K.M. Alexander's Blog, page 25

Raunch Review: Firefly

Raunch Reviews is a series about profanity. Not real profanity, but speculative swearing. Authors often try to incorporate original, innovative forms of profanity into our own fantastical works as a way to expand the worlds we build. Sometimes we’re successful. Often we’re not. In this series, I examine the faux-profanity from various works of sci-fi and fantasy, judge their effectiveness, and rate them on an unscientific and purely subjective scale. This is Raunch Reviews, welcome.

[image error]Raunch Review: Firefly
The Author: Joss Whedon
Work in Question: Firefly
The Profanity: “Gorram”

Joss Whedon’s much-beloved Firefly did a lot of fascinating things with language. The mixing of refined Mandarin Chinese with backcountry dialects helped layer a world with a myriad of linguistic possibilities. Throughout the series, we see this intermingling of language with many characters shifting between English and Mandarin as they talk. While many bits of “profanity” are uttered in Mandarin, the word we’re looking at today isn’t one of them.

The minced oath “gorram” crops up a lot. Unlike the interplay of language, this term happens to be more of an exploration of linguistic drift borrowing from a more blasphemous origin and becoming a bit of a minced oath. (Not unlike “by golly,” “gadzooks,” “holy moley,” and “jeepers,” before it.) From a language standpoint, drift is essential. The English we speak today would sound like a foreign language to English speakers from five hundred years ago. So it’s easy to see how five hundred years in the future common parlance has shifted and corrupted further. Language tends to drift towards ease—words are simplified and shortened; binary becoming singular is a common occurrence. We see that with “gorram”—a drifting portmanteau of “god” and “damnation.”

As it stands as both a minced oath, a curse, and an example of linguistic drift “gorram” is a fantastic example of faux profanity. While you couldn’t do it for the entire show—it’d be impossible to understand—it’s nice to see little touches like this sprinkled throughout. They help a world feel as though it’s evolved; it gives it a sense of history.

So “gorram” does Firefly justice. But, you might be interested to know while generally attributed to Firefly, that short-run series wasn’t the first use of “gorram” in the English lexicon. Its origins are actually much older.

Score: [image error][image error][image error][image error][image error] (5.0)

A Shopping List

“I don’t begin a novel with a shopping list – the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it.”

—William Gibson

From Conversations with William Gibson edited by Patrick A. Smith. While I love this quote, this particular interview conducted in 2011 by David Wallace-Wells is excellent as a whole. An extended version of the exchange is below but you can read the whole thing over on The Paris Review, “William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211.” (Paywall.)

David Wallace-Wells: How do you begin a novel?

Gibson: I have to write an opening sentence. I think with one exception I’ve never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed.

David Wallace-Wells: You won’t have planned beyond that one sentence?

Gibson: No. I don’t begin a novel with a shopping list—the novel becomes, shopping list as I write it. It’s like that joke about the violin maker who was asked how he made a violin and answered that he started with a piece of wood and removed everything that wasn’t a violin. That’s what I do when I’m writing a novel, except somehow I’m simultaneously generating the wood as I’m carving it.

E. M. Forster’s idea has always stuck with me—that a writer who’s fully in control of the characters hasn’t even started to do the work. I’ve never had any direct fictional input, that I know of, from dreams, but when I’m working optimally I’m the equivalent of an ongoing lucid dream. That gives me my story, but it also leaves me devoid of much theoretical or philosophical rationale for why Me story winds up as it does on the page. The sort of narratives I don’t trust, as a reader, smell of homework.

FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty Images

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Crafting Cuttac, Part 1

My free map brushes for fantasy maps are designed to replicate specific eras of cartographic development—usually aping styles from the 16th or 17th centuries. As a result, they tend to be focused on line art, which works quite well with early printmaking. While I love those old styles of maps dearly, I’ve wanted to try something a little different. Stretch my creative muscle as it were. I’ve recently hit a few knots in my revisions of Gleam Upon the Waves, and I find that I brainstorm better when I can channel some of my energy into something creative, and it’s not uncommon for me to make random maps.

