Fantasy
gregladen | May 9, 2017Evil Speaks: Warriors and Watchers Saga by S. Woffington is a new scifi/fantasy novel with an interesting twist.
If there is a Bechdel Test for ableism, it would pass.
This is an interesting story written for youthful readers (see publisher's summary below) that is well written and mostly devoid of the usual plot holes we find in this genre, but where the characters represent a range of non normative persona.
Benny, fifteen, is solitary by circumstance more than choice: he counts each move to a new town as “a life.” He’s on Life Number Seven. His last! He plans to run away from his…
aardvarchaeology | March 5, 2016 Arthur Machen (1863-1947)
Arthur Machen's 1895 book The Three Impostors, or The Transmutations, is a delightfully strange read. It consists of a short frame narrative interspersed with six standalone stories told inside the frame. Spoilers and musings follow.
First the background to the events, which the reader learns only in the sixth and last story inside the frame. The learned Dr. Lipsius is the leader of a secret Dionysiac cult in 1890s London, focused on sex, drugs and ritual murder. He recruits the young scholar Joseph Walters into the cult. After helping lure a victim to the cult HQ…
aardvarchaeology | March 16, 2013The Grey Mouser, along with Fafhrd the Northerner hero of Fritz Leiber's genre-defining sword & sorcery story cycle, is the archetype of the Dungeons & Dragons thief. He began his career however, Leiber informs us, as apprentice to a "hedge-wizard" who taught him some simple magical cantrips. I never understood what a hedge-wizard was, until now. I imagined it had to do with living in a squalid cottage out in the fields and being in touch with nature, druid-like.
Reading Avram Davidson's story "The King Across the Mountains", I now came across a hedge-parson. And googling, I found out…
drorzel | August 1, 2010The voting for the 2010 Hugo Awards closed last night. I sent in my ballot yesterday, but I'm trying to limit my computer time this weekend, so I didn't post about it until today.
The following lists are my votes, with miscellaneous commentary. The Hugos use a complicated vote-counting scheme, including a "No Award" option to distinguish between works you wouldn't mind seeing win, even if they're not your first choice, and works you consider so bad you would rather see them cancel the award than win.
Best Novel
The City and the City by China Mieville
Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson…
drorzel | June 30, 2010I have now finished all of the short fiction on this year's Hugo Award ballot (links to most nominees are available here), and I have to say, the pickings here are pretty slim. The stories that aren't forgettable or preachy are deeply unpleasant, leaving me wanting to put a lot of stuff below "No Award." And there's one story that makes me want to bleach my frontal cortex.
More detailed comments, category-by-category, below the fold:
Best Novella
“Act One”, Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 3/09)
The God Engines, John Scalzi (Subterranean)
“Palimpsest”, Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace, Orbit)
Shambling…
drorzel | June 5, 2010Over at Tor.com, Kate has a Lord of the Rings re-read post about the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, which includes a shout-out to me that I missed because I was driving to NYC:
Ãomer is "scarely a mile" away when the standard unfurls and is clearly seen to bear the White Tree, Seven Stars, and a high crown. If I were at home, I could ask the resident scientist to tell me how big these elements would need to be to be visible at a mile, but I'm finishing this post on the train down to New York City (vacation! Woo! I'm going to try and write the next post while I'm there, too, so as to make up…
jdupuis | April 16, 2010If you love sword & sorcery books and stories (and who doesn't!), SF Signal has one of their Mind Meld features in which they ask a bunch of writers and editors to name their favourites of the genre.
Here's a taste:
Lou Anders
"Ill met in Lankhmar" tops any list. How could it not? Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser defined sword & sorcery for me as a child, and I'm thrilled that, having just started rereading their adventures they are thus far holding up. Michael Moorcock's "Stormbringer" is tied or a close second. I haven't read that since I was 15 but the Moorcock I have read hasn't dated.…
razib | March 4, 2010Fantasy-nerd in-chief at The New York Times, Ross Douthat points me to an essay, Why is there no Jewish Narnia? As others have pointed out there are plenty of Jewish fantasy writers, including perhaps the most prominent mainstream fantasist today, Neil Gaiman. But this part caught my attention:
...and whether it is called Perelandra, Earthsea, Amber, or Oz, this world must be a truly alien place. As Ursula K. Leguin says: "The point about Elfland is that you are not at home there. It's not Poughkeepsie."
Amber refers to Roger Zelazny's Amber series. Roger Zelazny's father was an immigrant…
drorzel | February 13, 2010Since I'm at Boskone, talking and listening to people talking about science fiction and fantasy literature, it seems appropriate to do a quickie post listing notworthy genre stuff I've read recently. There isn't that much of it, as I've been doing a lot of non-fiction reading, and also slightly preoccupied with book promotion. Still, I've been reading a few things while putting SteelyKid to bed, and might as well comment on them here:
The Alchemist's Apprentice, The Alchemist's Pursuit, and The Alchemist's Code by Dave Duncan. Duncan occupies a literary position similar to that of the late…
razib | April 12, 2009Science Not Fiction has a review of Kröd Mandöon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire:
In Robin Hood fashion, the insecure hero, Kröd Mandöon (played by Sean Maguire), leads the struggle against the evil rule of Dongalor, a local king with big ambitions. Kröd is aided by a none-too-bright pig-man, an utterly ineffective wizard, the very gay Bruce, and his sexually liberated pagan warrior girlfriend. (A note on these last two characters--there's a very fine line between ironically parodying how women or homosexuals are portrayed in a genre, and simply exploiting stereotypes anew. Once…
grrlscientist | April 8, 2008tags: The Good Fairies of New York, Martin Millar, fantasy, humor, book review
Immediately after I'd broken my arm, I found it impossible to concentrate for long periods of time (longer than five or ten minutes at a stretch) because of the intense pain or because of the haze caused by the pain medications. But nevertheless, I wanted to retreat into a book, so I decided to read a book that was completely different than my usual fare -- just for fun, of course. Thanks to one of my readers, I already had the perfect book in my possession; The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar (Brooklyn,…