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Goth Chick News Checks into The Grand Hotel

Goth Chick News Checks into The Grand Hotel

The Grand Hotel-smallWhen exploring the back roads on the far outskirts of my beloved New Orleans, it is not unusual to spot the occasional decrepit plantation home.  It will be there, nearly out of sight behind the dense, mossy trees, but you can just spot the vine-covered columns barely supporting what was once a magnificent monument to the splendor of the “Old South.”

The sight of such a house, nearly consumed by the wildness lurking just beyond the paved road, always ignites sadness and dread in equal measure; sadness at the idea that this once, much-loved structure has been abandoned to the swamp, and dread at the idea that those who once loved her might still be doing so while peering back at you from behind those rotted lace curtains.

An isolated, deteriorating mansion sitting at the end of an overgrown road triggers something in all of us.  You hear “I dare you” in the back of your mind.  You wonder if there’s a flashlight in the trunk and you start thinking there would be no harm at all in going up one or two of the porch steps, just to see…

Author Scott Kenemore knows exactly how we feel.

He welcomes you to The Grand Hotel, where nobody checks out.

Where the desk clerk invites you into his mysterious and crumbling hotel, then takes you on a little tour to introduce you to the hotel’s “long term” residents who only look like they never call for room service.

As the very proper and solicitous clerk takes you deeper and deeper into the heart of the hotel, secrets that have been hiding for eons begin to show themselves. Although your guide seems quite prepared for this experience, there is some question as to whether or not the rest of the world shares his readiness.

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Why Humorous Fantasy Isn’t Popular

Why Humorous Fantasy Isn’t Popular

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (six volumes)
“Clench Racing”

Dave Langford describes Clench Racing thus:

Up to six can play. The rules are simple: each player takes a different volume of Stephen Donaldson’s blockbuster Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, opens it at random, and leafs feverishly through the text. You win by being first to find the word “clench” (or “clenched”, “clenching”, etc). It’s a fast, furious sport, and a round rarely lasts a full minute.

Clearly, Fandom has a tradition of affectionate mockery of the books it loves. Furthermore, Geeks, the cultural group that includes Fandom, tend to value intelligent wit. It seems odd then that Humorous Fantasy isn’t a massive subgenre.

It’s hard to get facts and figures. An industry insider friend says that Humorous Fantasy’s bestseller/midlist ratio is the same as for other subgenres, it’s just that there’s less of it. Similarly, two authors I know who had humorous fantasy series that petered out both said that the main problem was the size of the market. One of them told me about how at conventions people’s eyes glazed when he talked about his humorous series, but lighted up when he talked about other projects.

Of course, you could argue that Terry Pratchett is so prolific and so very good, that he simply absorbed the subgenre. However, in Heroic Fantasy there’s room for Patrick Rothfuss and Joe Abercromby.  George RR Martin may dominate Epic Fantasy, but he has peers. It seems that a typical reader has slots for several favorite authors in a couple of chosen subgenres, but just one slot for Terry Pratchett Humorous Fantasy.

So, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb assuming that Humorous Fantasy isn’t popular compared to other Fantasy subgenres. Why is this?

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Goth Chick News Crypt Notes: Holy Millennium Falcon Han Solo!

Goth Chick News Crypt Notes: Holy Millennium Falcon Han Solo!

Holy Millenium Falcon Han SoloWhere Star Wars is concerned, even a goth chick can go fan-girl.

Just in from the UK today: A pilot taking publicity photos for a flying school accidentally buzzed one of the sets of the new Star Wars movie with pretty impressive, if unintentional, results.

Matthew Myatt originally thought his pictures were of experiment aircraft at the Greenham Common airfield in Berkshire, England. Greenham Common is a former RAF airbase. Myatt was photographing one plane from another and it wasn’t until he got back and started reviewing his images that he realized what he had captured: none other than a partially built Millennium Falcon and an X-Wing fighter.

