Boing Boing » fantasy

Fantasy novel by an eight-year-old

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:42:15 +0000

Jaime sez, "In honor of Children's Book Week, I'm sharing a link about a book written by 8-year old Griffin Hehmeyer. His mom tells the story of how Griffin wrote a book, enlisted his friends and classmates for help editing and illustrating it, and eventually published it. The book serves as a model for children interested in creating literature of their own, practicing skills like story-telling, writing, empathy, collaboration, and persistence in the process."

The story was inspired by a make-believe game Griffin had been playing for several years with a good friend of his named Maya. In the game he was the king of the wolves, just like Makamom is in the book. Griffin says of the writing process, “When I first started this book, I had a hard time thinking of ideas. As I got closer to the ending it was easier to think of what to say.”
At the end of each chapter Griffin would read what he had written to his classmates and incorporate their feedback into the draft. When the draft was complete, Griffin and his teacher then spent another month reading through the book and correcting any errors before sending it to me. I think the editing process was the most frustrating part for Griffin, since he was impatient to be done. I had told him we’d print it out and get it bound, so he was excited to have a real book-like copy to enjoy.
By April I knew of the book's existence, but I hadn’t yet read any of it. When I received the completed draft, I was somewhat hesitant to undertake the reading such a large chunk of text written by an 8 year old – even if that 8 year old was my own son. To my surprise, however, the book turned out to be really good. As a colleague said when I shared a draft with him, “The book kept me reading it until the end, in one pass. It is a very interesting, clever, and engrossing story.” I also enjoyed watching my husband read the book to our other three children each night before bed. They laughed and gasped at all the right places, and begged their dada to continue reading well after lights out.

Making the Marakon Ways (Thanks, Jaime!)

Game of Brogues

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:14:16 +0000

From Max Read's fantastic article nitpicking the inconsistencies in Game of Thrones' deployment of regional British accents:

"The show has dragons, who cares if the accents don't match?": Well, first of all, I care. Second of all, the cornerstone of science fiction and fantasy fandom is nitpicking. Third of all, the fact that Game of Thrones doesn't take place within our collectively agreed-upon reality doesn't release it from its responsibility to verisimilitude or the maintenance of internal consistency within its own systems.

Boob-enhanced armor would have been deadly

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:09:10 +0000

Here's a nice analysis of why, were you actually a female warrior of olden times, you would not have wanted to wear a breastplate that showed off your breasts. Shorter version: Room for boobs is good. But outlining each boob in steel could get you killed.

Great free reading of Robert E Howard's "Conan and the Queen of the Black Coast"

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:25:15 +0000

I often listen to audiobooks when I'm falling asleep, and my favorite go-to for these is Librivox, the incredible collection of volunteer-read public-domain texts (I used to buy a lot of Audible titles, but the fact that they use DRM even when publishers and authors beg them not to has meant that I no longer use the service). Last night, I stumbled on Phil Chenevert's reading of the Robert E Howard classic "The Queen of the Black Coast," one of the great Conan stories, available on Project Gutenberg, in the anthology The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian: The Original Adventures of the Greatest Sword and Sorcery Hero of All Time!, and in a smashing graphic novel adaptation by Brian Wood (!).

This is the Ur-stuff, the sword-and-sorcery material that turned me into a stone Conan freak when I was 12 years old. It's all mighty thews and straining jaws and blood-drenched swords -- and pirates and sinuous dances and so on. Chenevert gives a great reading of the material, sounding like the voice that I heard in my head when I was falling in love with that stuff. I was reminded of the revelation I experienced when I read John Clute's marvellous Robert E Howard book, that the young Howard used to shout the words aloud as he typed them, in his small-town Texas home, while his mother lay dying of TB in the bedroom above him; and the fact that Howard wrote all this incredible material between the age of 22 and 29 (he killed himself at 29, after his mother finally died). The idea of a 22-year-old Howard producing this amazing, mythic stuff makes it all the cooler.

Queen of the Black Coast by Robert E. Howard

Creators remember Knightmare, the pioneering VR adventure show

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:48:07 +0000

Knightmare was a fantastic childrens' adventure show that ran on British TV in the 1980s. A youngster, wearing a vision-blinding helmet, would be guided around a giant virtual reality castle by a team of his or her peers, which issued instructions from dungeon master Treguard's chambers. Though defined by its technical limitations, Knightmare built a cult following thanks to its pioneering blue-screen setup—hence the blindfolding—and merciless treatment of contestants. The Guardian's Ben Child interviewed creator Tim Child and star Hugo Myatt and found that the production was itself something of a bad dream. Embedded above is the show's intro and a short documentary about it. Then you may enjoy a a selection of deaths.

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere as a BBC radio play

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 07:34:21 +0000

Dan sez, "The BBC have produced a radio play of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere with a host of great British actors. Sounds exactly like you want it to sound."

Akata Witch: young adult hero's journey of a Nigerian witch

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:51:57 +0000

World Fantasy Award-winning novelist Nnedi Okorafor's debut young adult novel is Akata Witch, a beautifully wrought hero's journey story about Sunny, a young girl with albinism born to Nigerian parents in America, and then returned to Nigeria, where she discovers that she is a Leopard Person -- a born sorcerer.

