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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

Leia a tirinha para responder à questão.

(Stephan Pastis. “Pearls Before Swine”. www.gocomics.com, 22.04.2019.)

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

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

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

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

Leia a tirinha para responder à questão.

(Stephan Pastis. “Pearls Before Swine”. www.gocomics.com, 22.04.2019.)

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

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

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

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

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

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

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

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

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

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

Read the text to answer question.

     The formula for calculating people’s environmental footprint is simple, but widely misunderstood: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology (I = PAT). The global rate of consumption growth, before the pandemic, was 3% a year. Population growth is 1%. Some people assume this means that the rise in population bears one-third of the responsibility for increased consumption. But population growth is overwhelmingly concentrated among the world’s poorest people, who have scarcely any A or T to multiply their P.

     Yet it is widely used as a blanket explanation of environment breakdown. Panic about population growth enables the people most responsible for the impacts of rising consumption (the affluent) to blame those who are least responsible.

(George Monbiot. www.theguardian.com, 26.08.2020. Adapted.)

Read the text to answer question.

The aliens among us

     Humans think of themselves as the world’s apex predators. Hence the silence of sabre-tooth tigers, the absence of moas from New Zealand and the long list of endangered megafauna. But sars-cov-2 shows how people can also end up as prey. Viruses have caused a litany of modern pandemics, from Covid-19, to hiv/aids to the influenza outbreak in 1918-20, which killed many more people than the first world war. Before that, the colonisation of the Americas by Europeans was abetted – and perhaps made possible – by epidemics of smallpox, measles and influenza brought unwittingly by the invaders, which annihilated many of the original inhabitants.

(www.economist.com, 22.08.2020. Adapted.)

Read the text to answer question.

     We are at the beginning of a long road to rethinking and rebuilding supply chain models to encompass not just financial priorities but also business operations continuity in the most trying of circumstances. Executives from France and Italy, for example, are discussing ways to remake their businesses in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Their specialty is supply chains. They are smart people at the core of the world’s most sophisticated and valuable systems of manufacture, shipment, and inventory, and yet many of their supply systems staggered in the past few months – the byproduct of reliance on old business models.

(Antonio Gulli. www.forbes.com, 28.07.2020. Adapted.)

Read the text to answer question.

         It wasn’t the first attempt to deter foreign students, but it could have been the most disruptive. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency sought to bar visas for international students at colleges that offer only virtual instruction. Students on existing visas would have had to transfer to a school that offers at least some in-person teaching if they wanted to remain in the U.S.

     The policy swiftly brought together a broad coalition of colleges, states and businesses that opposed it. “The overwhelming negative reaction to this proposal in a very short period of time shows that the administration really struck a nerve with this,” says Terry Hartle, from the American Council on Education. “It’s unprecedented for that many colleges and universities to file suit against the federal government.”

(Bloomberg Businessweek, 20.07.2020. Adapted.)

Read the text to answer question.

     The formula for calculating people’s environmental footprint is simple, but widely misunderstood: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology (I = PAT). The global rate of consumption growth, before the pandemic, was 3% a year. Population growth is 1%. Some people assume this means that the rise in population bears one-third of the responsibility for increased consumption. But population growth is overwhelmingly concentrated among the world’s poorest people, who have scarcely any A or T to multiply their P.

     Yet it is widely used as a blanket explanation of environment breakdown. Panic about population growth enables the people most responsible for the impacts of rising consumption (the affluent) to blame those who are least responsible.

(George Monbiot. www.theguardian.com, 26.08.2020. Adapted.)

Read the text to answer question.

         It wasn’t the first attempt to deter foreign students, but it could have been the most disruptive. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency sought to bar visas for international students at colleges that offer only virtual instruction. Students on existing visas would have had to transfer to a school that offers at least some in-person teaching if they wanted to remain in the U.S.

     The policy swiftly brought together a broad coalition of colleges, states and businesses that opposed it. “The overwhelming negative reaction to this proposal in a very short period of time shows that the administration really struck a nerve with this,” says Terry Hartle, from the American Council on Education. “It’s unprecedented for that many colleges and universities to file suit against the federal government.”

(Bloomberg Businessweek, 20.07.2020. Adapted.)

Read the text to answer question.

     We are at the beginning of a long road to rethinking and rebuilding supply chain models to encompass not just financial priorities but also business operations continuity in the most trying of circumstances. Executives from France and Italy, for example, are discussing ways to remake their businesses in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Their specialty is supply chains. They are smart people at the core of the world’s most sophisticated and valuable systems of manufacture, shipment, and inventory, and yet many of their supply systems staggered in the past few months – the byproduct of reliance on old business models.

(Antonio Gulli. www.forbes.com, 28.07.2020. Adapted.)