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Month: May 2014

Convention Review: Conpulsion 2014

Convention Review: Conpulsion 2014

Conpulsion 2013 taken by Mike Reddy
Conpulsion 2013. Pic by Mike Reddy

The potential GM, a curly-haired Scot of about my age, shakes his head. “I don’t know… ten year olds? I’ve had bad experiences GMing kids who don’t get it.”

“They’re genre-savvy,” I said. “DeeM here runs D&D 4th edition and they’re both experienced players. D&D. Fate…”

Kurtzhau senses my drift and chips in, “And I play Tom Clance—“

Inappropriate computer games,” I interrupt. “They’ll be fine, honest… and it’s OK to swear in front of them.”

So the GM heroically agrees and the boys book in to play a superhero game involving mad scientists.

We’re at Conpulsion, Edinburgh’s yearly gaming convention.

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Spring 2014 Subterranean Magazine now Available

Spring 2014 Subterranean Magazine now Available

Subterranean Spring 2014-smallNo other magazine makes me wish I was still editing the way Subterranean does. I think it’s the way they showcase a combination of top names mixed with exciting newcomers, an attractive website, and great covers. I don’t miss the non-stop busywork that comes with editing, publishing, and distributing a fantasy magazine… but boy, I do miss shopping for cover art.

The Spring 2014 issue of Subterranean is packed with great names:

The Screams of Dragons” by Kelley Armstrong
Bus Fare” by Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Traveller and the Book” by Ian R MacLeod
Hath No Fury” by Kat Howard
One Dove” by Stephen Gallagher
The Burial Of Sir John Mawe At Cassini” by Chaz Brenchley
The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile” by Aliette de Bodard

I’m pleased to see something new from Stephen Gallagher, who wrote several Doctor Who novels (under the name John Lydecker) in the early 80s. His later books include The Kingdom of Bones (2007) and The Bedlam Detective (2012), and the 2004 collection Out of His Mind, winner of the British Fantasy Award. Rich Horton reviewed Ian R MacLeod’s Song of Time for us back in 2011, and Emily Mah reported on Caitlin R. Kiernan being a co-recipient of the 2012 Tiptree Award last March. And we told you about Aliette de Bodard’s fabulous Obsidian & Blood omnibus in 2012.

Subterranean is edited by William Schafer and published quarterly. The Spring 2014 issue is completely free and available here; see their complete back issue catalog here. We last covered Subterranean magazine with their previous issue, Winter 2014.

The Series Series: Irenicon by Aidan Harte

The Series Series: Irenicon by Aidan Harte

Irenicon by Aidan Harte-smallWelcome to Rasenna, a shining city-state turned failed state, where river spirits haunt the streets and mistake themselves for the citizens they’ve drowned. Rasenna’s people hide in their towers at night, and even by day fear the river their enemy wielded to cut their city in two. With the city’s legitimate ruling house reduced to one girl not yet of age, the closest thing it has to law is the twenty-year vendetta between the gang that rules north of the Irenicon and the gang that rules to its south. Both sides boast masters of a martial art perfectly organic to the world of this book, one that could arise in no other.

Can a city recover from two decades of grief, madness, and self-destruction? Can these people change in time to save themselves? They’d better, because the rival city of sorcerous Engineers that smashed them before may well do so again. The masters of Concord have striven to perfect their Wave technology. Any city they choose to strike now will be scoured from the soil of Etruria.

Meanwhile — what are the Concordians playing at? — the enemy sends Rasenna an Engineer to build a bridge over the hated river. It’s a bridge no Rasenneisi citizen wants. The Irenicon and its water spirits are not keen to be bridged, either.

Aidan Harte has been justly praised for his world-building in his debut novel. Irenicon is, almost, what we might get if Italo Calvino’s classic Invisible Cities had lingered for a few hundred pages in one of its gem-perfect vignettes. Almost, except that Harte’s stunning gift for setting does not yet extend to dialogue, characterization, or prose style. Irenicon will not be a classic, but it is a fine, fun read.

