Answering SF Signal's Questions/Meme Regarding Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading/Buying Habits

A Small Glimpse at the Bookshelf

I'm a regular reader of the SF Signal blog. I think it and Blackgate blog are two of the best fandom based blogs on the internet. I am also not usually one for answering book memes, but since this one is directed at science fiction and fantasy - my two favorite genre - and since it offers plenty of room to avoid pretentious answers I'm all in. I also think that this is a list of questions that can spur on some discussion.

The questions come from John DeNardo's post earlier today.

Here’s a book meme that focuses on reading habits and buying habits.

You know the drill: Copy the questions below and paste them into the comments with your answers. Answer as many or as few as you’d like.

• What was the last sf/f/h book you finished reading? David Gemmell's DARK MOON. 

• What was the last sf/f/h book you did not finish reading and why? This does not happen. As a "completist," I feel a need to always finish a book. This is maybe especially true when I dislike it.

• What was the last sf/f/h book you read that you liked but most people didn’t? This is kind of a tough question, but since it is supposedly the worst writing ever done I'll say the EYE OF ARGON. It was nowhere near as bad as I feared, and doesn't compare in syntax/creativity/spelling errors to "The Quest for the Holey Grail" that Luke Y Thompson has been reading on Topless Robot.

• What was the last sf/f/h book you read that you disliked but most people did? The Wheel of Time series prior to Brandon Sanderson joining the team. While I may love my D&D campaigns to be a patchwork quilt of all the fiction I love - like Mystara - I'm not sure I like my fantasy epics to be.

• How long do your 1-sitting reading sessions usually last? Depends upon the book. A short book is 2 hours a long one might be eight, but I rarely do longer than an 8 hour 1-sitting read.

• What are you currently reading? CONCRETE BLONDE by Michael Connelly and ROGUES.

• Do you like it so far? Yes. It's the third book in the series, but it covers a good deal of Bosch's background. I was surprised to see how they integrated the plot from this book into the BOSCH pilot.

• How long ago did you buy the book you are currently reading (or the last book you read)? About a year ago/just a couple of weeks ago.

• What was the last physical sf/f/h book you bought? ROGUES and PROMISE OF BLOOD. 

• What is the sf/f/h sub-genre you like the most and why? Sword & Sorcery. Have you read Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Garth Nix, David Gemmell, Elizabeth Moon, C.L. Moore, and James Enge? If so, you understand.

• What is the sf/f/h sub-genre you dislike the most and why? Steampunk. It's not that I don't like the genre, it's that I don't like the classification. Too little Steampunk has any punk element at all. They all seem oddly conservative in their nostalgia and focus. There are exceptions, but as a rule I think if you are going to call yourself "punk" you ought to have punk elements. So I call it Steampulp.

• What is your favorite electronic reading device? Kindle.

• What was the last sf/f/h eBook you bought? SONGS OF LOVE AND DEATH.

• Do you read books exclusively in 1 format (physical/electronic)? No. I like both tablets and books for reading. 

• Do you read eBooks exclusively on a single device (eBook reader/ smartphone / tablet)? No. I tend to avoid using the iPhone because it can cause eye strain and I don't like reading books on a laptop screen. Tablets and Kindles both work well though.

EN World -- Striking Out on Its Own with O.L.D. and N.E.W.

In the before times, in the not now, EN World was a site for news about the upcoming 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Since that time, the website has evolved into a vibrant community site that not only had news about role playing games, but was also a publisher of exciting campaign materials for both the 4th Edition of D&D and the Pathfinder Rpg. This month the folks at EN World have taken another bold step and have launched a Kickstarter to fund the publication of their own role playing game system N.E.W./O.L.D. or as they have branded it "What's O.L.D. is N.E.W."

Rediscover the fun of pencil and paper, of building anything you can imagine, with rules that are clear but not so thin they'll blow away in a strong wind.

In What's O.L.D. Is N.E.W. you'll do all that and more! Build a starship. Brew a potion. Explore a dungeon. Create a universe. Put your wizard in the starship. Explore *your* world.

Both O.L.D. and N.E.W. are "generic" role playing games for their respective genres - Fantasy and SF - and as such constitute a brave move by Russ Morrissey. While the market for generic SF games isn't overly crowded, the market for generic Fantasy games is saturated. Morrissey is counting on his game's ability to be extremely customizable while at the same time being accessible. It isn't the first game rule set to make this claim, but if Morrissey delivers on that promise the games can gain a good foothold in the market. Savage Worlds, one of my personal favorite systems, shares some of this space and it is the combination of flexibility and playability that I believe makes SW as popular as it is. There's room in my heart for another game that hits that space and I'm backing this project. You can download the playtest documents yourself to see if they might interest you. As I read through the documents, and give them a brief run through with my group, I'll let you know my thoughts.

THE EYE OF ARGON - or - When A Community Mocks Its Own

I've long been a fan of science fiction and fantasy, and I've long been a person who is pretentiously opposed to pretense. In a way, I'm like an angry Polyanna who aggressively argues against those who mock the "juvenile" or "popular" things in SF/F. I love "skiffy" and have experienced no greater sense of wonder than reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' writings of John Carter. That's right. I believe that ERB's tales of Barsoom are as imaginative - nay more so - than Iain Bank's Culture novels, and I love those too. I'm the fan who loves both the Dragonlance stories and Malazan Book of the Fallen. I love the genre at its most literary, at its most imaginative, and when it falls into the "written by an overenthusiastic fan" territory.

I'm so positive in my passion about genre fiction and geek culture that I wrote an approving review of I, FRANKENSTEIN and have been reminded by my editor at Topless Robot that I need to bare the fangs every now and then because I am usually so enthusiastic.

While it's not for my upcoming Topless Robot article, I did find something that really aggravates me. It's how cruel SFF professionals and fandom can be. There are plenty of examples I could pull out of a hat, often dealing with the treatment of female fans as being "fake geek girls." As the father of twin girls who love Pirates, Pokemon, Paladins, and Princesses, I find that whole "controversy" infuriating. That's why I'm not going to write about that topic. It would be very difficult for me to avoid expletives on what has been consistently a G-rated or PG-rated blog.

Instead, I want to focus on how professionals and fandom have treated on particular enthusiast of Sword and Sorcery fiction, Jim Theis the author of THE EYE OF ARGON.

I've been doing nightly out loud readings of THE EYE OF ARGON. I do one chapter, or half chapter as the book has half-chapters as well, per night. I thought it would be fun to do. I heard that the SF/F community had regular readings of this poorly written work of fiction that were the book equivalent of MST3K...and it had been mentioned by the MST3K crew...so I thought it would be fun to do my own midnight readings with my wife.

My takeaway from the experience is that the SF/F community are cruel, judgmental, and full of themselves. I also came to believe that I was part of the problem. By participating in my own personal midnight reading, I was being an SF/F bully.

My sister, Krista aka  Luna McDunerson, bought me a the Wildside Press version of the book, which has a long introduction by Lee Weinstein that discusses the search and discovery of the real Jim Theis. It mentions an interview on a local (Los Angeles) radio show/podcast called Hour 25 where Jim supposedly stated, "that he was hurt that his story was being mocked and said he would never write anything again."

I'll be honest with you. I fluctuate in what to think. Either the whole thing is a hoax, or SF/F authors and fandom are cruel. Scratch that. Even if the whole thing is an elaborate hoax with false scholarship creating a plausible back story of a 16 year old writing the story for OSFAN, SF/F authors and fandom are still cruel. It doesn't matter whether Jim Theis is a real person or a fictional person, what matters is that the community has spent over 30 years mocking him. I became one of those people and it makes me feel terrible. The anger I feel toward myself more than outweighs the joy from any of the small chuckles I experienced during my reading of the work.

