Carrie Vaughn's Blog, page 33

more Robin of Sherwood

All right, I have binged the entirety of “Robin of Sherwood” in the space of about two weeks.

On one level, this show is deeply silly. Like, who knew there were so many Satanic cults hiding in so many medieval abbeys? So many witches, so many fur-covered Welsh barbarians. Was that a thing? And my memories of the show were that it was actually the god Herne watching over the band of outlaws, but no, it’s just a guy living in a cave wearing a deer head and everybody just goes along with it? Why?

And yet, the whole thing is so earnest and so full of heart. Well. It’s just lovely. I would still be watching if there were more episodes.

AND…I just know there’s some amazing slashfic out there involving, like, everyone, in every possible configuration, up to and including Old Robin/New Robin.

No, I don’t want links. It’s enough know it’s out there.

 

blizzard

We had a blizzard this week. Been a while since I’ve been in the middle of that much wind and snow, where all the fences were coated with it, where you worried that the trees were going to fall. I’m glad I could stay warm and safe inside.

There was a moment, at night, after the wind died down. The trees were encased in ice, and still swaying in the last little bit of the storm, which made the ice crack. So the night was filled with the most ominous crinkling, snapping noises. Nothing loud, nothing obvious. Just this strange crystalline murmur at the back of my hearing that went on and on. It was gorgeous.

It’s all melted now, that’s what Colorado blizzards are all about — a day of awful and then warm sun and water. A nearby pond is filled with pelicans. Maybe now, finally, we’ll get some spring.

 

Hugo Nominations

This week is the deadline to get your Hugo nominations in, if you’re eligible to nominate. I posted my own work from 2018 a while back, for your consideration.

I didn’t read a lot of new stuff last year, which pretty much goes along with all the other stuff I didn’t do last year. But I do have a couple of recommendations.

I’ve talked before about C.L. Polk’s Witchmark, which has been nominated for a Nebula and is one of my favorite reads from the last couple of years. It’s Edwardian-adjacent, alternate-world fantasy, and full of heart.

The Best Series category has only been around a couple of years but it’s often contentious. I like the category because it rewards sustained work over a length of time. Having done writing like that myself, I know what an accomplishment a good series can be. Once again this year I have to recommend Wild Cards, not just because I’m one of the writers but because this is perhaps the longest-running, most involved and complex series in all of SF&F and I think it deserves the recognition. The new installments this year include Low Chicago, Texas Hold’Em, and a number of shorts.

I’m also nominating the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, which I’m not sure is eligible but I’m nominating it anyway. I find myself recommending these books all over the place, especially to people who don’t think they like science fiction.

There’s a special category for Best Art Book this year, just in time for Alex Ross’s Marvelocity, a massive compendium of a bunch of the work Ross has done for Marvel. Alex Ross is one of the greatest comics artists of all time, and this book is breathtaking, both in showcasing his work but also in demonstrating the care he takes with the entire legacy of Marvel comics and its heroes. He’s amazing.

I’m putting two episodes of The Expanse on my ballot for Best Dramatic Short-Form:  Ep. 3.7 “Delta V” (RIP Maneo!) and Ep. 3.11 “Fallen World.” (Confession:  Abaddon’s Gate is one of my favorite of the books in the series because of what happens in the Ring and the slowdown and all the rest. It’s super, super traumatic in the books — and the TV show nailed it. Just perfect. These two episodes pretty much bookend what I love about that particular book and are great adaptations.)

 

Captain Marvel

I’m not going to lie, the movie starts off rough. It’s weirdly structured, and drops us in the middle of a standard military SF jaunt — the small commando unit, the untried rookie’s first outing that goes horribly wrong. It’s a familiar formula but the context leaves us at sea. Who are these people? What’s going on? Why do we care?

The next bit jams a bunch of disparate tropes into one sequence. We spend about five minutes in an alien-on-Earth/fish-out-of-water story, then five minutes in a straight-up chase scene, ten minutes in a buddy caper, and so on. Meanwhile, the film seems to be attempting some kind of throw-back mid-1990’s action-movie cinematography to go with the setting — think Terminator 2 — and I’m not sure it quite works.

When the movie really finds its feet is when our hero, who until now has been kind of brusque and unpleasant and predictably standard, starts uncovering secrets. Deep, dark, world and personality-shattering secrets. Discovering that there even are secrets. When she stops doing what she thinks she’s supposed to and starts fighting for herself — that’s when the movie straps on rockets and hits the stratosphere. It’s fantastic. Carol has a compact, powerful, tough-as-nails physicality that I really loved. She’s great to watch.

