Christopher Tuthill's Blog, page 10

Tolkien Conference Guest of Honor Nicholas Birns

I sent some questions to our Tolkien Conference guest, Professor Nicholas Birns, you can read his responses below. Go to the conference page to register or submit a proposal.

Guest of Honor Nicholas Birns

Wild Cards

For most of my life I’ve read copious amounts of fantasy and science fiction. I recall the Wild Cards series coming out in the late 80s; an acquaintance of mine sang the book’s praises, but the idea of comic book characters was something that at the time, as a 16 year old, I felt I was outgrowing. Maybe I was self-conscious reading Batman and Superman and the X-Men as an older teen, and advertising that I still loved those characters seemed unwise. Though of course, I read them at home, away from my peers.

During the recent holiday break, I was looking for something light to read, and picked up the first volume of Wild Cards, that series I had shunned in my young, foolish days. If George RR Martin edited it, it must be good, I reasoned. I’ve been wanting to read Winds of Winter for some years now, but alas, it seems I’ll have to wait for that. I have read almost everything else George published, so I gave it a try.

How I wish I could go back 30+ years and tell sixteen year old me to read Wild Cards. I was the perfect demographic for it back then. I guess I still am. What a fun, crazy ride I had with these stories. I didn’t love all of them, but there were enough good ones to keep me interested, and the ones I didn’t like as much still had some cool elements.

Wild Cards, for those of you unfamiliar with this now-32-volume series, is a shared world alternate universe filled with superheroes, in which, at the end of World War II, an alien virus outbreak turns a large segment of humanity into mutants. It kills some of them outright, horribly disfigures others (known as Jokers) and turns some into superhumans (aces). It’s a funny, neat idea, full of noirish and comic elements, enough to keep an adult comic book reader happy during these long winter nights. I particularly enjoyed Roger Zelazny’s entry, as well as Martin’s. I don’t want to spoil the stories, they are too fun. If you enjoy comic books, but want something a little darker and more adult themed, give these books a try.

I’d never read something like this collection before. I loved the idea of a shared world in which lots of writers try their hand in storytelling in the same setting. I also really enjoyed the way these comics were written with adults in mind. I’d never seen this before in fiction, except perhaps when I read the novelization of the 1989 Batman movie as a teen. These stories reminded me of Frank Miller’s work with Batman, and Alan Moore’s many legendary tales of Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and others. I don’t regularly read comic books these days, but this first volume in the Wild Cards series made me want to revisit my favorites, and maybe read some more in the Wild Cards series.

The Wikipedia entry for this series says that Martin and his friends started the series after playing a GURPS style RPG based on superheroes, which makes perfect sense. The detailed backstories in each tale in this volume are a perfect fit with an RPG campaign of this style. Probably most people who have played in a campaign thought of turning it into a book (what a great idea!), but leave it to uncle George to actually pull it off. I was also reminded of the wonderful Dragonlance books, which were similarly based on a D and D campaign. I may also have to try Thieves World, which is a series I never read, but which was also a shared world.

There are so many books, and never enough time for me to read all my favorites, but I’m glad I gave this series a try. Winter is the perfect time to stay inside and curl up with a book. You’ll have fun with Wild Cards, I think. I just hope Winds of Winter comes out soon.

New York Tolkien Conference

If you have an interest in Tolkien, or more generally in fantastic fiction, consider joining us at the New York Tolkien Conference at Baruch College this June! The details are at the conference site below. It’s always a grand time, with interesting speakers and friendly people. It’s also a chance to present your work, if you’re so inclined. If you have any questions, comment here on this post and I’ll respond, or send me a message. Hope to see some of you in June!

NY Tolkien Conference Returns in 2024

Return to Dark Tower

I’ve been playing this one with my son over the past couple of days. Wow, what a great game!

Happy Holidays

I like to take a break from social media and blogging and things like that through the holidays. I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Joyous Solstice, a Happy New Year, and may any other holiday you celebrate bring you peace and joy with those you love.

I’ve been working on lots of different things, hopefully some of them will see publication in the new year. Perhaps I’ll share some of these works in progress here; I had planned one book for release next September, but my publisher seems to be defunct now, so I’ll search for a new venue in 2024.

In the meantime, please enjoy this holiday song, “Run With the Fox,” from Alan White and Chris Squire, two great musicians who have passed on. This time of year I think we all remember friends and family who shared past holidays with us, and who are no longer here. I like to focus on the good times we had together and how lucky I am to have shared such moments. Peace to everyone reading this.

