Oz Don’t Look Like That!
With the release of the new movie OZ: The Great and Powerful this weekend, the world created by L. Frank Baum back in 1900 is getting a fresh look. Revisiting a classic is always a good […]
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The Fuzzy Line Between Science Fiction and Fantasy
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 […]
Characters: Song of Ice & Fire’s Tyrion Lannister
Tyrion Lannister has become a household name. Anyone who knows someone with an HBO subscription has heard of him. George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire has been making waves throughout the fantasy community […]
Why Sorcerers Have Long Grizzled Beards
Ever notice that fictional sorcerers always seem to have long, grizzled beards? Ever wondered why? Well, probably you haven’t, but you’re about to find out. The sorcerer “look” originally comes from a real-life sorcerer named […]
The James Allison Stories: Dreaming of the Past
Robert E. Howard produced several series: Solomon Kane, Kull of Valusia, Bran Mak Morn, and finally Conan the Cimmerian, all existing more or less in the same world at different times. In “Kings of the […]
The Science Fiction Fan’s Bucket List
I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel a lot and do many things I’ve always wanted to do. Some of my opportunities have been work related (e.g. using the Hubble Space Telescope, and helping […]
Crossroads: Is this a Kissing Book? SFF’s Relationship with Romance
Whenever I think of speculative fiction’s relationship to romance, I am always reminded of that scene in The Princess Bride where Fred Savage’s character interrupts his grandpa and – voice dripping with scorn – asks: […]
Amazing Stories from Mexico – Book Review: Three Messages and a Warning – edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo and Chris N. Brown
Three Messages and a Warning – Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic – edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo and Chris N. Brown Small Beer Press 2011 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-193152031-7 I was drawn to […]
The Artful Collector: Collecting Strategies Part 2 “Whatever It Takes”
Rich men (I am going to fall back on the male gender because most of the collectors in the field of illustration art and books are male) don’t let scarcity stop them from getting what […]
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? […]
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.
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