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Software Review: A look at Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus

Software Review: A look at Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus

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Jaw-Peninsula-East-Close
Their output is beautiful. Just looking at it takes you places (click for bigger version).

When I snagged a pre-release review copy of Profantasy Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus, smugness quickly turned to irritation… then to understanding and respect.

Let me tell you about it.

Though just a 3-person company, Profantasy are the behemoths of Fantasy cartography.

They’ve been around since 1993 (so far back that I think Richard III was still on the throne) which says a lot. They have a massive suite of programs for designing things like dungeons, cities, star systems and starship.

Their output is beautiful. Just glancing at what people can do with is enough to take you to otherwhen places .

So as I downloaded their not-inexpensive software, I was grinning happily to myself…. just like one of the dark lord’s minions walking into an ambush.

The new version is certainly an improvement on the old (which, however, did as advertised).

It’s more stable, makes full use of the power  of modern PCs, has a prettier, less confusing interface, a really very useful “verbose” tooltip that pops up when you use any tool, and smoother navigation.

I had the power to create beauty. I was mesmerized!

Then the ambush sprung.

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What to Read Next?

What to Read Next?

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Ocean_at_the_End_of_the_Lane_US_CoverHow do you choose what to read next?

That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m genuinely curious, for a number of reasons.

I tend to have a set list of authors whose work I will pre-order the instant I hear about it. Neil Gaiman, Sarah MacLean, Kate Elliot. I have authors I forget about for a few years and then dive in to read everything they’ve put out in the meantime (Stephen Brust tops that list: I can’t quit Vlad Taltos). I have graphic novel series I follow closely (Pretty Deadly, Ody-C, Rat Queens) and others I dabble in when the mood strikes.

Pretty_Deadly-01I am deeply blessed to have friends who throw books at me, as well. One of my oldest and dearest friends recently sent me an entire box full of books, including Trudy Canavan’s Traitor Spy trilogy; another hounded me until I read Cold Magic (thank goodness!).

But it’s easy to find oneself in a reading rut. Which is a shame, given the wealth of material out there. Self-publishing and digital publishing can make it easier to be published, but that isn’t always a good thing. Finding quality work in those muddy waters is its own trick. So how do you find something new?

Sites like our own here are helpful. I discovered Saladin Ahmed because of a review here, and that has been an absolute delight. (And if I’m dropping names and titles left and right, it’s because I’m returning the favor.) But even comprehensive sites can’t cover everything.

So how do you find new stuff to read? And how do you find new stuff to read when you realize you’ve gotten in a rut? When you discover that everything you’ve read in the last year is, say, fantasy by white women, or all space sci-fi? What are your favorite resources, and what was your favorite surprise find lately?

Representations of the Amazon in Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet and in DC’s Wonder Woman

Representations of the Amazon in Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet and in DC’s Wonder Woman

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Legolas_portrait_-_EmpireMagBut first, I’d like to ask readers a very important question:

Do Tolkien’s Elves have pointy ears?

This came up after my last post, in which I wondered why Anderson and Tolkien (and many other fantasy writers) agree that elves are tall and have pointy ears. After reading this, Frederic S. Durbin contacted me to say,

Does Tolkien ever say that the elves have pointed ears? To my knowledge, he never does. Please correct me if I’m wrong! This is a bone I had to pick a few years back, when some writer somewhere described hobbits as having “hairy toes and pointed ears.” I think this misconception about Tolkien’s elves and hobbits has come from artwork. Artists need to have a way of making magical races look different from humans, so they go for the ears. We need Spock to look different from humans in a cheap and easily-reproducible way from day to day in the studio, so we give him pointed ears. People have been seeing illustrations of pointy-eared elves and hobbits for so long that they’ve begun to believe Tolkien described them that way. I don’t think it’s true. (Again, I’m willing to stand corrected if someone shows me a passage!)

So there you have it, folks! Please help! Is there a passage anywhere in Tolkien’s writings that suggest that Elves (or even Hobbits) have pointy ears?

And now let’s turn our attention to Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet.

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Legion from the Shadows by Karl Edward Wagner

Legion from the Shadows by Karl Edward Wagner

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oie_9192021nLnODdJxFor those raised in this day of pure unadulterated Robert E. Howard texts, it may interest you to learn that once upon a time a flourishing industry of pastiche publication existed. There were only so many Howard stories to satisfy hordes of swords & sorcery fans, so the powers that were created more. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, the masterminds as it were, behind the pastiche industry were either greedy exploiters of Howard’s legacy or passionate fans who saw the need for further Howardian adventures. As a fan myself at the time, I was quite happy to buy and read a lot of them. Most weren’t better than alright but they scratched an itch.