The structure of Sunny's journey to mastery of her wild talent is familiar enough, the stuff of much-loved Rowling and Duane novels. But the world of Leopard People, beautifully presented by Okorafor, makes it sing with freshness. The increasingly difficult challenges that Sunny and her three friends -- a coven predicted in legend and come to Nigeria just in time to save the world from a murdering sorcerer bent on apocalypse -- are each more fascinating and pulse-pounding than the last, and the magic they practice has that dream-logic plausibility of the best fantasy.

Young readers and adults who try Akata Witch will find it a marvellous and uplifting read, heartwarming in its portrayal of true freindship, heartbreaking in its portrayal of headstrong youth and the perils of pride. Woven throughout is an implicit commentary on America's relationship to Africa, the distinct identities of African Americans, Nigerians, and other West Africans, and the adolescent pain of trying to please your family even as you are discovering yourself. Highly recommended.

Akata Witch

Rage is Back: graffiti crews save NYC from its lurking demons

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:21:14 +0000

Adam Mansbach's Rage is Back is a sneaky hybrid of a novel, part nostalgic urban graffiti memoir, full of vintage hiphop references and lush, old school New York descriptions; part brooding supernatural thriller where shamanic ritual and ancient subterranean presences secretly shape the mundane world of crime, wealth, privilege and art.

Dondi Vance, Rage's narrator, is the son of the legendary Rage Vance, a graffiti writer who went underground when Dondi was just two years old. Dondi's grown up with his mother, another graffiti writer, though she went straight with a job at second-rate literary agency and did her best to bring Dondi up right. He's bright, the kind of kid who qualifies for a scholarship spot at a fancy uptown private school, where his good grades point to an Ivy League future -- until he gets caught selling weed to his classmates and gets both expelled and kicked out of home.

All Dondi's life, he's heard stories about his father, and his father's madness. On the night Dondi was born, Rage and his crew went out to bomb a subway train with huge murals celebrating the birth. They were caught by Officer Bracken, a notorious cop who hated them with an irrational, unstoppable fury -- a fury so fierce that he actually drew his gun on them as they ran off, and, ultimately, murdered one of the crew, a young man named Eclipse.

The death pushed Rage over the edge, turned him into a revenge-bent graffiti-writing machine who covered massive swaths of the five boroughs with BRACKEN KILLED ECLIPSE tags and murals. Bracken, meanwhile, climbed the police ranks, seemingly unstoppably, and got Rage indicted in absentia, which led to Rage leaving for Mexico, abandoning his wife and their two-year-old son Dondi.

Rage is back. He's come back from a long dreamtime wandering the Amazon, learning from shamans, learning to be a shaman. And he's got revelations for Dondi about the night of the birth and the murder -- revelations about the thing they found in the subway tunnel, the force they encountered, an ancient evil that found something it liked in Bracken, who is now poised to become mayor of New York City.

Dondi is a hip-hop Holden Caufield, alienated from his parents and his schoomates, surrounded by role models of dubious vintage and value, desperately wanting to belong, but not wanting to give up his individuality. He's got a bright, acerbic, cynical adolescent outlook that's a treat to read (though I suspect it'd be less fun to be around). The caper that fills the second half of the book is big, weird, brash, and riddled with history and supernatural juju, and his ride through it is vastly entertaining, right through to the last page. This is a tremendously fun novel, and an authentic exploration of an illegal subculture, with all the frustrations and glories that entails.

If Adam Mansbach's name rings a bell, it might be because of his number-one NYT bestselling, piracy-as-viral-promo book Go the Fuck to Sleep.

Rage is Back

Three more Merchant Princes books due

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:39:08 +0000

Here's a bit of good news: Charlie Stross has sold another trilogy in his fantastic Merchant Princes series, a highly original take on heroic fantasy, with the DHS and real-world economics thrown in for spice. "

Kathe Koja's "Under the Poppy": farewell stage performances in Detroit this April

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:58:31 +0000

Kathe Koja's brilliant novel Under the Poppy -- a dark, romantic, swirling wartime intrigue -- was adapted for stage in her hometown of Detroit. It had a very successful run, and the crew and cast are coming together for a final series of performances this April, where the audience is encouraged to sport Victorian fancy dress. If I could make it to Detroit, I would be there for every show.

Poppy opens in a middle-European town on the eve of war, sometime in the late 19th century: a disreputable and dirty town full of brothels and cutpurses and spies and intrigue. One such brothel, Under the Poppy, stands apart from the others: it is more than seller of sex: it is a stage where every night, whores act out fantastic playlets, spurred on by the virtuoso piano-playing of a tongueless player who expresses himself in mime and music.
To the Poppy comes Istvan, a puppeteer whose mecs -- elaborate clockwork automata -- are perfectly suited to the Poppy's stage, being endowed with enormous clockwork organs and Istvan's bawdy and funny-cruel ventriloquism. But Istvan isn't just a travelling jongleur; he is the long-lost brother of Decca, the madame of the house, and the long-lost lover of Rupert, the front-of-the-house man. All three were orphans together in the long-ago, until love and anger drove them apart. Now, reunited, they might have all they ever wanted.
Except for the war. The war, threatening from the distance, is coming to town. With it come conspirators and commanders: Jurgen Vidor, a sexually sadistic mercantile empire-builder; Mr Arrowsmith, the special aide to to the coming forces, and the General, commander of the armies and participant in the vast conspiracy that seeks to take all of Europe for a small cabal of rich and secretive men.
War descends, dreams are smashed, old friendships split at the seams, blood is spilled, the brave are braver, the cowards cover themselves in shame, and coarse soldiers take up residence in the Poppy. When the players and the whores flee for Brussels, the dream is at an end.
This is just the first act, and it's merely the setup for a second act that's long enough to be a book in its own right, in which the stories of minor and major characters retwine: love and betrayal, blackmail and beatings, sex and death, all in that gummy blackness of stained cobbles and old blood.
This book made me drunk. Koja's language is at its poetic best, and the epic drama had me digging my nails into my palms. It's like a Tom Waits hurdy-gurdy loser's lament come to life, as sinister as a dark circus.

