Last week, I shared some of the Celtiberian artifacts at the newly remodeled Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid. The museum also has a strong collection of Roman artifacts, reflecting Spain’s longtime importance in the Roman Empire. Most gripping are the mosaics. Spain had numerous wealthy villas both in the cities and countryside, and thankfully many of these have been discovered and preserved.
This Godzilla film benefits from historical context, so here it be:
In the early 1970s, Japan faced a crisis from increasing pollution due to a massive, unregulated boom in industry across the nation during the previous decade. Poisoning from sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide created a spike in cases of asthma and bronchitis, and respiratory problems in general took a steep rise. The sulfur dioxide poisoning in the city of Yoakkaichi, from refineries built during the 1960s, was so pronounced that it coined a new disease name, Yokkaichi asthma. This caused a ten- to twenty-fold increase in mortality rates among asthma sufferers and led to a 1970 class action lawsuit. Children went to school wearing cotton facemasks, and in the larger cities oxygen tanks were available on the streets for emergency use. In the seas, poor waste management led to a drop in the fishing industry, one of the backbones of the Japanese economy—and fishing rates have continued to drop ever since. A country that once had nuclear power at the forefront of its fears was overwhelmed with a new horror of toxic waste contaminating the air and sea.
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A new edition of Dungeons & Dragons has been released, as Andrew Zimmerman Jones discussed the other day.
This is the third new edition released since Wizards of the Coast took over publication of the world’s first fantasy roleplaying game in 1997. If you’re the sort of roleplayer who spends any time online, visiting forums, blogs, and social media, you’ll know that this latest edition has already generated a lot of discussion, both pro and con, much of it enthusiastic and some of it, quite frankly, deranged. In that respect, it’s not much different than the last several new editions, whose advents were simultaneously hailed as the dawn of a new age of gaming and decried as the twilight of the gods.
I played the new edition a couple of times last year when it was being playtested and found it something I’d be willing to play again if someone else were refereeing it, which is the only standard by which any game (RPG or otherwise) should be judged. That said, I’m not planning on buying a copy for myself, since I’ve already got my own heavily housed-ruled and Holmesified version of Labyrinth Lord and need nothing more. That’s not a knock against WotC’s latest effort – or any roleplaying game – just a statement of fact. I’ve been at this RPG thing for thirty-five years now and, in that time, have pretty well determined what games I like to use at my table. It’s rare that I buy new RPGs anymore, let alone play them, which is why a scan of my shelves would reveal very few games first published after 1984, but then I’m a notoriously unimaginative stick in the mud, so that’s to be expected.
What truly fascinates me about the arrival of a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons is its seeming importance, for good or for ill, among its legions of fans. This is in stark contrast to my own early days in the hobby, when talk of “editions” was well nigh non-existent, never mind a subject of import. Granted, I entered the hobby in late 1979, several months after the release of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide, the third and final volume of Gary Gygax’s magnum opus. AD&D was, in many ways, the first “new edition” in that it was marketed as an “improvement” over its predecessor and, for that reason alone, worthy of purchase and use. I thus never witnessed any of the tumult that no doubt occurred in the lead up to its release. For me and my friends, AD&D was simply a fact of life.
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Earlier today, J.K. Rowling posted a brand new 1,500-word story featuring Harry Potter at her Pottermore website. Titled “Dumbledore’s Army Reunites at Quidditch World Cup Final” and written as a July 8th Daily Prophet article by gossip correspondent Rita Skeeter, the story highlights the media circus surrounding the reunion of Potter and those who fought beside him to bring down Lord Voldemort, at the 2014 Quidditch World Cup Final in the Patagonian Desert in Argentina. Here’s a snippet:
The Potter family and the rest of Dumbledore’s Army have been given accommodation in the VIP section of the campsite, which is protected by heavy charms and patrolled by Security Warlocks. Their presence has ensured large crowds along the cordoned area, all hoping for a glimpse of their heroes. At 3pm today they got their wish when, to the accompaniment of loud screams, Potter took his young sons James and Albus to visit the players’ compound, where he introduced them to Bulgarian Seeker Viktor Krum.
