“You Keep Using This Word… “

“You Keep Using This Word… “

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utopia thomas more-smallDid you know that in the 18th century, “conscious” meant “guilty”? People have always played fast and loose with terminology and definitions, and we’re all bothered by the ones that bother us, and not by the ones that don’t.

For example, there’s been a bit of an outcry lately over the changing definition of the word “literally.” While I understand – and sympathise – the fact is that new definitions don’t replace old ones, and that English is a language that’s been evolving forever. What’s more important, it seems to me, is that we decide which definitions we’re using at any given time, and we make sure that all other parties to the discussion are using the same ones.

So much for the definitions of words. What about when the word itself is the definition?

I always thought I knew what “Urban Fantasy” meant. You know, a novel set in a city, with an element of fantasy added in. Usually, but not always, a modern, our-world city*. A novel where the story couldn’t be set in any place other than a city, using the tropes, paradigms and conventions of fantasy. That’s what makes it a fantasy novel, just as the necessary setting makes it an urban fantasy.

Then I was invited to be on a panel where we were to discuss whether it was possible for urban fantasies to have male protagonists. I was confused. I wasn’t aware that to a great many people “urban fantasy” is coming to mean “paranormal romance.” Which is, you know, a romance novel with an element of the paranormal added in. Using the tropes, paradigms and conventions of the romance novel. Which is what makes it a romance novel.

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Goth Chick News: Ending “The Season” at Days of the Dead

Goth Chick News: Ending “The Season” at Days of the Dead

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Days of the Dead Chicago-smallIt is with a heavy sigh that the Goth Chick News team bids farewell to another “season” of Halloween fun but not before attending one last hurrah.

Days of the Dead is a four-city, tour de force of all things horror that rolled through Chicago last weekend.  In addition to a copious list of movie celebrities, this year’s event boasted the largest number of industry vendors ever to attend the Midwest show; including special effects artists, set dressers, authors and indy film makers.

Bigger events come through Chicago, but Days of the Dead has the monopoly on panache.

Let’s wade in shall we?

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Thank Politically Correct Parents for Sword and Sorcery!

Thank Politically Correct Parents for Sword and Sorcery!

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Battle in the Dawn
Sword and Sorcery… will not die despite the various attempts to kill it.

The odd thing about Sword and Sorcery is that it will not die despite the various attempts to kill it.

Sloppy overproduction ruined its reputation, its focus on violence and pre-modern-style patriarchal societies made it politically unfashionable, role players made it nerdy, then Terry Pratchett slashed and burned through its tropes, and still it survived!

Like a thief, Sword and Sorcery springs nimbly between media: “Literature has become hostile? Fine, now I’m a comic! Intellectuals look down on me? No problem, I’m a movie.” 

Like a mercenary captain, it furnishes characters to other genres: “Fashion favors Fantasy fiction? OK, but take a look at some of the supporting characters…”

Like a rogue, it’s a master of disguise: “Sword and Sorcery? Never heard of it mate! I’m Heroic Fantasy!”

It’s true that Sword and Sorcery is a most flexible genre. With no need to nod at extrapolation, and the capacity to invent bespoke cosmologies, it can reflect changing times and social mores, while still delivering a dose of physical adventure and sense of wonder. It’s also true that the genre has inherent literary advantages: magic and religion can support interesting themes, and close-quarters combat gives us the secondhand experience of people putting their bodies where their personal politics are.

However, there’s another factor that I think is easily overlooked. To understand it, you have to come Christmas toy shopping with me.

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Lin Carter and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series

Lin Carter and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series

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Beyond the Fields We KnowMany fantasy fans don’t realize how good they have it these days. Fantasy stories dominate the best seller lists, set box office records, and are some of the highest rated programs on television.

This hasn’t always been the case. In the years following the Second World War, fantasy in popular culture went into a decline. The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this post, primarily because I don’t want to write a doctoral thesis. Once was enough.

What I’d like to address in this and following posts is the resurgence of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically fantasy published by Ballantine Books in what became known as the Adult Fantasy Series.

The catalyst that led to the current fantasy boom was J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, of course. Although initially published by Ace in editions not authorized by Tolkien, Ballantine Books ended up as the publisher of the authorized editions. The books were a tremendous success. Readers began clamoring for more fantasy.

Ian and Betty Ballantine followed up The Lord of the Rings with, in addition to some other work by Tolkien, the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, four novels by E. R. Eddison (The Worm Ouroboros, Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate), A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, and The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place, the latter two by Peter S. Beagle. Considered precursors to the actual Adult Fantasy series itself, many of these books were later reprinted as part of the series with the unicorn head colophon.