I’ve been kicking around some ideas for a new writing project. So I decided to work on a map for that setting. For now, I’ve given it the working title, Cuttac—mainly because it sounded cool in my head. I thought it’d be fun to do all this worldbuilding publically, so welcome to Crafting Cuttac, a new series where I reveal the process of how I develop a fictional world.

Stage One – Continents & Islands

Using my tablet, I sketched out the continents and islands of the world of Cuttac. I focused on vast oceans and fewer chunky continents in favor of something a little more dynamic and fluid. I kept the brush small (2px, Soft Round) to highlight the details within the world. (You can click on any of these images to view them larger.)

[image error] The basic outline of the landmasses on Cuttac.

It’s Just a Color…

The Colour Out of Space​ is arguably one of the best—if not the best—H. P. Lovecraft stories. Plus, this is directed by cult-filmmaker Richard Stanley. (I highly recommend his film Hardware and the documentary Lost Soul, which tells the story of Stanley’s attempt to create a film based on H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau.) And to top it all off, this is being produced by the folks who made Mandy—one of my favorite campy horror flicks!

I’m sold. Sign. Me. Up.

The Murder of Deadspin

The internet is ephemeral. It’s always seething and shifting. Nothing remains the same from day to day, month to month, or year to year. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last few days in regards to the very public murder of my formerly favorite blog: Deadspin. I’m not going to recap the whole incident. You can read about its demise here and here and here and here and here. It’s been a thing. But it’s a thing to which I can relate—I’ve gone through an acquisition, and I’ve watched startups collapse around me, I’ve seen friends and colleagues go through the same both good and bad.

I have some thoughts.

Great Hill Partners (the private equity firm that bought Deadspin), G/O Media (the company that operates Deadspin’s blog network), and Jim Spanfeller (the CEO) made a purchase that was, in its essence, a talent acquisition. But either they didn’t realize it was a talent acquisition or they didn’t understand what to do with the talent they acquired. Most likely both. They failed to recognize that fans (myself included, Deadspin had been my homepage for years) didn’t go to Deadspin to read a generic sports blog. We went to Deadspin to read articles on all manner of things from writers we loved. Sport was a part of that, but it certainly wasn’t all of that. And that was its draw. There are a hundred other charmless sports sites that bloviate ceaselessly about sports—they exist for those who want them. Loyal readers didn’t want Deadspin to “stick to sports.” We wanted Deadspin to stick to Deadspin.

Loyal readers didn’t want Deadspin to “stick to sports.” We wanted Deadspin to stick to Deadspin.

Over the years, the site made a name for itself with a brash tone and a punk attitude. They punched up, made stands, took sides, and spoke truth to power. That was something that resonated with its fans. It set them apart from everyone else. Anyone could see that trying to force them to be something they weren’t would have backfired. Smart and capable leadership should have known that before the purchase was finalized.

As you’d expect, when a company doesn’t understand its talent acquisition, things went poorly. A longtime editor, Barry Petchesky, was fired when he spurned mandates that went against the site’s ideology. The staff revolted and refused to capitulate to management’s ridiculous demands, and they left en masse. Of course they left. They should have left.

Good on them.

I applaud and admire the staff of Deadspin for sticking to their principles. It’s uncommon to find that level of integrity in online media today—especially in blogging, and particularly in sports blogging. My gut tells me that the Deadspin I knew as a fan will never be back. That’s the nature of our everchanging web. But often, when this sort of thing happens, the result ends up becoming something greater. The talent goes elsewhere. The hydra spawns two new heads. Something new arises from the ashes, and it is often something better, with a wider reach and a tremendous impact. So while I mourn the death of my favorite blog, I cannot wait to see what the writers and editors do next.

Deadspin was a good website.

Deadspin forever.

