Posts Tagged: Fantasy

Art

Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor

By Aidan Moher April 19th, 2012

So, I do a google search for “fantasy women art” and this shit pops up:

Fantasy Women

We’ve all seen it before, and it’s fucking absurd. Do any three of those women look like they’re ready to take a sword-swing from those angry warriors behind them? Do they look like they could stand any sort of a chance in a pitted battle against even a moderately armed and armoured child?

No, no they do not.

So, in comes one of my new favourite websites: Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a collection of artwork from around the web that features female characters wearing reasonable, functional and cool looking outfits. Like, you know, the kind that you generally find on male characters?

Art by Alex Alice:

Art by Alex Pascenko Read More »

Art

New Covers for Nights of Villjamur and City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton

By Aidan Moher April 18th, 2012
NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR by Mark Charan NewtonCITY OF RUIN by Mark Charan Newton

I’m fairly certain that Newton and the art team at Tor UK are just trolling me at this point. An old geezer and a melancholy Dashboard Confessional fan who doesn’t even know how to properly wear a bag with a shoulder strap? Le sigh. I’m far more interested in the fact that Newton spent some time combing through the first volume, Nights of Villjamur, and smoothing out some of the wrinkles:

There’s more, though: I’ve actually made quite a few (over a hundred) changes to Nights of Villjamur. Call it the ambitions of a first-time author, call it crap writing, but there were a few points of the text in this book that I believed caused a clunky experience. I’ve managed to iron many, many of these out, thankfully. It’s only a word or two here, a line there – not a complete re-edit, mind you, but enough to give me peace of mind that the most ridiculous of the excesses have now been removed.

This sort of thing happens all the time when authors are given a chance to tinker with their own work (David Anthony Durham recently mentioned that he’s done the same thing to the first volume of his Acacia trilogy). Nevertheless, it would be interesting to compare the revision.

News

Brandon Sanderson talks A Memory of Light, reveals Wheel of Time mysteries

By Aidan Moher April 17th, 2012

TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (eBook)One Wheel of Time fan recently had the chance of a lifetime. Known as “Luckers” on the Dragonmount forums, this fan sat down with Brandon Sanderson and railed off a series of questions regarding some of The Wheel of Time‘s mysteries, both big and small. Most of the questions were answered with “RAFO” (Read and Find Out), or some variation thereof, but others were met with refreshing honesty (or devilish smiles, which tell almost as much). It’s a great read for fans of The Wheel of Time who’re just itching to get their hands on the final volume in the series, A Memory of Light, which releases early in 2013.

There are, of course, spoilers out the wazoo, up-to-and-including Towers of Midnight, and, some might consider, beyond. So, you’ve been warned. Read More »

Feature Article

“Embedded With the Enemy?” by Jeff Salyards

By Jeff Salyards April 16th, 2012

Scourge of the Betrayer by Jeff SalyardsI’ve always been fascinated by embedded journalists. Chronicling a military campaign right in the middle of the action rather than second- or third-hand, at a safe remove. It’s hard to get more visceral than that—dust in the face, grit in the teeth, adrenaline thumping, shadows jumping, blood splattering immediacy, all while trying to just stay alive long enough to somehow give what happened some kind of coherency. Whether book or article, writing is often a solitary, quiet affair, but writing front and center on a military endeavor changes the whole ball game.

Being a self-professed geek (at least 12th level), I naturally take observations like this and start plugging them into a fantasy scenario. How would this play out with a quill and ink on a different world, and how could I complicate it to make such a chronicler’s life even more hellish than anything your modern embedded journalist might endure? I’m a cruel bastard like that.

Now, that phrase “embedded journalist” is a recent invention, but the notion isn’t—Jean de Joinville was a crusader groupie 700 years ago. And Glen Cook cooked up a ripping yarn about a chronicler in a mercenary company—you might have heard of it—so the idea isn’t unique to fantasy either. I had to figure out how to differentiate my take, so I resorted to that most ancient and venerable of writerly tactics, the “what if” game… Read More »

Feature Article

Weekend Reading: Women in Science Fiction & Fantasy

By Aidan Moher April 14th, 2012

Women in SF&FSince the beginning of April, Fantasy Cafe has been running a wonderful series of articles for Women in SF&F Month, with the hopes of exploring and celebrating the impact that women (as authors and characters) have had on our favourite genre. In addition to this, there is some discussion of the politics in the genre, gender equality and reviewer bias.

Kristen, editor of Fantasy Cafe, explains the driving force behind Women in SF&F Month:

This particular subject is one I’ve felt pretty strongly about for a while now. A few years ago, I noticed that most of the fantasy and science fiction books being talked about on many blogs and forums were written by men and started questioning whether or not there was a significant number of women writing these genres. Since then, I’ve of course found that there are many female authors of fantasy and science fiction books and it’s become very important to me to make sure their work is recognized and discussed. Usually I just do this quietly by reading and reviewing a lot of books written by women, but after the topic came up again I decided I wanted to do more to showcase the many women who are writing and reviewing all kinds of different types of fantasy and science fiction. So I started asking around to see if there was any interest in being a part of this and have spent the past 2 or 3 weeks gathering volunteers and posts.

So, here are some of the articles from the series that have caught my eye:

Vanishing the Elephant by Stina Leicht:

Addressing touchy subjects with story is one of Science Fiction and Fantasy’s best traditions. Sure, not all Sci-fi and Fantasy does this. (Some novels are intended to be fluffy and they do have their place.) However, I feel the main thing that sets Sci-fi and Fantasy apart from other genres is its capacity to make the reader think, in addition to SFF readers’ willingness (perhaps even eagerness) to contemplate complex subjects.

Elizabeth Bear, author of Range of Ghosts, on how you can support women who write SF&F:

[T]he problem is not that women are not writing science fiction, or that science fiction by women is not being published. It’s that a certain segment of fandom doesn’t pay enough attention to notice.

As you might imagine, I find this intensely frustrating. It’s as if one or two women in each generation of writers are anointed to become token representatives of our gender in the general critical discourse, and the rest–somehow never get talked about very much.

The good news is, this is easy to fix.

Read More »