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And the Wall Comes Tumbling Down – The Two Towers Deck Building Game

And the Wall Comes Tumbling Down – The Two Towers Deck Building Game

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The Two Towers Deck Building GameI wasn’t sure what to expect upon opening The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Deck Building Game (Amazon) from Cryptozoic. I was familiar with the basic concept of deck building games and had played both Ascension and Marvel Legendary, but the only deck building game I actually owned was the science fiction game Eminent Domain. Fortunately, LOTR: The Two Towers contains some engaging variations on basic deck-building strategy, resulting in a fun competitive game that is sure to entertain fans of the series for endless variations of play, especially when combined with other deck-building games in the series.

If you’ve never played one, here’s the basic mechanic behind deck-building games: Each player begins with a small default deck of cards (10 starting out in all of the above games) and goes through rounds in which they play cards from their hands to buy more cards into their discard pile. When they run through all their cards, the player shuffles it back into the deck. Many of the cards have a secondary ability, such as letting the player draw more cards out of the deck, take cards from the discard pile, or eliminate useless cards from their hand or discard pile. The goal is to gain effective cards and streamline your deck to get as many effective cards into your hand as quickly as possible.

The first thing that makes The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers stand out is that each player gets to assume the role of one of the characters from the film: Samwise, Frodo, Legolas, Aragorn, Merry & Pippin, Gimli, or King Theoden. By drawing from a selection of oversized Hero cards, the player randomly determine which character they are (or you can just choose). Each different character gets a unique card that goes into their starting deck. For example, Frodo’s card (called “It’s Getting Heavier”) allows him to gain control of The One Ring card while Samwise’s card (“There’s Some Good in This World”) protects from possible negative results from cards and allows you to draw another card.

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See the First Glimpse of Maleficent, a Dark Fantasy from Disney

See the First Glimpse of Maleficent, a Dark Fantasy from Disney

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Who is Maleficent?

Maleficent was the name Disney gave to the wicked witch in the classic animated film Sleeping Beauty (1959). She is one of the superb creations of 20th Century film and the character has endured well beyond the original movie. Maleficent has appeared in numerous other Disney books and movies, including the TV series House of Mouse, Ridley Pearson’s Kingdom Keepers novels, the ongoing ABC series Once Upon a Time, and perhaps most notably as a major character in the popular Kingdom Hearts video games. When the Ultimate Disney website hosted their top 30 Disney Villains countdown, Maleficent ranked #1.

Now her story is being told properly, in a big-budget live action release from Disney scheduled to arrive May 30. Described as both a prequel and a remake of Sleeping Beauty, the film presents the story from the point of view of Maleficent. Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol) is behind the project; it was written by Paul Dini and Linda Woolverton, and directed by Robert Stromberg. Imelda Staunton, Miranda Richardson, and Elle Fanning star, and the title role is portrayed by Angelina Jolie.

Watch the first trailer below to get a taste of this new dark fantasy from Disney. It promises to be a wholly different take on a famous story.

New Treasures: In Space No One Can Hear You Scream, edited by Hank Davis

New Treasures: In Space No One Can Hear You Scream, edited by Hank Davis

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In Space No One Can Hear You Scream-smallIn 2013, no one remembers that “In Space No One Can Hear You Scream” was the tag line of a 1979 horror movie.

Well, after 34 years, I guess it’s okay to recycle a decent tag line, even for a film as popular as Alien. Especially when the end product is as intriguing as this Halloween-themed science fiction anthology. The moment I saw it I thought, “I wonder if it has the really great horror SF, like Arthur C. Clarke’s “A Walk in the Dark,” and George R.R. Martin’s “Sandkings?” It has both, in fact, alongside 11 short stories and novelettes from Theodore Sturgeon, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, and others — plus a long novella from James H. Schmitz.

THE UNIVERSE MAY NOT BE A NICE NEIGHBORHOOD…

“The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown,” the grand master of horror, H.P. Lovecraft, once wrote. And the greatest unknown is the vast universe, shrouded in eternal cosmic night. What things might be on other planets — or in the dark gulfs between the stars?

Giving very unsettling answers to that question are such writers as Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Sheckley, James. H. Schmitz, Clark Ashton Smith, Neal Asher, Sarah A. Hoyt, Tony Daniel and more, all equally masters of science fiction and of terror.

One might hope that in the void beyond the earth will be found friendly aliens, benevolent and possibly wiser than humanity, but don’t be surprised if other worlds have unpleasant surprises in store for future visitors. And in vacuum, no one will be able to hear your screams — as if it would do any good if they could…

Here’s the complete table of contents.

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The Hero’s Struggle

The Hero’s Struggle

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The Swords of Lankhmar-smallConan the Barbarian. Elric of Melnibone. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Gilgamesh. Hercules. Hector of Troy.

