A few weeks ago I was looking at my favourite heist movies, and I was struck by the realization that a heist is not a con. It’s not that the two can’t occasionally overlap, it’s just that there are distinctions with shove each of them into their own sub-genres.
This doesn’t mean that a con game doesn’t result in something – and occasionally someone – being stolen, or taken, or perhaps recovered. The point is that looked at a certain way, a con game isn’t a theft, it’s an act of persuasion. You don’t steal the item, you persuade the owner to give it to you.
There’s a simple element that can make the con game more palatable to audiences in general: you can’t cheat an honest man. The marks are always greedy, and the con artist uses that greed against them. It’s not theft, in a con game, the artist gets someone to give them the target item willingly. In the best examples, the mark never even knows what’s happened. And that’s why a common trope of the con, or sting, is that it involves no violence, often not even pretended violence.
Leigh Brackett was born on December 7, 1915 and died on March 18, 1978.
Leigh Brackett was the first woman ever to appear on a Hugo ballot when she was nominated for her novel The Long Tomorrow in 1956, and was nominated for two Retro Hugo Awards in 2016. Her collection Sea Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories was nominated for a British Fantasy Award. In 1978 she received a Forry Award from LASFS, and she was named the recipient of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award in 2005. In 2014 Brackett was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Brackett and her husband, Edmond Hamilton, were guests of honor at Pacificon II, the 22nd Worldcon, held in Oakland, California in 1964. She worked in Hollywood and is one of the credited co-writers of The Empire Strikes Back as well as The Big Sleep, on which she shared a writers credit with William Faulkner. She collaborated on fiction with Ray Bradbury and her husband. She published one of her non-genre novels using the pseudonym George Sanders. The Empire Strikes Back was dedicated to her memory.
“Interplanetary Reporter” was first published in the May 1941 issue of Startling Stories, edited by Mort Weisinger. It wasn’t reprinted until 2002, when Steve Haffner included it in the Brackett collection Martian Quest: The Early Brackett. In 2008 the story was included in an e-collection issued by Baen Books, Swamps of Venus. In 2009 Adventure House reprinted the original issue of Startling Stories that contained this tale.
Brackett was known for her planetary adventures and in “Interplanetary Reporter,” she places IP reporter Chris Barton in the Venusian city of Vhia. A grizzled war reporter, Barton has decided he is done with working as a reporter and is planning on telling IP editor John Sanger of his decision. On the way into Sanger’s office he spots the beautiful Kei Volhan, who is engaged to cub reporter Bobby Lance. Just as Barton announces his decision, Vhia comes under attack by a Jovian military force.
Partly to keep from saving face in front of Volhan, Barton allows himself to be convinced that he need to go into space to report on the Jovian attack. The two reporters and Volham manage to make their escape in an IP news spaceship and once they achieve orbit, they quickly learn that the surprise attack is not Jovian, but rather Martian in origin as Mars is trying to start a war between the Jovians and Venusians in order to gain a better deal on water rights.
Though there is no shortage of great offerings from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, etc, it’s hard to not heave a sigh knowing we’re still a way off from our favs. Game of Thrones’ final season has been confirmed for an April, 2019 release, though an exact date hasn’t been announced. We also know we’re going to have to wait until sometime in the summer of 2019 to binge season 3 of Stranger Things, though that is about as much detail as has been let out. There is a very amusing teaser trailer which I’ve included above if you haven’t seen it in all its 80’s mall glory, but other than confirming Steve is awesome, it doesn’t say much about what to expect from our friends in Hawkins, IN.
Word on the underground grapevine is that a substantial trailer as well as the exact release date for season 3 will come out during Super Bowl 53 on February 3rd. We also know filming wrapped in the fall, from the blurb that star Millie Bobby Brown posted on her Twitter feed for the first official Stranger Things Day which occurred on November 6th (the day Will originally went missing).
(Not about the Sack of Limoges, or the Hundred Years War)Worldbuilders!
What if I told you that the Sack of Limoges in Froissart… never happened?
Well, OK, you’d look at me blankly. After a moment you might ask, “I’ve never heard of Froissart. Where is that? French Canada?”
I’ve been reading LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by Singer and Brooking. It describes the emerging world of Internet “news” where news passes from person-to-person on social media, no source is uncontroversially trustworthy, and where both information warriors and click-bait farmers are uninterested in the truth, except as a way of making untruths more plausible.