The thing is, I think that Jim Theis was a real person and that he did write THE EYE OF ARGON. While the Eaton Collection doesn't have a copy of OSFAN 10, the issue that is said to contain the original story, they do have issue 11 thanks to a generous donation by former UCLA librarian Bruce Pelz. According to the Weinstein essay in the Wildside edition, Theis remained an active fan of SF/F for most of his life. Can you imagine what it would be like to attend conventions where there was a midnight event dedicated to mocking you? It would be one thing if Theis embraced that mockery and made it his own, finding some way to leverage it into a positive thing, but that Hour 25 interview seems to imply the opposite. The mockery killed Theis' desire to become a writer. That's right, the SF/F community's mockery shattered a fan's aspirations. To me, that is the biggest crime that any professional or fan can do. No matter how "bad" a writer is at writing, they are never wrong to aspire to become a published author.

Yes THE EYE OF ARGON is poorly written, but not much more so than Lin Carter's THONGOR stories. Unlike Theis, Carter doesn't have the excuse that he was 16 when he wrote the THONGOR tales. Unlike Carter, Theis wasn't a brilliant editor. If an editor as brilliant as Carter was can write drivel and still be a vital contributor to the field as a whole, who is to say Theis may not have evolved into something more? I can tell you from experience that there are some sentences in ARGON that hint at some talent, if only Theis could set aside his Thesaurus for a moment.


When my wife was in film school, one of her classmates stated that she wanted "to be one of those writers who writes terrible movies" and wanted to know how to do that because it seemed like an easy way to make money. It was a statement filled with pretense and disdain that also lacked an understanding of why and how things are created. I don't think anyone writes with the intention of creating something terrible - baring those things that are done as parody. Instead, most writers are attempting to entertain others and to share their own personal feelings and joys. Jim Theis, like Lin Carter, clearly enjoyed his Robert E. Howard stories. Heck, he might even have enjoyed Carter's THONGOR stories. It seems that a 16 year old Thies wanted to share his love of those tales with others by creating his own version. What was his reward for exposing himself thus?

He was publicly ridiculed for over 30 years.

For a community to spend 30+ years making a game that amounts to nothing more than "Taking turns mocking one's own" is something for which I have nothing but I have disdain. I'm not saying to end the readings of THE EYE OF ARGON. There is humor to be found in the mixed metaphors and odd misuses of words that Theis clearly didn't understand. But there is also an enthusiasm to the writing, a sincerity, that should be acknowledged. Readings of THE EYE OF ARGON can be humorous and educational experiences, but they should exclude mockery for mockery's sake. Acknowledge the enthusiasm of the author. Point out how his errors are the errors that many new authors make. And remember that the writing in THE EYE OF ARGON is so "bad" that many of the early myths of its origin required that it be written by someone of respected talent.

Geekerati Radio Flashback Friday -- Susan Palwick Discusses SHELTER

Susan Palwick is an award winning Science Fiction and Fantasy author who currently teaches English at the University of Nevada Reno. Many of her novels and stories deal with emotional trauma or questions of identity, and that includes her novel SHELTER. Susan kindly discussed her book with me and the other Geekerati hosts back in 2007.

It was a special moment in the Geekerati history as it was one of our first author interviews. We've done many more over the past six years, but this one was quite special. It isn't special solely for its place as an early episode, it is also special because Susan was one of my mentoring professors as an undergraduate. There is absolutely no way I would have been able to complete my degree if it hadn't been for her compassion - and the compassion of a couple of other wonderful academics.

Listen to internet radio with Geekerati Radio on BlogTalkRadio

School of Thrones: Game of Thrones Goes to High School

Mash ups can be a wonderful thing, as can taking a story in one setting and translating it into another setting. Take the film CLUELESS as an example. It transferred Jane Austen's wonderful tale EMMA and placed it in a modern Beverly Hills high school. The result was a genuinely entertaining film that captured much of what made Austen's tale so endearing, while managing to add a little of its own flair.

On March 10th, a brave band of Web Series creators released the first episode of a similar venture. This time they took George R.R. Martin's popular fantasy series A Song of Ice & Fire, the basis for the HBO series Game of Thrones, and like CLUELESS placed the tale in a modern high school.

There are parts of the translation that work well. There are parts of the production that are remarkable -- the title sequence is pretty neat. Then there are the wigs. What is up with the wigs? Then there is the acting...

I'm on the fence on this one. This could be very good. It could be very bad. And if it's only mediocre -- which it is looking like it might be -- it will be worse than if it were very bad.

Worst comes to worst, I can always break out my copy of the Green Ronin RPG and run a couple of sessions...or...you know...watch the HBO series.

[Movies] D&D 3 -- When Your Trailer is Less Exciting than a Board Game Trailer it's Pretty Bad

It is a shame that the new trailer for the Descent 2nd Edition Board Game is more engaging than the new D&D movie teaser.

Before anyone starts thinking that this is going to be a screed about how the new D&D movie looks terrible, is going to be terrible, and how lame Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro are, let me make it clear that this will not be that kind of post.  Instead, it will be a post about how the movie looks like it doesn't have a budget, that even "bad" fantasy films can be entertaining, and how this is yet another legacy of the pre-Wizards dying TSR.

Let me say that thing that leaped out at me the instant I hit the play button on the new D&D trailer was how low budget it looks.  The CGI dragon looks more CGI than the dragon in a Kickstarter project I funded, the actors stilted acting makes it clear that the budget for talent was pretty low, the make up isn't very good, and the visual effects on the spells...well...let's just say that I'm less than impressed.  By all appearances Joel Silver has closed all stops and plugged up the budget everywhere...which is to say that this film appears to be the D&D equivalent of the Roger Corman "Fantastic Four" film.  It looks like Silver and company are spending just enough money on the movie to maintain the license.

Setting that aside, some of my favorite fantasy movies were made with zero budget.  What really seems to matter in these cases is whether the people making the project are actively trying to entertain you.  From what I know, and though I know someone who worked on the project that is still remarkably little, many of the people on this project really want it to work.  One of the writers on the film is a regular D&D player, has worked on a number of good rpg products in the past, and is an all around nice guy.  My hope is that this film can rise to the quality of a "Hawk the Slayer," "Krull," "Beastmaster," "The Knights of Bloodsteel," or even the second D&D movie.  I don't have much hope that it will be as good as the "Midnight Chronicles" movie that Fantasy Flight Games made, as that is a pretty remarkable piece of work considering its budget.  I don't think it is too much to ask that if this film isn't going to feel epic, that it will at least feel fun.  My favorite "D&D" movie is Jet Li's classic "Swordsman II" -- my second is his amazing "Kung Fu Cult Master" -- and if one takes off their "Hong Kong films are awesome glasses" it becomes pretty clear that "Swordsman II" is kind of hokey.  But sword energy is still pretty awesome.

All of the problems with this D&D movie, and the earlier two, can be laid in the lap of one single transaction and that is the sale of the license to Courtney Solomon in the dying days of TSR.  Courtney was 19 at the time and eventually managed to bring the film to fruition by partnering with New Line Cinema for distribution who purchased the rights for $5 million.  This ensured Courtney a solid payday, and ensured that until someone buys the license away from Silver, we are unlikely to get the "D&D movie we want."

The Best in Fantasy Fiction -- A Reading from "The Shadow War of the Night Dragons"

Many of the best works of Science Fiction and Fantasy are meant to be read aloud.  Ursula Le Guin describes the power of prose meant to be written aloud in her description of Tolkien's narrative prose in The Lord of the Rings in her essay "Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings."  The essay was published in the book Meditations on Middle-Earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien, and like the book she is describing, the essay is a joy to read.  She describes such works as follows:

The narrative prose of such novelists is like poetry in that it wants the living voice to speak it, to find its full beauty and power, its subtle music, its rhythmic vitality.