Under the Poppy | Under the Poppy Farewell Performance (Thanks, Kathe!)

SF writers Jim C Hines and John Scalzi dress up as sexy female assassins to raise money for The Aicardi Syndrome Foundation

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 20:00:48 +0000

Science fiction writers Jim C Hines and John Scalzi donned sexy garters, high heels, little black dresses and, um, crossbows, and replicated the odd cover of Vicki Pettersson's "The Taste of the Night," competing to see who could was most credible as a sexy female assassin book-cover illustration lady. They were raising money for The Aicardi Syndrome Foundation, a very good cause indeed. Also, Scalzi wore a wig.

Be sure and click the link below for the backstory that makes this all somehow plausible, to see the mind-searing full-size images, and to learn more about the most excellent fundraiser.

Pose-off with John Scalzi (via Whatever)

Schooling a reader who doesn't like female, middle-aged, black pirate captains

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 02:03:43 +0000

A reader of Scott Lynch's fantasy novels upbraided him for daring to have a black, middle-aged woman running a pirate crew, calling it a "politically correct cliche" and went on to say "Real sea pirates could not be controlled by women, they were vicous rapits and murderers and I am sorry to say it was a man’s world (sic)." Lynch's response was appropriately scathing, and rather wonderful.

You know what? Yeah, Zamira Drakasha, middle-aged pirate mother of two, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. I realized this as she was evolving on the page, and you know what? I fucking embrace it.
Why shouldn’t middle-aged mothers get a wish-fulfillment character, you sad little bigot? Everyone else does. H.L. Mencken once wrote that “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” I can’t think of anyone to whom that applies more than my own mom, and the mothers on my friends list, with the incredible demands on time and spirit they face in their efforts to raise their kids, preserve their families, and save their own identity/sanity into the bargain.
Shit yes, Zamira Drakasha, leaping across the gap between burning ships with twin sabers in hand to kick in some fucking heads and sail off into the sunset with her toddlers in her arms and a hold full of plundered goods, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy from hell. I offer her up on a silver platter with a fucking bow on top; I hope she amuses and delights. In my fictional world, opportunities for butt-kicking do not cease merely because one isn’t a beautiful teenager or a muscle-wrapped font of testosterone. In my fictional universe, the main characters are a fat ugly guy and a skinny forgettable guy, with a supporting cast that includes “SBF, 41, nonsmoker, 2 children, buccaneer of no fixed abode, seeks unescorted merchant for light boarding, heavy plunder.”
You don’t like it? Don’t buy my books. Get your own fictional universe. Your cabbage-water vision of worldbuilding bores me to tears.

Bravo!

Not to mention that woman pirate captains were numerous enough to fill an entire (and excellent) history book on the subject.

Fuck Yeah SciFi/Fantasy WOC (via Making Light)

Manuscript auction to benefit Sandy victims

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 21:35:26 +0000

Mary Robinette Kowal sez,

At the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto this weekend, as much as we were talking about fantasy, we were talking about our friends and colleagues who had been hit by the storm. Some of them had to evacuate and had no idea when they'd be able to go home. One editor joked barely -- that his slush pile was actual slush now since his office flooded.
A lot of authors and editors could not make it because they live in New York. Many of those who did make it headed straight for their rooms and had their first hot shower in a week. A lot of them said that they had been unable to see images of the storm damage because they had been without power and so were seeing some things for the first time.
To help raise funds for relief, I'm auctioning off a manuscript of my novel WITHOUT A SUMMER. This is book 3 in my series and isn't out until April 2, 2012. I'll mail the winner a signed manuscript of the book five months before it's in the stores. If the fundraiser goes over $500, I'll also include book 4, VALOUR AND VANITY, which won't be out until 2013. If it goes over $1000, I'll tuckerize the winner into the series. Note: depending on your name, you may or may not be a character but your name will be there. The books are set between 1814-1818 so I do have to be cautious about committing to character names.
Over $1500, and I'll include a manuscript of a book that we haven't even announced yet. All I can tell you is that it is also historical fantasy. If it goes over $2000, I'll think of something cool. All the proceeds will go to American Red Cross in Greater New York.

Mary's Regency-plus-magic series is a delight. Here's my review of book one, and here's my review of book two.

Hurricane Sandy relief auction -- Signed manuscript of WITHOUT A SUMMER (Thanks, Mary!)

Red Sonja and The Wizard: lost footage from 1978 Comic Con show

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:25:13 +0000

In the seventies, Red Sonja writer Frank Thorne and Wendy Pini used to perform a show, "Red Sonja and the Wizard," at comic conferences. No record of these legendary shows were thought to have survived, however—until this film, shot by an audience member at 1978's San Diego Comic Con, surfaced on YouTube.

