Blog Archives
sI’m not alone in my fascination for all things Appendix N. Author Colin Anders Brodd is as taken with the subject as anybody and is undertaking his own survey of the fantasy and science fiction canon: So what is the point of all this? Well, in part, it is “getting in touch with my roots” […]
#SpaceOperaWeek — Delany and Heinlein are not Space Opera!
Saturday , 20, May 2017 Appendix N 33 CommentsTime and again we’ve seen it this week. People weigh in on the topic of space opera and then… somehow start talking about something entirely different that has nothing to do with it. It’s baffling really. But it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about alternative marriage arrangements in Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 or the ultimate obsolescence […]
My Favorite Conan Story: Shadows in Zamboula
Saturday , 20, May 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Book Review, Fiction, Short Fiction 9 CommentsI don’t profess to be an expert on the excellent Robert E Howard. In fact, it was over two decades after Conan the Barbarian became a favorite character of mine that I read Howard’s stories about the Cimmerian! My first exposure to the pulp titan was in the form of Saturday morning cartoon Conan the […]
The Truth About Women and Science Fiction
Tuesday , 16, May 2017 Appendix N, Before the Big Three 17 CommentsOver at Tor.com, Judith Tarr weighs in on a well trod discussion point: Every year or two, someone writes another article about a genre that women have just now entered, which used to be the province of male writers. Usually it’s some form of science fiction. Lately it’s been fantasy, especially epic fantasy (which strikes […]
Once More Unto the Breach: The Appendix N of Appendix N
Sunday , 14, May 2017 Appendix N 10 CommentsCommenter “instasetting” has this to say in response to my recent post on some particularly stupid characterizations of both Gary Gygax and Dungeons & Dragons: Cecelia wants to exalt the players; you want to exalt the canon of books Gygax loved; and I exalt the DM. Or, nice to have good players; nice to have […]
The Double-Edged Sword of Dogmatism
Saturday , 13, May 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Before the Big Three, Fiction, Uncategorized 12 CommentsLast week, I wrote an observation about Lovecraft’s works. In the comments, several readers mentioned The Shadow over Innsmouth, a tale I had embarrassingly not read at the time. I rectified this error soon after. And wow, what an amazing story! An imaginative gem from beginning to end, with steadily mounting tension, an inspired explanation to the […]
I get a lot of feedback on what is and isn’t obscure in fantasy and science fiction, so I was really keen on hearing this panel put on at Ravencon. Steve White is absolutely on fire, weighing in on “Planet Vietname” Syndrome in military science fiction, praising Traveller and BattleTech developer William H. Keith to […]
Dungeons & Dragons is easily the most interesting thing on the internet. But in spite of the unparalleled amount of resources available today for people that want to delve into the topic, people still managed to get it wrong. In fact… so few people get anything about it even remotely right, it’s positively baffling. Cecilia […]
A reader writes in to comment on the latest discussion in the fantasy and science fiction scene: “If you want people to employ traditional virtues in service of civilization, they first have to be able to imagine them. Heroism and romance were suppressed specifically to make it easier to destroy a people. The poindexters hold […]
There’s a fascinating comment over at Unz Review: People are getting dumber. Whatever cultural genre you choose, no matter who it’s aimed get, it gets cleverer and cleverer as you go back in time. Literature, magazine, news, tv, everything. Read a mass-market pulp fiction magazine from the 30s or watch one of the many 1950s […]
The Forsaken Sequel: The Unforsaken Hiero
Monday , 1, May 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized 8 CommentsAppendix N entry Hiero’s Journey by Sterling Lanier is one of my favorite books. A thrilling masterpiece of fast-paced creativity and high adventure from start to finish. Its protagonist is Hiero Desteen, a powerful telepathic Christian warrior riding a “morse”, a mutation of a moose and a horse, in a post-nuclear wasteland filled with oddities, horrors, and […]