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Blogging Dan Barry’s Flash Gordon, Part Fourteen

Blogging Dan Barry’s Flash Gordon, Part Fourteen

Barry Gordonkurtzman_flash_gordon_cvr11“The Swamp Girl” by Dan Barry was serialized by King Features Syndicate from October 31 to December 31, 1955. Just as Dan Barry guided the strip closer to its origins, he took two sidesteps in introducing a back-story for Dr. Zarkov that Alex Raymond never intended. “The Swamp Girl” introduces us to a hot-tempered, beautiful young woman called Zara, whose mother was the sole survivor when her rocket crashed on the swamp world of Malagua twenty years before.

As the story begins, Lisa (Zara’s mother) is succumbing to malaria just as her daughter has finally succeeded in repairing their rocketship. Zara sets off to visit her father’s home world of Earth and fulfill her mother’s dying request that her daughter bring the father she has never met to see her mother before she dies, so that her mother may reconcile with him.

Zara arrives on Earth with her pet black panther, Octavio. Their ship’s coordinates take them to the desert town where Zara’s father, Dr. Zarkov, lives. After upsetting the neighborhood and evading the police, both the swamp girl and her panther reach their destination.

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The Fascination of Dragons

The Fascination of Dragons

The Flight of Dragons DVD-smallI don’t remember when I learned about dragons, but I do remember the first time they took my breath away.

I was ten years old, helping to restack the shelves in my school library while a younger class watched a movie in the next room: a cartoon I’d never seen before, but which I eventually learned was called The Flight of Dragons. As it played in the background, I gleaned that there was a princess called Melisande and some sort of dark sorcerer trying to take over the land — and then, just as the bell was ringing, I saw the dragons: a sleeping field full of them, multicolored and wise, taking flight as the evil magic was lifted.

That image struck some chord within me I hadn’t known was there. Before then, with the saccharine exception of the colorfully coiffed dragons of Lady Lovely Locks, the only dragons I’d seen in stories were evil: the monster slain by St George, Disney villains Maleficent and Madame Mim in dragon form, the fearsome mountain dragon in Emily Rodda’s Rowan of Rin.

But with this single portrayal, I suddenly realized they could be more than that: that dragons could be awe-inspiring, noble, beautiful.

Soon after, I stumbled on Graeme Base’s newly released The Discovery of Dragons, a singularly gorgeous book that only affirmed my fascination; so much so that, nearly twenty years later, I still have my original copy, dust jacket and all. Then came Falcor, the beloved luck dragon of The NeverEnding Story.

But what really sealed the deal for me was a game: the original Spyro the Dragon. Despite the fact that I didn’t have a console, I played video games compulsively whenever I visited friends who did. Thus it was that, during one fateful trip to a neighbor’s house, I discovered the demo version of Spyro and became obsessed. I’d wanted a console before, but now, the idea of not having one — of not being able to play the full game — was intolerable.

I must have been pretty persistent, because sure enough, come Christmas morning, my parents revealed that they’d been paying attention: I received both a PS1 and Spyro and spent the rest of the day playing it. As, indeed, I still sometimes do, along with the first two sequels, Spyro: Gateway to Glimmer and Spyro: Year of the Dragon — not just for the nostalgia value, but because, despite the now woefully outdated graphics, they’re still good games, full of clever puzzles and fun environments, many of which had a similarly fundamental impact on how I envisage fantasy landscapes.

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New Treasures: Fantasy Scroll Magazine #1

New Treasures: Fantasy Scroll Magazine #1

Fantasy Scroll 1-smallWell, here’s some exciting news. April 15th saw the release of a brand new, professionally produced digital fantasy magazine: Fantasy Scroll.

Here’s the description, from their website:

Fantasy Scroll Magazine is an online, quarterly publication featuring science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal short-fiction. The magazine’s mission is to publish high-quality, entertaining, and thought-provoking speculative fiction. With a mixture of short stories, flash fiction, and micro-fiction, Fantasy Scroll Magazine aims to appeal to a wide audience.

Issue #1 brings you twelve short stories from authors such as Ken Liu, Seth Chambers, KJ Kabza, Alex Shvartsman, Hank Quense, and more. The magazine contains a well-balanced mix of original stories and reprints from new authors, bestsellers, and award-winning writers, plus a variety of nonfiction features, such as author and editor interviews, book reviews, and movie reviews.