It's a wonderful description, and it captures Tolkien's work perfectly.  There are places in The Lord of the Rings where my "silent reader mind" recoils from the page, but when the passages are given voice they come to life.

Some fiction was just meant to be read aloud...and that includes John Scalzi's Hugo Nominated masterwork The Shadow War of the Night Dragons Book One: The Dead City.  Like most works of sublime Fantasy, Scalzi's true genius is revealed by the voice of the reader -- in this case Mark of MarkReads.net.  As Mark reads the pages, the reader is given the pleasure of seeing how masterfully Scalzi combined Shakespeare's opening of Hamlet with one of the most endearing story openings of all time -- second only to Once Upon a Time in its familiarity to readers -- and wraps them in a stylistic bow of genius.

I dare you to watch this video and not be moved to tears.




Do you see what I mean?  What is striking about listening to this, as opposed to merely reading it as I have done before, is that it has affected the way that I read Patrick Rothfuss and Iain Banks.  Thanks to John Scalzi, the Culture Novels will never be the same again as they are surely sequels to Shadow War.

The SF Library: Mandatory Anthology #1 "Adventures in Time and Space"

If you want to get a good sense of the "Golden Age" of Science Fiction, there is no better volume to have on your Science Fiction bookshelf than the Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas edited Adventures in Time and Space.

 Adventures in Time and Space is an anthology making an argument for the literary merit of Science Fiction as a genre.  It was originally published in 1946 -- one year after the dawn of the Atomic Age and the end of the Second World War.  I own the 1957 Modern Library Edition, and it is a book I return to often when I think about what Science Fiction is as a genre and where it can go "literarily."  The genre has had some fine wordsmiths -- Heinlein, Asimov, Iain Banks, C.L. Moore -- come immediately to mind, but it is a genre that still suffers under the shadow of the poorest written "Space Westerns" of the genre.  It is this shadow that Healy and McComas were trying to destroy.  These editors believe that by 1946 Science Fiction as a genre had found its place as a literary genre, a genre of truly imaginative literature.  And they believed that the elevation of Science Fiction as a literary form was largely due to the work of one editor, John W. Campbell Jr.  As they put it in the introduction to the Modern Library edition:

"Critics have called this the 'definitive' anthology of science fiction stories.  We agree -- not just because it flatters us, but because it is an accurate judgment of the magazine editor who first published most of the stories in this collection.

That man was John W. Campbell, Jr. And perhaps no one man ever had a greater influence over a literary form, for Campbell single-handedly revolutionized the writing of -- and possibly more importantly -- the thinking in modern science fiction.

He created what all of us -- readers, writers and editors -- refer to as the Golden Age of twentieth-century imaginative literature. You are about to read the golden bests of that golden time.

Prior to Campbell's advent as editor of Astounding Stories in 1937, science fiction had badly deteriorated from the standard set by its great founders, Wells and Verne. While some editors strove for genuinely interesting scientific speculation, they allowed such challenging postulations to be presented in a framework of atrocious prose. Generally, however, magazines nominally presenting science fiction offered science that was claptrap and fiction that was graceless and dull.

Campbell changed all that...

As I read those words today, I don't think that Healy and McComas are overstating Campbell's influence.  Campbell is an editor whose shadow looms large over the genre, just as Lin Carter's looms over fantasy, or August Derleth's looms over the Weird Tale.  There have been great editors since Campbell, but he was among the first great editors of the genre.  This is especially telling in the themes of the stories he edited.

Read Asimov's Foundation stories and A.E. Van Vogt's Space Beagle and Slan stories in one straight run, and you will notice themes emerging.  Asimov's "psychohistory" and Van Vogt's "nexialism" sound very similar to each other thematically, and they are applied in similar ways.  Both of these disciplines are collections of the skills of other disciplines, they are a kind of "master science."  This optimistic theme of a rigorous social science that could better our lives is a common undercurrent in Campbellian fiction.  It is one of the hallmarks of his tenure...as is optimism itself.  It is sometimes striking how optimistic Campellian fiction is.  Even when it is skeptical -- like Herbert's Dune -- it contains optimism.  For what are Mentats and the Bene Gesserit, but practitioners of Nexialism and Psychohistory?

Adventures in Time and Space doesn't include Dune World or Slan, but it contains stories with many of the same themes.  Among my favorite tales are:

• Robert Heinlein's "Requiem" and "The Roads Must Roll"
• Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's "Time Locker" and "The Twonky" -- written as Lewis Padgett.  Moore and Kuttner seem to be to be vastly under-read by the modern SF reader.  C.L. Moore is arguably my favorite SF author, her combination of the weird and the wondrous are magnificent.
• John W. Campbell, Jr's "Who Goes There?" which is the story that the classic SF films THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and THE THING are based upon.  Campbell published this story under his Don A. Stuart pseudonym.
• Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall"
• A.E. VanVogt's "Black Destroyer" -- possibly my favorite SF story.  Readers will notice its influence in Ridley Scott's ALIEN and in the STAR TREK franchise.  The Space Beagle and its mission are surprisingly similar to that of the Enterprise and nexialism and Mr. Spock have a lot in common.
• Harry Bates' "Farewell to the Master" was the inspiration for THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and stands as a classic tale far better than the "cold war bigger bully scares us straight" narrative of the film.

There are 35 tales in all in the anthology and they are tales that I return to again and again.  Much like Carter's "Adult Fantasy" series with its many fantasy anthologies, Adventures in Time and Space belongs on your bookshelf.

If only Erik Mona and Paizo had managed to get the rights to do a Planet Stories edition of the book before that line went on hiatus.  I would have loved to see this anthology with some artwork from their stable.  If only because the Coerl of "Black Destroyer" is also the influence behind the D&D monster the Displacer Beast.

Why "The Brave" Trailer is Superior to "Wrath of the Titans" Trailer

Before I post the two trailers in question and critique the "Titans" trailer, I just want to state for the record that I am jazzed to see both of these movies. They both look like fun and appeal to my inner child.

Now take a minute to watch the trailer for "The Brave." It's only a couple of minutes long.



The trailer is essentially 2 minutes, or so, taken straight out of the film. Two minutes that encapsulate a story on their own, that hint at the stakes surrounding the situation, and that entertain. I now want to see the movie now more than ever, and have the sense that the film will make me weep as its twists are revealed.

Now take a minute to watch the trailer for "Wrath of the Titans."



From the opening BWAAAAAM -- straight out of "Inception" -- there is cut scene after cut scene of ever escalating action that reveals that our hero will have to battle many mythical beasts over the course of the film. Never mind that a releasing of the Titans, and their war against humanity, would make for an exciting series of films let alone a single picture. A fact that makes it appear as if this film will be trying to do too much in too little time, and at the expense of creating an actual narrative. The action scenes are compelling, and heighten my desire to see the spectacle of the film, but they do little to invest me emotionally in the film.

Both trailers make me want to watch the films, but one demonstrates that the film I will be watching will make me feel something emotionally while the other bludgeons me with spectacle.

I can't help but feel that the reliance on a spectacle oriented trailer, rather than an emotional one, for the upcoming "John Carter" film is a bad move. There is action in the John Carter series of tales, to be sure, but there is also a great romance. It is a mythic romance and the trailers have done little to convey that fact. I would even go so far as to say that the Super Bowl trailer made me want to watch the film less.

