Sable Aradia's Blog, page 17
November 20, 2019
Excellent Review for Once Upon a Time in the Wyrd West at On Spec!
Really honoured to receive such a positive review from Nicole at On Spec, a preeminent Canadian SFF magazine!
A+ world-building in this one. The Wyrd West is set in the post-apocalyptic Canadian prairies–a new wild west only with magic. Alongside the traditional gunslingers, desperados, First Nations people, saloon owners and courtesans, there are also necromancers, elves, gnomes, Mantis-folk, and some steampunk technology. Even the common elements have been tweaked to be just a little different–the courtesan’s guild runs a spy network and the saloon owner has a prosthetic hand. I especially enjoyed the gunslingers’ magic and code of honour: the Mark of Cain they wear after killing a bandit, the vigil to the Lord and Lady, the blessed ammunition.
On Spec Magazine
Rated at 4 out of 5 stars! You can read the full review, plus get the skinny on some other great Canadian SFF, at On Spec’s book review…
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November 15, 2019
An Excellent Review for Gunsmoke & Dragonfire
Geoff Habiger is an author and reviewer who supports other authors in the indie community. Thanks for a great review!
Fantasy is probably the most broadly encompassing genre in fiction because you can create so many unique stories in a limitless number of settings. Mix that with the Western genre, and you get a wonderful blend of stories. Diane Morrison’s Gunsmoke & Dragonfire anthology pulls together twenty-five of these stories into a single collection that just blows me away. The variety of stories presented, and the skill of the authors (from well-established authors to those just starting out), really stand out in this anthology. There are stories here of gunslingers and spellslingers, stories featuring magic and myth, and those set in the far future on worlds that are like the Old West.
Geoff Habiger
See the full review at Habiger/Kissee Authors.
November 11, 2019
November 7, 2019
The Six Main Arcs in Storytelling, as Identified by an A.I.
By Adrienne LaFrance
“My prettiest contribution to my culture,” the writer Kurt Vonnegut mused in his 1981 autobiography Palm Sunday, “was a master’s thesis in anthropology which was rejected by the University of Chicago a long time ago.”
By then, he said, the thesis had long since vanished. (“It was rejected because it was so simple and looked like too much fun,” Vonnegut explained.) But he continued to carry the idea with him for many years after that, and spoke publicly about it more than once. It was, essentially, this: “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers. They are beautiful shapes.”
That explanation comes from a lecture he gave, and which you can still watch on YouTube, that involves Vonnegut mapping the narrative arc of popular storylines along a simple graph. The X-axis represents the chronology of the story, from beginning to end, while the Y-axis represents the experience of the protagonist, on a spectrum of ill fortune to good fortune. “This is an exercise in relativity, really,” Vonnegut explains. “The shape of the curve is what matters.”
Read the whole article at The Atlantic.
November 4, 2019
Chelsea Eckert on On Writing Anthropomorphic Animal Characters (For Adults)
From Cat Rambo’s blog:
As someone who works deeply in the zoo/conservation industries and spends a lot of time pretending to be a tiger at conventions around the country, you might say I’m enthusiastic about animals.
You’d be wrong, of course.
I’m zealous in my love for them. If I could be a little shield-carrying furry paladin, I would. (In fact, I play one in a homebrewed Dungeons and Dragons campaign.) I could go on and on about the why—because as an autistic person I relate to critters more, because there’s always something new to discover about ‘em, because they’re just badass—but the point is this…
I love writing about them. I love reading about them, especially in fictional settings. Whether they live in a Society
or still bolt from men with guns, they’re fascinating. Yet I’ve found that most “talking animal” tales out there are for kiddos. Y’know: Redwall, Peter Rabbit, and the like.
Read the whole article on Cat Rambo’s Website.
November 1, 2019
Decolonizing Magic
Also applicable in writing fantasy, I think. Good work from my friend POC Gamer!
