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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 5

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 5

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Firefly crewGood day, fellow Browncoats (and Alliance moles). So far, we’ve covered the pilot in Part 1, episodes two and three (“Train Job” and “Bushwhacked”) in Part 2, “Shindig” and “Safe “ in Part 3, and “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and “Jaynestown” (episodes 6 and 7) in Part 4.

We’re zooming into the second half of the season and coming up on some really great episodes. So make sure your six-shooter is loaded and let’s go.

Out of Gas (Episode 8)

This is one of my favorite episodes of all time, from any show. There is symmetry and a poignancy that we seldom see on broadcast television.

It begins with Serenity drifting in space. She is empty of crew. All is quiet. Then we see Mal fall to the floor with blood coming from somewhere. Next we are flashed back to Mal and Zoe checking out the ship for the first time. He is excited by the possibilities this little Firefly-class ship offers; she is not impressed.

Back in the “present,” Mal struggles to his feet with a piece of machinery in his hand and staggers off. Then we flashback to the crew sitting around the dinner table and sharing some laughs. It turns out to be Simon’s birthday and they surprise him with a cake. He’s about to blow out the candles when the lights flicker. A moment later, fire explodes from the engine compartment.

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Monthly Short Story Roundup – February

Monthly Short Story Roundup – February

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So February’s come and gone, a bunch of new stories have been published, and some were very good. With five stories from five different authors, it’d be an exciting month if I loved all of them, but at least there were more hits than misses.

oie_1122436ENJGqRjjLet’s start with the February issue of Curtis Ellett’s Swords and Sorcery Magazine. It’s Issue #25 and first of the magazine’s third year of publication. That’s over fifty stories published — fifty new works of heroic fiction out there for free! Lots of writers are getting to see their first published stories — some good, some fair, some poor — out in front of eyeballs and in position to get feedback.

Even if I sound like a broken record every month (Dad, what’s a record?), I can’t urge everybody enough to check this and the other web ‘zines out and let the editors and writers know what you think. This is how the genre will continue to grow and evolve. As readers, we can do our part by supporting these magazines and these writers.

Issue #25, is equal bits weak and and strong. First, the weak: “The Wedding Gift” by Neil W. Howell. It’s a story of the moments around the arrivals at the church of a royal bride and a royal groom, told from the perspectives of several different observers. There are the war veterans now serving as guards outside the church. Then there’s the embittered mother of the bride, a disappointed and defeated queen.

They and others weigh in on the events that have led to the wedding, which is really only a plan to end a generation-long war and unite two kingdoms in peace. Into this hopeful moment comes a terror that may or may not be an accident and leads to unforeseen conclusions.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes

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Sherlock BBC-smallMe? Oh, why, thank you for asking. I’ve been into Sherlock Holmes since the early eighties. Columnist, contributor, reviewer, short story writer, screenwriter, newsletter editor, website creator: I’ve found many ways to express my Holmes geekiness.

I used to run a Holmes On Screen website, which I dropped just before the first Robert Downey, Jr. movie: how’s that for timing? Swing by www.SolarPons.com to see my (not one, but) two free, online newsletters inspired by the world’s first private consulting detective.

If you have a pulse, you may have noticed that Sherlock Holmes is rather popular these days. In the mid-eighties, the British TV series starring Jeremy Brett had revived interest in the detective. That interest waned as Brett’s health deteriorated and the series quality fell off towards the end. A few made-for-television movies, including ones starring Matthew Frewer (that Max Headroom guy), Richard Roxburgh and Rupert Everett, didn’t generate much excitement. Sherlock Holmes and the Vengeance of Dracula, once the hottest script in Hollywood, lost its luster and became a dead property. Sherlock Holmes was as viable as Martin Hewitt.* “Who,” you say? Exactly.

Then, on Christmas Day, 2009, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes opened and grossed over a half a billion dollars worldwide. A sequel did even better here and abroad. Mark Gattis and Steven Moffat, deciding to expand beyond Doctor Who, grabbed Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, put them in modern day London and helped make Sherlock Holmes even more popular than during the stories’ initial run with their simply titled Sherlock.

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Self-published Book Review: The Tragic Empire by Wil Radcliffe

Self-published Book Review: The Tragic Empire by Wil Radcliffe

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TragicEmpireIf you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here.

