Marc Aplin's Blog, page 217
July 26, 2014
Chinese ‘Lord of the Rings’ Covers FTW!
They’ve only just come to the attention of the masses, but the following Lord of the Rings book covers were designed by artist Jian Guo almost a year ago now. Jian designed the covers for a competition run by Chinese Publishers, Wenjing Publishing. Guo is well known online for his unique style of art that […]
July 25, 2014
Is It Better To Be A Blank Slate Or To Have Some Character?
In a recent blog post, Mark Lawrence commented on the trade offs of creating a blank slate character versus a more defined, idiosyncratic character. In the post (and I highly recommend reading the entire thing), Mark writes that for a number of fantasy readers, plot is of primary importance. For such readers, a vanilla protagonist […]
First Strange Chemistry Author Snapped Up!
A few months back the SFF community took a huge blow when we lost the Strange Chemistry imprint. Although the label hadn’t been making the kind of revenue it needed to survive, its authors were getting attention through largely positive reader reviews and a fair share of award nominations . This, of course, made the […]
Batman if Square Enix got their hands on him…
There was recently a lot of talk about how Ben Affleck would look as Batman. Most people thought he’d probably just about pull off the look, but weren’t too sure about how his acting would hold up. Anyway, we’re not talking movies today. Imagine, instead, if Square Enix had the money and desire to license […]
July 24, 2014
Worldbuilding: Food For The People
We all need food to live. Even in fiction, food plays a part in most stories, whether it is a simple supper at a boarding house or a grand wedding or coronation feast. In fantasy settings, most of the time it doesn’t matter where the food comes from or how it was prepared. What does […]
Jackson Facebooks new ‘Hobbit’ poster
Peter Jackson decided to get us Hobbit fans all excited yesterday by releasing a special SDCC edition of “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” poster on his Facebook page. Without any explanation or ‘check out this piece of awesomeness’ type comment he simply asked: “Anyone else excited about San Diego Comic Con?” That […]
July 23, 2014
Rjurik Davidson Interviews Ben Peek
Rjurik Davidson is the author of the novel, Unwrapped Sky, recently released by Tor in the US and UK. A novel that SciFiNow noted “can go toe-to-toe with China Miéville’s best,” and was noted as an “ambitious debut,” by Pop Mythology, it is set in the ancient city of Caeli-Amur. The novel follows three characters […]
The Oathbreaker’s Shadow FINALLY gets US release date
We at Fantasy-Faction were big fans of Amy McCulloch’s The Oathbreaker’s Shadow. In fact, we rated it as one of our top fantasy titles of 2013. It seems we were right in doing so as well, because when I attended the Young Adult Literature Convention a few weeks back Amy was getting lots of attention […]
July 22, 2014
Combating Cynicism
I was watching the most recent Karate Kid film, the one with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith – I got to the scene with the chopsticks where Chan is eating and Smith comes to ask about the hot water. Smith watches Chan as he tracks a fly with his chopsticks, the tension builds for a […]
July 21, 2014
Rogues edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
G.R.R.M. states in his introduction that’s the “Rogues is not meant to be a fantasy anthology” but I picked it up for the authors that I knew from being a fantasy reader, and I believe most readers will, so that’s where I will focus. The character type is so ingrained in the fantasy genre and […]