Three Great Horror Reads for Halloween 2019

It’s Halloween today, the perfect time to curl up with a good scary story. I’ve been reading horror since I was a kid, and I wanted to share three of my favorites. Since I’ve read a lot of good horror, I figured it’d be best to limit myself to books I’ve read over the last few years. You can see my reading list for 2017 and 2018 here on my blog, and you can view my current list for 2019 over on Goodreads. So what three did I choose? Why, let me show you…

[image error] A Lush And Seething Hell

by John Hornor Jacobs

I’ve just started into my reading of A Lush and Seething Hell, a book consisting of two masterful novellas of cosmic horror. The first, The Sea Dreams it was the Sky was one of my favorite books from last year [See my review here], and I’m finding myself falling into John’s beautiful and haunting prose all over again. Lyrical and evocative while remaining stakrly human, I cannot wait to dive into the second story, My Heart Struck Sorrow. I’d also reccommend John’s weird west series that begins with The Incorruptibles.

 

[image error] Mapping the Interior

by Stephen Graham Jones

Jones is a modern master of horror and always approaches the genre in unique ways; Mapping the Interior is no exception. Told from 12-year old Junior’s perspective, the story is one part family-struggle and one part ghost-story all woven with a heartfelt earnestness that’s easy to believe and hard to shake. It’s a book about childhood, about family, about heritage, about legacy, and the cost and ramification of all four. The ending devastated me. I’d also recommend Jones’ Mongrels.

 

[image error] The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

A horror classic that I (oddly) hadn’t read until last year. This is the archetypical haunted house story that defined the genre for decades to come. You’ll recognize the tropes it established right immediately, but be drawn along by Jackson’s incredibly descriptive prose and the layer of uneasiness she weaves throughout. It’ll get under your skin and you’ll see it’s fingerprints everywhere. I’d also recommend Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

 

So there are three of my favorite horror novels from the last several years. If you’re looking for something to read on a cozy and dark autumn night, you’d be hard-pressed to find better. What are you favorite horror novels from the last few years? Leave a comment below and let everyone know!

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

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Garden of Horrors: Cordyceps

Garden of Horrors faithful probably expected we’d eventually come to this: a particular fungus (It’s always a fungus, why is it always a fungus!?) with a terrifying parasitic ability it infects and then enslaves its host. That’s right, today we’re looking at Cordyceps.

Here’s how it works: Cordyceps spores infiltrate an insect’s body, infecting them. Once infected, the real terror begins; the fungus takes control of the insect’s muscles, driving it upward where it forces the insect to fasten itself to a branch and waits for death. The fungus eventually fruits, pushing through the exoskeleton. This kills the host, and the added height helps spread the cordyceps’ spores over the most extensive area possible infecting others below, and the cycle repeats.

[image error] Cordyceps ignota parasitizing on a bird spider – Photo by Ian Suzuki, Wikimedia Commons

Ghastly right? It’s pretty clear why these parasites have become known as the “zombie” fungus. The concept of something taking control of your muscles and dragging your conscious mind along for the ride is the sort of story you’d expect from a horror novel, not the natural world. It’s no wonder both Mike Carey (in The Girl with All the Gifts), and Naughty Dog Studios (in The Last of Us) used cordyceps as the source for their zombie apocalypse. The very idea is unnerving.

But it’s not all horrible. In Traditional Chinese medicine, Cordyceps is actually collected and dried and has been used for centuries to treat fatigue, sickness, kidney disease, and apparently low sex drive. There’s been other research happening as well looking into the other potential benefits of imbibing cordyceps. So, for those who always ask: “Can I eat this?” Yes! Yes, you can eat this weird parasitic fungus that wrestles control of the motor function of insects forcing them to climb higher and higher until the fungus kills them. Apparently, it’s good for you.

The 2006 BBC Earth special Planet Earth featured a small segment on the cordyceps, and it included some amazing footage. You can watch it in all its enthralling details below.

Funny enough, new research from Penn State University and the University of Notre Dame has only made our understanding of cordyceps more unnerving. As I implied above—and what Planet Earth got wrong at the time—cordyceps don’t take over its host’s brain. It only takes control of the muscles. This means the host is very much aware of what is happening to it as it performs its upward death march. Yikes.