Back when I reviewed the first Noggle Stones book, The Goblin’s Apprentice, I knew there was a sequel. Of course I could only review one book at a time and I figured I should start at the beginning. Though I really enjoyed the first volume, I didn’t want to review books in the same series two months in a row, so I couldn’t cover the second book right away. Now that it’s been a year, enough time has passed for me to take on the sequel.

The Tragic Empire takes place a few months after the events of the first book. Martin Manchester is settling in as the king of Willow Prairie, establishing alliances with the nearby realms of dwarves, ogres, and other folk. The goblin Bugbear serves as Manchester’s diplomat while pursuing his own investigations, with a particular interest in discovering what force was behind the Shadow Smith, the villainous mastermind of The Goblin’s Apprentice. To that end, he’s allowed himself to be thrown into an Áes Dána prison, in hopes of finding access to their archives, which contain works dating back to the Coranieid Empire. After a tricky escape and some fancy diplomacy, it seems that Bugbear may get what he wants, until the US Army attacks the Áes Dána.

Which answers one of the lingering questions of the first book. We saw what happened to the town of Willow Prairie when our world of 1899 merged with a world of ogres, goblins, and dwarves, but there was no indication of what happened to the rest of the world until now. Surely someone in Washington noticed all these strange people appearing from nowhere and decided to do something about it. War against the invaders would be an obvious option.

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Software Review (kind of): Fantasy Map Making with Hexographer

Software Review (kind of): Fantasy Map Making with Hexographer

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greyhawk-297x300
…began as a tool for creating Mystara-style maps and cheerfully emulates the World of Greyhawk feel.

I dare say that we Black Gate types love maps and charts of imaginary lands.

As kids, we pored over the maps in CS Lewis’s Narnia books or Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Most of us have had posters of Middle Earth or the Hyperborian Age on our walls and almost all of us have scratched out maps of imaginary places, either for the joy of it or as a DM/GM or Fantasy writer.

It’s great fun to draw a map using pencil and paper. However, there are practical limitations. It’s hard to make changes neatly, difficult to produce different versions of the same map, a fiddle to create small scale local maps, and ultimately a chore to curate all the bits of paper.

For most of us, digital is our friend, which is why I am reviewing Hexographer, a relatively inexpensive Fantasy map making tool.

Hexographer very much has its roots in old-school roleplaying.

It began as a tool for creating Mystara-style maps and cheerfully emulates the World of Greyhawk feel. However, with a range of symbol sets to choose from, it’s grown into a flexible Fantasy cartography tool. What makes it distinct is that it explicitly treats maps as collections of hexagons (though you can place items freehand as well), which makes it almost perfect for writers and gamers.

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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 4

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 4

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Firefly crew2-smallOh yes! We’re reaching the midway point of the first, and only, season of Firefly. I covered the pilot in Part 1, episodes two and three (“Train Job” and “Bushwhacked”) in Part 2, and four and five (“Shindig” and “Safe “) in Part 3.

If you’ve been reading this far, you know my feelings about the series. Some have postulated that perhaps we hold it in such high esteem because it was taken from us too soon. Well, in re-watching these episodes again, I was even more enthralled and entertained than the first (or second, or third…) time I saw them.

Today, we’re going to dive into two more episodes. Rev up the engine, Kaylee. It’s time to be a leaf on the wind.

Our Mrs. Reynolds (Episode 6)

A man and his wife driving a covered wagon are ambushed by bandits. The couple turn out to be Jayne and Mal (in drag), posing as settlers. When the bandit leader demands some personal time with the missus, Jayne replies that he married “a powerful ugly woman.” Mal and Jayne pull guns on the desperados.

A firefight ensues and Zoe pops out of the back of the wagon, gun blazing.

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Year of the Unicorn by Andre Norton

Year of the Unicorn by Andre Norton

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Andre Norton Year of the Unicorn-smallOn the first day of the Year of the Unicorn, twelve and one young women are to be delivered to the Wastelands beyond High Hallack and into the hands of sorcerous shape-changers known as the Were Riders. In battle, they change their forms into those of fierce animals, instilling terror in their opponents, then ripping them apart with tooth and claw.

The lords of High Hallack turned to the Riders in their desperate search for any defense against the unstoppable invaders from Alizon across the sea. The Riders agreed, but demanded payment of those brides-to-be, due on the first day of the new year following the war’s end.

Andre Norton’s novel, Year of the Unicorn, introduces Gillan, an orphan relegated to a dreary future in the abbey of Norstead, who instead exchanges herself in secret for one of the appointed brides. In disguise, she rides into the Wastes in search of any life beyond the one she seems fated to. There she finds her beastly groom and discovers her magical powers.

Since discovering how good Andre Norton’s Witch World series is, I’ve been slowly making my way through its sixteen books. (There are later books by other writers, but it’s Norton’s original writing that has hooked me.) The four novels and dozen or so stories I’ve read so far have ranged in style from wild science-fantasy to swords & sorcery to Gothic mystery. Some have even read like fairy tales from a world catty-corner to our own. Year of the Unicorn, first novel in the High Hallack sequence, is one of those.

As a child, Gillan was rescued at sea from Alizon raiders by a High Hallack nobleman. She was too young to know where she was from or how she came to be captured, but her dark hair leads him to believe she’s from the East. Deciding that if she was worth the Alizoners’ trouble she might have some future value, the nobleman raises her in his own household.

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris

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The Wood Beyond the World William Morris-smallThe Wood Beyond the World
William Morris
Ballantine Books (237 pages, June 1969, $0.95)
Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo

With this installment in my reviews of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, we come to the first volume by a man who has one of the worst reputations for prose in the series.

I’m talking of course about William Morris. Lin Carter published four of Morris’s works in five volumes; The Well at the World’s End came in at two volumes. Carter appears to have had plans for another four volumes.

In his introduction, Carter makes the claim that Morris invented the modern quest fantasy. Personally, I think that may be stretching things a bit. Morris did invent a number of things, including the Morris chair, but I’m not sure he should get sole credit for modern fantasy.

I must admit I came to this book with some trepidation. After the Adult Fantasy line was canceled, the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library published 24 volumes, with five by Morris. I attempted to read one, the collection Golden Wings and Other Stories, about ten or twelve years ago. I didn’t get very far.

Fortunately, The Wood Beyond the World isn’t a long book. Furthermore, it’s broken up into short chapters, with a line break and a heading before every paragraph or two. Of course with Morris, paragraphs can be more than a page long.

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An Origin Story Mashed With a First-Contact Story: A Review of The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

An Origin Story Mashed With a First-Contact Story: A Review of The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

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The Lives Of Tao-smallThe Lives of Tao is the rare science fiction book set in modern times. No space exploration here, unless you mean the Quasing, the alien race that’s been quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) orchestrating human events since… well, since there were humans to orchestrate.

Quasing are beings so ethereal that they must live within a corporeal host to survive. Once inside a host, the Quasing can only leave if the host organism dies. In essence, Quasings are immortal as long as there is a living host nearby.

The Quasing’s main goal used to be to get humans to create interstellar travel so they could get to their home planet. Now, however, the Quasing are split into two factions (the good-guy Prophus and the bad-guy Genjix), whose main goal seems to be defeating the other. Tao is a member of the Prophus faction.

When Tao’s host dies during a mission against the Genjix, Tao needs to find a new host, pronto. Enter Roan Tan: an overweight programmer with low self-esteem who’s never run a mile, let alone held a gun, in real life. The next few months finds Tao whipping Roan into some semblance of a covert operative so they can thwart the Genjix’s secret project.

There’s plenty here to enjoy. Chu choreographs vivid action scenes, he injects humor seamlessly into dialogue, and he makes the world-building fun. Chu had all of history at his disposal, after all, and he took full advantage.

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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 3

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 3

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Firefly banner 3-smallI’m back with my third installment of this series about the Firefly show. I covered the pilot in Part 1, and episodes two and three (“Train Job” and “Bushwhacked “) in Part 2.

This week we’re up to the fourth and fifth episodes. Sit back, put your starship on autopilot, and enjoy.

Shindig (Episode 4)

This one begins with a familiar sight: Mal, Zoe, and Jayne are in a cantina, this time playing pool with some traders while Inara watches. It turns out these friendly traders deal in transporting slaves, so Mal lifts their money clip and, naturally, starts a bar brawl.

Next, Serenity stops at the planet of Persephone, which we last saw in the pilot episode. They’re here to find work. Inara is in her shuttle looking for clients. She chats with Atherton Wing, a blueblood who invites her to a fancy party.

Mal comes in and they banter about her work, and his brawling. This scene sets up the rest of the episode, which mainly focuses on their budding relationship.

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