Compare the "John Carter: Virginia" clip to the Super Bowl ad. The Virginia clip makes me want to watch the movie, the Super Bowl ad makes me believe that Disney doesn't really believe in the story or that the characters are worth highlighting. Thankfully, the Virginia clip exists and lets me know that there will be character development -- even if it is apocryphal -- and not just spectacle.





I'll take Virginia over spectacle any day, and I'll take a short continual glimpse into the world over clips featuring the soundtrack of "Inception."

A Victory Point Games Christmas

Victory Point Games is an independent small press gaming company located in Southern California that is both a game company and a classroom.  Not only do they want to produce fun to play games, but it is their mission to turn game players into game designers.  They are a friendly and talented crew.

For the past few years, VPG has released playable game after playable game.  What the games have sometimes lacked in quality of components, they have more than made up for in quality of play.  Recently, VPG has made two corporate decisions that will bring the physical/visual quality of their products in line with the play quality.  First, they have ordered a die-press in order to produce high quality die-press counters for their games.  They have been hand pressing and cutting the individual games in the past.  Second, VPG has slated a series of digital adaptations of their games.

VPG has just released their first digital game, an adaptation of Chris Taylor's "Loot and Scoot" fantasy game.  The digital version of the game does a good job of capturing the simple charm of the printed version of the game.  It also features significant graphic improvement over the tabletop game.  You can compare the digital version's graphic presentation to that of the original by looking at the images below.  The first two images come from the new digital edition, while the second two images come from the physical version of the game. 

 

I am quite fond of the physical game, and there is no replacing a good face to face board game experience, but the digital game is both cheaper and slicker than its physical counterpart.  The new digital game -- available for both iPhone and Android devices -- comes in at an inexpensive $2.99 where the physical copy has a $17.95 price point if purchased direct.  The digital game is competitively priced, where the physical game reflects the costs associated with limited print runs, both are worth the price.  Get yourself a copy of the digital game, and purchase a copy of the physical game for a friend.

In addition to "Loot and Scoot," VPG has a large catalog of fun games that make perfect Christmas presents.  My top ten list (in no particular order) are the following:

1. Hero of Weehawken: The Aaron Burr Conspiracy
2. Gettysburg: The Wheatfield
3. Forlorn Hope
4. Nemo's War
5. Empires in America
6. Zulu's on the Ramparts
7. Waterloo 20
8. Final Frontier
9. Ancient Battles Deluxe
10. The Barbarossa Campaign

I've Got to Get Jody to Do Another Fantasy Toon Soon

[Film Trailer] MURAL: Strange and Inspiring Fantasy

As much genre influence as Hong Kong films have had on American cinema, there is one genre where Hong Kong's influence has yet to have significant impact on American film making. Every modern American action film has some touch of the gunfu and kung fu films of Hong Kong's heyday, but one rarely sees touches from amazing fantasy spectacles like The Bride with White Hair, Dragon Inn, or Warrior of Zu Magic Mountain in American productions.

When we do get film influenced by HK fantasy films -- with the exception of John Carpenter's magical Big Trouble in Little China -- the American adaptations/translations are mere shadows of what could be cinematically.  It's as if Western film makers are afraid to truly push the envelope regarding what a fantasy story can be.  The Forbidden Kingdom is a perfect example.  The film stars two of Hong Kong's greatest actors, yet the film makers decided to add an American protagonist and to mute the fantastic elements of Sun Wu Kung's tale.  The movie is an inelegant patchwork of a number of wonderful tales.  Even when talented Hong Kong directors make films with elements of HK fantasy, like Warriors of Virtue, the fantasy is targeted at young children and the warriors become kangaroo versions of Ninja Turtles.  In these fantasy translations, the "anything can happen" narrative and the "nothing is too extreme" attitude of HK fantasy is lost, only to be replaced with tamer shadows that hint at what could have been.  There are moments of The Forbidden Kingdom and Warriors of Virtue  that shine through, but they are only enough to make the film's moderately entertaining when they could have been spectacular.

Thankfully for fans of Hong Kong fantasy, and you should really be one, the HK film industry is still making fantasy spectaculars.  This September saw the release of Gordon Chan's latest film Mural.  The movie is an adaptation from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio a classic collection of Chinese fantasy stories of Vampires, Ghosts, and Magic.  Gordon Chan's Fist of Legend is one of the best martial arts films ever created, and if this trailer is any hint we might be in for something special with Mural.  Let's hope it gets released stateside soon.

 

Max Brooks is Better than C.L. Moore According to NPR

I hate top 100 lists.  They force reviewers, participants, and readers to ranks books in order of "importance" or "quality" in a way that is truly unhelpful.  Matters of which book is better or worse are not merely a matter of subjective standards, the subjectivity often lacks any real weight of opinion.  As someone what their 54th favorite book is, and the answer will likely be different each and every time.  This is even true if the individual hadn't read any books between askings.

The one thing that top 100 lists are good for is spurring discussion and possibly, just possibly, highlighting works that may be overlooked by those who want to explore a particular subject or genre.  But the 1001 "blanks" to "blank" before you die books do a similar thing and don't have any arcane selection systems.

Recently, NPR finalized their "Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books" list.  It was a list that seemed to have rules constructed specifically to rule out Harry Potter and to guarantee that Tolkien would be placed at the top of the heap.  It's a list that contains some truly excellent examples of genre writing, but it is also a list that demonstrates the flaws so apparent in top 100 lists.  One wonders what "new shores" or discoveries the individual seeking to delve into SF and Fantasy will find if they pick from this list -- a list filled with well known names and tilted toward New York Times best-sellers, as well as some writers favored by the literati.  The list is sadly lacking in some truly excellent names, while including all of the "modern favorites."  One knows they are reading a flawed list when the first Michael Moorcock book is listed at spot 90 behind such longstanding and influential works as <em>World War Z</em> and Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn Trilogy" of Star Wars media tie-in fiction.  I loved <em>World War Z</em> and the Zahn is one of the best writers in the Expanded Universe, but neither of these contain the literary merit or influence of the Elric books -- or Moorcock's work in general.

There are authors on the list, high ranking authors, who consider Moorcock to be mandatory reading, yet he ranks in the bottom 10 of the top 100.

If only this were the worst of the sins.  Low rankings on a list can be dismissed as mere subjective differences, but out and out exclusion of important voices -- while other writers receive multiple entries -- is nigh unforgivable.

Who was excluded?

Are you a fan of fantasy history and look to the past for great writing? Are you looking for some names you might remember from English Literature courses?

Never mind Samuel Butler or Edmund Spenser, you won't find them on this list.

Patrick Rothfuss' "The Name of the Wind" (a wonderful book btw) comes in at #18, but "The Faerie Queene?"  Nah that's not a top 100.

The writer who created one of the most entertaining genre's in all of SF, the Planetary Romance, should be there right?  Nope.  Edgar Rice Burroughs is a less important contributor to SF/F than Terry Brooks.  Friends who know how much I love and defend Terry Brooks know that I make that statement not out of lack of respect for Brooks, but for those who think he has more "important" works than Burroughs.

Where are C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, C.J. Cherryh, Elizabeth Moon?  Thankfully Connie Willis and Lois McMaster Bujold manage to make the list (at #97 and #59 respectively) or the list would be a complete fraud.

Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman, David Gemmell, Gordon R. Dickson (wtf? no Gordon R. Dickson?!), Harlan Ellison, or Jack Williamson?  All of these writers are of lesser contribution than Max Brooks.

John Brunner, who wrote a book that one could argue paved the way for Brook's World War Z entitled <em>Stand on Zanzibar</em>?  Nope.

Worst of all.  There are two Stephen King books and not one by Howard Phillips Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe.

What books or authors do you think were left off the list that are top SF/F writers?

