Monthly Archives:
sWe completed the AVID Assistant Kickstarter on Sunday, and more than tripled our funding goal. I’m more than a bit exhausted and asocial at the moment, having been pushing this through my social media contacts for a month. It’s been a very long – and very fruitful – ride. Final tally was $15,942– over triple […]
“Around April every year, the nominees for the Hugo Awards are released. Anticipation about what might be (or should be) nominated builds throughout the spring, stoked by various Hugo recommendation sites. The two most popular online rec lists are at Emerald City and NESFA. How predictive are these lists? How much overlap is there between […]
RETROSPECTIVE: The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany
Monday , 13, April 2015 Appendix N 2 CommentsFirst published in 1924, Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter was rescued from obscurity by Lin Carter’s work with the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. It was an excellent choice for that project, too. Here we find the forgotten themes that set up the cadence of twentieth century fantasy literature. Here we have a take on […]
Something I have noticed – hardcore readers of sword and sorcery fiction generally also read blood and thunder historical fiction. Sometimes the boundaries of the two genres are very blurry. Vikings appear to be popular right now with the History Channel’s very historically muddled Vikings show. Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chonicles take place during the Viking […]
In light of the controversy swirling around the Hugo Nominations, I thought it would be worthwhile to define one of the leading causes of puppy related sadness: boring message fiction. The modifier ‘boring’ is an important one. Message fiction does not have to be boring, pretentious literary dreck; nor is boring, pretentious literary dreck necessarily message fiction. […]
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a skill system in an RPG with any credence for reality shall suck. Some game engines, such as Classic Traveller and GURPS started out with a number of skills that accrued with every release. Some skills are more useful in game utility than others. Other skill checks result in “plot plugs.” […]
In a somewhat quiet year for the Hugo Awards, a number of records have been smashed: Most Ballots Cast, Ever: 2,122 Most nominations for a single individual in a single year (John C. Wright): 6 First year since the class of 1988 that every Best Novel nominee carries a minimum of a 4-star rating. Highest […]
To say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. ~Terry Pratchett …Good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. ~Albert Camus War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. ~George Orwell The term […]
This book is pretty wild. I mean, you don’t just see an unstoppable foe here cut from the same cloth as Steve Jackson’s Ogre cybertanks or Steve Cole’s Star Fleet Universe Andromedan invaders. You get to see one of the earlier iterations of what would become Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Borg, sure. But you […]
While doing some searching at the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base on anthologies, I noticed one called Warrior Fantastic. Turns out I have it but forgot about it. I forgot about it because I read one story at the time and the book got shoved behind others on one of my bookshelves. Martin H. Greenberg […]