Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On: The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On: The Tempest by William Shakespeare

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Title page from the First Folio

One of the problems with writing about great works is there’s so little for me to add to the volumes and volumes written by writers far and away more knowledgable than I. Still, maybe I can bring a newcomer’s eye to books that have nourished the roots of fantasy, and maybe encourage a few others to pick them up. So I shall ramble for a piece about William Shakespeare’s last solo play, The Tempest (ca. 1610).

The Tempest is believed to have been performed only a few times during Shakespeare’s lifetime, including once in 1611 for King James I at Whitehall Palace on Hallowmas night. It became part of the standard theatrical repertoire during the Restoration starting in 1660, but was edited to appeal more to upper-class audiences and support royalist policies. Finally, in 1838, when actor William Charles Macready staged an incredibly elaborate production using the unedited script, Shakespeare’s original became the preferred version.

Along with several other of Shakespeare’s final plays, including The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline, The Tempest is categorized as a romance, fitting into none of the standard tragedy, comedy, or history categories. His later works, perhaps reflecting his own changing nature, changing tastes, and the growth of more elaborate productions, mix the comic and tragic, along with magic and mystical elements. The Tempest showcases this evolution brilliantly.

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Goth Chick News: Attention What We Do in the Shadows Fans

Goth Chick News: Attention What We Do in the Shadows Fans

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Given my favorite genre, watching anything that results in hysterical laughter is a rarity. It isn’t that I don’t have a sense of humor. You couldn’t work here without one. It’s just that the opportunities to partake in hilarity doesn’t often arise in the horror industry; but when it does, the source is usually something very special.

Such is the case with the FX series What We Do in the Shadows. The two-season series is a look into the daily lives of four vampires who’ve been together for hundreds of years, and their “familiar,” the young Guillermo, whose dearest wish is to be turned into a vampire in payment for his years of faithful service. This show, which is also available to stream on Hulu and Amazon Prime, is just plain wrong, which is what makes it so darn funny. No subject is off limits, and though some might characterize the humor as of the “potty” variety, personally that is precisely what I need in the all-too-serious times we live in.

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Feedback Loop

Feedback Loop

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January 1st

This diagram of a diamond molecule also shows the relationship of your characters to one another. Coincidence?

Dear Diary,

My newest writing project is ready to begin! I have chosen to try my hand at a classic mystery novel, which I will give the working title Alabaster. Welcome to existence, Alabaster! As a mystery requires, I have outlined the novel in its entirety, so I know which clues must go where, and so on. However, in order to temper the heavy-handed planning of my previous project, I have decided to seek out a critique group.

This was made far more simple by the fact that the local library has signed a long-term leased to the large and empty house next door, and has spent many weeks now stocking the spacious rooms with a representative sample of the world of literature, as well as a number of programs aimed at enriching the intellectual lives of the surrounding citizens. Lucky me! What more can a writer ask for than a critique group practically on their own doorstep? I watch their preparations from my writing room window each day.

Power Crystal: Diamond, for clarity and strength.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: En Garde, Old Boy

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: En Garde, Old Boy

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The Three Musketeers miniseries (UK, 1966)

At last! Because you demanded it. (I’m pretty sure that happened,) Finally, the subject everyone wants an article about, French Swashbuckler Tales Adapted for British Television! I know, right?

In the Sixties, one of the BBC’s stocks in trade was popular literature adapted into mini-series of six to sixteen half-hour episodes, usually shown on Sunday afternoons. In this context, Alexandre Dumas worked well for them: they’d had such success with The Count of Monte Cristo that they went back to the Dumas well twice more with his musketeers, and then picked up and dubbed a French serial called Le Chevalier Tempête set in the same period. En garde, old boy!

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Sword & Sorcery Has a Future: The Red Man and Others by Remco van Straten and Angeline B. Adams

Sword & Sorcery Has a Future: The Red Man and Others by Remco van Straten and Angeline B. Adams

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The Red Man and Others (March 2021). Cover artist uncredited

Back in May I was contacted by author Remco van Straten, who was promoting his new Heroic Fantasy collection The Red Man and Others, written with Angeline B. Adams. Here’s what he told me.

These are interconnected stories around a small but tough sell-sword, Kalia, her disabled forger girlfriend Ymke, and their teenage thief and con-artist protégé Sebastien, each with a grudge against the Brotherhood of the Wheel. In their attempts to get back at the cult, they find each other, and a new purpose for their skills. The paperback is illustrated throughout and also contains background material.

I’m a sucker for modern heroic fantasy, so I was glad to take a look. And what I found was a well-packaged collection that has already garnered some surprising attention.

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From the Mountains to the Oceans: Twilight 2000‘s American Campaign, Part II

From the Mountains to the Oceans: Twilight 2000‘s American Campaign, Part II

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This is the second of three articles covering GDW’s published adventures in the “American Campaign” for Twilight: 2000’s first edition. The first, “Going Home Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” can be read here.