Do you prefer "to be read lists" to "top 100" lists?

[Review] "Battle of 4 Armies" is Fantasy Fun for All!

Earlier today, I made the second of what I hope will become a regular monthly or bi-monthly visit down to Victory Point Games headquarters in Santa Ana, CA.  The game company's staff are friendly and welcoming, and it doesn't take long before a visitor gets talked into participating in a playtest of an upcoming game.  On my last visit, I was able to playtest an upcoming game entitled "Assault on Galactus Prime."  The game was a blast, and I eagerly look forward to its release.

This time I playtested an expansion for "Battle of the 4 Armies," one of VPG's existing game products.  But before I played the expansion, I had to learn how to play the base game.  I own a large stack of VPG games, but I had yet to purchase "Battle of the 4 Armies" by designer Nathan Hansen.  It is a testimony to VPG's desire to support and educate burgeoning game designers that this game, which was released on May 12 of this year, already has an expansion in the works.

The premise of "Battle of the 4 Armies" is simple:

 In a wealthy valley through which a warm,  enchanted river flowed from Foggy Mountain, Queen Elyra’s Council could no  longer keep secret her mysterious disappearance. She, the last heir to the Crown of Chip, was gone and, as word of  her departure grew more dire in each retelling of this new while spreading o’er
the land, order in the realm crumbled.

The representatives of the Great Races in the Queen’s Council, long assembled in peace by the force of her will, laid forth their claims to the crown in her absence – first with words, and then with deeds, calling their armies from afar in all directions to this land, each seeking to claim and restore the Crown of Chip.

In order to lay claim to the Crown of Chip, the winning Race must either completely defeat the armies of all of the other Races or control 3 of the 4 strategic locations on in the wealthy valley. Hansen provides some very simple tile placement and combat resolution rules that constitute the majority of game play, rules that echo some of the best elements of Diplomacy and Neuroshima Hex.

At its core "Battle of the 4 Armies" is a territory control game with very few random elements. Save for one random mechanic utilized to represent the morale of units in the game, this is a luckless game. Given the strength of Hansen's basic mechanics, this single random mechanic impacts play but does so in a way that is predictable and adds realism to the game -- morale effects being a staple of wargaming of all kinds. It would be easy to give a pure description of the rules, but they really are so simple that almost any attempt to describe them would border on plagiarism. As one of VPG's "Battlelesson" line of games, the game spends more text providing clear examples of good strategy than it requires to convey the basic mechanics.

That simplicity shouldn't be misinterpreted as meaning that the game is shallow. On the contrary, the choices required of players in the game are quite complex. Where to place and move pieces, when to push forward, when to retreat, these are all very significant choices -- choices that can result in very interesting movement combinations. Not only are the choice options complex, but the size of the territory to be controlled is small enough to guarantee that players must become actively engaged or suffer the consequences. There is no stalling in Australia in order to build up your armies in "Battle." The game can be played with 2 - 4 players, and the more players participating the more frenetic the game play.

Hansen designed the game as a "strategy game" to use during a role playing game session. The game represented a game that was played within his fictional game world. It has since come to be an excellent generic fantasy war game, one that I plan on inserting into my Eberron campaign as a representation of a battle that took place during the "Last War."

In short, "Battle of the 4 Armies" is almost a definition of what reviewers mean when they call a game elegant. There are few pieces, simple rules, but complex and diverse choices to be made that result in remarkable combinations. The game is quite simply one of the best games I have played this year, and is well worth the $15 price tag that VPG are charging.

Buy the game. Play the game. And help me start a viral campaign to convince VPG to do a Kickstarter project that produces a copy of this game with a cardstock map and nice plastic fiddly bits.

[Blogging Northwest Smith] "Scarlet Dream" (Reprise)

Published in the May 1934 issue of Weird Tales, "Scarlet Dream" is the third of C. L. Moore's tales of the interplanetary rogue trader Northwest Smith. It is also the third story in Paizo's Northwest of Earth collection. With this tale one can really see C. L. Moore developing her voice as an author of the weird supernatural horror story. Of the three Smith tales I have read for this series of blog posts, this is the best of the bunch so far.

Like in her previous Smith stories, there is little within the narrative itself that signifies that this is a science fiction story. Other than the fact that Smith eventually uses his magic wa... err ... "gun" against a foe, this story fits firmly within the narrative tropes of the "faerie" tale. Like Christina Rossetti's wonderfully frightening Goblin Market the tale demonstrates the consequences of tasting the "fruit" of Faerie. Like Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter, this tale has time in the land of magic move at a different pace than that of the real world. Unlike either of those tales, morality offers no salvation for our hero.

"Scarlet Dream" begins with Northwest Smith wandering the streets of a vibrant bazaar where he purchases a shawl made of an unbelievably light textile and bearing a mysterious glyph. The shawl, "clung to his hands like a live thing, softer and lighter than Martian 'lamb's-wool.' He felt sure it was woven from the hair of some beast rather than from vegetable fiber, for the electric clinging of it sparked with life. And the crazy pattern dazzled him with its utter strangeness."

In describing the physical properties of the shawl, Moore provides foreshadowing to the events that are about to unfold as the tale progresses. It is masterful foreshadowing as it occurs in a description where one does not assume the author is providing a map to the structure of the tale. Who would guess that the shawl clinging "to his hands like a live thing" hinted at darker things to come? Not darker things from the shawl itself, that would be obvious, but darker things that come as a result of the unnatural properties of another world. The use of strange patterns and objects of alien make would be used again by Moore in her section of Challenge from Beyond -- a shared universe tale she wrote in 1935 with H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long. Each of those authors adding their own characteristic touches to the story. In Moore's case, that touch is an artifact -- a shawl in "Scarlet Dream" and a crystal in "Challenge."

The market where Smith buys the shawl is in the city of Lakkmanda on Mars, but the description of the market is similar to one that might be given to the bazaar of Baghdad. It is not until Smith returns to his hotel room, a small cubicle of polished steel, that one gets any visual sense of the science fictional (sfnal). It doesn't detract from the story that it isn't a "hard science" tale, it adds to the mystery and sense of wonder as the tale unfolds.

Smith falls asleep covered in the shawl and is overtaken by a disturbing dream. He awakens, only to fall back asleep into another dream. It is in the second dream that Smith's consciousness is transported into a fantastic land. When he arrives he meets a young woman who is fleeing a horrible beast. She is covered in blood and frantic. Smith calms her and soon discovers that he is in an eerie bucolic paradise. The weather is pleasant and the lakeside landscape is beautiful. The temple building where he arrived in the world is the only large man made structure. There are no books, no worldly distractions, and as he soon learns...no food.

He is initially puzzled by the lack of food, but the beauty of the land -- and of the woman (whose name is never revealed) -- intrigue Smith and he follows the young woman to her house. The next day Smith finds himself overcome with hunger and asks the young woman to take him to the temple to acquire sustenance. When he arrives, he sees people kneeling before spigots docilely consuming the liquid being dispensed. He himself begins to partake when he realizes that the people, and now he himself, are feeding on blood! No mention is made of where the blood comes from, and Smith recoils in horror at the thought of feeding on blood. Yet...he has found it satisfying. As the days pass, he eventually partakes in a routine of idyllic days and nights with the young woman interrupted only by regular feedings at the temple. Smith has completely overcome any moral objections to the feeding, satisfied that it sustains him.