Philip K Dick

Every Saturday I have a ritual, in which I go to the library used book sale. I always stop first at the science fiction section and see if there is anything by Philip K Dick, who is one of my favorite writers. I haven’t found one in the roughly eight years I’ve been doing this.

This week, for the first time, I took my three year old. I carried him into the store and put him down. He grabbed a board book that was on display. We went to the Science Fiction section. He ran to a random area of the shelf and grabbed a book off the shelf and held it up to me. “Get this one daddy,” he said. “You can read it to me, too. I want this one.” Here’s the book.

The Zap Gun, by Philip K. Dick

I’ve read dozens of his books. This felt like the start of some crazed scene in one of his novels to me. Perhaps the boy was directed there by some outside intelligence. Maybe aliens planted it there. Or another dimension is seeping into ours. Perhaps an unlikely coincidence. I think I’ll be taking the lad again.

Shane MacGowan

A friend gave me a tape of Pogues songs when I was in college, back in the mid-90s. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, but at the same time, incredibly familiar. Irish traditional music with a punk edge and a poetic lyricism that many songwriters attempt and few carry off. I was dumbfounded. I went out and bought everything they had released.

The more I learned about the Pogues, the more I hoped to see them. The problem was that they no longer existed, like so many of the bands I grew up loving and listening to. Shane was unreliable, I read, and had split with his bandmates. This was news I was not happy to hear. But I bought Shane’s new records, recorded with a band he called ‘The Popes.’ The Snake was a great album, I loved it–it featured a hilarious track called “The Church of the Holy Spook” that I enjoyed playing at full volume. I liked some of the Pogues songs more, but that record was important to me; I’d been waiting for a new album, rejoiced when it came, and played it for months, to the irritation of friends riding around with me in my junker of a Dodge Colt.

The other albums the Pogues recorded were a revelation to me. Impossibly good, each one better than the last. Songs like Navigator, and The Sick Bed of Cuchulain, A Pair of Brown Eyes, Dirty Old Town, The Irish Rover were the soundtrack of my twenties. I listened a lot to other music too, but the Pogues were something special. The music is wonderful but the heart of it was Shane and his poetry. He was such a writer! Singing of mythology and death and gambling and drinking with wit and charm and humor, and making this unlikely blend seem natural and easy to do. Read some of his lyrics sometime–they stand up well after all these years, even without the aid of the band. I have a feeling his songs will be sung long after all of us are gone.

And of course, there is no better drinking music. Brown Eyes begins: “One summer evening drunk to hell, I sat there nearly lifeless” and every time I heard it I burst out laughing, usually with a bottle in my hand.

I tried and failed to see them when they reformed in 2002. I got tickets the instant they went on sale and I waited for the day excitedly. My girlfriend and I would see the great musician in person, on St. Patrick’s in New York. What could be better?

We drank a lot of beers before going to the venue, but when we arrived we found a Xerox sheet on the locked doors: “THE POGUES SHOW TONIGHT IS CANCELLED.” Shane was mercurial and not so reliable with shows. He wasn’t healthy. Had it been some lesser artist, almost any other artist, I would have been angry and complained. But this was Shane MacGowan. I was crushed, but not angry with him, only sad I didn’t get to see him. We went and had some more pints of Guinness and played the Pogues on a jukebox.

Eventually, I saw him in 2008. It was worth the wait. Maybe it wasn’t the heyday of the Pogues, but I didn’t care at all. I got to see him, the peerless songwriter, the guy who in my opinion is up there with Dylan.

“Did the old songs taunt or cheer you?
And did they still make you cry?
Did you count the months and years
Or did your teardrops quickly dry?”

–Thousands are Sailing

The lyric above always reminded me of my Irish grandmother, a woman I never knew, who died before I was born. An immigrant who arrived in New York when she was in her early twenties. Anytime I asked my father about her, he got very serious and spoke in reverent tones. She was very sick with Parkinson’s from the time he was a young boy. Confined to a wheelchair and ill, she was taken care of by my grandfather. My dad wasn’t big on sharing a lot of detail of his early life, but I know he grew up in borderline poverty, and her illness pained him even many decades later. It must have been hard to see the person he loved most so helpless. I could see in his eyes how much he cared for her, what an important force she was in his life. He was a kind, gentle soul, and I credit the woman she must have been for that. I’m sorry I didn’t know her.