Magic. It’s a core component of fantasy, but is often unevenly distributed and developed. On the outset, this seems sensical, until you dig into it a bit. At that point, other disparities and issues come into sharp relief. So this is a short post on decolonizing magic.
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October 31, 2019
Book Review: The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Read for the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club.
You really can’t go wrong with H.G. Wells, can you? Even if you know the story. Even if you’ve read it before.
Granted, it’s been many years since I read it last. I was still a child, I think. I also remember doing it as a radio play assignment as a kid in grade school (which led to a whole subgenre of play where my friends and I would make our own radio plays, or make tapes of us acting like radio DJs, or whatever.)
You all know the premise. A man somehow makes himself invisible through a combination of chemistry and 19th century pseudo-science. He finds out it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For instance, to remain invisible, you have to be naked, and winter is bloody cold in England. Plus bare feet step on things.
What isn’t often emphasized by people who talk about this story is that Wells is, in fact, a consummate storyteller. In the late 19th century, the novel was still a relatively new art form. Reading some of the early novelists is a bit… challenging at times. H.P. Lovecraft could write a single sentence that was three pages long. Virginia Woolf and Mary Shelley could write the most amazingly purple prose. I often think our modern novel is too codified (they literally have graphs that they teach in writing classes to show writers how the perfect novel should proceed) but in the early days, novelists were still forging the path, and figuring out how the art was done.
And yet, Wells’ work still stands up as “good writing,” now that we know what “good writing” looks like (or think we do.) The story draws you in right away, perhaps because he begins in the middle. When we catch up with the Invisible Man, he has already made himself invisible, and he has already gotten himself into some trouble and is hoping to get himself out. Only later do we get the back story of how this was accomplished.
Another thing that’s amazing about the quality of the writing here is the moral ambiguity of all characters. The Invisible Man is a classic sociopath, completely devoid of normal human empathy, and he was like this before he made himself invisible. Just… consider the damage that could be done by an invisible sociopath!
On the other hand, the fear, superstition, and suspicion of the townsfolk lead them to treat our protagonist horribly, and long before they have any reason to do so. It makes you sympathetic towards someone who would otherwise be a completely unlikable person. Dark fantasy authors: take note. If you want me to like your sociopath, you need to find a way to make me appreciate their pain too.
A must-read for any fan of science fiction; or indeed, for anyone.
October 28, 2019
Book Review: Royal Destiny by Morgan Howell (Queen of the Orcs III)
Royal Destiny by Morgan Howell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In general, I really enjoyed this series. But this book was definitely the weakest of the three, which is a shame, because it was the end.
I have come to be extremely emotionally invested in Dar and in Kovoh-mah, her orc companion. I wanted to see their love succeed against all odds. (view spoiler)[Well, it didn’t. That’s okay in and of itself, because life doesn’t often work out the way you want it to. But I didn’t appreciate the alternative. Dar ends up going with a guy who’s been a bit of a non-entity since his first appearance, and it seems like she goes there because she has nowhere else to go, not because she wants to or because she has feelings for him. (hide spoiler)] And I hated it, because it seemed to me that the theme of the series was intended to be how a woman in a bad situation seizes her own agency and rises above her circumstances with the shitty hand she’s been dealt. And in the end, she lost all that agency that she’d gained, after being used and discarded by a holy power.
As a result, I feel cheated.
Now, that’s the subplot. It occupies the greatest part of my brain because the main plot has gone from a really interesting and intense dark fantasy, focused on the fate of a small character, to a vast high fantasy with tropish villains and even tropier conflicts. The villain often has plot armour, Dar is smart or stupid according to plot convenience, and every woman except Dar is two-dimensionally rendered and easily filed into “all good” or “all stupid.” Well, except the Lore-Keeper. She was pretty awesome, to be fair.
I guess I just expected *more,* and it didn’t deliver. There’s nothing objectively wrong with the plot or characters, or any of the events as they unfolded. It’s just… not what the beginning promised.