De Camp (who fiddled mercilessly with Howard’s own short stories) and Carter wrote some of the weakest pastiches. For all his involvement with Howard’s fiction, de Camp never seemed to understand its nuance and why it worked. By education he was an engineer, and the need for things to be logical and systematic undermines his fiction. Carter, sadly, just didn’t have the talent to mimic the writer whose work he loved so dearly.

Unknown Swedish author, Bjorn Nyberg wrote The Return of Conan (1957). Decades later famous authors such as Poul Anderson and Andrew Offut tried their hands at the game. Howard Andrew Jones wrote a good piece on the pasticheurs a while back. Eventually a critical mass of fans and academics rose up, rightly so, to decry the inferior copies — and really, most were — of Howard’s creations.

There’s one Conan pastiche novel I remember truly liking: The Road of Kings (1979) by Karl Edward Wagner. It was good; equal parts dark and exciting. You can read Charles Rutledge’s review from a few years back here.

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How Dinosaur Soaky Bubble Bath Bottles Got Me Thinking About Neuroscience

How Dinosaur Soaky Bubble Bath Bottles Got Me Thinking About Neuroscience

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These are currently available on eBay for $15 plus $10 shipping.
These are currently available on eBay for $15 plus $10 shipping.

I’m filing this report from my Microtel suite in Mankato, Minnesota.

Even if you’ve never heard of this city of 39,000, maybe you’re one of the nearly 2 million people who have visited the notorious web site dedicated to it, which has been online for around twenty years (I often used the site for illustrative purposes in the research portion of my composition classes — for reasons that will be immediately apparent when you consider how cleverly it raises the issue of reliability of Internet sources). If you haven’t visited http://city-mankato.us, do so right now (or after you finish reading this).

There you’ll learn about Mankato’s hidden underwater city, the ancient pyramids, and the incredible geological feature here that defies the northern weather. Here’s the opening paragraph of the web site’s home page, just to give you a taste:

Mankato, Minnesota is truly a wonderland. Tucked into the Emerald Green Valley in Southern Minnesota, it is the hidden vacation Mecca of scores of knowing Midwesterners. Mankato has everything thanks to a freak of nature: the Sclare/Far Fissure. This fissure in the earth’s crust takes water seeping through the earth, heats it to well over 165 degrees, and sends it back up to the surface in steam pits and boil holes. The heat from these pits and holes heats the valley air to such an extent that the winter temperature in many Mankato neighborhoods has never dropped below a balmy 70 degrees!!!! Come enjoy our winters! Let’s “Make It Mankato”!!!

I spent the afternoon driving up here, which is why this blog is posting so late at night (in fact, the dateline says it’s the next day). I’m here not to visit LufsaHoma, the “original fictional ‘Castle Dracula’ from Bram Stoker’s novel,” nor to investigate the “great Stoddard/Milet expeditionary digs of 1907 and the mysterious Silver Disks.” Over the next couple days I’ll be a presenter at a Young Writers’ Conference, teaching tricks of the monster-story trade to fifth through ninth graders. So, other than writing this post, how do I occupy these lonely hours in my hotel room?

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Adventures In History: George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman

Adventures In History: George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman

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First FlashmanA few months back, I was (ever so gently) castigated for not giving proper credit to the screenwriter of the Michael York / Oliver Reed rendition of The Three Musketeers. That man was George MacDonald Fraser, he who wrote the Flashman books, a series into which I had never delved.

That has now been corrected, and just in time, too: no lesser a light than Ridley Scott (Alien; Blade Runner) is developing a reboot of Flashman with 20th Century Fox. As the fool on the hill once opined, everything old is new.

So let’s set aside fantasy for just a moment and allow for historical action-adventure as a sideline of the vast cultural behemoth that is now Black Gate. Swords, after all, form a big part of heroic fantasy, and in Flashman (first published in 1969, never out of print), swords of many types are on display and put to use. Lances, too. Plus primitive rifles, dueling pistols, and cannons.

The only thing missing? The heroism of our anti-hero, Harry Paget Flashman. He’s a survivor, and an accurate judge of other people’s character and abilities, but beyond that, he’s the very definition of reprehensible. He’s a cad, a coward, and an unrepentant racist; he’s treacherous, larcenous, and vindictive besides. Let’s leave off his appalling treatment of women, at least for now, and accept him for what he’s best at: looking sharp in military regalia. Ah, if only looks could kill…

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Art of the Genre: The Art of the Iconic Character

Art of the Genre: The Art of the Iconic Character

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Predating Paizo by a decade and a half...
Predating Paizo by a decade and a half…

By Webster’s definition, Iconic means ‘of, relating to, or having the characteristics of an icon’, which in essence reminds me of looking for the Wizard’s 1E D&D Protection from Evil spell only to be told to ‘see Cleric spell of the same name’, unless, of course, you know the word Icon means ‘a person who is very successful and admired’.

Now, having established the meaning, I intend to look at the evolution of ‘Iconic Characters’ [thus Iconic Character Classes] in the RPG setting.