Throughout the story, there are references to a beast of some sort that was responsible for the murder of the young woman's sister -- beast that eventually comes for everyone when their time has come. Smith is unworried, and the girl is fatalistically accepting of her mortality. Life in this world is idyllic, yet the routine of it eventually over comes Smith. He needs adventure and discovery, not a dull routine in a beautiful setting. Unable to return home, he decides that he must journey within this realm to find adventure, but this is to be denied him. The planet has no food to sustain him, save for the temple's blood spigots, and Smith learns another terrifying fact. It seems that the entire planet, plants and all, are alive and feed on the blood of living things. If you stand too long in one place, the grass will drain you of your blood. You cannot sleep if you aren't on stone as the plants will eat you. This is a world where all the denizens are sustained by blood.

Smith is not shocked or terrified by the prospect, he is resigned to satisfy his sense of adventure. His spirit cannot be sentenced to a life of dull routine. It is his Fredrick Jackson Turnerian frontiersman spirit that saves him from a fate worse than death.

How? That's for you to find out when you read the story.

What is particularly interesting in this story is the way that Moore uses the traditional elements of the faerie story, that of entering a beautiful but dangerous world, while demonstrating how a non-moral actor would react to the environment. What use has the adventurer for bucolic paradise? Apparently, not much. It would be unfair to leave out that the girl, like the sister in Goblin Market, sacrifices herself in order to save a beloved, but in Goblin Market the spirit of curiosity is the culprit and not the savior. Also interesting was Smith's reaction to the feeding process in the world. He is initially revolted, as I imagine any one would be, but he quickly overcomes his moral rejection and feeds like everyone else. This is the moment where the audience, though not the character, get to feel a sense of cosmic horror. We look into the abyss with Smith, horrified, but he allows the abyss to look back into him and is largely unaffected. This is a disturbing thing to read. How does one react to a protagonist who so quickly, Smith does not resist eating for days nobly suffering before succumbing, to temptation?

Smith may never have discovered the name of the young woman, but the audience never discovers the origin of the blood the people feast upon. Is it the blood of those killed by the beast? Is it the blood of those killed by the planet? Is it the blood of the planet? If it is the blood of those killed by the beast, is some of it the young woman's sister's blood? Creepy...and wonderful.

Previous Blogging Northwest Smith Entries:

2) Blogging Northwest Smith: "Black Thirst"
1) Blogging Northwest Smith: "Shambleau"

Heartbreak & Heroines: I'm on Board

[EDIT: I received an email this morning stating that this project has been cancelled.]

Three days ago Caoimhe Ora Snow (also credited as Kynn Bartlett) announced a new Kickstarter roleplaying game project. As many of you know, I have been supportive of a number of gaming related Kickstarter projects in the past. I believe that "sourcefunding" or "patronage" are wonderful ways to build the venture capital needed to fund and self-publish games, films, books, you name it. The explosion of sourcefunded projects in the past year is a boon for gamers, and I am sure for other art forms as well. It is a boon, because it allows for projects that might otherwise be impossible to distribute to have a chance at seeing daylight. Heartbreak & Heroines is one such project.

For years, there has been heated discussion about the inclusiveness of the role playing game hobby toward those women, minorities, or LGBT who are participants in the gaming community. The conversations have been similar to those regarding the SF/F community. Someone examines the field and finds a result and comments on it, this is then followed by knee-jerk backlash and possibly meaningless counter-examples attempting to refute initial comment, the conversation fades unresolved. A typical exchange can be seen over at the Black Gate Magazine website in the conversations here and here.

There is some good discussion of women in the role playing game hobby in particular in Michelle Nephew's dissertation on authorial power "Playing with Power", a chapter of which is included in the book Gaming as Culture. If you can get a copy of the dissertation, do so. It's worth it. If you cannot, the chapter is a very thought provoking read. She discusses how the milieu of games can be very sexist and off putting to women gamers, "From this perspective, including the historical facts of sexual inequality and other discriminatory practices as part of the game setting allows male players to escape into a game world that validates their own sense of worth by making their characters physically and socially superior to others around them, whether those ‘others’ happen to be monsters or women.” (Nephew, Michelle, 187 - 188).

Nephew's dissertation covers many more topics than the appeal of games to women, but it is interesting to note that a hobby that has near limitless possibilities with regard to creating counter-cultural societies -- and which often prides itself on being counter-culture -- rarely creates games that truly go against social norms. It is also rare that a game will come along that is constructed specifically to be inclusive toward overlooked communities of potential players.

The announcement of Kynn's Kickstarter project met with some predictable outcries that mirrored the traditional pattern. "She's saving us from ourselves." "The window of which she speaks has always been open." "It's not like we've got any roleplaying games which include women in anything."

It's true, if one looks hard enough, one can find games like Blue Rose and Faery's Tale (to name only two) that seek to appeal to new audiences. It is also true that games like Vampire initially broke the "kill, loot, and power up" style of game that is directed at male players -- though the splat books soon empowered those gamers significantly. That doesn't matter. Assuming that it does assumes that the conversation is over. It isn't.

We need more games, and we need more points of view. Gaming is a place where we get to construct meaning and tell stories together. It's a place to mirror and to break stereotypes.

I for one, am looking forward to Kynn's offering -- now is when I should admit bias as Kynn has been regularly playing in a D&D Encounters game I run once a week for the past month or so.

My only concerns are that the game will only capture the imagination of one of the two audiences that such a game should appeal to.

Games aimed at inclusiveness should target two audiences. The first audience is the group that is already playing, but who are being overlooked by the majority of game offerings. Heartbreak & Heroines certainly meets this goal. The second audience is the group that isn't playing games because of the social barrier built up by the underlying assumptions of what a role playing game is, and how to "properly" play.

I know the H&H is reaching the first audience -- the Kickstarter is doing very well -- but I hope it can make some ground in the second.

Kynn has provided a basic outline of the game's mechanics on the Kickstarter page, as well as one hint regarding the setting/narrative assumptions of the game, and I look forward to seeing how they pan out in play.

Character 'Death' in Fantasy Role-Playing Games

One of my best friends, and a regular at my gaming table, Eric Lytle wanted to share his thoughts on role playing games and character deaths. He's a great asset at the table, and I thought his observations might demonstrate some interesting differences underlying game play for modern gamers versus "grognards."

Illustration Copyright 2011 Jody Lindke

I HATE character deaths in fantasy Role-playing games, for the most part. I certainly think death has a valid place in the milieu. I can't recall ever running away from an encounter, ever. And for this reason I've had many characters die on me. The most telling example is 1st edition Basic D&D where this is pretty much the norm. Even printed adventure expect DMs to be killing characters left and right. I've rolled up at least 10 characters for a level 1 adventure in basic D&D. As a result the cast of characters for our campaign include a cavalcade of boring faceless dead. I just stopped putting any effort into developing them. They were ammunition in a gun. Not the richly developed characters;with character links to other players, emotional ties to NPCs, well developed back story that creates good heroic motivations for actions, that I usually enjoy playing. When the first basic D&D came out and there was nothing else to be had on the market I'm sure that I would have been fine with it. My introduction to the RPG scene was much later. I started really heavily playing paper and pencil role playing games with Star Wars D20, which is a cinematic role-playing game about being awesome(read Jedi Knight). It's certainly not the wild west days of RPGs anymore.

As a member of the RPG 'new school' it is my expectation that character death is not an imminent threat. Party level balanced encounter design is the norm for new school RPGs and I think this is a good thing. It takes a lot of headaches away when the maths is all figured out for you. Game expectations are to tell a collaborative story and not an antagonistic one. GM and players are working together to have fun and tell cool stories. There is no sinister villain behind the DM screen trying to kill the player characters anymore.

As a player I want character death to have meaning. I get attached to the characters create and unless it's a character I was provided for a 4-6 hour convention game I'm looking to create long story arcs with them because I sure as heck have imagined an entire back story for them even if it's not written down or well articulated to the other players. And even when I'm playing a 'con' game I want the death to be meaningful. I didn't pay money to have some GM bully me for six hours and finish the story with "I'm sorry you died".

