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Watching the Justice League Movie

Watching the Justice League Movie

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Justice League trio-small

I have a poor track record seeing DC movies. The trailers have usually turned me off with their enthusiasm for finding the grim-dark cinematic angle that the regular comic book version of the DC universe chucked when it diversified its tone with the launch of Rebirth. So, I didn’t see Man of Steel kill people, or Batman and Superman fight, or any of that stuff, because I wasn’t interested.

Hearing that Wonder Woman was different, I happily checked that out, and thought it was a great expression of the superhero cinematic form (in this sense, I mean nothing more than the WW movie did what it could to make a great story within the conceits, conventions and expectations of anything based on super-powered vigilantes).

So my 12-year old son and I checked out the Justice League movie. By now, you’ll have seen many of the reviews, both good and bad, and will have seen that Warner Brothers isn’t making enough money of it for its investors to consider it a success. If you haven’t you can check out “Justice League’s Mediocre Box Office” and “shake-up in the works.”

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Chance Encounters

Chance Encounters

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Bond casino 2Between lotteries and televised poker tournaments, horse racing and casinos, games of chance play a large part on the world’s stage. It should come as no surprise that they play an equality large part in fiction, and perhaps in genre fiction in particular. As writers, aren’t we always looking for something for our characters to do while they’re talking to each other? Preferably something that also reveals character, and is interesting in itself?

I’m not talking about giving a character a gambling addiction – that’s deeper than I mean to go. I’m referring to the game of chance as literary or narrative device.  It can provide characters with motive (win money to achieve purpose, defeat opponent); provide an opportunity (meet someone); and the winning or losing of these games can be the cause of a number of interesting effects. Games like poker or a bridge can be a microcosm of the world of the novel and they reveal the characters of the players in a way that very few other activities can.

Of course any movie or TV series set in Las Vegas, or Montecarlo, is going to involve gambling or casinos as part of the backdrop. But when it comes to characters, the one who comes to mind first is James Bond. In the novels, and in many of the films, Bond is generally playing baccarat. In the most recent film version of Casino Royale the game itself (poker in this case) is the central pillar of the plot, but it’s a rare Bond film that doesn’t have him in a casino somewhere. Since he’s often playing against one of the villains of the piece, the way they play the game reveals aspects of both their characters; sense of fair play, stoicism, nerve, and if they lose – or win – gracefully.

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Goth Chick News: The Night of the Living Dead VR Game You Didn’t Know You Had to Have

Goth Chick News: The Night of the Living Dead VR Game You Didn’t Know You Had to Have

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Goth Chick Night of the Living Dead

Having self-determined I have been extremely good this year, and figuring Santa (or maybe Krampus in my case) may be a tad light in his technical knowledge, I took the liberty to gift myself with an early holiday pres. The custom-built computer which I christened “Winston” (aka the “Computer of Destiny”) is comprised of a liquid-cooled 16 thread CPU with an AMD Ryzen1800 x 8 core, an AMD Vega 64 8GB video card with Corsair 32GB Vengeance memory, 2 x 16GB, and that’s just getting started.

Yes, can’t help it… I’m bragging.

Even the lovely gents at my day job who gleefully stuffed the biggest and fastest everything into the smoked-glass, neon lit housing wanted to know what the heck I was going to do with the beast they were building. To which I had three words…

Virtual reality gaming.

I want the ultimate in high-tech, I want total emersion, I want the freakin’ Enterprise-holodeck-with-Data-riding-shotgun of gaming experiences. Why? Because this is nothing less than the next generation of geek-nirvana.

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Little Miss Martian

Little Miss Martian

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Other Worlds May 1951-small Other Worlds May 1951-back-small

Other Worlds, May 1951. Cover by Hannes Bok

Other Worlds Science Fiction launched in November 1949, part of the boom in f&sf magazines in a postwar world that retroactively realized their worth after real life rockets and atomic bombs made headlines. It was frankly third-tier, half written by Rog Phillips under pseudonyms and half by younger writers striving to make their mark. After a year or two, though, some bigger names like Ray Bradbury, A. E. van Vogt, and Robert Bloch were lured in and a few of the newcomers would develop into stars of equal rank. Even so, fans read it for fun and excitement, not literary quality. Issue after issue sated with a plenitude of humor stories, starting with the Hoka series by young Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, and robot stories, including ones by Bradbury, van Vogt, and Bloch, and humorous robot stories, many by authors nobody remembers (such as Hodge Winsell, whose two atrocities comprise his entire f&sf oeuvre).

One reason for the increase in quality was hidden from readers. The editor for the first issue was listed as Robert N. Webster, another pseudonym. Knowledgeable fans would have been tipped off by the presence of “The Fall of Lemuria” by Richard S. Shaver, a true screwball who might have believed in his stories about an alien civilization hidden within the Earth. Ray Palmer had pushed circulation at Amazing Stories to the  f&sf magazine peak with Shaver until his bosses grew tired of the slime on their fingers. Sure enough, Robert N. Webster was Ray Palmer and Other Worlds was headed down that same path.

