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I wonder how much of the trappings of modern “fantasy” owes to Dune

I was too tired last night to post any real update but, I sort of knew that Dune was basically a sort of fantasy / sci-fi hybrid, not just because of the sort of powers related to ancestral memory and the future but because of the flavoring of the universe, and while I can’t say that it absolutely cooks (because the first 50 pages are more about Paul’s impending predicament) it’s still cool.

lol are they painting a landing pad for a helicopter???

Like, Snickett hasn’t outright mentioned that the triplets are going to die in this book and my time on Tumblr has prepared me for the eventuality that some sort of horrible science-fiction bio-plague is going to be responsible for both the deaths of the Baudelaires and I assume the triplets, but it’s been long enough that I don’t know for sure what happens to Duncan and Isadora in the immediate future 😬

The triplets (-1) feels like something that this series has been desperately missing - comrades in arms who empathize with what the Baudelaires have been going through and aren’t like the progressively cartoony and worthless parade of adults in their lives. Actually, this book has been starved for ANY child characters who weren’t the Baudelaires, lol

OMG HERE IT IS THE LAST 50 PAGES WHAT IS GONNA HAPPEN?!?!

AHHHH EVERYTHING RVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

lol hold on is Doria gonna turn on meggie when he finds out that meggie read the words that killed his no good firebrand cousin??? This is gettin a little YA

Nooooo there is only one reason sootbird is throwing an impromptu carnival for all of the children 😬😬😬 and fenoglio being full of his own ego at the start is the setup

the metatext of living in a book universe is great. obviously the author couldn’t have filled in all of the small details, so where do they all come from? the same thread of life that continues the story from where it leapt off of the rails, of course.

“The God of the Asteroid”

The first part of this story is basically a retelling of Lovecraft’s submarine horror but on a spaceship. Then it turns from a more or less regular horror story to something more psychological as one of the astronauts is entombed alive in the wreck of his ship and treated like a God by the insect-people who inhabit the asteroid. And THEN, well, who knows for sure?

“The Colossus of Ylourgne”

An Averoigne tale where a horrid necromancer raids grave after grave in order to build an enormous flesh golem that he inhabits. His reign of terror reminds me of Barker’s “Rawhead Rex”, just with significantly less gore (I mean, compared to Barker) and leaving the most twisted tortures to the reader’s imagination.

“The Supernumerary Corpse”

A bizarre not quite horror story where a chemist tailors a super-poison to get one over on his rival, only to find that somehow or other it resulted in the creation of a second corpse in its own house. The story skirts a fine line between psychological (the MC’s triumph was a hallucination) or just plain weird, in which case, what is the mechanism for the extra body???

“The Plutonian Drug”

A cool sci-fi piece where a man takes a space drug that lets him see five hours into both his past AND his future. Except, well, his future dead-ends into the void in an alleyway he was going to use to get to his next engagement. Gentle reader, what do YOU think is going to happen to the sculptor? The fun meta is a discussion on what the “present” is and what we are actually perceiving.

“The Doubled Shadow”

Atlantis / Hyperborea with two sorcerors, one of who is obsessed with uncovering the secrets of a tablet that washed ashore near their waverly place. They eventually find out that it belongs to the serpent-men of pre-PRE-history and, against the MC’s better judgment, his master translates the tablet and they cast the spell. Kids, don’t use
the lost sorceries of the serpent people.

“Ubbo-Sathla”

Hyperborea, past-life, and cosmic horror. The big show here is the title entity, the origin of all life “native” to Earth. The most recognizable fantasy motif is the danger of looking too long into magic crystals, also seen in The Lord of the Rings and Wizard and Glass. The idea of tracing the thread of your past lives to the moment of creation is interesting.