As a GM I don't want to frustrate my players or have them feel like I overwhelmed them. The goal is to tell a heroic story. If the high critical zombie minion takes out the Dragonborn paladin with a lucky shot its not that heroic of a tale. PC death can be an interesting part of the story but it should come organically from storytelling not from opposed tactics and lucky dice rolls. Sure the villain should be trying to stop the PCs from interfering with their plans. But there are many ways to be 'taken out' of a situation that aren't lethal. Setbacks are great in these kinds of games. But having to develop a new character in an established game because of chance shouldn't be a goal or a byproduct for fantasy RPG play.

This is specific to Fantasy RPGs (i.e. D&D and its clones). I can see the value in having disposable characters for other types of role-playing games. Character deaths in a gritty noir story or a Lovecraftian horror story make a lot of sense to me. Check out Sean Preston's discussion of Grittiness in Savage Worlds in regards to Bennies at Reality Blurs. Although to be honest I'm lying about this point. I still hate character death unless it serves some story purpose. Rob Donoghue talks about character death in Fantasy over at his Some Space to Think blog (with Game of Thrones spoilers), which also touches on how it adds that gritty feeling to the genre. It is unthinkable to kill your characters in other genres too. Doc Savage and friends aren't going to be biting the bullet in your pulp RPG.

[Blogging Northwest Smith] -- Shambleau (A Reprise)

Almost two years ago, Cinerati featured a post discussing the differences between Sword and Sorcery tales and stories of Planetary Romance. According to the post, a couple of the key differences were the moral clarity of Planetary Romance tales and the inclusion of "Weird Supernatural" elements in Sword and Sorcery tales. In response to the post, Blue Tyson, posited that I had left a "Northwest Smith" sized hole in my argument. The implication being that these tales contained "Weird Supernatural" while falling squarely into the Planetary Romance genre.

At the time I had only read Catherine Lucille Moore's Jirel of Joiry tales, and not her Northwest Smith stories. Blue Tyson's comment deeply intrigued me, and I decided to read C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith stories and to do one blog entry per story as I read them. For the exercise, I used Paizo Publishing's excellent Planet Stories edition of Northwest of Earth, which contains the complete stories of Northwest Smith (including "Nymph of Darkness" a collaboration with Forrest J Ackerman and "Quest for the Starstone" a collaboration with Henry Kuttner), as my reference during the discussion.

Eventually, life caught up with my ambitious attempt -- in the form of twin daughters, graduate school, and work related stresses -- and I was unable to complete the experiment.

I think of it as one of my failings as a blogger. I think of it as my biggest failure, just above not being able to continue my Geekerati podcast with Bill Cunningham and Shawna Benson -- a podcast that I still think is among the best done. Just skip the last couple of episodes, which were recorded as the podcast was in its twilight.

Now that it is summer, and Gen Con approaches rapidly, I would like to re-ignite my series. To that end, I will be re-posting the earlier blog posts for the next few days, after which I will complete my Northwest Smith journey. If you want to skip ahead, you can read the originals by going to the Blogging SF/F page, but I'd rather you stuck around for the ride and commented on the new pages.


For those of you who are unfamiliar with Northwest Smith, he is often discussed as the fictional character who is the inspiration for George Lucas' character Han Solo. Any need to point out similarities between Northwest Smith and Indiana Jones seems unnecessary, as the names themselves speak volumes about that connection. According to John Clute's Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Through Smith, CLM helped revamp the formulae of both space opera and heroic fantasy. Smith's introspection and fallibility give him a more human dimension than his predecessors in heroic fantasy, and the depiction of his sexual vulnerability represented a psychological maturity uncommon in the field."

I think it bears mentioning that Stephan Dziemianowicz, who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia, makes no mention of Planetary Romance in the Northwest Smith section and focuses on Smith's importance in space opera and heroic fantasy. I mentioned in the prior post that Planetary Romance was a sub-genre of heroic fantasy, but then again so is a great deal of fiction that no one would ever imagine being classified as Planetary Romance.

If "Shambleau" is any indication of the direction that future Northwest Smith tales will wander, Moore's tales of Smith belong firmly in the genre of space opera and completely outside the bounds of Planetary Romance. Though the Smith tales' inclusion of imagery associated with "Weird Fiction" marks them as stories that extend the boundaries of the traditional space opera tale.

In support of the Smith stories falling into the sub-genre of space opera -- a genre that some argue includes the Planet Stories tales of Leigh Brackett, though I believe that classification lacks specificity and makes space opera too broad a category -- I looked to David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's The Space Opera Renaissance for a working definition of space opera. They offer two early definitions of the genre. These early definitions are most useful given the publication dates of the Smith tales, newer definitions bring to mind epic tales like Iain Bank's "Culture" stories or Asimov's "Foundation" due to the expansion of the use of the term space opera.

According to Hartwell and Cramer, the Fancyclopedia II had the following definition:

Space Opera ([coined by Wilson] Tucker) A hack science-fiction story, a dressed-up Western; so called by analogy with "horse opera" for Western bangbangshootemup movies and "soap opera" for radio and video yellowdrama.

Hartwell and Cramer are quick to point out that this definition is actually a watered-down version of what Tucker actually said in his fanzine, which wasn't to actually equate Westerns and Space Opera as telling similar tales. But the connection had been made and by the early 1950s, Galaxy magazine was firm in its use of space opera as "any hackneyed SF filled with stereotypes borrowed from Westerns." The definition of what constitutes space opera has since expanded significantly since the 50s -- it has come to be so broad as to include both Planetary Romance and the "Culture" stories which is almost too broad -- but the connection between the Western and space opera seems particularly significant in the case of Northwest Smith. I would not call Moore's writing hackneyed, but "Shambleau" could easily be rewritten as a Western with only minor cosmetic changes.

"Shambleau," which was Moore's first published story, was published in 1933 during the height of the pulp era. The shelves were filled with a wide array of writing of various qualities, but it is easy to see why Moore's piece was selected for publication in the November 1933 edition of Weird Tales. The piece could also be used as a demonstration for how to mold a work of writing to suit a particular publication. It isn't hard to believe that Moore actually started this as a Western and then adapted it to better suit the tastes of Weird Tales.

"Shambleau" opens with a prefatory paragraph which sets the tone of the tale, establishes a sense of history and place, and gives readers some foreshadowing regarding the turn the tale will take. The paragraph is reminiscent of the paragraphs Robert E. Howard used to open his Conan tales. Where his paragraphs represented excerpts from the fictional Nemedian Chronicles, Moore's resemble the careful tone of a campfire tale. The paragraph is different in tone from Howard's, but serves much the same purpose.

It begins:

MAN HAS CONQUERED Space before. You may be sure of that. Somewhere beyond the Egyptians, in that dimness out of which come echoes of half-mythical names -- Atlantis, Mu -- somewhere back of history's first beginnings there must have been an age when mankind, like us today, built cities of steel to house its star-roving ships and knew the names of the planets in their own native tongues--

One might believe after reading this paragraph -- especially since the place names for Mars and Venus used later in the story are those used in this paragraph -- that he or she is about to read about Space travel in this time before time. This is not the case. References to "New York roast beef" and a "Chino-Aryan war" leave any speculation that this tale takes place in a forgotten time behind. No...this tale takes place in our future, after mankind has once again conquered Space. The sense of the mythical is used in order to make the twist of the story plausible and ensures that the twist falls well within a reader's suspension of disbelief.

We know that our tale take place at some time during mankind's Space conquering future, but what kind of future is it and what kind of man is our protagonist? Apparently, the Mars of the future is a lot like Virginia City.