It appears that, at least in part, director J.J. Abrams will use models for filming rather than pure CGI. As one excited fan wrote on www.theforce.net, “Who’d’ve guessed filmmakers still build physical models?” and “Looks like the Falcon got a paint job!”

Star Wars is due out in December, 2015

Future Treasures: Shattered Shields, edited by Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Future Treasures: Shattered Shields, edited by Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Shattered Sheilds-smallWell, here’s a fun thing: an upcoming anthology packed with tales of epic battles and soldiers struggling against overwhelming odds, with a stellar cast of contributors.

Shattered Shields is edited Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and will be available in November. Jennifer — who got her start as an RPG reviewer in Black Gate magazine back in 2002 — has previously edited no less than ten anthologies, including Space Tramps and Human for a Day. Her co-editor Bryan Thomas Schmidt has also edited Space Battles and Beyond The Sun, among others.

The book includes a brand new Black Company story from Glen Cook, a Paksenarrion tale from Elizabeth Moon, a Runelords story by David Farland, a tale of October Daye from Seanan McGuire — and a story set in the World of Zang by our very own John R. Fultz. Here’s John on his story:

“Yael of the Strings” is my contribution…  Most of the Zang Cycle stories were collected this year in The Revelations of Zang, but this is a brand-new excursion into that world. The protagonist isn’t a soldier at all, but a minstrel whose fencing skills become his only chance at survival when the red tide of battle overwhelms. “Strings” revisits the nation of Ghoth with its behemoth spiders (from “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine”), and introduces Sharoc, Land of the Griffon.

Readers who remember John’s terrific sword and sorcery tale, “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine” (from Black Gate 12) will surely want this one. Other contributors include Cat Rambo, Robin Wayne Bailey, Dave Gross, James L. Sutter, and many others.

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Art of the Genre: Art of the Iconic Female #5: Princess Leia

Art of the Genre: Art of the Iconic Female #5: Princess Leia

fa832e1c671c8fb5638dadc8425630da-d5lc2cf-industry-reacts-to-star-wars-episode-vii-s-lack-of-womenToday continues the Art of the Genre series on the Iconic Female.  If you’ve missed any of the others, click on the hotlinks to find #1, #2, #3, and #4, and now on to the good stuff!

I was six when Star Wars was initially released.  I did get to see it in the theater, but I more remember the feel of the venue and the oddity of the aliens rather than if I had an emotional attachment to Princess Leia.  I know I must have enjoyed the film because my house quickly filled up with Star Wars figures, posters, and memorabilia, but none of this led to a particular ‘love’ of Leia.  Honestly, the only true memory of Leia I had in those early days was that her very thin and small laser pistol was lost when I tried to put her in Luke’s landspeeder.  To this day, I swear it is still ingeniously stuck inside that toy even though the odds are that it was devoured by my mother’s two inch shag carpeting where the incident occurred.

Nonetheless, Leia didn’t ‘blossom’ for me until the release of Empire Strikes Back, where, like Han Solo himself, I became smitten with her.  By this point, in 1980, I was a precocious nine year-old who was just beginning to truly understand that girls had more to offer than all my friends had previously surmised.  I well remember my Cloud City play-set, and the outstanding Han Solo figure with blue jacket that could stand proudly beside the intricately woven hair of Cloud City Leia.  I’m also pretty sure this was the first time I ever saw a kiss onscreen that didn’t make me look away, so certainly some things were readily changing in my view of this iconic character.

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In the Mail

In the Mail

AE08Despite what my post last week may have implied, I too have been culling my RPG collection. This isn’t driven so much by a concern about space – that’s what garages are for, after all – but utility. In the thirty-five years I’ve been involved in this hobby, I’ve accumulated a lot of games, but how many of them do I actually play with any regularity? Heck, how many of them do I play at all?

