"Guest of Honor": three words I honestly never expected to hear applied to myself, and I frequently remarked on that during Lunacon. But invited as GoH I was, and so last weekend (the 14th through 16th) I was at Lunacon in Rye Brook, NY. Note: in the following piece I'll try to link to the people or places mentioned, but in some cases I can't find or am not sure of an appropriate link. I posed some problems at the last minute to the con staff, who rose to the occasion magnificently. The people who had been [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
March 3, 2014 By Leave a Comment
1977, as I have mentioned before, was something of a banner year in my fandom experiences for me. Star Wars was released in that year; I first encountered roleplaying games, in the form of Dungeons and Dragons, in 1977; The Sword of Shannara was published in that year. And so was Lord Foul's Bane, the first book in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever – a series which was first a trilogy, then two trilogies, and now a total of ten books with the addition of a final tetralogy. I have not read this final [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Pirates of the Caribbean
February 26, 2014 By Leave a Comment
"You're forgetting one thing, mate: I'm Captain Jack Sparrow." Once upon a time there was a rather cheesy amusement park ride called "Pirates of the Caribbean". Disney had constructed this ride to capitalize on the image of pirates that it had, itself, helped to create, swashbuckling rogues who were perhaps not quite as blackhearted as they would like you to think, and certainly not very much like the real thing. This was certainly a slight foundation on which to build a movie, and I myself have never seen the ride [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Witch Family
February 24, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Written by children's author Eleanor Estes (best known for her "Moffat Family" books and "Ginger Pye"), The Witch Family is probably my favorite of her works. It tells the story of Old Witch, the oldest, most evil, and most powerful of all the witches, and how she was "banquished" to the great bare bleak glass hill for her wickedness by Amy, an ordinary mortal girl living in Garden Lane in Washington, DC. The action of most chapters is an interspersion of Amy and her best friend Clarissa talking about Old Witch and [ Continue reading... ]
What is an Editor Good For?
February 21, 2014 By Leave a Comment
A lot of people who are not published authors don't have a clear idea of exactly what an editor does, or why they're needed by an author. In addition, there's a lot of stories out there about horrible things editors do or have done to people and their stories. This is becoming a VASTLY more important issue because so many people are going the self-published route and really, honestly don't understand why they might need an editor at all. I want to talk about my own experiences and views of editing, garnered over the [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
February 19, 2014 By Leave a Comment
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment." My last post reminded me that I hadn't yet posted anything about the original -- an oversight that I now rectify! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a man of wide experience and education – a doctor who served on both a Greenland whaler and a steamship on a voyage to western Africa, a scientist with a keen sense of justice, a man fascinated with the unknown and unknowable. Though he had many notable achievements in his [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Young Sherlock Holmes
February 17, 2014 By Leave a Comment
The power of speculative fiction – and, indeed, of many other works of fiction – rests on the simple phrase "what if…?" What if we could reach the moon? What if you could predict the course of civilization and saw its collapse? What if the Greek Myths were real? This is of course also the foundation of much fanfic – what if the story continued, what if these people had a different relationship than shown in canon, etc. What if someone wrote a marvelous Sherlock Holmes fanfic and got it filmed? [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Weapon Brown
February 14, 2014 By Leave a Comment
"I've got a lot of names, depending on who you ask. I'll let you call me Chuck. I kill for a living. There's a lot of guys in my line of work, and they're all cheaper than me. If all you want is to put a hole in somebody, you hire one of them. But if you want to take out a tank crew of battle-hardened scum and fall asleep knowing they died screaming -- you call good ol' Weapon Brown." Holy. Crap. There are few things that leave me speechless upon encountering them. WEAPON BROWN is one. I ran into this [ Continue reading... ]
(Not) On My Shelves: Neon Genesis Evangelion
February 12, 2014 By Leave a Comment
In the very early 1980s, a new anime company burst onto the scene, founded by a couple of fans who had determined to go pro: Gainax Studios. First gaining prominence with a fantastic video intro to the Daicon convention in 1981, Gainax gained funding and resources to release four anime which were generally considered classics, each in its own way: Gunbuster: Aim for the Top!, which was a high-powered space opera which combined ludicrous with the realistic in what was both a gentle parody and also a completion of the Giant Robot [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Ghost Rider
February 10, 2014 By Leave a Comment
It's said that the West was built on legends. Tall tales that help us make sense of things too great or too terrifying to believe. This is the legend of the Ghost Rider. Nicholas Cage has done a lot of movies – some good, some pretty bad – over the years. Of all his movies I've seen, my favorite remains Ghost Rider. Part of the first new wave of superhero movies (which was sparked by the success of Spider-Man), Ghost Rider tells the story of Johnny Blaze, a son of a stunt motorcycle driver (and a good stunt [ Continue reading... ]
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