I did know her brothers, however. I recall them coming to the house when I was a young boy. They had brogues and smoked and drank and laughed constantly and I thought they were rock stars. I’ll never forget their visits. I wish I knew them better because they seemed like an awful lot of fun.

My father also told me of going back to her hometown in Ireland in the early 1950s, when he was in the Air Force. He arrived at the bus station in her little town, where a woman greeted him, saying, “You must be Mary’s boy.” Indeed he was. They had been told he might visit, and I guess the town was small enough that his reputation preceded him.

As an adult I gained Irish citizenship. I love Irish music and poetry, and feel proud to be Irish, but have never had the chance to go to Ireland. I’ve gotten citizenship for my kids, as well. Someday we’ll all go and visit that beautiful island, and drink to my father, and my grandmother, and to Shane. May they all rest in peace. Thank you, Shane, you crazy, beautiful, poetic soul. Your exquisite songs of love and longing and hope helped many of us understand where we came from a little better.

If I should fall from grace with God
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I’m buried in the sod
But the angels won’t receive me

Let me go, boys, let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud, where the rivers all run dry

–If I Should Fall From Grace With God

Memoir ’44

We are heading into winter, perhaps the best time of year for board games!

My 11 year old is crazy about tabletop games, and World War Two games in particular. He really loves games with minis, so we have tried a number of those in many genres, but one of his very favorites for years now has been Axis and Allies. The only problem with that game is its epic length. It can take a long time just to set it up, and the game itself can take several sessions of a couple hours, over several days.

Enter Memoir ’44. Made by Days of Wonder, this game includes 15 different scenarios from D-Day. It’s a card based game with lots of die rolls, and beautifully produced miniatures. We’ve played four of the scenarios so far, and each of them took only around a half hour to complete. It’s lively and fun and if you enjoy wargames but don’t have three or four hours to play one, I would strongly recommend this game. You’ll probably like it so much that you’ll end up playing more than one scenario in a session, anyway.

The game is played in turns during which a player activates a card, which allows them to move troops on one or more sections of the board. You can then engage the enemy by rolling dice, subtracting points for various obstacles like trees, bunkers, barbed wire, and so forth.

I really loved playing this one with my son, and he has enjoyed it immensely as well. It makes great gift, and won’t break the bank– I got a copy of it for around $50. There is enough variety to make each scenario feel quite different; Days of Wonder has also created many different expansions, so if you enjoy this one and play all fifteen scenarios enough that you want more variety, you will never run out of more to play if you’re so inclined. There are also expansions that allow up to eight players, which sounds like it would be lots of fun.

I’d rate this one five out of five stars. So much fun to play, and beautifully designed.

Washington Irving

“My father was always scrupulous in exacting our holydays, and having us around him on family festivals…It was the policy of that good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world, and I value this delicious home feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent could bestow.” –from The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, by Washington Irving

This is a favorite quote of mine, from one of my favorite books. If you’ve never read the Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, I give it my highest recommendation. I live not far from Irving’s home in Sunnyside, which I pass on my way to work, and I think of him often during my commute. There is something magical about his stories that captures the essence of the area, especially as it must have been in those bygone days.

Happy Thanksgiving, and my warmest wishes to all for a peaceful holiday season.

I Got a Name

I’ve always loved Jim Croce’s music, and I’ve been thinking of this one a lot. It’s a poignant father/son song, and though Jim didn’t write the words, you can feel the emotion. His father had a dream of being a singer, one that Jim lived out. To me this is a proud declaration of a guy who is doing his best, working hard, keeping his head down.

At one point he sings of his song, as smooth as honey:

“I’ve got a song/And I carry it with me, and I sing it loud/If it gets me nowhere, I go there proud.”

Now that’s some mantra to live by.

“Like the fool I am and I’ll always be, I’ve got a dream.”

Yes, don’t we all. The message comes down to us, clear through the decades, and I think of it every time I submit a story or a manuscript. I don’t even care anymore if they get published. I’m not going to stop trying.

Croce had so much well deserved success, in a life tragically cut short. In a sad twist of fate, this song was released just after he died. I feel like this one is a hymn for all the dreamers out there, doing things because you have stories to tell and songs to sing and things to create, whether they are met with great accolades or total indifference. God bless all of you. Keep on working: you got a name.