Appendix N (Shop on the Borderlands) “APPENDIX N: INSPIRATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL READING” AND OTHER FANTASY RPG READING LISTS: PART 1 — “That distinction between swords & sorcery and epic high fantasy is important in the history of D&D and other fantasy RPGs. It’s clear from Appendix N, and from early modules like the Giants series or Tomb of Horrors, that Gygax intended D&D to reflect swords & sorcery. However, by the time D&D went really big in the 1980s (when yours truly started playing), swords & sorcery literature had gone out of fashion, and epic high fantasy was in the ascendancy. If you’d gone into a branch of W.H. Smith in 1984, you’d have found The Lord of the Rings, and Thomas Covenant, and Sword of Shannara, and The Belgariad, but probably nothing by L. Sprague de Camp or Fritz Leiber. There might have been a Conan book, but it was probably a movie tie-in.”

Science Fiction (The Last Redoubt) Review: Oath of Fealty — “When Pournelle stopped There Will Be War at the ninth volume, he started a new project, published by Baen, called Imperial Stars. It explored governments of the future, more than straight warfare. Included in the essays was an old Campbell essay where it was discussed tribesmen, barbarians, and civilized people, and that to a barbarian, civilized people looked an awful lot like weird tribesmen, subsuming themselves to the tribe. He closed with the point that future political changes past ‘civilized’ may take on structures that look a lot like the old, to our current selves.”

Movies (Yakov Merkin) Phasma: Star Wars Shows it Doesn’t Know How to Explore its Characters or What Fans Want — “We didn’t need to see Anakin’s whole backstory and fall to the dark side. Even if the prequels had been good movies, it was still an unnecessary story in many respects. In another angle, the EU also told us far too much about the details about Darth Vader’s suit, which we didn’t need at all, to the point where it basically became a joke. I’ve watched this RedLetterMedia video where they read from Wookiepedia (the Star Wars wiki) directly, about this, and it’s hilarious while also kind of sad, making Vader into almost a joke. We have seen similar phenomena elsewhere, with unnecessary books focusing on backgrounds of other minor characters.”

Television (Entertainment Weekly) Star Trek: Discovery to tackle Trump-era political divide —  “The Klingons are going to help us really look at certain sides of ourselves and our country. Isolationism is a big theme. Racial purity is a big theme. The Klingons are not the enemy, but they do have a different view on things. It raises big questions: Should we let people in? Do we want to change? There’s also the question of just because you reach your hand out to someone, do they have to take it? Sometimes, they don’t want to take it. It’s been interesting to see how the times have become more of a mirror than we even thought they were going to be.”

D&D (Venger Satanis) Delving Deeper Into Old School — “I liken this division (having a number of striking similarities) as the difference between old and new testament in the Bible. We call early RPGs – such as 80’s D&D – old school as if it’s all the same. However, in some ways, those two camps – primordial and complex – couldn’t be further from each other. Do they get at the same things but with different approaches? Or do they each have completely separate goals?”

From the Comments (Jon Del Arroz) Sci-Fi Sexism By The Numbers: It’s A Mean Girls’ Club — “Pretty sure that the short story market isn’t like a raffle where buying more tickets gets you a better chance of winning. I think the quality of the story you write has some influence on whether or not it gets published. Write a really good story, and you boost your chances of getting published close to 100% regardless of who you are. If you’re not getting published, maybe it’s not so much the number of theoretical ‘slots available’ for men and more that the story isn’t good enough?”

Pulp Revolution (Rawle Nyanzi) Constant Adventure vs. Constant Worldbuilding — “Adventure Constant is a story that cares so much about building a fun world that it completely junks wonkish world-building logic in favor of what sounds cool. No explanation is given for why counterparts to familiar Earth nations sprang up, you do not question why the existence of Carthage, the continued rule of the Pharaohs, and the failed colonization of Africa gave rise to similar historical events, and you do not care to hear about economic minutiae or extensive national backstories. You’re given just enough information to orient you, and the characters get back to the plot. It is yet more proof of a key tenet about fantastical tales: Worldbuilding does not matter.”

Pulp Revolution (SuperversiveSF) The Beginnings of Pulp — “The English upper classes ignored the new medium. The middle classes, who feared anything that might diminish their advantages over the working class, hated it and sneered at it, dismissing all stories so told as ‘dreadful’. This was a calumny. As Theodore Sturgeon would certainly have said, nine-tenths of the penny serials were crap; but then, nine-tenths of the expensive books favoured by the middle classes were crap. The real sin of the penny dreadfuls was not that they were bad stories, but that they brought printed books within the reach of the Lower Orders.”

Appendix N (Gitabushi) Frustrations with Edgar Rice Burroughs — “Sometimes it is having incredible luck that saves John Carter from failure/death or otherwise continue the narrative. One would be irritating, but there have been at least 10 so far…way too many.  Examples: How was it John Carter to Barsoom returned just in time to encounter Tars Tarkas? How was it Tars Tarkas wasn’t the Green Warrior surprised by the unexpected jumping tactics of the Plant Men? How did Thuvia and Tars happen to be right at the location where the damaged air car of John Carter, Xodar, and Carthoris comes to ground?  Why does Thuvia have the ability of nearly perfect telepathy with beasts? Is this something other Barsoomians have? The answer seems to be that ERB needed something to get the characters through a nearly-impossible situation, so he just pulled something out of the air and ran with it.”

Appendix N (Joe Kushner) Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson — “The use of Chaos and its minions, like the timeless and fey elves, who aren’t evil necessarily, but are bored and are capricious at best, are intent on spreading their world. For them, the sun and its light, for example, are anathema. Their own world lies in a subtle shade that protects them, and there is a distinct difference between the world of man and that of the Fey. The arrival of Holger is during a time when Chaos is on the rise. A time when Chaos may make a great play for the world. A time when Giants stalk the land and when those whose inheritance may have a touch of the old blood, are stirred to action.”

Anti-Pulp (Tor.com) A Moment in a Life: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Day Before the Revolution” — “Laia is seventy-two, at the end of her life. She has had a stroke, and her right side has not completely recovered, she drools and is intensely self-conscious about it. She is an old woman, in a genre where we still see very few old women. And she is an old woman who remembers being six and sixteen, who still recognizes her sexuality, and who has been an intellectual giant, their world’s (better) equivalent of Marx. Her books of political thought have given a name to the movement, but now she’s old and a little vain and wants to keep thinking about the past.”

No Sale (Black Gate) Companion Robots, Grave Robbing, and Monster-haunted Catacombs: July/August 2017 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction — “I try my best not to let my editor experience at HFQ color my reviews too much, but this time I failed my willpower role. A kind of alternate-history story of a slave uprising in the Deep South, centered around one Afiya, a young black woman who, through song, can channel ancestor magic. It is well written, and the subject is a unique take on things, but… by now I’ve read dozens of stories where young protagonist is shunned because of the Power and finally after enough indignities and injustices gives in to the Power and some people are made to regret their choices. Is that how ‘Aifya’s Song’ goes? Maybe, maybe not, but I didn’t stick it through to find out.”