"Recovering this is, for us, the equivalent to Robert Ballard's locating the Titanic," says Pini. "The quality is, alas, 1978-era Super-8 film taken under difficult conditions - but it EXISTS!"

Fun Fantasy Adventure Young Adult Novel: The Other Normals

Mark Frauenfelder — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:38:18 +0000

The unlikely hero in Ned Vizzini's young adult fantasy novel, The Other Normals is Perry Eckert, a 15-year-old boy with divorced parents, an alcoholic older brother, and few friends. He is terrified of girls. While other boys his age are developing into young men with deepening voices and growth spurts, Perry's body stubbornly refuses to kickstart the puberty process. He's teased at school, and has been given the nickname Tiny Pecker. Because his life sucks, it's not surprising that Perry frequently retreats into a fantasy world fueled with sword & sorcery roleplaying games. But because he has almost no friends, Perry plays the games by himself.

As the saying goes, nothing's so bad that it can't get worse, and when summer rolls around, Perry's parents ship him off to a summer camp for 8 weeks. The kids at the camp dislike Perry even more than the kids at his school, and they either shun him or pick on him. And when the camp staff takes away the gaming manual he'd brought along, Perry has nothing to look forward to.

The remaining 350 pages of The Other Normals would be depressing if not for the fact that a red skinned humanoid with yellow hair and a tail runs past a window that Perry happens to be looking out of. Perry goes outside and meets the creature, who speaks English and is addicted to smoking pebbles, which make him stoned. The creature's name is Mortin Enaw, and Perry learns that Enaw comes from another dimension. Enaw leads Perry into the woods and he activates the portal (made from mushrooms connected to a car battery) that allows them to enter the World of the Other Normals. Perry finds himself in a real sword and sorcery world, just like the one in his confiscated gamer's manual. He also learns that his assistance is needed to save the World of the Other Normals. This appeals to him, because he would rather battle loathsome half-men/half monsters on a strange planet than deal with the shunners, bullies, and girls at camp. Unfortunately for Perry, his assignment requires him to return through the portal to Earth to kiss one of the girls at the camp. What follows is an enjoyable adventure story that moves back and forth between Earth and Enaw's world as Perry attempts to control escalating situations on both sides of the portal.

Vizzini's story reminded me of Rudy Rucker's novels, which often have silly, almost cartoonlike, nonhuman characters, but portray human relationships, struggles, and desires in a realistic and engrossing way.

I interviewed Ned Vizzini on Gweek in September 2012. Listen to it here.

The Other Normals

Pratchett's Dodger: Dickens by way of Discworld

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:09:20 +0000

Terry Pratchett's latest novel, Dodger, isn't a Discworld book, except, well, it kind of is. Nominally, this is an historical novel, a fictionalized account of the fictionalized person who inspired Mr Charlie Dickens to create his much-beloved character The Artful Dodger. But as the story unfolds, the parallels between the early Victorian London of Dickens (and Mayhew) and the Ankh-Morpork of Pratchett's Discworld novels become sharper and clearer, so that by the end, we're reading a story that really could be set in either one of those fantastical places, and what's more, there's a kind of vividness to Dodger that comes, I think, from its proximity to the origin of Pratchett's inspiration, a cask-strength version of what makes Pratchett so addictive and so loved.

Dodger tells the story of a young street-urchin, a "geezer" who is known throughout the tenements of central London as a dashing and fearless character. Dodger is a "tosher," a young man who scrounges in the sewers of London for coins and jewels and little bits and pieces that wash up, and he worships the Lady, a deity descended from the Roman goddess Cloacina, the patron of the sewers the Romans carved out beneath Londinium. He is fearless, noble, but also lightfingered, with a cheeky propensity for making off with anything that isn't nailed down or buttoned firmly in a gentleman's coat-pocket.

Dodger starts one night in the sewers, when Dodger hears the cries of a woman in distress from above. While in Discworld, this distress might be hinted at and painted in vague, impressionistic strokes, here it is as vivid as Dickens: the woman whose rescue Dodger leaps to is being horribly beaten by a gang of thugs, whom Dodger lashes out at, dealing out fast and furious blows until they run off. As he tends to the woman, he meets Charlie Dickens and Henry Mayhew, the first of two historical personages to make an appearance in the pages of Dodger (others include Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli, and Sweeney Todd).

So begins the story of Dodger's coming of age. He and the woman he rescues fall in love, but the men who hunted her are still chasing after her, driven by a great imperial house of Europe whose king would see her dead. Against this backdrop, Dodger must both beat the assassins and thugs on his trail, and also find his true love's way clear of the deadly intrigue, all the while mixing in the alien environs of high society -- and journalistic circles -- whom he is introduced to by Dickens.

Dodger features some of Pratchett's most engaging characters yet -- which is saying something! -- inasmuch as these people are allowed to experience and react to the mercilessly cruel world of Victorian London, which Pratchett is fearless about describing. This isn't a book for the squeamish, but then, neither is Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, which Pratchett describes as the genesis for this novel in an author's afterword.

Which is not to say that Dodger lacks the humor that makes Pratchett so beloved. This is a book that is every bit as funny as any Discworld novel, and includes Pratchett's signature trick of hiding the gravity of the world in absurdity, a very serious pill wrapped up in a fluffy, sweet confection.

What's more, Dodger features the most satisfying climax and denouement of any Pratchett novel of my recollection, a thunderous final chord that lingers and stretches. It's a masterwork from a treasure and hero of a writer, and it will delight you.