 More Garden of Horrors

Ascocoryne sarcoides – aka – jelly drops
Rafflesia – aka – Carrion Flower/Corpse Lily
Monotropa uniflora – aka – the ghost plant
Lithops
Gymnosporangium Juniperi-Virginianae – aka – cedar-apple rust
Hydnora Africana
Pterocarpus Angolensis – aka – Bloodwood Tree
Hydnellum Peckii – aka – Bleeding Tooth Fungus
Clathrus Archeri – aka – Devil’s Fingers

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Open Call for Tenebrous Cosmic Horror Goodies

For the past five years, I’ve put together a highly-curated list of cosmic horror-related paraphernalia for the holiday season. It’s a collection of some of my favorite weird/new weird goodies that’d make perfect gifts for yourself or the cosmic horror fan in your life. I’m pleased to say this year will be the sixth! (I’ll link to past lists at the end of this post.)

I’m traveling over Thanksgiving, so I’m getting an early jump on assembling the guide. Like last year, I figured it’d be worthwhile to do an open call and see what else is lurking in the shadowed corners of the internet. Not everything submitted will get selected. But there’s always something cool out there that I completely missed. So, what have you found, dear reader? I want to know about it.

As before the categories are:

Books (I generally have this covered)
Music
Apparel (no teeshirts—there’s a bajillion of them, most are awful)
Games
Housewares
Miskatonic University

You can leave a comment below (I approve all non-bot comments) or just drop me an email and let me know what you’d like to see on this year’s Gift Guide!

Previous Cosmic Horror Gift Guides

As promised, below are links to the guides from the last five years. Just click on any of the links and start shopping!

2018 – 2017 – 2016 – 2015 – 2014 

For those waiting, don’t fret too much longer, the 2019 Cosmic Horror Gift Guide launches on Black Friday! Be sure to check back to see this year’s selection. It’ll be a good one.

Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information.  SIGN UP TODAY →

The Game Continues

Longtime readers know I’ve been running an alternate reality game for a while. It begins with this post from 2016. Since then, I’ve shared more clues, both here and on Instagram, and in other undiscovered corners. I even collected some into a handy repository, which I update whenever new ephemera appear.

The game continues. A new narrative from the Bell Forging Cycle is playing out in yet undiscovered corners. If you’re a fan and you’ve wanted more, I’d say it’s worth your time. It leads to some unusual places and opens up yet more of the world.

If you’re looking for quick answers, this post won’t have them. But I’ve gotten enough questions and emails lately that I felt it necessary to take a moment, address a few things, and offer some tips:

The cipher I chose is somewhat tricky. I figured readers would band together to figure stuff out, but (so far) that hasn’t happened. So if it feels extra difficult, that’d be why.
The number sequence will lead to clues that will help you figure out the cipher. But it’s not a key to the cipher itself. It’s also much easier to figure out.
Search Engines are your friends.
Along with search engines, don’t forget that this blog has a search bar. It’ll be handy, eventually.
Sometimes it’s helpful to think beyond the internet.
In the end, ARG organization is up to the players. Consider engaging with each other, launch a subreddit or a discord channel, start a wiki, or even consider email threads. I’m happy to write books and make content. But I don’t have time to moderate another community.

As before, I don’t want to offer too much. It takes away from the thrill of discovery. Part of the fun is unlocking this as you go—want to help others out? Why not share what you know in the comments?

Good luck, roaders! Stay wary and as always, Look West.

“Enough prattle. Look west, Guardian.”

—Chapter 30, Red Litten World

 

Ogilby: A Free 17th Century Road Atlas Brush Set for Fantasy Maps

“You come to a Descent sprinkled with Woods, whence by Loudwater, a small Village, (a Brook accompanying your Road on the Left) at 32’3. You enter High Wickham, seated in a pleasant Vale, a large and Well-built Town, numbering near 200 Houses, with several good Inns, as the Cathern Wheel, etc. Is Govern’d by a Mayor, Recorder, etc. Sends Burgesses to Parliament, hath a well-frequented Market on Fridays, and two Fairs annually…”

Outside of some slight language differences, that description of 17th century High Wycombe could be taken from any modern travel guide. It comes from John Ogilby’s 1675 book Britannia, Volume the First. Or an Illustration of the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales: By a Geographical and Historical Description of the Principal Roads thereof (the full title goes on much longer, and I’ll spare us all.) Britannia is, in essence, part road atlas and part travel guide—it also serves as the source for my latest brush set named after the man himself: Ogilby.

