Throughout the 1990s, while weekend antiques and craft fairs, and even Ren Faires, were drawing tens of thousands of attendees each weekend, SF cons were still deliberating the good of “one day memberships” and advertising […]
Once upon a time, science fiction and fantasy conventions were great places to find, and buy, original art – and, in time – reproductions of art created by the best professional illustrators in the field […]
“Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no STAR WARS” George Lucas. “What we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits.” Terry Gilliam. It […]
I remember being uncomfortable about the “psionics” in Dungeons and Dragons back when I was a kid. Psychic powers seemed more appropriate in science fiction than fantasy. I mean, we had Mr. Spock’s mind meld […]
I kinda like the Best Dram Pres Long Form ballot this year. It’s a varied one, has one fairly good-sized surprise, features some obvious choices, and has a two-horse race as I see it. That […]
(Note: This is from the perspective of someone who has watched the Game of Thrones TV show but is only 120 pages into the first book.) I’ve spent a serious chunk of my first week […]
I met Anja Uhren recently at an Easter egg painting event. She was casually painting a face on an off-cut of card and I was immediately impressed by the effortlessness with which she produced a […]
Welcome to the Amazing Stories BLOG HORDE INTERVIEWS! The ASM Blog Horde is a diverse and wonderful species. I have the privilege of talking with all of them, and I get to share those chats with […]
Among fantasy titans, Patrick Rothfuss shocked just about everyone by carving a place for himself with his book, The Name of the Wind. It centered on Kvothe, a character of a hundred different stories and […]
Since taking on this blogging position, I have been struggling to find works that would appeal to the audience that Amazing Stories has, particularly those who are interested in fantasy. I would categorize a large […]
Hunter x Hunter #77 – Giant ants! Giant mutant intelligent ants! Giant intelligent ants which eat people and then practice Lamarckian evolution! I expect to start hearing a theremin any minute now. I can think […]
Let’s travel back in time, you and I. Let’s go back to a time before music was delivered in packets of data. Let’s travel back to a time of bell bottoms, long hair and muscle […]
A common thread of discussion for collectors who buy art from me, and which runs through many sites dealing with collectibles, concerns the factors that make certain types of “X” (coins, stamps, comics, art, etc) […]
Hunter x Hunter #76 – Hunter x Hunter was previously adapted for TV in 1998-1999 for a series that ran to the middle of the Yorknew City arc and stopped. Various direct-to-video continuations (none of […]
As I put the finishing touches and edits on my latest novel, I am charged with the task of also creating the cover art. I consider myself to be a good photographer but for some […]
Zero-magic fantasy is a growing subgenre. But can it ever rise above the level of thought experiment? And what are the tradeoffs?
This week some in the world are celebrating the birth/death of the Bard of Avon also known as William Shakespeare. Shakespeare as you might have heard was a well-known English playwright and poet. Curiously enough […]
Be warned, this post contains spoilers for this week’s Game of Thrones episode “And Now His Watch is Ended”. This morning I sat and watched Daenerys Stormborn finally grow up as she unleashed hell upon […]
It has recently been brought to my attention that every year, the Japanese government pays a large sum of money to a handful of animation studios so that those studios will each produce a half-hour […]
More international streaming sites have announced their spring simulcasts, and I’m afraid it looks like the entire world will get to see a couple of high school romantic comedies, but most of the good sf […]
Welcome to the Amazing Stories BLOG HORDE INTERVIEWS! The ASM Blog Horde is a diverse and wonderful species. I have the privilege of talking with all of them, and I get to share those chats with […]
oxymoron (n) a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction fantasy (n) the faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things realistic (a) representing things in a way that is […]
Just kidding! Putin didn’t really ride that meteor! But it was an uneasy thing to watch, and it prompted uneasier thoughts about other things that fall, and why I crave stories with endings.
Number 13: a 13th Amazing Stories post. I interrupt my regularly scheduled posts, in my ongoing series of discussing writers of classic science fiction (and the inner meanings therein), to consider the number 13 (and […]
A big stack of first looks this week, and then it’ll be time to make decisions about what to add for the regular weekly commentary. Those of you worried about the absence of Attack on […]
In 1939 Farnsworth Wright began a move away from Sword & Sorcery. With Robert E. Howard dead, he no longer championed the dark fantasy tale, publishing Henry Kuttner’s Elak as the last. This meant that […]
There’s something unseemly about writers who write about writers. Many of my beliefs about writing have changed since I was a pink-cheeked little colleen getting up early to write before school, but this is one […]
This week I’m fighting my way past drunken skateboarders and striking cab drivers to get a peek at the latest security and surveillance gadgets the world has to offer. I’ve already spoken with some developers […]
First, a little awards news: Nominees for the Seiun for Best Media (roughly equivalent to Hugo nominees for Best Dramatic Presentation) include two anime series, Bodacious Space Pirates and Eureka Seven AO. E7AO is a […]
“Do not annoy a dragon, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.” — Author Unknown A myth about ancient map makers is that they’d adorn the distant uncharted areas with “Here Be Dragons”, […]
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