Dodger

Sailor Twain: don't fall in love with the mermaid of the Hudson valley

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:20:56 +0000

I wrote about Sailor Twain, Mark Siegel's beautiful, haunting serialized graphic novel when it began. Since then, the story of a New York steamship captain who is haunted by his love for a mermaid has run its course, and today it has been published in a single, handsome hardcover volume from FirstSecond.

Sailor Twain tells the story of Captain Twain of the Lorelei, which plies its trade up and down the Hudson valley, while the ship's owner, a dissolute Frenchman, seduces the wives of the gentry in the owner's cabin. Captain Twain's own beloved wife is wasting with some unspecified disease on land, and he works to raise money to send her to specialists. He's a good man, beset with tragedy, and he has forgotten how to write the poetry he once loved.

And then comes the day when he spies a mermaid clinging to the deck of the Lorelei, gravely wounded. He pulls her from the sea and into his cabin, and everything changes for Sailor Twain. The poetry comes back, and at his request, she never sings for him, never puts him under her siren spell. But still, he is hers.

Out spills a mystery, a story about seduction and duty, mythology and gender, dreams lost and dreams forgotten, and the lure of magic and wonder. Siegel's illustrations are charcoal drawings that fearlessly mix highly detailed, realistic depictions with cartoons, impressionistic smears, and caricature, and they are moody and grey and dreamlike, the perfect match for the story.

This is a stupendous work, a beautiful and sad and lovely thing. If you don't believe me, go read it online for free and see for yourself.

Sailor Twain

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:33:27 +0000

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There is the long-awaited sequel to Cat Valente's debut novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and it delivers on all the promise of that book, which is one of the strongest fantasy novels for young readers I've had the pleasure of getting lost in.

September, the young heroine of Circumnavigated, is back in the mundane world when she chases a green wind across the Nebraska prairie and returns to her beloved Fairyland. But it's not Fairyland as she remembered it: her shadow -- lost on a previous adventure -- has become the Hollow Queen of the Underworld, and is using her minion, the terrible Alleyman, to steal all of Fairyland's shadows and with them, Fairyland's magic. Equipped with a magic ration-book and a few scant adventurer's supplies, September runs to the Underworld for a series of Adventures, in an attempt to foil her shadow's evil and restore the natural order to Fairyland above.

But this is a Valente novel, so nothing is at seems. There's as much Phantom Tollbooth here as there is Narnia, a disorienting but familiar sense of story-ness as September travels slantwise through the underworld, shot through with menace and heroism. You never know what's coming next in Fell Beneath, and the most roundabout and whimsical turns always come back around to the main story and its payoff.

As masterful as the first novel, and with a reprise of Ana Juan's illustrations, this is a most worthy sequel. I'm also excited to note that there's an unabridged, DRM-free MP3CD audiobook edition, because this is one of those fairytales, like Gaiman's Stardust, that you want to have read aloud to you.

If your fancy is tickled by this, don't miss Deathless, Valente's fantasy for adults about the Siege of Leningrad.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

The Kairos Mechanism: a half-sequel to The Bone Shaker

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:00:14 +0000

Back in 2010, I reviewed Kate Milford's dreamy, Bradburian YA novel The Bone Shaker. And back in April, I blogged Kate Milford's Kickstarter pitch to fund a print-on-demand half-sequel to act as a bridge between Bone Shaker and its direct sequel The Broken Lands.

That Kickstarter was fully funded, and Milford used the money to produce a beautiful little print-on-demand paperback (printed and sold by the excellent McNally-Jackson bookstore in Manhattan) called The Kairos Mechanism. As with Boneshaker, Kairos is a haunting and inspiring young adult story set in 1913 small-town Missouri, and it tells the story of what happens when two boys appear out of a corn field with a stretcher bearing the freshly shot body of a man who died in the Civil War, 50 years previous. Filled with mystery, canonfire and the horrors of war and a villain who's nightmare-scary, Kairos Mechanism is a great interlude and a fine way to tide readers over after we finish the just-published Broken Lands.

The Kairos Mechanism

Introducing Elfquest at Boing Boing!

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:01:11 +0000

UDPATE: It's live! Read the first page.

It's my great pleasure to welcome Wendy and Richard Pini to Boing Boing, where they'll be publishing the next chapter of their long-running fantasy epic Elfquest—online-first for the first time!

You may also know Wendy from her anime-style retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of The Red Death — which even got her in trouble with Facebook over cartoon boobs.

The first page of Elfquest: The Final Quest's prologue will appear here at Boing Boing on Monday. In the meantime, catch up with the story so far (all 6000 pages of it!), free of charge, at the series' official homepage.

After the jump, I've pasted in part of an item I once wrote (for the late, lamented Ectoplasmosis (Update: reborn on tumblr!)) about why this comic series is so awesome. Then follows our press release.