"Shambleau! Ha...Shambleau!" The wild hysteria of the mob rocketed from wall to wall of Lakkdarol's narrow streets and the storming of heavy boots over the slag-red pavement made an ominous undertone to that swelling bay...

Northwest Smith heard it coming and stepped into the nearest doorway, laying a wary hand on his heat-gun's grip, and his colorless eyes narrowed. Strange sounds were common enough in the streets of Earth's latest colony on Mars -- a raw, red little down where anything might happen, and very often did.

Moore gets us into the action quickly. After a prefatory paragraph that sets the tone and place, she launches us straight into a dangerous situation. It's like reading the scrolling preface before a Star Wars film and then being thrust right into the action. In this case, the action of the tale is simple enough. A wild mob is shouting for the death of a woman, whether "Shambleau" is her name or the name of her people has not yet been made clear, and Northwest Smith takes it upon himself to calm the mob and save the girl. It is only after saving the girl that Northwest Smith comes to understand why the mob was after the woman in the first place -- to tell you more about the girl would be spoiling the fun, but it would also be unfair to leave out further discussion of our protagonist.

We know by his introduction, and his hand on his heat gun, that Northwest Smith is a dangerous man. We come to find out that his saving of the woman probably had little to do with chivalry, but more to do with "that chord of sympathy for the underdog that stirs in every Earthman." This chord of sympathy must stir strong in Smith, because the mob is pretty persistent and Smith -- like Han Solo after him -- isn't the kind who wants to get too involved in this kind of action. Smith's business is usually of a different sort:

Smith's errand in Lakkdarol, like most of his errands, is better not spoken of. Man lives as he must, and Smith's living was a perilous affair outside the law and ruled by the ray-gun only. It is enough to say that the shipping-port and its cargoes outbound interested him deeply just now...

Apparently, Smith is a blaggard whose day to day business is so unseemly that Moore refrains from sharing it, likely because the audience would lose sympathy with our protagonist. It is easy to see how Smith became the archetype that anti-heroes would be based upon for decades to come. He's a cautious man, who pulls for the underdog, but who participates in business best left unspoken. Sounds like Han Solo to me...or Wolverine.

"Shambleau" is a fun tale with a nice twist, a twist that is fairly obvious after the prefatory paragraph. One can see illustrations of "Shambleau" by Barbarella creator Jean-Claude Forest at this fairly NSFW link if you don't want to wait to find out the surprise. I recommend waiting. Read Moore's prose first. Moore incorporates classic mythology into the Science Fiction narrative smoothly and dramatically. Her writing is addictive and she manages to take a classic monster and turn it into something really weird.

[Blogging Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz] Sorcerous Puppets and Dark Gods -- A Look at "Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again"

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across a wonderful publication entitled Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery. The book was edited by Lou Anders, who is one of my three favorite SF/F editors and is Editorial Director for Pyr Books. Anders was aided in his editorial duties by Jonathan Strahan, the Reviews Editor for Locus Magazine. The Table of Contents of the book included a veritable who's who of my favorite Fantasy authors: Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, and Joe Abercrombie to name a few. Needless to say, with the combination of a talented editor, an industry influencing reviewing editor, and a murderer's row of writers, I imagined that this book was destined to become a favored book -- one that was featured both in my Kindle and on my bookshelf.

I was right in this assumption, but I also encountered a pair of wonderfully unexpected characters. These wandering adventurers, Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz, were featured in the story "A Suitable Present for a Sorcerous Puppet" by Garth Nix. Mister Fitz is the titular Puppet, and he is one of the most interesting characters I have encountered in all my years of reading.

I have mentioned before that my formative years with reading Fantasy literature were saturated with the writings of Michael Moorcock. In fact to me Modern Fantasy begins with Moorcock more so than Tolkien. This being the case, I could only imagine how genre changing Moorcock's anti-hero Elric was. On a rational level, I can see and understand how different Elric is from earlier Sword & Sorcery characters -- and Fantasy characters in general -- but I could not truly imagine how perception changing the character was for those who encountered the character when he was first published. Now I think I can.

Mister Fitz changed the genre for me. You see Mister Fitz is a Sorcerous Puppet -- a puppet animated by ancient sorcery. He's kind of like Pinocchio. As Nix points out in the narrative, the vast majority of Sorcerous Puppets were created to be entertainers -- just like Pinocchio. There are a couple of small difference though. Mister Fitz has a large Pumpkin shaped papier-mâché head, and he's possibly the most powerful Sorcerer the world has ever known.

That's right...a Puppet is the Sorcerer Supreme who uses his sewing related sorcery to battle dark and ancient gods.

The concept was mind blowing.

I immediately began hunting down all of the Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz stories, and discovered that there are three stories. Two are published in print anthologies, and the first was published in Jim Baen's online magazine Universe. That first story is Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again.

Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz are worthy inheritors to the grand Sword & Sorcery tradition of adventuring companions. They fit right in with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Elric and Moonglum. They are wonderfully complementary characters who are a kind of twisted mirror image of one another.

Sir Hereward is the vain and noble Knight and Artillerist. Hereward, likely named after the proto-Robin Hood Hereward the Wake, is a skilled physical combatant who possesses the ennui common among the questing heroes of Sword & Sorcery. He is a noble, but reluctant hero. In his first conversation with Mister Fitz, Hereward wonders at his place in the world and why the world is conspiring to push him and his companion from one dangerous adventure to another. Even when they merely seek a resting place, it seems that events conspire to have them participate in some epic battle. Hereward's humor and kindness, as well as his reluctantly heroic nature, perfectly reflect what I always viewed as the Paladin archetype. He nobly accepts his fate, but wishes he could live and love like other men.

Mister Fitz is...well...he's a Puppet with a papier-mâché head who happens to be a centuries old sorcerer created to battle with gods and demons for the fate of the world.

Hereward and Fitz's first adventure, "Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again" sets the pattern for all of the tales printed to date. Hereward ponders some question -- what their purpose in life is, whether that pirate ship will actually shoot at them, or what exactly makes a good birthday present for a thousand year old puppet -- that hints at the theme of the adventure. At some point, Hereward meets an attractive woman -- who would be more attractive is she bore the ritualistic facial scars of the women around whom he was raised -- that Hereward might be able to have a satisfying relationship with. Some obstacle to happiness in that relationship arises, and potentially some tragedy. Finally, Hereward and Mister Fitz battle some powerful demi-god who was named by an ancient charter as a threat to the world. There is usually a comic, and tragic, twist at the end of the story where we get to see how the continual quest of protecting mankind is a thankless and terrible fate.

In the first tale, Hereward and Fitz are looking for gainful employment in the city of Shûme. Shûme is a vibrant city-state surrounded by poorer nations, nations that appear to be readying for war in a jealous attempt to reduce Shûme's hegemony over the region. But we soon discover all is not as it seems in Shûme, and that Hereward and Mister Fitz's duty to battle eldritch evil overshadows their ability to earn a little money. There are some secrets to Hereward and Fitz's origins that are better left revealed by the tale, but let me say that they are for all intents and purposes under a geas to defend the world. Their charter requires them to combat demons and demi-gods listed in an ancient tome created a number of largely forgotten civilizations. The civilizations may be forgotten, but the evil they opposed is still very real and Hereward and Fitz wander the world stumbling onto that evil and battling it.

The representations of Hereward's swordplay are almost superhuman. He is a truly skilled combatant, but he is still just a man and his skills are primarily limited to battling other mortals. It is Mister Fitz who faces the ancient evils, and who metes justice on those who worship them.

Fitz is a comical and terrifying figure. It is that combination that has endeared him to me. I can only hope that there are more stories on the way.