Three stars for “it was all right.” The first book is amazing. The second is good. But be warned, Game of Thrones fans – the end is decidedly lacklustre.
October 24, 2019
Book Review: Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Read for the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club.
In reading the SF Masterworks list, I have been exposed to a variety of amazing science fiction classics that I might not otherwise have read. But I’ve also read some stuff I wish I hadn’t.
Philip K. Dick is a loaded die for me. There’s a ridiculous number of PKD books on this list. I have really enjoyed a handful of his books; most have been kinda meh; and some have been complete garbage.
This one was in the “pretty decent” category. I wish there were a 3 and a half stars rating, because I’m going back and forth between 3 and 4 stars.
In this dystopia, there was a second American Civil War, and the US is now a police state run by the cops, who have totally replaced legitimate government. Our protagonist, Jason Taverner, is an aging, superfamous musician and TV star who has lived a life of privilege, and then he wakes up one day to discover he doesn’t exist. Never has existed. Maybe imagine if this happened to the Kardashians.
As an unperson in this world, he is a legitimate target for Forced Labour Camps and possibly summary execution. He goes to great effort to stay out of their hands. Most of his actions are morally defunct and illegal, and he never really suffers once in the entire story. One wonders if PKD was creating a legitimate wish-fulfillment fantasy in which a person who thought himself immune to the suffering of the mere little people around him, whose fate as a result of his actions concern him not at all, is brought low — but was afraid to bring him too low. It’s a bit like Franz Kafka‘s The Metamorphosis crossed with The Demolished Man this time. The worldbuilding is top-notch, the mystery is engaging, and this read through quite quickly and overall, I enjoyed it.
Now the down sides *sigh*.
Once again, we’re rehashing Alfred Bester.
Once again, (view spoiler)[it’s drugs that cause the time distortion/alternate reality. (hide spoiler)]
Once again, the character is a raging misogynist who clearly hates women (I know that’s redundant by their dictionary definitions, but I think “misogyny” is often used as a synonym for “sexism” – and I mean to say that he actively hates women.) He thinks of every one he encounters in terms of how she can be used, and usually, he seduces them as part of the “use” and they just put up with it; maybe because of his “irresistible manly man masculine charisma” or some freakin’ thing. Granted, this character uses everyone, but this is a new low. If this were a female character, you’d see pages of nasty reviews decrying her as a shameless whore. Insert an eye-roll emoji here.
And this book is horribly racist too. A eugenics program imposed by the state sterilizes black people after they produce one child, so they can be eradicated over generations. This is just window-dressing to the plot for the most part. Two black people appear in the story. One is a setting prop and the other is a “magic negro” for another white male character. Insert another eye-roll emoji.
This stuff just gets old.
I’ve gone back and forth a couple of times, but I think my overall verdict is 3 stars. Strangely, this is some of my favourite worldbuilding that PKD has done. And the story isn’t bad. “Not bad” isn’t good, though, and the character is, as always, utterly unsympathetic. I’m not sure he learned the karmic lesson he was supposed to, and I’m not sure I care about whether or not he did, because he’s a jerk. Read it if you’re a PKD fan or you like dystopias, but don’t expect to invest a lot of emotion into it.
October 22, 2019
The Art and Craft of Writing (or, the worst and best advice you’ll ever get as an author)
I’ve recently been invited to talk to a few writing groups, about the experience of transitioning from a reader, to a budding writer, to a published author. This column comes as a result of thinking about that journey, from the advice I gave and the questions I answered, plus a few interesting discoveries on the internet I made along the way.
First, for funsies, it seems like we keep telling ourselves the same stories. In a recent study, researchers have fed numerous books to a machine learning module, and it has found The Six Main Arcs in Storytelling, as Identified by an A.I. It’s amazing to see how a computer analyses emotional highs and lows, based on language. This isn’t about machines taking over storytelling, but how we can harness technology to better understand ourselves.
Do make sure you follow the YouTube link in the article to Kurt Vonnegut “story…
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