For the characters at the start of their adventures in Twilight: 2000 — presuming they start with the default location in Poland — the situation in America is essentially unknown. They may learn more clearly that the United States government has split into competing units: the so-called MilGov and CivGov. However, the nature and extent of the collapse of society and the rising of powerful alternative forces would largely be unknowable.

The nuclear strikes against America overwhelmed governmental services either because they were taken out in the strikes (the main body of the federal government), the vast quantity of desperate refugees put civilian leaders in no-win situations for shelter and food, or the collapse of the intricate infrastructure of food production and delivery stripped civilian government of any authority as people turned to baser instincts for survival. Even the Roman emperors understood the importance of food supplies and ensured that the citizens of Rome had free supplies of bread.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask – March, 1932

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask – March, 1932

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You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I decided to kick off this year’s A (Black) Gat in the Hand run with a look at a stellar issue of Black Mask. And the March 1, 1932 one was a knockout. Note the catch phrase on the cover was “Detective, Western, Stories of Action.” Just two issues prior, in January, the cover illustration featured a cowboy wielding a pair of six shooters. Even with non-Western stories from Erle Stanley Gardner, Raoul Whitfield, and Stewart Stirling. The shift towards hardboiled had been made, but the Mask was still appealing to other pulp genres. Competitor Dime Detective had only started up the month before.

But man, the March issue delivered hardboiled like a tommy gun, backed up with a pineapple through the window. No, not the kind of pineapple they use in Psych (great show!). I will argue that it was one of the best Black Masks ever. Considering that there is no Hammett story, it’s a bold claim.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 edited by Terry Carr

Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 edited by Terry Carr

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 (Del Rey, July 1979)

Terry Carr died 34 years ago, in 1987. A whole generation of fans has arrived since his death, discovered science fiction, argued over the Star War sequels, and settled comfortably into middle age to raise contentious young SF fans of their own.

So fans today could be forgiven for not understanding how thoroughly Carr dominated the field during his lifetime. Before he died in 2018, Gardner Dozois was seen as the preeminent editor and taste-maker in 21st Century science fiction, winning the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor a record-shattering 15 times, and editing 35 volumes of the perennially popular The Year’s Best Science Fiction. But in 1979, the year Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 appeared, that crown belonged to Carr, and he had no less than four books — including three Year’s Best — place ahead of Dozois’ own Year’s Best installment in the annual Locus Poll for Best Anthology.

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After Every Deep Breath, the Long Exhale: A Quiet Afternoon 2, edited by Liane Tsui and Grace Seybold

After Every Deep Breath, the Long Exhale: A Quiet Afternoon 2, edited by Liane Tsui and Grace Seybold

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One of my favorite anthologies from last year was A Quiet Afternoon, edited by the Canadian duo of Liane Tsui and Grace Seybold and published by Grace & Victory Publications. So I was very pleased to see an ambitious follow-up arrive this month, packed with 27 stories by Stewart C. Baker, Gabrielle Bleu, L. Chan, Jessica Cho, and many others.

What’s it all about then? Here’s Laura DeHaan, from her introduction.

We are tried and overstimulated and wrung out. The real world is presenting us with more than enough actual life-or-death struggles that we frequently feel powerless to affect. We don’t need to read more of that in our escapist literature. Instead, we take comfort in stories featuring manageable goals and which celebrate small victories.

There are, of course, bittersweet tales as well: broken hearts, lost recipes, forgotten words. Even so, there are triumphs, That which is broken can be fixed, the lost found, the forgotten remembered. After every small deep breath is the long exhale.

In, out.

An anthology dedicated to low-stakes speculative fiction is welcome and oh-so timely. Filled with tales of talking cats, home-cooked meals, robots, cryptids, weather magic, haunted houses, aliens, and knitting, A Quiet Afternoon 2 is waiting with a warm cup of tea to comfort and entertain you.

Here’s the publisher’s description and the complete contributor list.

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Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #3: Tricks of the Trade and Reflections

Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #3: Tricks of the Trade and Reflections

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  • Cover of Imaginary Worlds
    Cover of Imaginary Worlds
Imaginary Worlds (Ballantine Books, June 1973). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo.

I’m doing a deep dive into Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds (first article), and I’ve finally gotten to his last chapter in which he gives advice to writers:

When a writer first begins evolving in his imagination and his notebooks, the raw materials that he intends to shape into an imaginary world, he should think through the problem through to its logical ramifications.

Because…

…despite the convictions of occultists and the religiosi of the several faiths, in the actual world magic simply does not work… and an invented world, therefore, that includes the super natural element must be–has to be–very different from his own. Any writer…. should think through all its implications.

If you’ve just tuned in, Lin Carter was a Fantasy author and editor who flourished roughly from the 50s to the 70s. He was a far better editor than author, however his stories are reliable comfort reads, and compensate for lack of depth with fast pacing and unconstrained imagination. No surprise, then, that his thoughts  on Fantasy worlds are worth reading. He gives them in X entertaining secions.

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