The Archers and The Sacred Tree: A Fable
Once upon a time, a very long time ago when there were wolves in the forests and the future could be discerned through the observation of the flight of birds and the entrails of beasts
Tagged: fantasy
Saying Something Important: The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot
set aside a couple hours in the screaming and the chaos that is surrounding us now and watch The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot
Stakes and Satiability – Part 3
Looking for the beginning of my Jane Austen-Bram Stoker mashup? Part 1 Part 2 After having spent a fitful night asleep at his desk tormented by dreams which ranged from blackest nightmare to flights...
Stakes and Satiability- Part 2
“Sisters are prone to jealousy, Mr. Blackabee. Some cannot bear to know that one of them wants something that they cannot all have.”
Stakes and Satiability – Part 1
Here you go, a vampire story in the style of Jane Austen, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Sunday Morning! The City & The City
A fellow who doesn’t read much in the way of speculative fiction reads a wild novel about overlapping “unseen” cities, murder, and intrigue- and emerges with his mind in knots but still intact.
Adventure Time?
I’ve heard it said that at its heart, science fiction is really just an adventure story.
While this may be true, I don’t believe “adventure” is the reason I enjoy the genre.
Survey for League Roleplayers.
To the peeps who expressed an interest I need some questions answered for my own information. You can either post the response here, or if you’d prefer email them to me. The responses will...
Sketching Out States in Fantasy: Two Cases from Avlis
As promised here are two cases from Avlis of magic equipped societies. I will begin with a (moderately) short description of each state, then compare the place of magic and its political economy. This...
The Arcana of Political Economy: A Follow-Up
Author’s Note: This post is a follow-up to my original post on the political economy of magic. It’s highly recommended that you read that original post and the discussion thread after. I’m happy to...
The Political Economy of Low-Cost Extradimensional Energy
Reading through Taylor Martin’s excellent blog pointed me in the direction of a Dan Nexon post at the Duck of Minerva. Both Martin and Nexon have interesting takes on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of...
A Wrinkle in Time
Austin Allen has a lovely post on Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time up at Big Think: L’Engle insisted that her novel be published as a children’s book, but she nearly gave up on...
Resurrection of a book club – The Darkness that Comes Before
My sincere apologies to everyone who was, er, participating in this bookclub. With recent job changes and the holidays and some other things it sort of fell off the face of the earth. I’m...
Fantasy and High Fantasy
Alyssa Rosenberg and Adam Serwer both have responses up to my post on fantasy and the Anglosphere. Adam correctly notes that what I’m writing about in particular is “high fantasy” – a sub-genre of...
Fantasy and the Anglosphere
When I published my fantasy piece in the Atlantic it was linked (reproduced?) by Richard Dawkins’ site and a number of the atheists in the commentariat had scathing things to say about fantasy literature....
Do Fantasy Books Really Need To Be As Long And Meandering As My Posts?
(Minor spoilers for the Harry Potter series and medium spoilers for the A Song of Ice and Fire series contained within.) In the wake of the death of Google Reader (which is only mostly...
The White Luck Warrior (and a new fantasy book club)
Don’t worry, no spoilers in this review. I just finished R. Scott Bakker’s novel The White Luck Warrior (Available at Amazon) a couple days ago. It’s the second book in his Aspect-Emperor trilogy and the fifth...
Book Review: The Magician King
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians posed the question “What if your childhood fantasy turned out to be real?” Quentin Coldwater had always been obsessed with magic, and particularly with Fillory, a Narnia-like land from a...
What’s Really Wrong with ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’
~by Ryan B. Lots of spoilers for the whole series, up to and including A Dance with Dragons. Reader beware. Now that we’re past our contretemps of the last few days, maybe it’s time...