The other thing I found amazing about the film is I didn’t know the MCU was missing a prequel. Like, I thought we knew everything? I thought we had all the information in the right sequence?  Prequels are so notoriously bad about shoe-horning in unnecessary details and forcing a retconning of what we thought we knew. Captain Marvel doesn’t do that, and it’s great. This answers questions I didn’t know I had and fires guns that have been on the mantle the whole time only I didn’t realize they were there. It fits in so well they must have planned this all along, right?

And the first post-credits scene is a masterpiece in tying it all together. Thirty seconds of film worth the price of admission all by itself.

Next up, Avengers: Endgame.  I know back with the first Avengers movie we said it had all been leading up to this. But now, here — it’s all been leading up to this. Higher, further, faster …

 

Curious Fictions – read some stories!

I’m trying something new. As you know I’ve written a lot of short stories over the years, and some of them appeared only in print, in now-defunct magazines or one-off anthologies, and they’ve gotten really hard to find. I’ve been thinking of ways to get them back out in the world.

So I’ve set up a page at Curious Fictions, a site where you can explore authors and stories, subscribe to their pages, and maybe drop a few bucks in the tip jar if you’re so inclined.

Here’s my page.

And here’s the first story I’ve posted:  “The Girl Who Loved Shonen Knife,” my hyperactive, anime-inspired cyberpunk romp, that originally appeared in the anthology Hanzai Japan.

Enjoy!

 

new Harry and Marlowe

And now, for your edification, a new Harry and Marlowe story at Lightspeed:  Marlowe and Harry and the Disinclined Laboratory.

This fills in the gap between Harry and Marlowe Escape the Mechanical Siege of Paris and the part of the story where they become adventuring partners.

Enjoy!

 

Robin of Sherwood

I’m still on my Robin Hood obsession. On my fourth novel and now starting in on movies.

So, this. Robin of Sherwood, the British TV series from the early 80’s that was absolutely iconic for many of my generation. The Clannad music. Michael Praed’s pretty, pretty mullet. The weird paganism. I was always aware of the show — it aired in the U.S. on PBS or on Showtime or something like that. I didn’t watch it with any kind of consistency, but I caught a few episodes here and there. The thing about this show is you really only need to catch a few episodes for it to imprint hard. You never forget it.

Turns out it’s streaming on Amazon Prime. So… I’ve watched a few episodes, for the first time in probably 30 years. How does it hold up?

It’s delightful. I’m enjoying it immensely. The weird paganism is still weird, the birdsong is so loud like all the time, and it seems to anticipate some of the Robin Hood tropes that have become standard since then:  a Muslim character, the narcissistic and sadistic Sheriff ala Alan Rickman but half a decade earlier, and so on.  Or is this how some of those tropes entered the mainstream? Hmm….

But what I like most is the hugging. There’s so much hugging and back slapping and hair ruffling and so on among the Merry Men and it’s just so pleasant. These people like each other!  There’s an episode where Will Scarlet, played by a young and burly and kind of hot Ray Winstone, declares to the gang, almost tearfully, “I would give my life for every single one of you.”

So that’s why I’m going to keep watching, to spend time with these endearing people who really care about each other, because apparently that’s my thing now.

 

15 minutes of cleaning – update

Last week I started on the craft/sewing area. It’s a mess. I realized, on top of all my other belated realizations about last year, that the only thing I sewed was my niece’s Halloween costume and a hat for my brother. No garb, no cosplay for me, nothing.  Because the space was a mess, I didn’t know what I even had, and it was too much to deal with.

But 15 minutes at a time, I can do that. It’s taken more than a week and $70 in storage bins, but it’s coming together. I now know what fabric I have and where. A bunch of half-finished or needing to be refurbished projects are in a pile, and not stuffed in bags all over the floor. I have a few ideas for things I want to work on and what I need to do to make them happen.

Feels good.

 

upcoming events

Today I’m busy with, well, everything, so here’s a reminder about the conventions I’ll be at this summer:

May 17-19:  KeyCon in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It’ll be my first time back in Winnipeg since I was like 10 years old, so I’m excited.

May 31- June 1: Denver Pop Culture Con, formerly Denver Comic Con.

August 15-19: Worldcon in Dublin, Ireland. I’m also planning an extra week in the country to visit as many neolithic sites as I can, since I’m still on that research obsession.

I’m looking forward to summer…

 

things I worry about

I worry that in the afterlife all the historical figures I’ve ever written about will come to me and tell me how I got them wrong.

Actually, that might be pretty cool.