[image error]John Ogilby’s depiction of the road from Bristol to Exeter

While the depictions of British towns, inns, and valleys are charming, the actual maps themselves are a delight. They are unlike anything I’ve seen before. These maps place the traveler’s perspective front and center making for a much more intimate experience. Read bottom to top and left to right one can trace their route through the countryside. Windmills, wells, ponds, homes, and churches are lovingly depicted as well as are the small towns clustered around roads and random points of interest. Climbs and descents are documented as one would encounter them as they crossed the rolling countryside. The route will move, but barely, instead, significant turns are shown with subtle shifts indicated by the compass rose that rotates on subsequent “scrolls.” I thought this was an interesting solution to show more substantial variations in a road’s direction.

[image error]

Fiction has long had a fascination with the road story, and fantasy isn’t an exception. So it’s a wonder this sort of map hasn’t been attempted before. (Prove me wrong, if you know a book with this style of road atlas, let me know!) It’s so useful and such an interesting presentation. After spending some time with the plates and Ogilby’s descriptions, I knew at once these etchings would make an excellent brush set. Whether one is attempting to recreate an Ogilby-style road atlas or just using his various signs and symbols on a more standard map.

[image error]

As I worked, I realized that I would need to build this set off of multiple plates, and uh… the set sort of grew in the making. Ogilby is now my largest set ever. Inside you’ll find over 870 brushes (yes, seriously), including:

60 Homesteads
50 Manor Halls
10 Hamlets
60 Villages
10 Large Villages
20 Steepled Churches
70 Towered Churches
10 Priories
5 Unique Churches
20 Castles
20 Unique Settlements
10 Ponds
20 Rills/Streams
10 Rills/Streams w/ Bridges
20 Rivers w/ Bridges
20 Heath/Wetlands
20 Hills
20 Upslopes (Hills with space for roads to pass up them)
20 Downslopes (Inverted hills with space for roads to pass down them)
20 Unique Slopes
30 Scrub Lands
30 Leafy Trees
30 Evergreen Trees
30 Bushy Trees
10 Leafy Forests
10 Evergreen Forests
30 Bushy Forests
40 Windmills
10 Elevated Windmills
20 Beacons
20 Gallows
5 Wells
5 Springs
10 Quarries
10 Coal Pits
10 Lead Mines
10 Parks
10 Monuments
15 Unique Points-of-Interest
20 “Plain” Compasses
35 Standard Compasses
15 Complex Compasses
5 Combined Compasses
3 Boats

The button below links to a ZIP file that contains a Photoshop brush set (it’ll work in GIMP as well) as well as a set of transparent PNGs in case you’re using a program that doesn’t support Adobe brush files. I’ve separated them by type, Settlements, Points of Interest, Flora, Cartouches, and Landforms. They’re black, and they’ll look broken if viewed in Chrome, but trust me, they’re all there.

[ ! ] Bonus #1 – I’ve also included the option to download a blank and layered PSD of the scroll background used in Ogilby’s original maps. To save on file size, this must be downloaded separately. It also includes a transparent png.

[ ! ] Bonus #2 – I found more success mimicking Ogibly’s road styles in Adobe Illustrator. This will allow one to recreate the various styles of roads Ogilby uses across his maps quickly and efficiently. Like the Scroll background, this must be downloaded separately and it requires Adobe Illustrator.

DOWNLOAD OGILBY

Download the Ogilby Scrolls Background

Download the Ogilby Illustrator Road Brush Set

As with all of my previous brush sets, Ogilby is free for any use. I distribute my sets with a Creative Common, No Rights Reserved License (CC0), which means you can freely use this and any of my brushes in commercial work and distribute adaptations. (Details on this decision here.) No attribution is required. Easy peasy!

Enjoy Ogilby. Feel free to show me what you created by sending me an email or finding me on Twitter. I love seeing how these brushes get used, and I’d be happy to share your work with my readers. Let me see what you make!