And then the horribly unlucky Palmer, who grew up hunched and dwarfed after a car accident when he was seven, slipped, fell, and became temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. A 21-year-old fan, Bea Mahaffey, who was already on the payroll as Managing Editor, i.e. editor of scutwork, quietly took over, adding Marge Budwig Saunder to replace her hands-on jobs. Today it’s given that the sudden veer away from Shaver and toward solid second-tier status is attributable to Mahaffey.

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December Short Story Roundup

December Short Story Roundup

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CaptureDecember’s here, so it’s time for another roundup. When the luminous Mrs. V. asked me about what I was reading this week, it turned into a conversation about short stories, then and now. At some point I said something along the lines of short stories have always been hit-and-miss, with most stories being satisfying, some terrific, and even a big name doesn’t always knock it out of the park. In fact, anyone might hit a home run, so a magazine like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, featuring unknown and lesser-known writers, is just as likely to contain excellent stories as any of Lin Carter’s anthologies. That’s why I persist in reviewing new short stories each month. There’s a chance each and every month that I’ll discover a story that measures up to the best of the past, and will be worthy of a place in some future anthology of great swords & sorcery tales.

That’s the sort of anticipation I have when I open up a new issue of HFQ each quarter. Adrian Simmons, David Farney, William Ledbetter, James Frederick William Rowe, and Barbara Barrett are the names on the masthead, and swords & sorcery fans should thank each one of them for consistently putting out the best new S&S and with far less attention than they deserve. I won’t say any of the latest volume, #34, is among the greats bound to last, but all three are very good. Can you really ask for more than that?

“Crazy Snake and the Demons of Ometepe,” by Eric Atkisson, brings to an end the multi-author tale begun last issue where alternate universes were at risk of domination by the Destroyer, a terrible trans-dimensional power. In “Between Sea and Flame” by Evan Dicken, Tenochtitlan fell to evil priests from the sea (not to Cortes) and the warrior Hummingbird found herself forced to back the lesser evil in order to save the word. Raphael Ordonez’s wandering ex-conquistador, Francisco Carvajal y Lopez, had to fight the Destroyer as well in “I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.”

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Simulations Publications Inc: The TSR Incursion

Simulations Publications Inc: The TSR Incursion

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Around the end of 1981, brothers Kevin and Brian Blume wrested control of TSR away from founder Gary Gygax. The company would change dramatically under their leadership, until Gygax returned from his west coast exile in 1984 and (briefly) reclaimed his company. One ‘Blume Incident’ from 1982 is a pretty good example of the way they did things.

In 1958, Avalon Hill was formed, creating the modern wargaming industry, out of which role playing games grew. In 1969, James Dunnigan created Simulations Publications, Inc. — to be known as SPI — with Redmond Simenson as co-founder. He started the company to save an existing wargaming fanzine, Chris Wagner’s Strategy & Tactics, which was in a precarious financial state. Simenson was the graphic designer for the magazine and a huge part of its success. For the princely sum of $1 (yes, you read that right), SPI took on Strategy and Tactics and made it the industry’s leading newsletter, starting with the September, 1969 issue.

Strategy & Tactics would include a new wargame in every single issue from then through the current one, which is remarkable. With the popularity of the magazine, SPI also became Avalon Hill’s major competitor in the wargaming market and enjoyed great success in the seventies. Things were good. Then, as for JFK, came Dallas. Okay, not quite.

Dunnigan’s Dallas: The Television Roleplaying Game, was a licensed product, intended to cash in on the massively successful show. My first thought is to wonder how many Dallas fans wanted to play an RPG — apparently not many. It was a disaster. Simonsen commented that they produced “80,000 copies and that was 79,999 too many.”

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Modular: The Capharnaum RPG: A Kickstarter Combining the Campbellian Hero Path, Arabian Nights Multiculturalism, and Compelling Worldbuilding

Modular: The Capharnaum RPG: A Kickstarter Combining the Campbellian Hero Path, Arabian Nights Multiculturalism, and Compelling Worldbuilding

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Capharnaum RPG

Two years after running our very successful Kickstarter for the transhumanist SF RPG Mindjammer, Mindjammer Press is back with a new project — the English-language version of a fascinating French-language RPG “Capharnaum – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked.” As a soundbite it’s billed as “a fantastic Arabian Nights RPG of deserts, dragons, and crusaders” — but it’s so much more than that. I first came across Capharnaum and its gorgeous artwork in the Paris Games Fair in 2009, and even then I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been brought to the English-speaking gamer. Now, with Capharnaum‘s second edition, the case is even more compelling.