These giants of heroic fantasy (and the mythology from whence it springs) strode across the landscape of my imagination as a young man. They were my guiding stars when I started to write my own stories. But what were they teaching me?

When I think about these heroes, one thing that comes through is their incredible lust for life. Even when they lapse into melancholy, they never stop striving, never stop fighting, and that struggle is the essence of life. Whether it’s Conan carving out a place for himself in the kingdoms of Hyborea, or Elric fighting to keep his fragile body alive with potions and sorcery, or Hector facing the dread Achilles to protect his home, these heroes confront the challenges of their ages.

Their struggles say a lot about humanity. How far would we go to protect our own? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? Is violence ever warranted?

So when it came time to create the heroes for my own stories, I didn’t set out to emulate these characters, but time and time again I noticed certain parallels. For instance, Caim (the main character of my Shadow Saga) has many of the physical traits of the Gray Mouser, but married to a personality more like Conan. Caim is direct in his sneakiness, deliberate in his dealings, and he possesses a code of honor that, although rather bleak and brutal to most people, elevates him above his peers.

Heroes often fight. They tend to love and mourn with superhuman passion. But first and foremost, they struggle. With their enemies, with their societies, with the gods, and oftentimes even with themselves. They struggle, and so must our contemporary heroes who wish to tread in their titan-sized footsteps.

November/December Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

November/December Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

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F&SF Nov-Dec 2013-smallI wish I had time to really keep up with F&SF. As it is, I barely have time to run out to the bookstore every two months to pick up a copy.

Nonetheless, I’m proud to be able to support the magazine. Ever since it switched to a bimonthly format in April 2009, six double issues a year, the huge 256-page issues have felt more like anthologies than a magazine. Editor Gordon van Gelder maintains a nice mix of SF and fantasy — including the occasional sword & sorcery piece — the only major magazine to dare to blend genres.

Colleen Chen reviewed the issue at Tangent Online:

“Baba Makosh” by M. K. Hobson is my favorite story of this issue. Three Comrades, fighting for the Red Army in the Russian civil war, are sent as a squad to seek Hell… Baba Makosh leads them to a village and a great building made of twisted roots, inside which they meet her sons, who look like stags but walk like men, and her husband — whom only Pudovkin sees is the horned god Veles. His companions are too busy gorging on cheese to notice. Pudovkin begins to question the post-revolutionary principles of the Red Army — principles he has supported until now — as Veles and Baba Makosh show through their words and actions that the traditions his grandfather loved, cruel though they may seem, have a strength and a rationale for existence that cannot be controlled nor defeated.

This piece offers beautiful, lush writing, a unique plot, strong characters, and folklore intertwined with history so skillfully that the whole takes on a magical quality that transports the reader completely to this new reality. The story is worth dissecting and even more worth reading as a whole — it’s rich in theme, with every word and line placed with purpose.

The issue also includes a novella by Michael Blumlein and novelettes and stories by Matthew Hughes, James Patrick Kelly, Albert E. Cowdrey, Tim Sullivan, and others. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Revisiting the Scene of the Crash: John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars

Revisiting the Scene of the Crash: John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars

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Ghosts of Mars One SheetI thought writing two John Carpenter articles in a row was sufficient. I had a strong enough excuse to go two-for-two with Carpenter because of the Blu-ray debuts of Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness, films that have developed a growing and appreciative fan base. The idea of doing a third article on a John Carpenter film, let alone one on the critically rejected Ghosts of Mars… no that never crossed my mind when I penciled in on my calendar, “Blu-rays for PoD and ItMoM! Write for Black Gate!”

However, enthusiastic comments on both Black Gate and Facebook made it imperative I complete a John Carpenter on Blu-ray trilogy of articles.

(Oh, wait: Assault on Precinct 13 arrives on Blu-ray today. Should I go for four in a row? Or instead do that examination of the Russian animated film The Snow Queen in time for the release of Frozen? I wish more of life’s dilemmas were of this type.)

Watching Ghosts of Mars on Blu-ray was my first time seeing the movie since August 2001, when it managed to hold onto multiplex screens for a week. The horrific opening weekend — coming in ninth place — meant Ghosts of Mars rapidly evaporated into the thin atmosphere, leaving a carbon blast mark people interpreted as the end of John Carpenter’s career. The $28 million science-fiction action/horror film managed a dismal $14 million global gross. Yes, global. Even in a career like Carpenter’s, filled with disappointing box-office returns, Ghost of Mars crashed epically. The critical and audience reaction was also murderous; it seemed unlikely the film would join some of Carpenter’s other financial disappointments like The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China in future fan appreciation.

Yet Carpenter has always had a reputation for being ahead of his time. Was it now time for Ghosts of Mars? Did the passage of twelve years give the film a better sheen, offer more to digest?

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