How to Begin a Short Story
Maybe I’m just impatient, but I’ll generally stop reading a short story if the first two paragraphs don’t answer the following questions: Who is this story about? (Character) Why should I care about that character? […]
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The Lost Vamps: Bloodthirsty Flicks that Actually Don’t Suck
Vampire flicks have been all the rage since Twilight flooded the box office with sticky, coppery crimson in ’08, and have proven a solid moneymaking strategy ever since, with each of the saga’s four sequels […]
Women in Armour vs. Chicks in Chain-mail
One of the more common tropes of fantasy illustration is depictions of women in armor, but this is not necessarily unique to fantasy illustration. Armored women have been depicted in art throughout the centuries. Most […]
The Chocolate Teapots of the 21st Century
Looking back at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear disaster of 3/11/2011, I ask more questions about Japanese robotics. Baudrillard and M. John Harrison are roped in to help. Also, we bought a Roomba.
Cloud Atlas Shrugged – or let the Skyfall
On Monday Skyfall was released on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK. Tomorrow Cloud Atlas will open in UK cinemas. Two films, poles apart. Skyfall, the 23th entry in probably the world’s longest running and […]
Top Ten RPG Game Systems of All Time
Pull the blinds and turn off the phone, it’s time to head to the Game Room and lock in on some hardcore meta-gaming action. In the Game Room we will explore the world of gaming […]
Crossroads: The Power in Paranormal Romance
Happy Valentine’s Day! In my first draft of this week’s essay, I started to trace the history of the paranormal romance all the way from the Gothic novel, through to noir, into romantic suspense, urban […]
Dark History: Bran Mak Morn
Robert E. Howard, more than anything, wanted to sell to Adventure Magazine. This publication of the Buttrick Co. was considered by many the best Pulp of all the hundreds of cheap magazines published between the […]
The Galapagos Frontier Thesis
The formative American experience was the conquest of the western frontier. Would science fiction and fantasy exist without the frontier model? What does Japan’s parallel conquest of Hokkaido tell us about the legacy of colonial expansion?
Art + Fandom ≠ Fan Art, part II: Images of Galadriel
Well it looks like I put my foot right into it in my previous post! Several people objected to my definition of the term “Fan Art”. They felt that it was not in accordance with […]
The Top Ten Roleplaying Games of All Time
Pull the blinds and turn off the phone; it’s time to head to the Game Room and lock in on some hardcore meta-gaming action. In the Game Room we will explore the world of gaming […]
The History of Fantasy, Part II: Barbarians and Elves and Jesus Figures and D20s
The nineteenth century closes with two books that will be imitated constantly for the next hundred years or so: Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. To a […]
Dress for the Occasion 2: The Decked-out Heroine
Previously I blogged about that favourite trope of SF & Fantasy illustration: The Scantily Clad Female. That topic generated a lot of comments, so let’s look at the opposite end of the spectrum and see […]
Judging A Book By Its Cover (Art)
The old axiom about not judging a book by its cover notwithstanding, I am going to judge the merits of various book covers that wrapped editions of heroic fiction. This is not a scholarly article, […]
Crossroads: Tripping the Noir Fantastic
Last week, we talked about some of the tensions between science fiction and noir. Fantasy, which relies on metaphor even more than science fiction, has an even more challenging time of it. Its traditional themes […]
Horrorcast: The Drabblecast
If you love to start your day with photos of catacombs and bone chandeliers, or listen to ectoplasmic psychodramas while doing your grocery shopping, then quality genre-related newsfeeds that bring you the best art, fiction, […]
Fiction and the Happy Brain
STORY HORDER As a child, I was a story horder. I couldn’t get enough of them. I was very fortunate to have parents who read to me, and looking back, they were saints in this […]
Art + Fandom ≠ Fan Art: Definitions
Before I get properly rolling with this blog, I thought it might be worth taking a moment to stake out the territory I plan to cover. This website, and these blogs, are all about fandom, […]
Tarzan, Celebrating the Centennial: A Review
Christmas 2012 was very good. And one of the reasons it was so good was that among the presents that Santa (in this case my son, J. Michael) left under the tree was a hard-cover, […]
Why Doesn’t Fantasy Sell in Japan?
Epic fantasy is a hard sell in Japan. Why? A country so saturated in the fantastic seemingly ought to have an affinity for our beloved genre. But shared passions often get lost in translation.
NEW! MODERN! CONTEMPORARY! HIP!
I have spent a lot of time in previous posts dwelling in the past. I have been like an old man suddenly lost to the present, the memory of times past reeling behind his eyes while he absently stirs his tea. Well, I think perhaps I should bring this topic into the present and talk about some of the science fiction and fantasy artists working today.
There has been an explosion of fantastic art. In the past fantastic art’s only reason for being was as illustration to fantastic literature. That changed and today fantastic art is it’s own reason for being. You can find fantasy art on posters, tee-shirts, coffee mugs. You can find it on the internet almost as easily as you can find pornography or lolcats.
The Elves of Japan
In Japan, even the elves are different. Fantasy novelist Satoru Sato has won a place in the postwar fantasy canon for his uniquely charming creations, the Korobokkuru.
Hobbit Art – Before the Movie (well, almost)
Kia ora and welcome to my new Visual Arts blog on Amazing Stories! First up, let’s have some Hobbit art. Let me state this outright: I am not going to try to determine who is the “greatest artist” in the fandom. I am not particularly interested in who is the most technically proficient, or the most outrageously inventive. Who gets the biggest fees, the most prestigious projects, has the greatest fan base, or who, by whose definition, is the “most famous”. I like to feature art I like.
Satan’s Imagination Stations
I was 8 years old, and I had gotten my greedy little hands on a copy of The Hobbit. I read it by nightlight early in the morning before my family awoke. The Lord of […]
There and Back Again, or, How I Got Scared Into Science Fiction
Science Fiction is one of the great loves of my life. I have spent some thirty odd years reading, critiquing, discussing, collecting, watching and dreaming it (I won’t talk about writing it, at least not […]
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