• With Dave Sim’s Cerebus The Aardvark, it was among the first self-published comics to make it big, booting down the door for new talent the nation over. Its success as a graphic novel in mainstream bookstores helped infect the American mainstream with a European-esque appreciation for comics. Women read this! Women!
• Wendy Pini’s art is a melting pot of comics, manga and classical illustration. And she’s been at it since before most people had even heard of manga.
• The feral, omnisexual, hallucinogen-guzzling protagonists aren’t Tolkien-derived clichés, but a freakish medley of european lore, native american myth and hippy free love. And yet it isn't at all "edgy".
• No superheroes, magic wands or other arbitrary magics. It’s consistently plotted to tight rules of engagement and expertly crafted by the same wife-and-husband team thats been doing little else since 1977.
• It’s a neat blend of high fantasy and science fiction: the “elves” are aliens who wanted to impress us by appearing as angels, but got stuck in a genetic disguise by their slaves’ violent rebellion.
• All the fashions in it are either from the 1970s or the 1930s: everyone is either a pimp in furs and leather or something sculpted by Erté.
• Winnowill is the best arch-villainess since Cthulhu.
• 6,000 pages of full-color classic indy brilliance free of charge. Precedent set.
• Issue #17’s Elf Orgy. Great name for a punk band.

New Elfquest story to make online debut at Boing Boing!

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (September 5, 2012) — After decades of epic adventure, the heroes of Wendy and Richard Pini's indie hit Elfquest still haven't settled down. But for now, they'll be found at top blog Boing Boing, taking their place in its first ongoing narrative comic presentation.

"We're stoked to be able to take the next chapter in the series 'online-first'," said Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza. "For anyone who grew up reading indie comics or who loves a fantastic yarn, this is a dream come true."

Elfquest, a fantasy epic first published in 1978, replaced the era's Tolkien-esque tropes with a more modern—and less foofy—vision of point-eared peril. The story of Cutter's barbaric tribe of elves, and their quest to discover their cosmic origins, was one of the first independently-published comics to achieve mainstream success.

"Wendy and I never set out, thirty-five years ago, to take the indie comics world by storm," said Richard Pini. "But there the history is, in the sales and—more importantly—in the fandom that's stayed with us. Now we get to relive those scary, heady days once again as Elfquest makes its online debut to fans old and new."

Among other graphic novel firsts counted by Wendy and Richard: a massive female audience, publishing deals with both Marvel and DC Comics, and translation into dozens of languages.

Boing Boing is one of the top blogs in the U.S., with more than 4 million visitors a month and a long tradition of showcasing the unusual, the spectacular and the wildly talented.

The prologue to the new tale, to be published weekly over several months, gears up the decades-long story for its long-awaited next major chapter.

"Elfquest's World of Two Moons—its landscapes, inhabitants, dangers—is familiar yet always unpredictable territory," said Wendy Pini. "After five years' hiatus, I've come home to the Holt and to my main characters, Cutter and the Wolfriders, only to wreak storytelling havoc on them as never before. In 'Elfquest - the Final Quest' sturdy, stable characters will react in totally unexpected ways as they face devastating, unavoidable change. I'm scared and exhilarated by what's going to happen!"

Each page of the story will be published at boingboing.net on Mondays, beginning next week on September 10. New readers can read the story so far, free of charge, at http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html

Lord of the Rings: The Orcs' side of the story, told in LEGO

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:55:15 +0000

[Video Link] A short LEGO parody telling the Orcs' side of the story from Lord of the Rings, Directed and Animated by Kevin Ulrich.

Interview with Tim Powers

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:28:29 +0000

Rick Kleffel sez,

Tim Powers is one the founding fathers of steampunk, and a writer whose every book is superb. I drove down to San Bernardino City College to talk to him about his latest work, Hide Me Among the Graves, a secret supernatural history of the Pre-Raphaelite poets and painters.
He has a rather unique perspective on writing, history and fantasy that involves identifying events that seem as if they might have some supernatural aspect and then creating a backstory that ties them together. The Rossettis; Dante Gabriel Rossetti (poet and painter), Christina (poet), William and Maria are a perfect set of subjects.
We had a great time talking about how he put it all together.

08-27-12: A 2012 Interview with Tim Powers

MP3 Link (Thanks, Rick!)

The Coldest War: Ian Tregillis continues the Milkweed Triptych

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:17:15 +0000

Ian Tregillis's The Coldest War is the long-awaited sequel to his 2010 novel alternate WWII novel Bitter Seeds, a secret history that pitted a mad Nazi scientist who'd made a cadree of twisted, dieselpunk X-Men against the hidden warlocks of the British Isles, men who conferred with ancient, vast forces and traded the blood of innocents for the power to warp time and space.

Coldest War opens in the late 1960s, in which continental Europe has been entirely taken over by the Soviet Union, the UK locked in cold war with it. The Nazi supermen of the first volume were either captured by the Soviets and spirited away to a secret city for reverse-engineering, or they were killed, or they have gone underground in London.

With all the flair he showed in his debut novel, Tregillis continues the tale, bringing to it that same marvellous plotting, immersive sense of place, and above all, wonderful characters. One of the characters introduced in the first novel is a precognitive, and in this volume -- which revolves around her long plots -- we are shown that the power to see the future is the most corrupting power of them all. Tregillis's oracle is one of the most chilling psychopath villains of literature, a delicious monster who drives the book forward.

As with the earlier volume, I tore through this one in a day and a half. Tregillis is a major new talent in the field, and this is some of the best -- and most exciting -- alternate history I've read. Bravo.

The Coldest War

Fables 17: Inherit the Wind

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:52:10 +0000

The latest installment in Bill Willingham's astonishingly, consistently great, long-running graphic novel series Fables is volume 17: Inherit the Wind.

