A new episode with an amusing topic: brain batteries, FBI blunders, and the oddness of the representations of women in the Star Wars universe. We share a few laughs, shed a few tears, and generally have a good time. Feel free to check out the episode! Also: help us pick the next Torture Cinema movie; if you haven’t voted already, please do so here. You’ll be torturing us for your own amusement. We promise!
We all know that libraries are under attack these days, and I intend to do my part to show their importance by checking out books (because I have some delusion that using the library is somehow recorded and then sent to evil government people who are forced to reconsider cutting library funds because people actually use the library). Here’s what I currently have checked out: Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (DVD) Ghostbusters (DVD)(it was awesome) Once Upon a Time in the West (DVD) Mythologies by Roland Barthes Globalization and Utopia: Critical Essays edited by Patrick Hayden and Chamsy el-Ojeili The Search For Philip K. Dick by Anne R. Dick A Companion to The Crying of Lot 49 by J. Kerry Grant A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway Alone Against Tomorrow: Stories of Alienation and Speculative Fiction by Harlan Ellison American War Poetry: An Anthology edited by Lorrie Goldensohn Carrying the Darkness: the Poetry of the Vietnam War edited by W. D. Ehrhart The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology edited by Paul Hoover The Postmoderns: the New American Poetry Revised edited by Donald Allen The Sunset Limited: a Novel in Dramatic Form by Cormac McCarthy The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway A History of Literary Criticism: from Plato to the Present by M. A. R. Habib Nanyo-Orientalism: Japanese Representations of the Pacific by Naoto Sudo Teaching Literature by Elaine Showalter That’s one hell of a list, don’t you think? I had others checked out a few weeks ago, but decided to return them. I’m hoping to work through most of these this month. You won’t hear anything about them, though, since most of them aren’t of interest to you all (postmodern poetry is hardly SF/F). In the interest of prying into your lives, though, I want to know what books you currently have checked out from the library. Family’s count (I’m looking at you, Jen)!
In the interest in plugging things for friends, I would like to point you all to my friend Adam’s first ever pro publication over at AE! The story is called “Resolution,” the publication of which Adam has to thank me, since I critiqued the hell out of it. Or maybe I’m exaggerating my involvement… In any case, check out the story and let Adam know what you think on his blog! Congrats, man!
Genre Walking started on Twitter with Jason Sanford and Fabio Fernandes. One of them responded to a tweet I put up about the amount of walking I’ve done since keeping track on April 8th; moments later, we had an idea: let’s create a little group of SF/F folks who are walking, jogging, or running and track how many miles we’re doing. Think of it like those “green on campus” movements where faculty and students try to carpool, use the bus, and walk instead of driving by themselves. The cool thing about Genre Walking, though, is that anyone can join. And it’s easy. All you have to do is say “I’m in” on this blog, on my Twitter account, or with the #genrewalking hashtag on Twitter. Then: record your miles! And how do you do that? On our handy dandy Genre Walking entry form! It’s that simple. If you want to see how everyone is doing, you can go here. I’ll add names to the side list as they become available. Now get your butt out the door and start walking!
2011 is shaping up to be a very interesting year for science fiction dramas. I’m liking it. Epic scifi is great, but sometimes it’s just as good to sit down with a film that makes you think. Hopefully Another Earth will be one of those films. Here’s the trailer (after the fold): Anyone else want to see this movie? You can learn more about it on the website. (Thanks to SF Signal for the original discovery.)