The answers to those questions are surprisingly short, as I’ve discussed before. Of course, I’m not so stonyhearted that I’d consign to the flames (or at least eBay) any RPG I hadn’t played in the last year or two. I’m a hopelessly sentimental guy who revels in nostalgia and youthful memories. That’s why I keep around Gamma World and Gangbusters, neither of which I’ve played in decades. I used to play these games with great regularity and I hold out hope that I will get to do so again (plans are afoot for a new Gamma World campaign later this month!). But Blue Planet or Spycraft or even D&D settings like Planescape or Dark Sun? Nah.

Overall, then, my RPG collection is growing smaller, though I prefer to think of it as growing more “focused.” That said, its size isn’t wholly on a downward trend. That’s because, while I’m buying very few new games, I’m continuing – even increasing – my purchase of RPG fanzines.

When I was a kid, gaming fanzines weren’t on my radar. I read Dragon and, later, White Dwarf, and was vaguely aware of Different Worlds, but all three of those were professional magazines produced by game companies rather than photocopied (or “Xeroxed,” as we said back in the day) pages lovingly stapled together in someone’s basement and then sent through the mail. I dimly recall hearing about Alarums & Excursions, probably from one of the older guys who hung around the hobby shop, though, as they would have been quick to point out, A&E is an amateur press association, not a ‘zine, a distinction that’s still somewhat obscure to me even today.

Regardless, fanzines played a vital role in the early days of the hobby, disseminating not only news and reviews, but also ideas derived from what players and referees were actually doing with RPGs at the time. Reading them, one could see the myriad ways that roleplaying games were being interpreted and expanded upon, which in turn sometimes gave birth to whole new games and approaches to gaming, something that, even now, sets them apart from the slicker, better produced “pro ‘zines” that followed in their wake.

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The 2014 British Fantasy Award Winners Announced

The 2014 British Fantasy Award Winners Announced

A Stranger in Olondria-smallThe 2014 British Fantasy Award winners have been announced, and once again I’m reminded that there’s a lot of fantastic fantasy out there I’m not reading.

Every year, while I’m struggling to catch up on Henry Kuttner short stories I haven’t read or something, another must-read fantasy escapes me. This year it appears to be Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria, which so far has been nominated for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. On Sunday, it also won the British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy novel (also know as the Robert Holdstock award.)

We haven’t reported consistently on the British Fantasy Awards in the past and, looking back, that was an obvious error in judgment. They’ve selected some terrific winners over the years and it’s time we paid more attention. Besides, they have an award named after Karl Edward Wagner — that alone should make them noteworthy.

The complete award list follows.

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award):

A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)

Best Horror novel (the August Derleth Award):

 The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes (HarperCollins)

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August Short Story Roundup

August Short Story Roundup

oie_955935TUQkHqmzFive weeks off have done a lot to recharge my batteries. Among other things, I actually read several books that are not swords & sorcery in the slightest. Among them were Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy by John LeCarre (rereads both), The Children of Old Leech edited by Russ Lockhart and Justin Steele, Killer Move by Michael Marshall, and Miami Blues by Charles Willeford (also a reread). I recommend all of them highly.

I also read the first of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood books, Brethren of the Main, and am in the midst of reading The Chronicles of Captain Blood. I can place the revival of my obsession with pirates at Howard Andrew Jones’s and my seven-year-old nephew’s feet. These are books you will definitely be hearing about in the near future.

But enough blather; I’m here to fill you in on the past month’s S&S shorts. Between Swords and Sorcery Magazine #31 and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #21, six new stories made their appearances this past August. You may not love every story or even the ones I do, but I can never stress strongly enough the need to check them out for yourself. The authors and editors need to know there’s an audience for the work they’re doing.

As he has every month for the past two and half years, Curtis Ellett presented two new stories in his most recent issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine. In the first, “Red Cat’s Marriage” by Melanie Henry, the skillfully manipulative daughter of a king brings dire consequences down on herself when she tricks a man into marriage. While well written, it’s not suspenseful nor really fantasy, let alone swords & sorcery.
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Paul Miller’s “A Promise Made” is nice meat-and-potatoes S&S. It’s right on target, giving the reader a heroic sword-wielding main character, a dangerous world filled with deadly denizens, and innocents in peril needing rescue. The Blademistress is a supernaturally gifted warrior working as a guard on a caravan in a world that has fallen to the forces of darkness. She’s determined and more than ready to do whatever is necessary to honor her promises — even to the point of death. Among the many evils haunting her world are the Fallen.