The premise of Fables lets its creators use any mythos, any tradition, any narrative, and mix and match as necessary, and Willingham and his illustrators continue to show that these possibilities are indeed endless. While the long arc of the story continues in this book -- movingly along very snappily and satisfyingly -- the real delight is that what that Oz, Dickens, and highbrow narrative theory all climb around on top of each other in a squirming puppy-pile of greatness.

If you've been following the story for all these volumes, then you can rest assured that the Fables are really cracking along -- but you can also be assured that you'll find all the characteristic funny asides, meandering noodly mini-tales that are there for the sheer exuberance of the thing, and sly asides are not set aside for mere plot.

I'm told that this story definitely has an end, but it's hard to imagine. As Fables subsumes literally every other story ever told, and as Willingham shows no sign of boring with his creations, I can easily imagine reading this until Willingham breathes his last (and may that day come a very, very long time in the future). If he keeps writing them, I'll keep buying 'em.

Fables 17: Inherit the Wind

If politics in Game of Thrones featured attack ads

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 08:09:49 +0000

Mike Mechanic from Mother Jones sez, "So, basically, the folks in our DC office were sitting around shooting the shit, and someone asked: What would it be like if they had Super-PACs in Westeros? Well, it turns out somebody knew somebody who knew someone, which allowed us to professionally produce these 'Game of Thrones Super-PAC Attack Ads.'"

Game of Thrones Attack Ads

Reasons to love you, Game of Thrones

Leigh Alexander — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:27:06 +0000

I became involved with the Game of Thrones TV series and books against all odds. After all, I don’t think of myself as a “geek” or a “nerd”, even if I am a video game journalist.

My interest is in unnatural universes and the potential in interactive fictional worlds, but the traditional wheelhouses of SF and high fantasy—and as terrified as I am of the people who won’t like to hear this, I’ll come out and say it—feel like something I grew out of. When I was adolescent, I ate up entire novel series about thrones and dragons and mages. In my work—where I look at the cultural context of the things we play, and the reasons we’re attracted to playing them—I click, tap and button-mash through countless products that owe everything to Tolkien.

Wandering though these exalted realms, I’m way tired of serving wenches and noble knights; weary of sack-clothed peasants and their thatched-roof cottages; sick to death of bikini armor, sigils, scale helms and sacks of holding. Enough, already.

So I thought it’d be more than safe to overlook Game of Thrones, a niche-bound, overcomplicated slice of knights-and-dragons that, for whatever reason, was becoming an ornately-armored TV show.

People will eat up all kinds of garbage; ‘media criticism’ often means gritting your teeth, convinced of your rightness, through the latest pop culture feeding frenzy until the blood has dissipated into the sea. This is what I was going to do about Game of Thrones, even though all of my friends—all of my people!—were stoked about it.

But then I heard about the boobs.

If you know nothing else about Game of Thrones, you know that there are boobs in every episode, that according to the TV show the world of Westeros (and the lands beyond the narrow sea!) seems preoccupied with relations after the canine manner. Even if you do not watch Game of Thrones and you never intend to, you’ve heard someone say that there are a lot of naked women, there are a lot of woman-subjugating sex scenes, and there'ss generally a lot of fleshy eye-candy in this show.

There are entire articles, from high-end magazines to lunatic blogs, which analyze, deride or scrutinize this particular element. And like any new media feminist, I got suckered into the debate before I’d read a stitch of text or seen a minute of the show. Voraciously eating up all of the discussion, the dread premonition settled in: I would end up reading all of George R.R. Martin’s books. I would tune in, with the fervor of religion, to the television series.

This happened to me before—and I take no pride in it—with the Twilight series. When something attracts so much online discussion (wondering why adult women would be attracted to an absurd tale of supernatural creatures warring over a clumsy, ordinary girl) I consumed it as thoroughly as any superfan. Twilight's disturbingly anti-feminist fantasy is compelling escapism, a deferral of obligations in the face of complicated things, a fear-response to overwhelming female empowerment rhetoric.

In an age where we’re whisking shame away from sex like so much stale old smoke, what woman wouldn’t daydream about being treasured by many even if she never puts out—even if she’s a powerless loser? In an era where it’s nearly a sisterly obligation for each woman to stand wholly on her own, who wouldn’t find some guilty pleasure in the admission of fear of male anger (facing the werewolf, Jacob) or of male sexuality (the chilly, chaste restraint of Edward)?

I kinda loved it. So in kind, I wanted to know: Why Game of Thrones, why HBO, why now?

I ate up the first book over the course of a work trip late last summer, and the first season of the show, always making sure to keep ahead in my reading. That way, a new episode carried with it the distinctly geeky pleasure of instant recognition: I already knew the television characters for who they were.

First, there's the brilliant casting. Every character reveal is a subtle delight, which alone seems a reason to keep watching: a fascinating translation from the text to the imagination and to sight. It shares this quality with the Harry Potter movies—fiction that captures the imagination creates a compulsive urge for imagery that’s more tactile, more relatable. Most of those who roleplay Harry Potter on the internet uses the series’ film actors for their avatar pictures, not the books’ official art nor any of the impressive fanart that exists.

There’s something about Game of Thrones that makes it more interesting than anything I’ve ever seen step over the crossmedia threshold. Martin’s writing style is frustratingly unsentimental—he’s like a lover who spends the night with his back to you. He describes incredibly complicated relationships in elaborate political climates; yet he creates empathy for these would-be rulers without giving us much insight into their inner worlds.