(Giveaway info will be at the very end of this post.) I’d like to discuss some aspects of magic in fantasy novels, specifically how the magic in my novel Rast both differs from and coincides with that used as a plot device in other novels. First, in my novel, magic is described as a power active in a particular place; the magic kingdom of Rast, ruled by a Drogar, the sorcerer king. But later developments reveal that there is also another realm where magic is mastered, Easderly, where cousins of the sorcerer king reside, and from where a daughter has to be sent to be mother of a future sorcerer king. This is similar to the treatment in other works as well as folklore, where special places exist where magic happens – in Fairie or Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter. In fact, the latter work has a fairy princess necessary to bear a future magic king – clearly testimony to the power of magic’s distant influences, because I’d never heard of that novel before researching for this blog post. In this discussion I will assume (drearily lacking any sense of wonder) that in both the reader and myself, magic is accepted as being wholly fictional. This was not always the case, even in fiction; in William Shakespeare’s time, witches like the Weird Sisters in Macbeth and wizards like Prospero in The Tempest were widely considered to be real. To my mind, the greatest difference between the magic in Rast and that in almost every other work of fiction is the ‘price’ mine charges for its use. In all works where magic is a plot device, there are two considerations; firstly that there must be sufficient limits on its use to retain the necessary plausibility that opposition to the magic wielders is possible (there is no story else); secondly that these magic wielders have had to learn or otherwise exert themselves to acquire the ability. There is one exception that I will deal with later. In Rast, the ability to exersize magic is inherited, but has to be mastered and is ultimately fatal. It comes with a huge price; after a number of years the restless magic will overpower the sorcerer king and burst the bounds he places on it and so destroy him. This is the major plot problem of the story, which takes place during the interregnum while the old Drogar is losing his last struggle and his heir, Prince Egon, is learning how to take up the deadly power. The wieldable magic isn’t the only manifestation in Rast; there are magic entities and creatures that have been created in the past by magic, but always through the workings of the same magic force. Thus these are all interconnected to that force by a greater or lesser degree, making magic an immanent reality, like gravity. Magic artifacts are common to many fantasy novels, and there are a few artifacts of magic in Rast. The gossamer net that the Princes’ sweetheart uses to protect herself from the Deepning’s spells was created for the purpose in such a distant past that its origin is lost in myth. Prince Egon was given a saffron crystal by his father as an aid to learning to use and control the magic. The princess sent from Easderly was given one spell sealed in a bronze bound casket as a gift from her father. The Deepning, a magic created creature, can send out siren spells to lure victims, but they are actually part of its own substance. And the earlier exception I mentioned? In many works of fantasy the magic is bestowed by some form of object, a talisman, a wand, or a ritual object, and here we get very close to folklore and the belief that magic actually exists. How much difference is there between believing the power of a magic lamp or an enchanted sword and in that of a holy relic? While magic in fiction has to be an integral part of the law of the story, in the real world magic is something that is completely outside of the laws of physics – supernatural; a completely unnatural power. In fiction we might enjoy playing with a tamed facsimile of this magic, but the tension is always greater when the audience has been brought to suppress their scepticism and to fear it as the ancients did. Perhaps we are not all that distant from Shakespeare’s audience after all. ————————————————————– About Rast In Rast, magic is not a convenient parlour trick, it’s a deadly force that takes no prisoners. Those who must wield it are doomed, for it never ceases to work within the mind and nerves until it destroys its master. And now, the time of the interregnum is here; the reigning sorcerer king, the Drogar of Rast, is struggling for a last grasp on magic power while his heir, Prince Egon, must take up the deadly mantle. Egon is fearful but courageous in his duty. Not one peril threatens Rast, but many. While he struggles to tame the magic to his command the mechanistic Offrang adventurers arrive to seize the land for their empire. The Offrangs don’t just disbelieve in magic, they treat any attempt to discuss it with withering scorn. Then, when the Drogar falters, the North Folk sweep out in their multitudes to cover the land of Rast at the behest of their depraved Casket of Scrolls. Deepning too, a creature of earth magic in its mountain pools, stirs to gain power enough to conquer Rast. The Prince’s sweetheart Jady does her best to support him, but she is not strong enough in the power of the lineage to bear him a magic wielding heir. She sets out to meet the caravansi of the cousin princess who is sent to be his consort with duty and anger both warring in her mind. The crisis will reveal surprising enemies, surprising friends, and as the Drogar tells Jady, “Even