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Take Zombies Seriously: The Pentagon, Mayo Clinic Researchers, and U.S. Centers for Disease Control All Do

Take Zombies Seriously: The Pentagon, Mayo Clinic Researchers, and U.S. Centers for Disease Control All Do

are-you-ready-for-a-zombie-attack_1First there was the much-ballyhooed U.S. Strategic Command document discovered earlier this year outlining a plan of action in case of a zombie apocalypse (read the CNN report HERE). Then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention capitalized on the zombie zeitgeist with their campaign for zombie outbreak preparedness (HERE). Even researchers from the Mayo Clinic, the top-ranked hospital in the United States, have participated in “Bounce Day,” which describes itself as “an integrated disaster response experience” that simulates a zombie plague (HERE).

Such stories are noteworthy and amusing, especially to a horror maven such as myself, but perhaps they aren’t as surprising as some folks may first think. Really, they make perfect sense.

Protocols for dealing with a zombie outbreak are pretty similar to those for virtually any pandemic (minus gunshots to the head). As the Bounce Day blog notes, using “actors simulating illness (zombies) and those affected by the crumbling of society” in such training scenarios helps “participants [learn] both medical and nonmedical response protocols ranging from vaccination and treatment to refugee camp management and security.” In other words, even though zombies don’t exist, the skills we would need to utilize in order to contain them are highly practical for many real-world threats (avian flu, Ebola — take your pick of scary viruses that keep World Health Organization officials up at night).

Zombies provide a fill-in-the-blank marker for such quarantine situations — a growling, rot-faced placeholder for any number of nightmare scenarios. Ironically, by giving such hypothetical scenarios the zombie veneer, you make them less scary. Practicing for a bird-flu pandemic is kind of depressing, and really kind of terrifying. Zombies are fun because they don’t exist. Hence we have an illustration of how monsters are often used to sublimate real fears under the guise of stand-in bogeymen. We can deal with our real fears at one level removed, without having to cogitate on them directly.

And as an added bonus: in the unlikely event the dead do start rising again with a hunger for human flesh — hey, we’ll be prepared for that too.

New Treasures: A Discourse in Steel by Paul S Kemp

New Treasures: A Discourse in Steel by Paul S Kemp

A Discourse in Steel-smallThere’s a school of thought in cover design that says that book covers with a heavy design element — as opposed to a reliance on artwork — are taken more seriously.

There’s something to this. A lot of bestsellers eschew artwork altogether in favor of design, and it seems to work just fine. When George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones became a bestseller, Bantam Spectra jettisoned the artwork by Stephen Youll that had been on the cover for nearly ten years, and replaced it with the boring cover you’re familiar with today. No artwork, just a shining sword. Most mainstream readers won’t buy a book that looks too much like a fantasy novel — or at least, that’s the theory.

That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the cover of Paul S. Kemp’s  A Discourse in Steel, the second novel in his Tales of Egil & Nix series. It’s a sharp cover, actually, with a clear adventure fantasy theme. The lack of artwork and focus on design brought A Game of Thrones to mind (maybe it’s supposed to). But I also found it a little generic.

Here’s the book description.

Egil and Nix have retired, as they always said they would. No, really – they have! No more sword and hammer-play for them!

But when two recent acquaintances come calling for help, our hapless heroes find themselves up against the might of the entire Thieves Guild.

And when kidnapping the leader of the most powerful guild in the land seems like the best course of action, you know you’re in over your head…

A hugely-enjoyable stand-alone adventure in classic sword and sorcery mode, from the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Deceived and The Hammer and the Blade.

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