In this world, what determines a narrative’s success is not veracity but rather: Simplicity; Resonance; and Novelty.
Just switch the arena to “rumor” and this looks awfully like a greatly accelerated version of the pre-modern — especially Medieval and Renaissance — milieus we use as inspiration for Fantasy worldbuilding. Keep the rumor but return the tech, and it’s also a good jumping-off point for building a Space Opera future. Stay with me and I’ll explain. But first, back to the smoking ruins of Limoges.
The authors — Singer wrote a great book on robot warfare, by the way — talk about a US military training scenario that would make a good Traveller adventure: insurgents set up both a demonstration and an ambush, guaranteeing the former will get caught in the latter, the objective being to generate Internet images of an occupier-perpetrated massacre. The military response — as I recall; the index isn’t very good — is to contain or avoid the ambush. Singer and Brooking remark that this won’t do any good. The insurgents — if cynical enough — can just shoot the civilians anyway and blame the occupiers, or simply upload images from elsewhere.
And that’s what made me think of Froissart and Limoges.
Roger Dee Aycock was born on December 6, 1914 and died on April 5, 2004. He wrote mostly using the pseudonym Roger Dee, although he also published one story as John Starr when he had two stories appear in the November 1951 issue of Planet Stories.
Dee’s story “Worlds within World” initially appeared in the October 1953 issue of Science Fiction +, the final science fiction publishing project of Hugo Gernsback. It was the penultimate issue of the magazine. The story was reprinted in Science Fiction Monthly issue one, in September 1955, an Australian magazine edited by Michael Cannon.
“Worlds within Worlds” may not have been a cliché when it was first published, but in many ways it reads like one now, not just for its central idea that modern readers will see coming, but for the techniques Dee uses to tell his tale. From the earliest part of the narrative, he uses undefined terms and technobabble to give it a futuristic feel and it is only well into the story that the reader fully begins to understand the situation that the main character, Racon, is in, although Racon is fully cognizant of where he is and what is going on. Mostly. He is wondering why he isn’t being allowed on an interstellar research ship that is about to launch.
The Stele of Castrelo de Val, showing a shield and chariot. This Bronze Age stele is similar to those found in Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, and the Mediterranean.
When one thinks of Spain, one generally thinks of sun-soaked coastlines and arid stretches of plain, but Spain’s northern coast is a green, hilly region with a strong Celtic tradition. The westernmost region, just north of Portugal, is called Galicia. Here you’ll find cider instead of wine, bagpipes instead of castanets, and a rich archaeological heritage.
GALAICOS. Un pueblo entre dos mundos at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid explores the ancient history of this region from the Bronze Age to the arrival of Christianity. It reveals a well-populated archaeological region that was connected to the Phoenician and Greek trade routes along the Atlantic coast to the tin mines in Britain. The exhibition shows some interesting examples of artifacts making their way along the trade route to Galicia from Italy, Greece, and North Africa.
I used to live in the pleasant village of Fairport, NY, a short walk from the Erie Canal, by which inland Fairport got its name. A reminder of those industrial days could be found about a mile east along the canal in a long four-story factory owned by the American Can Company. Canco, as locals called it, had been formed in 1901 as one of the 300+ trusts that gobbled up every industry in America into impregnable monopolies. The tin-plate trust was never as famous as Rockefeller’s Standard Oil or Carnegie’s United States Steel yet played just as critical a part in the average household. Canned foods were another hot new technology, because a new method of sealing the cans without solder had just been perfected by the well-named Sanitary Can Company, which ran their experiments in Fairport. After a steep learning curve, leading to many bulging botulistic cans quietly being dumped in the canal, Sanitary perfected the means of crimping can tops on to the body, made of corrosion resistant tinplate steel, the familiar tin can of today. American Can swallowed Sanitary Can in 1908.
World War II changed everything, including food. Millions of young families fled cities for the open spaces of the suburbs and their increasingly gigantic supermarkets, filled with endless aisles of canned foods. Those promised ease from the hours of cooking known by their mothers. Poppy Cannon, author of the Can-Opener Cookbook, apotheosized the tool as “the open sesame to freedom . . . from tedium, space, work, and your own inexperience.”
Jon DeCles was born as Donald Studebaker on December 5, 1941.
In addition to writing, DeCles is also a Mark Twain interpreter, performing as Twain and giving lectures about the man’s life and career. He collaborated with Paul Edwin Zimmer on the novel Blood of the Colyn Muir. Studebaker married author Diana L. Paxson.