Events and behaviors are drawn as they are, and his skill is in letting his readers know plainly who the “good guys” are without writing anyone as particularly good. Much of the appeal of his novels lies in the pleasure of emotional inference; behavior hints at subtext, and you root quietly for your favorites, knowing that most of them will never gratify you, and may be yanked away at any moment for an inglorious death.

Well-cast and talented actors given such roles are light blades of clean light shone through a prism—suddenly everything bursts into color. Certainly, the show has taken liberties. As faultlessly loyal to the books as it often is, it feels somehow different; the actors add nuances to the book's characters without making meaningful change to their story arcs or to their dialogue.

How human written creatures are once we can look into their eyes! Game of Thrones is a fascinating essay in how television and literature are alike yet different; what does one medium excel at versus another, when telling the same story?

Back to the boobs, though, since that’s why most people know about Game of Thrones. If the fiction is as political as The Sopranos, and as socially complex as Mad Men, why does it need to rely on “sexposition,” the much-bandied term that refers to using erotic scenes as backdrops to illustrative revelations about plotlines or characters?

The fabric of Martin's universe, with multiple families, motives and allegiances, is pretty taxing. Perhaps HBO needs a way to keep people with short attention spans tuned in. Okay.

But through all of the banners and battlefields, through the trenchers of bacon and the heels of black bread—more on the books’ truly elaborate food fixation later, maybe—it’s a narrative about marginalized people triumphing in ironbound, ancient and ugly structures.

It’s a world that allows magic to creep in at its fringes, a variable that just might create future fortune for those who most need it. Whether they’re little-person “half-men” (as in the series’ best character, Tyrion Lannister, as portrayed by Emmy-winning Peter Dinklage), unwanted bastard sons, or frustrated women powerless in a patriarchal structure, Game of Thrones is about the heroism of fighting fate and the social order.

In The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum recently pointed out that Game of Thrones is just one of many high-concept television dramas fascinated with the nuances of old-fashioned “patriarchal subculture”. Meanwhile, our pop television breathlessly fans itself with White Girl Problems, 2 Broke Girls, Sh*t Girls Say, The New Girl, and—oh, wait, what’s that one?—oh yeah, Lena Dunham’s Girls.

Boobs on TV aren’t just boobs on TV at a time like this. Power structures are changing, so it’s not so surprising people would be drawn to a fantasy series about how power structures limit and exploit women—structures suddenly fragile in a fantasy world at war, ideologically and literally.

It’s the kind of thing that I feel rewarded by exploring instead of just talking about. You can be one of those people who calls "misogyny!" at the first sight of a naked woman on TV. Just as you can be one of those people—as I almost was—who sees Game of Thrones as just another sugary slice of fanservice.

Either way, you’d be missing out on something that’s not just a fascinating exercise in crossmedia storytelling, but probably has an under-addressed role in expressing our own culture's quiet revolutions.

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) is available from Amazon and bookstores.

Flowchart: what is Weird fiction?

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:00:36 +0000

Jeff Vandermeer sez, "As part of our celebration of weird fiction, centered around the release this week of The Weird -- 800,000 words of weird fiction from the past century--we've posted weird writer Stephen Graham Jones's flowchart showing the differences between weird fiction, horror, surrealism, and more...we're soliciting opinions. Did Jones nail it?"

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (Thanks, Jeff!)

Bordertown shirts

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:00:52 +0000

Ellen Kushner, co-editor of the multiple-award-nominated new Borderlands anthology Welcome to Bordertown, writes, "Have you dreamed of a Danceland T-shirt? Some Dancing Ferret beer mugs? A Khandroma (Tibetan girl skater gang) charm? Thanks to the many Bordertown authors who gave their kind permission to allow us to create logos for B-town places they invented! Designer Tara O'Shea has come up with some fabulous designs now up on CafePress for sale to the general public. Click on each design & scroll down to see not only T-shirts in many styles, but coffeemugs, sippy cups, postcards, tote bags, puzzles & more! With luck, high school students all over the country will be baffling their classmates with geekish glee."

traders' heaven (Thanks, Ellen!)

Locus Award winners: popular choice award for best sf/f of 2011

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:37:26 +0000

Locus Magazine has announced the winners of its annual Locus Award poll, a popular choice award for science fiction and fantasy. As always, it's a great guide to some of the best genre material from the preceding year. Here's the top novel lists, with links to some of my reviews:

Science Fiction Novel
* Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
* 11/22/63, Stephen King (Scribner; Hodder & Stoughton as 11.22.63)
* Embassytown, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)
* Rule 34, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
* The Children of the Sky, Vernor Vinge (Tor)
Fantasy Novel
* A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin (Bantam; Harper Voyager UK)
* Snuff, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)
* The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss (DAW; Gollancz)
* Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente (Tor)
* Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)

2012 Locus Award Finalists

7' fire-breathing, flying dragon built by RC airplane hobbyist

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:50:06 +0000

Franceso sez, "Rick Hamel, an American RC airplanes builder, created the Mythical Beast, a radio controlled fire-breathing dragon. It's powered by a Jetcat P80 Kerostart turbine, is over 7 feet long and has a wing span of 9 feet. Beside flying, this scratchbuilt dragon is able to breath fire thanks to a liquid propane and a stun gun circuit. Mythical Beast won Best of Show at the Weak Signal event held in Toledo a few weeks ago."

Drago Volante Sputafuoco Radiocomandato - RC Dragon (Thanks, Francesco!)