Dragonstar: More than just D&D IN SPAAAACE!!!!
D&D in space. It’s an idea that has been around for a long while in the form of TSR/WotC’s Spelljammer.
However, a few years ago, Fantasy Flight Games produced an OGL supplement for a new kind of science-fantasy game. Thus was born the Dragonstar universe.
In a nutshell, the known galaxy, which theoretically includes any and all fantasy game worlds, is ruled by a council of dragons. These are the standard dragons of D&D fame, the Chromatic and Metallic breeds, and they follow the same alignment guidelines. The chromatics are generally evil, and the metallics are generally good.
Each breed takes a turn at ruling the Dragon Empire, alternating between the two factions. At the time the game is set, the Red Dragon Emperor is assuming the throne, and a dark era is descending.
Bitch Slap the (unrated) film relates to fantasy fiction how, you may ask?
The Woman Who Loved Reindeer, by Meredith Ann Pierce
I don’t know what makes a novel great. Maybe every great book is great in its own way. I suspect, though, that a novel’s greatness resides most often either in its structure (not just its plot, but its balancing of themes and elements, its division into units like chapters, and its decision of what to describe and when) or its prose (its ability to make every word count, not only in depicting character and setting, not only in moving forward story, but in advancing the theme of the book, what it’s about, the idea that prompted the telling of the tale in the first place).
Anyone who has been reading these entries with any regularity knows that the word “minimalist” will never be used in the same sentence with my name. I seem to be visually starved, needing to be perpetually surrounded by interesting if not strange things to look at. This can easily be proven by the fact I cohabitate with a voodoo doll collection and three German Shepherds.
Night of the Necromancer
The lead story for the
complete artwork comprising all the issues in 2010) is “Mannikin” by Paul Evanby. The story opens in July 1776, the date of American declared independence from British colonial rule (sidenote: the writer is Dutch and the magazine is published in the U.K.). But this isn’t about Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, and doesn’t even take place in the colonies, but rather signifies the irony of a revolution that resulted in freedom for white Protestant male landowners who relied on the exploitation of African-American slaves to maintain economic autonomy.
The Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly