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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 6

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 6

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Firefly cast-smallHey there! I’m back this week with part 6 of my examination of the Firefly series. 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, “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and “Jaynestown” in Part 4, and “Out of Gas” and “Ariel” in Part 5.

We’re into the second half of the season, where I really feel the show finds its stride.

First up, War Stories!

War Stories (Episode 10)

It starts with Simon and Shepherd Book (who was absent last episode during the hospital heist) discussing River’s condition. Simon thinks he’s closing in on what the Alliance did to her. River is struggling, though, because the treatments aren’t working all the time.

The crew is feeling good after their last job, though Wash gets irritated with Zoe for not backing his plan to cut out the middlemen when selling their loot. Instead, she takes the captain’s side in the discussion, and Wash feels Mal and Zoe are too close. Meanwhile, Inara’s attractive female client arrives on the ship. Jayne sees them and announces that he’ll be in his bunk. Classic Jayne!

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His Name is Vengeance: Kellory the Warlock by Lin Carter

His Name is Vengeance: Kellory the Warlock by Lin Carter

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BKTG22855Poor Lin Carter: perhaps the greatest champion heroic fantasy ever had, an editor with few equals, one of the most knowledgeable fan boys in the world, but a poor writer. I think he would have liked his stories and novels to be remembered more fondly than they are. I believe Kellory the Warlock proves he had the potential to have been a better writer.

Carter remains despised among the Robert E. Howard scholars for his involvement in Sprague de Camp’s Conan projects. As recently as 2008, Morgan Holmes over at the Robert E. Howard United Press Association was giving him grief for his sins against good prose in general and REH in particular.

It’s easy to be rough on Lin Carter’s writing. For my very first review on Swords & Sorcery: A Blog, I really lit into Carter’s debut novel, Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria. It’s derived entirely from Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, which should mean good, pulpy fun, but instead it’s awful with no redeeming qualities. The plot isn’t built well enough to merit being called ramshackle, the characters are thin and bloodless because they’re cut out of cardboard, and the writing is lumpy and turgid. Even the cover stinks.

But his bad prose is overshadowed by the importance of his editing. His most prestigious work was the creation of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (being reviewed one volume at a time here on Black Gate by Keith West). It resurrected many of the forebears of genre fantasy fiction (e.g. James Branch Cabell, H. Rider Hagard) and introduced several new authors to the public (Katherine Kurtz, Joy Chant).

The series also included several books, one being Imaginary Worlds, about the history and evolution of fantasy (though it’s been pointed out by no less a literary figure than Peter Beagle that Carter’s research was poor and his attributions incorrect). Nevertheless, these works represent one of the earliest efforts to provide a critical study of the genre.

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Review of Pathfinder Tales: Stalking the Beast by Howard Andrew Jones

Review of Pathfinder Tales: Stalking the Beast by Howard Andrew Jones

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Pathfinder Tales Stalking the Beast-smallLike many fantasy fans of my generation and the generation before (Gen X and Baby Boom respectively), I was ushered into the genre by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and C.S. Lewis. There were others, of course, but those were the big three. Narnia gave me my first taste of a secondary world populated by mythical creatures, witches and wizards, and talking beasts. Burroughs inched me toward a more Americanized “sword and sorcery” via the “sword-and-planet” Barsoom novels. Howard’s gritty, fabled world of a certain barbaric Cimmerian delivered the full-on S&S.

Branching out from Narnia, I found my way to the towering, epic high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. And moving on from Howard I stumbled into the dangerous alleyways of Lankhmar in Fritz Leiber’s world of Nehwon.

Not surprisingly, when I got wind of a game that allowed you to invent your own characters and take them on adventures in such worlds via some cool dice, maps, rulebooks, and a little bit of imagination, I was all over it. By the sixth grade I was a devout Dungeons & Dragons player, and Tolkien was my favorite author. Both statements remain true.

So perhaps it’s a bit surprising, given this profile, that I never delved into any of the D&D novelizations — the Dragonlance Chronicles and their ilk. (I did read some of the D&D Endless Quest books, which were in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure, lured by their solo-gaming appeal — a craving that was better met by the Lone Wolf and Fighting Fantasy game books.)

My reading of Howard Andrew Jones’s new novel Pathfinder Tales: Stalking the Beast may be a test case on whether it stands on its own merits because, first, I’ve just never been much into tie-in novels. (Somewhere along the line I read a Star Wars novel, and in junior high I went on a Doctor Who kick. There were also a couple movie novelizations in the mix — inevitably written by Alan Dean Foster. But when it comes to full disclosure on that point, there’s just not much to disclose.)

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Lord of Misrule

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Lord of Misrule

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LeeQuestion – What do Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, James Bond, Fu Manchu, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, John Belushi and Sherlock Holmes all have in common?

Answer – Lee. Christopher Lee (one of his autobiographies was titled Lord of Misrule)

In May, talented British actor Christopher Lee turns 92 years old. Thanks to his performance as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he is as popular today as he ever has been. And proving he knows how to get in on a winning franchise, he was Count Dooku in the second Star Wars trilogy. Which chronologically was the… oh, never mind.

But Lee first made his name in the horror flicks produced by Hammer Films in Great Britain in the late fifties and sixties. Lee played the monster (Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy), while friend Peter Cushing was the protagonist.

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Caught Between Rebels and the Empire’s Blackest Magic: Beyond the Veil: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris

Caught Between Rebels and the Empire’s Blackest Magic: Beyond the Veil: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris

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Beyond the Veil Janet Morris-smallI continue with my review of the 5-star, Author’s Cut editions of Janet Morris’s classic of Homeric Heroic Fantasy, the Beyond Sanctuary Trilogy, of which Beyond the Veil is the second book. Once again, she does not disappoint in this stirring novel of political and religious intrigue, dark magic, gods and men, witches and mages, and the price of love and war.

This is a pivotal book in the trilogy, where foreshadowing and story threads begin to weave in and out to form a tapestry, telling a tale of friends who become foes, enemies who become allies, and what fate lies in store for certain demigods and mortals.

Now, after the battle to win Wizardwall that took place in book one, Beyond Sanctuary, Tempus, Niko, and the Sacred Band are caught between the local rebels and the empire of Mygdonia’s blackest magic. Once again, “War is coming, sending ahead its customary harbingers: fear and falsity and fools.”

It begins with the murder of a courier on his way to meet with Tempus, and the arrival of a young woman named Kama, of the 3rd Commandoes, (a unit of special rangers originally formed by Tempus) who seeks audience with Tempus, who is also known as Riddler. Her mission is to take 11-year old Shamshi, the young wizard-boy, back home to Mygdonia.

Shamshi, once a pawn in the game played by the late sorcerer Datan in the previous novel, is still under the spell of Roxane the witch, but is now being held as a guest-hostage by Tempus and the Sacred Band. Though he may be a child in the eyes of men, Shamshi is already plotting against Tempus and Niko.

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Fiction Review: Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

Fiction Review: Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

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Francesca Forrest's Pen Pal
Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

This past month, I’ve not been playing much in the way of interactive fiction and my webcomics have fallen behind schedule–in part because I’ve been reading some great prose books. One of the most recent is the novel Pen Pal by Francesca Forrest, a self-published novel that began its life on livejournal and grew up into a full-fledged, completely remarkable fantasy. For those who have been looking for something different than fantasyland fare, this is definitely a novel you should check out.

As the story opens, young Em, a girl from the floating community of Mermaid’s Hands just off the Gulf Coast of the United States, is reaching for the larger world. She loves her community and trusts in the Seafather, the god worshipped by her small village of intertwined boats on the mudflats, but she wants to see more of the world. With the help of a friend, she tosses a message in a bottle into the sea, willing the Seafather to take it somewhere interesting, to someone who will write her back.

Whether through fate or the intervention of two very different gods, the letter ends up in the hands of Kaya, a political prisoner in the country of W–, near Indonesia, whose prison is a faux-temple suspended over Ruby Lake, a lava lake in the center of a volcano. Kaya is from the mountains, making her a minority in her own small country, and her people’s traditional religion, worship of the Lady of Ruby Lake, has been forbidden. Through writing to Em, she begins to examine how she became a political prisoner–she who had once embraced the lowland culture, attended college in America, and sought to advance in life. But her plan to hold a festival for the Lady, just as a cultural celebration, nothing to offend the government, crashes around her ears and sends her hanging perilously above the lava, in solitary confinement, but for letters from her mother and Em and a strangely intelligent crow companion.

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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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