paul D. Miller, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, told CNN.

    "Scholars generally differentiate between civic and ethnic/sectarian nationalism, that is, between rooting American identity in the ideals of the American experiment versus rooting it in some aspect of our culture, heritage, history, language or ethnicity. Civic nationalism is the same as what I would call patriotism, and it is essential to a healthy democracy. The second kind of nationalism -- sectarian nationalism -- is pernicious and dangerous."

    But Raheem Kassam, a former senior adviser to Brexit leader Nigel Farage, rejects this second, more negative definition of nationalist.

    "Nationalism is not inherently ugly. It is in fact inherently beautiful," said Kassam, who is currently a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

    "Nationalism is a philosophy based around either the nation state, what we know colloquially as 'countries,' or around another identity factor, which could be religion, ethnicity, geography or even interests," he told CNN.

    "In the case of President Trump, he is no doubt using the word to outline his belief in a nation of people unified by beliefs, interests and a common history. This is typically what nationalism has meant since the earliest references to it in human history, though there have no doubt been periods where nationalism, just like socialism or other philosophies, has been used to divide rather than unite, which is ironically the antithesis of its purpose."

From: shorturl.at/kmOR1 Accessed on 08/28/2019