About to turn 34, there are a couple of threads of silver in the famous Auror’s black hair… The famous lightning scar has company: Potter is sporting a nasty cut over his right cheekbone. Requests for information as to its provenance merely produced the usual response from the Ministry of Magic… So what are they hiding? Is the Chosen One embroiled in fresh mysteries that will one day explode upon us all, plunging us into a new age of terror and mayhem?
While there’s little dialogue in the “news piece,” the story is surprisingly satisfying, briefly featuring Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, most of the Weasley clan, and a handful of others, including Harry’s sixteen-year-old godson, the half-werewolf Teddy Lupin. In her catty tabloid style, Rita Skeeter skillfully highlights major events in the lives of our favorite characters since the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sixteen years ago — there’s even a nice twist at the end.
Read the complete story at Pottermore (free registration required).
I have loved the work of two-time World Fantasy Award-winning and two-time Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Tim Powers ever since I read The Anubis Gates (one of the foundational works of steampunk) back in 1984. Since then, I’ve been equally thrilled by a number of his other books, including The Stress of Her Regard, his tale of artists and vampiric monsters; Last Call, about the search for the Fisher King in Las Vegas; and Three Days to Never, involving time-travel, Albert Einstein, and Charlie Chaplin.
Every few years I feel the pull to revisit his third novel, The Drawing of the Dark (1979). It’s a swords & sorcery adventure set in 1529 and climaxing during Suleiman the Magnificent’s siege of Vienna.
Briefly, The Drawing of the Dark is about the adventures of Brian Duffy, an aging soldier of fortune who encounters a stranger with an offer of employment at just the time circumstances require him to flee Venice.
The old man who’d hailed Duffy stood by the window, smiling nervously. He was dressed in a heavy black gown with red and gold embroidery at the neck, and wore a slim stiletto at his belt, but no sword.
“Sit down, please,” he said, waving at the chair.
“I don’t mind standing,” Duffy told him.
“Whatever you prefer.” He opened a box and took from it a narrow black cylinder. “My name is Aurelianus.” Duffy peered closely at the cylinder, and was surprised to see that it was a tiny snake, straightened and dried, with the little jaws open wide and the end of the tail clipped off. “And what is yours?”
Duffy blinked. “What?”
“Oh! I’m Brian Duffy.”
Aurelianus nodded and put the tail end of the snake into his mouth, then leaned forward so that the head was in the long flame of one of the candles. It began popping and smoldering, and Aurelianus puffed smoke from the tail end.
I picked up a copy of Susan Klaus’s debut novel over the weekend, and so far have been intrigued. It’s romantic fantasy dressed up as science fiction, in which a young woman returns to the jungle planet of Dora, where long ago she was saved by a male harpy with beautiful golden coloring. But the human colonists of Dora treat harpies like dangerous animals and hunt them like wild game.
This morning, I read a guest post by Klaus at SF Signal, where she reveals that Flight of the Golden Harpy was inspired by an encounter with Brad Pitt while she was an extra on Oceans Eleven:
The guy wasn’t a disappointment… Brad is even more gorgeous in person. After 12 hours of gawking and drooling, I learned he was also a nice, down-to-earth guy. But his looks and personality had nothing to do with my book dedication or why he’s my main man and character in my books. It came from how Brad was treated when he first walked on the set. The extras immediately mobbed him. He smiled, signed their autographs, and [posed] for their little cameras, desperately trying to appease the crushing crowd. It was sad. Even on a closed set, he was smothered and harassed. Going out in public must be a nightmare for him. Sure he’s handsome and has fame, and fortune, but is it worth a hectic stressful life with the press and fans constantly stalking and pursuing him like wild game…
I drove home and realized that good-looks can have drawbacks, especially in his case. That night I started writing my fantasy about a jungle planet with the point of view of the beautiful winged harpies, half-bird, half-human creatures that can’t understand mankind or why humans hunt and kill them for their wings that become mounted trophies on a wall. I gave Brad Pitt credit because he inspired the story, and the novel is also dedicated to our vanishing wildlife.
Flight of the Golden Harpy was published by Tor Books on June 17, 2014. It is 400 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.
Thanks in large part to Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Per Cent Solution (book and film), Sherlock Holmes had a revival of popularity in the mid seventies. This resulted in an under-appreciated British-Canadian big-screen effort, Murder By Decree.