It can be universally accepted that Paizo coined the phrase ‘Iconics’ with the release of its Pathfinder Adventure Paths [and their beta versions from Paizo’s Dungeon Magazine], but that is simple semantics.  In reality, the first true ‘Iconics’ were from the Wizard of the Coast release of D&D 3rd Edition, namely Krusk, Jozan Vadania, Tordek, etc.

These characters were really the first to take players through the game by repeating their exploits in both artwork and description.  Created by artists Todd Lockwood and Sam Wood, players from a whole new D20 generation were introduced to this new system and cut their teeth with the WotC Iconics.

However, I would contend that perhaps the definition of Iconic doesn’t have to depend on players of RPGs actually knowing the character’s name, but rather recognizing their image.  If that is the case, then the role of character class Iconics goes back much further.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Post Index #2

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Post Index #2

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VAlley_wilesCipherBack on September 29th of last year, I created a linked index of all The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes posts up to that date, plus a few extras that I’d written here at Black Gate. Well, since this column debuted on March 10, 2014 (yep, a year ago tomorrow!), I figured I’d create an index of all the posts written since that first index.

As the past year has shown, I’m not just about Holmes. I’ve looked at other mystery topics, including my love of hard boiled private eyes. And I’ve touched on fantasy, science fiction, true crime and gaming.

There’s lots more to come (Robert E. Howard’s Steve Harrison is currently in the research stage). Hopefully you’ll keep checking in on Monday mornings. Thanks!

Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle

William Gillette – The first great Holmes on stage or screen.

The List of Seven – Mark Frost’s Conan Doyle pastiche.

Elementary – America’s modern-day version of Holmes returns to televisions.

The Abbey Grange Examined – Did Holmes get played in this story?

Solar Pons – The greatest Holmes successor and pastiche of them all.

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Self-published Book Review: Transgressions by Phillip Berrie

Self-published Book Review: Transgressions by Phillip Berrie

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here. I’ve run short on books that I’ve received in the past year, so anything new has a good chance of being reviewed.

TransgressionsTransgressions by Phillip Berrie introduces us to the elderly wizard Wamzut, who has a problem. His body was destroyed in a mysterious attack in the Golden Void, the space between worlds, and the only thing that’s kept him tethered to his world is his psychic refuge. He’s in need of a body, and the only one available is that of a young half-Alfaren woman named Attina, whose soul has vanished. With limited options, Wamzut takes the opportunity afforded him and starts a new life, calling herself Sarina.

The fact that Attina’s body is half-Alfaren is in some ways more important than it being female. While Wamzut tries to adapt to being female, she hides the fact that she is Alfaren using magic. Alfaren, who are sometimes, but rarely, called elves in the book, are not common, and while there doesn’t seem to be a specific prejudice against them, they’re considered an oddity. Attina’s half-Alfaren nature is particularly well suited to magic, though, as she collects particles of it in her skin. It’s implied that this may give Alfaren enhanced physical abilities, but Wamzut is mostly interested in using it as a reservoir of magic. I was disappointed that Attina’s history wasn’t explored further. What was she doing in Ilbarsis, the city where Wamzut has been the court wizard for decades? What estranged her from her Alfaren father? The novel raised those questions, but never pursued them.

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March/April Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

March/April Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March April 2015-smallGordon van Gelder, who has been editing The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction since June 1997 when he took over from Kristine Kathryn Rusch, steps down this issue. As we announced in January, he is being replaced by C.C. Finlay, author of  “The Nursemaid’s Suitor” in Black Gate 8. In his Publisher’s Note this issue, Gordon had this to say:

AFTER eighteen years of reading submissions, my eyes need a break. I’ve hired C. C. Finlay as the new editor of F&SF, effective with this issue.

When I first started editing the magazine back in 1997, I likened the role of editor to that of managing a baseball team. That analogy still works well for me. I think I’ve had a lot of good seasons, but now it’s time to move to the back office and let someone else kick dirt on the umpire when he gets a call wrong.

You got a good sample of our new editor’s skills in our July/August issue last year, and you can see more of his taste in action in this issue. I think you’ll like what you see.

I’ll take this moment to thank all you readers and artists who have put your trust in me. I’ve done my best to bring you the best magazine I can, and I’ll continue to do so as publisher. To that end, I’m very happy to have Charlie replacing me.

Mr. Finlay begins his first issue as regular editor with a diverse range of fiction — including two Black Gate regulars, Jonathan L. Howard (author of the Kyth the Taker stories, “The Shuttered Temple” and “The Beautiful Corridor”), and Brian Dolton (“What Chains Bind Us”), both of whom I’m very pleased to see in F&SF. There’s also fiction from Bao Shu, Alice Sola Kim, Paul M. Berger, Jay O’Connell, Kat Howard, and many others.

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