“The Power of Kings” was written for the eleventh Thieves’ World anthology, Uneasy Alliances, edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey and published in 1988. He would write a follow-up story for the next, and final, volume of the original series as well.
A troupe of actors led by Feltheryn has arrived in Sanctuary, where High Priest Molin Torchholder is building them a new theatre and has commissioned them to perform a play. Once a major actor in the capital of Ranke, Feltheryn and his crew are hoping to reestablish themselves in Sanctuary, unaware that Torchholder has specifically chosen a play that couldn’t help be political in nature and set to offend Prince Kadakithis and his lover, the Beysa. The story is clearly part of the woven tapestry ofThieves World and would not work well standing on its own.
The story deals with Feltheryn’s need to get the theatre in order, rehearse himself and his troupe, and keep tabs on his troupe, from his partner/lover Gisselrand, who is as focused as he is, to Rounsnouf, the comedian given a key dramatic role who is spending all his time at the infamous Vulgar Unicorn tavern. Into this schedule are thrown random groups of street toughs who want to avenge themselves on Feltheryn for not being able to rob him, as well as meetings, chance or otherwise, with various denizens of Sanctuary.
For someone who thrived in the capital, Feltheryn seems to have a poor sense for when he is being used a as pawn. Not only is Torchholder using him and the troupe for his own purposes, but many others who he or Rounsnouf come into contact with see the theatrical troupe as a means of advancing their own agenda. Even without the troupe being aware that anything is happening, they are moved in a political agenda which could (and should) be disastrous until Feltheryn’s quick thinking allows him to cast the situation in a more positive light.
Dungeons & Dragons is having something of a renaissance. After a somewhat awkward period era known as “fourth edition,” the most popular roleplaying game in the world has attained a greater reach than anytime in its history.
If you’re looking for some good setting materials or adventures for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, this last year has shown the release of a handful of fantastic resources. Last spring was Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, a great resources of various races, including the Devil/Demon war between Hell and the Abyss. But two books released this fall focused a little closer to our fantasy home, with the classic city of Waterdeep.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is an urban-based adventure for characters of level 1-5, centered around a massive treasure embezzled from the government of Waterdeep and rumored to be hidden within the city. The GM picks the main villain at the outset from four options, a choice that determines the season of the adventure, which alters how the subsequent chapters will unfold.
I’m a fan of all kinds of fantasy. Urban, romance, Arthurian, YA, weird, magic realism, anthropomorphic, horror, sword & planet… plus all the ones I can’t think of right now. But my first love was adventure fantasy and sword & sorcery, and that’s still the sub-genre that gets the bulk of my attention. Tell me a tale of heroes and magic, and you’ve got my interest. Throw in a dungeon, and I’ll show up for opening night.
So when I found Jen Williams’ 2016 fantasy The Copper Promise — a tale of swords, monsters, and dungeons — at Barnes & Noble last weekend, I wasn’t so much intrigued as I was thinking, “How the heck did I miss this for two years??” Turns out I didn’t miss it entirely; Adrian Tchaikovsky recommended it in his Tor.com list of Five Books Featuring Adventuring Parties, which I read back in 2016, saying:
Jen is one of the best new voices in UK fantasy, and it’s a testament to her writing skill that Wydrin, the “Copper Cat” and a proper fantasy rogue through and through, does not actually eclipse her companions Frith and Sebastian as they fight, trick and run their way through a world that has gone from run-of-the-mill dangerous to actively-being-set-on-fire-by-a-dragon dangerous thanks, chiefly, to their own poor life choices. “Let sleeping gods lie,” goes the tagline. No need to tell you how that one works out.
The book was released by Angry Robot; a little digging online found one sequel from the same publisher, The Iron Ghost (2017), and a third volume published only in the UK, The Silver Tide (2016). All three were nominated for the British Fantasy Award. The first for Best Newcomer, and the second and third for Best Fantasy Novel. The reviews have been strong as well, especially for the first one. Starburst Magazine said “The Copper Promise is near-perfect fantasy-adventure fun and a breath of fresh air,” and Den Patrick said, “There are pirates and magic, demons and disciples, undead soldiers and noble knights… a lot of fun.” Here’s the Angry Robot book blurbs for the first two.
A few weeks ago I was looking at my favourite heist movies, and I was struck by the realization that a heist is not a con. It’s not that the two can’t occasionally overlap, it’s just that there are distinctions with shove each of them into their own sub-genres.
