Search Results for: neverwhens

Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: No One Suspects the Spanish Inquisition (Wasn’t That Bad)

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G. Willow-Wilson author photo by Amber French for SyFy.com Since this column began this year, we’ve looked at the visual continuity of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (and why, ironically, it does a better job of wordlessly telling the sweep of Middle Earth’s history than Tolkien’s millennia-long, cultural stasis does), authenticity (and lack thereof) in The Witcher, and talked about the commonalities and differences of historical fiction and fantasy with several, excellent authors who work in both arenas. Along…

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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Of Lambs and Lizardmen

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The Ring-Sworn Trilogy by Howard Andrew Jones: For the Killing of Kings (Feb 2019), Upon the Flight of the Queen (November 2019) and the forthcoming When the Goddess Wakes (April 2021) A bit of prologue and some full disclosure to the Gentle Reader The purpose of this column has been looking at the challenges of historicity vs. fantasy in the process of world-building; well at least when the fantasy in question is trying to be either realistic or set in…

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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Of Orks and Orkney

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One of these men is an author, the other is Odin…there’s more commonality than you might think. Scott Oden  is an American writer best known for his historical novels set in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece, and historical fantasy. Oden’s breakthrough novel was 2005’s Men of Bronze, set in late Pharonic Egypt; it was followed in 2006 by Memnon and in 2010 with The Lion of Cairo, which mixed pulp-style action and sorcery with Crusader politics in Fatimid Egypt. His most recent…

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Neverwhens: Where History and Fantasy (Careers) Collide — an Interview with Christian (and Miles) Cameron

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Christian Cameron as a Hoplite Christian Cameron, a well-known historical fiction author who writes espionage novels under the pen name Gordon Kent and fantasy under Miles Cameron, is a Canadian novelist who was educated and trained as both an historian and a former career officer in the US Navy. His best-known work is the ongoing historical fiction series Tyrant, set in Classical Greece, which by 2009 had sold over 100,000 copies. But in recent years he’s not only chronicled ancient…

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Neverwhens, Where History & Fantasy Collide: Witcherian Swordplay and…. er… 14th century Mullets?

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OK, this is just STUPID, assuming one likes their fingers. (If, you are also angry that a guy in vaguely Renaissance clothing is swinging a Roman gladius at a man with a medieval longsword, I salute your attention to detail, but you’re probably watching the wrong show.) There’s an interesting side-effect to being a researcher and author on historical, European martial arts (HEMA), especially when you also own a large, full-time school for the same in a major city. I…

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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide

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Fantasy and Science Fiction are often viewed as two distinctive, though related, forms of speculative fiction, but in reality, the genre is a continuum in which the dreamscapes of a Lord Dunsany or Robert Holdstock can lead us through twisting turns of possibility until we arrive at Andy Weir and Ian Banks, or a Neal Stephenson story of “digital resurrection” can turn into a story of gods, goddesses and quests. The central theme, the true “Call of Cthulhu” behind good…

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When Venice Ruled the… Galaxy? Miles Cameron’s Artifact Space

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Artifact Space by Miles Cameron (Gollancz, June 14, 2022) Although I love to watch Sci-Fi shows & movies, I don’t tend to read a lot of Sci-fi, and never have; even though Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos remains one of my favorite set of novels in any genre, and I have an incredible soft-spot for sword & planet pulp. OTOH, good space opera often blurs the line between fantasy and Sci-Fi, or takes themes we see in historical fiction and contemporary…

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High Fantasy Noir: Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse

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Black Sun (paperback reprint) and Fevered Star (Saga Press, June 2021 and April 2022). Covers by John Picacio My first novel The Robots of Gotham was released in June 2018, and it was gratifying to see a summer debut could quickly climb bestseller lists, receive wide attention and praise from numerous venues, snag a Nebula and Hugo nomination, and win a Locus Award. Not mine, of course. No, all that breathless acclaim went to Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning, released…

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Between the Years When the Oceans Drank (Henry Kuttner’s) Atlantis, and the Rise of COVID-19 — Elak Lives Again!

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Adrian Cole is hardly a stranger to fantasy fiction. Born in Plymouth, Devonshire in 1949, Adrian first read The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s while working in a public library in Birmingham, and was inspired by the book to write an epic entitled “The Barbarians,” which was eventually revised into The Dream Lords trilogy, published by Zebra Books in the early 1970s. He has been writing various ghost, horror, and fantasy tales, in both short-story and novel-length,…

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 44 Now Available

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Issue banner by Rengin Tumer The ancient druids used to use gigantic standing stones to precisely chart the passing of the seasons. Me, I have a more accurate and satisfying method. I rely on the mystical and inexorable cosmic cycle that gives birth to a new issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, every quarter, without fail. HFQ 44 is a special treat as it contains a complete story by our very own Greg Mele, whose most recent article for Black Gate,…

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