The most famous detective had tackled the most famous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, in 1965’s A Study in Terror. Originally conceived as a sequel to Christopher Lee’s under-achieving Sherlock Holmes & The Deadly Necklace, John Neville played a solid Holmes, though saddled with Donald Houston’s doofus of a Watson.
A bit lurid, it’s a good Holmes film, though promoted to appeal to Adam West’s very popular ‘Batman’ TV show crowd (“Here comes the original caped crusader”).
The Ripper File was a book based on Jack the Ripper, a BBC miniseries in which two popular TV detectives investigated the Jack the Ripper case. That miniseries introduced Joseph Sickert and his royal conspiracy theory (later turned into Stephen Knight’s book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution) to the world.
Director and producer Bob Clark (whose next film, improbably, would be Porky’s) built his story around The Ripper File. There are several variations of the royal conspiracy theory and Murder by Decree changes some (but not all) of the names and follows one of them.
For the last two years, Wizards of the Coast has been getting feedback on their new “5th edition” set of rules from playtesters all across the world. July 15 marks the official release of the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, giving the world the first glimpse of the final version of these rules. Unfortunately, the D&D Starter Set provides only pregenerated characters with some advancement rules through level 5, and some basic mechanics, so it doesn’t consist of a full set of game mechanics or character creation rules.
In other words, it’s not enough to give us a full idea of what the final rules for 5th edition will look like … but it does provide enough information to get some hints about how the upcoming edition of the game will be structured. In general, the goal seems to be to streamline the system, making it very accessible to new gamers, but still providing enough substance and versatility that more experienced gamers will find the system desirable. It’s a tough balancing act, but looking over the D&D Starter Set, I feel a growing sense of confidence that the new system will achieve these objectives.
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Casey Neumiller’s Destiny’s Heir is the first book of a planned epic fantasy series. Like most novels starting off a series, a goodly portion is spent introducing the characters and the world. For centuries, Letale’s kings have ruled with the guidance of the Magi, who both advise the king and, when necessary, combat the servants of the Dark One. But a few decades ago, a new king assassinated the old line and declared the Magi outlaws, flipping the theology by declaring that the Aethir whom the Magi serve is the Dark One and the former Dark One is the Light One. It seems odd how easily most people accept this, but there are enough real world examples of a paradigm shift in belief systems that I don’t consider it too unbelievable.
The story follows two parallel plot lines, that of the Magi apprentice Arraya and that of the thief Ben, alternating between them for each chapter. From Ben’s point of view, this is a heist story. He and his friends, Zeke and Corin, have been asked by the leader of their guild in Jepitsa to assist in stealing one of the most valuable items in the kingdom, the queen’s crown. There is no actual queen, so the crown’s kept in storage, where it can be easily claimed by a clever thief with the right items, which Ben, Zeke, and Corin spend most of the novel attaining.
Corin, however, has some doubts about the guild-leader Allen. She thinks he means to make off with the crown while leaving the rest of them to take the blame, doubts which Ben is unable to put to rest.
Neil Baker, publisher of The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, informs us that fantasy short story writer and novelist CJ Henderson lost his battle with cancer earlier this week.
His first novel, Brooklyn Knight, was published by Tor in 2010; it was followed by one sequel, Central Park Knight (2011); his short story collection, Where Angels Fear, was released by Dark Quest Books in 2010. I first encountered him with Kolchak and the Lost World (Moonstone, May 2012), one of several licensed tie-in novellas he wrote featuring the great occult investigator Carl Kolchak, which I bought at the Moonstone booth at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show in April.
Neil writes:
A prolific writer for decades, CJ had a successful collection of novels to his name, numerous short stories for a wide selection of publishers and comic books for Marvel, DC and others. He also wrote books featuring Kolchak, wrote for Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series and collaborated with William Shatner on Man of War.
Personally, I only got to know him through my first publication, and he was an open and generous soul. He fought the disease all the way to end, determined to make it out to future conventions to sell more books and meet more fans, and in his many emails to me he would discuss his fight, his deep love for his wife and his passion for writing.
CJ leaves a legacy filled with hard-boiled characters, ripping yarns and good humor. He will be missed.
CJ Henderson died on July 4, 2014. He was 62 years old.