The magazine is open to most sub-genres of science fiction, including hard SF, military, apocalyptic & post-apocalyptic, space opera, time travel, cyberpunk, steampunk, and humorous. Similarly for fantasy, we accept most sub-genres, including alternate world, dark fantasy, heroic, high or epic, historical, medieval, mythic, sword & sorcery, urban fantasy, and humorous. The magazine also publishes horror and paranormal short fiction.

Kindle Magazines are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you’re not wirelessly connected.

Fantasy Scroll Magazine is edited by Iulian Ionescu, Frederick Doot, and Alexandra Zamorski. Copies are $2.99, for roughly 134 pages. I quite like the cover art, “The Dragon Rider,” by Jonathan Gragg, which speaks to me of an adventure fantasy mindset (click on the image at right for a larger version). See the complete contents of issue #1 here. Check it out.

See all of our recent New Treasures here. And thanks to John DeNardo at SF Signal for the tip!

Writing in the Flow

Writing in the Flow

writing-pen-smallThere are a lot of things I love about writing: the fame, the fortune, the hordes of screaming fans… *cough.* Pardon me as I clean up the soft drink I just snorted through my nose.

Really, writing is both a wonderful and terrible choice for a career, but one of the best parts is an experience so sweet and pure that it truly rivals the other great pleasures in life. No, it’s not the first time you sign a book for your parents.

I’m talking about The Flow.

The Flow is that magical experience when the words come as naturally as breathing, popping into your head like fireworks that seem to type themselves across your screen. When you’re in The Flow, writing seems like the easiest, most blissful vocation on the planet.

I only wish it lasted.

I don’t know about you, but when I sit down to write, it usually takes me a little time to warm up. I don’t bother with pre-game exercises; I just dive in. I read back over the previous day’s work, maybe jot down a couple notes as I try to find the narrative moment where I left off. Within half an hour, I’m typically chugging away. Then comes the make-or-break period. Somewhere toward the end of the first hour, I’ll either snag The Flow and cruise through a productive session or the magic eludes me and I have to fight to make my daily quota.

That’s the magic and wonder of The Flow. It comes and goes. But is it possible to encourage that spark to visit and maybe stick around for a while? Drawing solely from my own experience, I say yes. Er, sorta.

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Future Treasures: Skin Game by Jim Butcher

Future Treasures: Skin Game by Jim Butcher

Skin Game Jim Butcher.-smallJim Butcher is something of an inspiration to modern fantasy writers.

Harry Dresden was not a hit when he first appeared, way back in the paperback original Storm Front (2000). Roc sent me a copy and I remember I couldn’t find anyone interested in reviewing it. Ditto with the next few, Fool Moon (2001) and Grave Peril (2001). Thomas Cunningham was the first to start reviewing them for us and he quickly became an unabashed fan.

Things happened fast after that. All my review copies were snapped up (except for my first edition of Summer Knight, which accidently ended up in a dollar bin at my booth at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention, where it was found by a lucky fan). I bought a complete set of the hardcover omnibus editions from the Science Fiction Book Club — and they were loaned out and never returned. I bought a second copy and it suffered the same fate.

Jim Butcher began to hit bestseller lists. I clearly remember the moment when I realized he’d crossed over to literary megastardom — it was at Dragon*Con 2010, when I glimpsed the size of the mob that showed up to get his autograph. The line wound around the room, out the door, and down several blocks.

Jim Butcher is proof positive that it’s still possible to achieve bestseller status starting with a midlist paperback series. That’s the dream of virtually every midlist fantasy writer, and for the greater part of the last decade, as publishing suffered one upheaval after another — the rise of Amazon, the collapse of Borders, and the shift to e-books, just to name a few — it was beginning to look like that dream may have suffered a hard death.

So there’s a lot of reasons to celebrate Jim Butcher’s success. But for most of us, it’s enough to know that the fifteenth volume of one of the most popular fantasy series on the market has finally arrived, breaking an 18-month drought since the last volume, Cold Days (November 2012).

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