The brains behind Capharnaum — The Tales of the Dragon-Marked are two experienced French game designers, Raphaël Bardas and François Cedelle. They’re joined by a large and extremely active gaming community based in Montpellier, the ancient town on the Mediterranean coast, but active throughout France, bringing together enthusiasts of ancient world Mediterranean and Arabian Nights-style gaming. In the aftermath of 9/11, Raphaël and François wanted to create a setting which refracted the cultural conflicts of our time in a historical-fantasy context, but which equally provided a gameplay which transcended those conflicts and offered a route to coexistence and appreciation of our diversity.

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A Homecoming: Son of Mfumu by Milton J. Davis

A Homecoming: Son of Mfumu by Milton J. Davis

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DIhhmcBUQAAjNxv“…keep it old school. Don’t make it boring, pack it with action, don’t invert it, converge it, or subvert it. Have a hero even if he is a rascal. Have some gothic atmosphere and a touch of cosmicism. Give it technicolor and dream dust instead of shades of gray. Have the ending mean something.”  -Morgan Holmes, on writing a classic S&S story.

Milton Davis’ five volume series about the mighty and wily Changa Diop is swords & sorcery cast from a classic mold, the dimensions of which were first set down ninety years ago by Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and C.L. Moore. Changa is a hero through and through. Even when he’s got one eye focused on making a profit, the other is on his own honor and courage. There are wonderful descriptions of a vibrant, exciting world designed perfectly as a stage for mighty adventures, but done so well it never impedes the action. Of action, there’s more than enough for any S&S fan, ranging from duels with pirates to epic battles with demonic conjurations. Heroes are bold and villains deadly. This is the root stuff of which good S&S is made.

Whenever you get bummed out about the current state of S&S, rest assured that there are authors hewing to something like Holmes’ cri-de-coeur. And they aren’t making copies of the tried and true, but crafting their own myths and legends, adding their rousing additions to this genre we love.

Starting with Changa’s Safari (2011), and continuing for four more books, Milton Davis has sent our titular hero to the ends of the earth in search of the means to avenge his father’s murder, and claim the throne of Kongo from the usurper and sorcerer, Usenge. Each comrade with whom he surrounds himself is skilled and memorable in his own way. Foremost, there is the blue-robed and silent swordsman known only as the Tuareg. Zakee is a young Yemeni prince rescued from a disastrous marriage, the irascible navigator Mikaili is an Ethiopian with plans to become an priest someday…just never today, and finally there is Panya, Yoruban sorceress and beloved of Changa.

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The 4th International Science Fiction Conference, Chengdu, China, November 2017

The 4th International Science Fiction Conference, Chengdu, China, November 2017

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chengdu-small

I’ve been cataloguing some of my Paddington-the-Bear adventures in 2017. This year was the first time I went to New York (see A Babe in the Woods: Derek’s Literary Adventures, and Questing in New York! NYCC 2017). I had some other secret adventures this fall that I haven’t blogged about, but recently I had a bigger adventure!

For the first time ever, I was invited to a literary conference to be an Author Guest of Honor. It was the 4th International Science Fiction Conference in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. It was sponsored by SFWorld, a Chinese magazine and book publisher, with media and tech giant Tencent as one of the sponsors. I was one of about a dozen foreign authors and editors in attendance. Here’s a shot of some of the billboards outside the event.

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Party Of The First Part

Party Of The First Part

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3 musketeers ballEveryone likes a party. Many of us even like to plan parties, especially writers (who, if they didn’t like process, wouldn’t be writers.) But do we like to write about them? Maybe not so much

Of course there are some memorable parties to be found in Fantasy and SF literature. The two that immediately come to mind are the birthday party that opens LOTR, and the high tea that opens The Hobbit. Is it significant that both of these involve not only the same author, but the same character?  I think so. I also think it’s significant that Bilbo doesn’t plan the party in The Hobbit (it’s Gandalf’s do), but he does plan the one in LOTR. Seems like it might take a little age and experience to organize a big affair.

MatrixFor the most part parties in literature seem to be limited to pre-WWII novels where omniscient narrators can give us interesting overviews, occasionally zooming in to present important detail. Look at Jane Austen: with or without zombies these people spend a lot of time at balls, dances, tea parties, supper parties and the like. Otherwise, how would the characters, particularly the women, meet one another? Even Cinderella meets the prince at a ball.

A party is also a great way to allow your characters to interact in public, and reveal all kinds of details about themselves that you might otherwise have to take chapters to show. Still, unless you are using an omniscient narrator, a party scene can be deadly both to read and to write. Think of the last big party you attended. If the narrative of the story was told from your point of view only, the reader would get a very limited understanding of what happened.

Do parties have any other narrative use? Do they forward the plot? I’d say they do, but only by what we’ve seen already: introducing characters to the reader and allowing characters to meet each other. By the way, however planned they might be, I don’t think we can include ceremonies in our definition of parties. Maybe the reception, for example, but not the wedding itself.

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