Unexpected Classical Music

Lately I've been enjoying a lot of saxophone quartet music while writing.  Saxophone quartets are grossly underrated.  String quartets get the headlines because in the small parlors of the 1700s, the lightweight and soft tones didn't blast the audience seated just a few feet away, but I'm partial to the sound of the woodwind, myself - and not just because I came of age listening to the sax-heavy soundtracks of the 1980s.  There's something clean and pure in this particular woodwind that lends itself to a quartet.  The natural blend of the different sizes of a saxophone, and the natural volume you get from them makes these perfect instruments for listening to on the streets and in the concert hall. 

But that's not what this post is about today.  Today's post is about the classic modern masterpiece that is the theme from "Super Mario Brothers".  Check this out:



Four movements.  Three styles.  Peppy, breezy, maniacal interlude, menacing, then back to the original theme with a huge flourish at the end.  That's a real crowd pleaser.

Speaking of which, have you ever been to a concert where the performer broke into this song?  It's electric.  Those first few bars are not just recognizable, they are beloved.  Everybody knows them.  Everybody loves them.  The intro of this song makes the crowd sit up, laugh, and pay attention.  They make people of all ages smile, and it's a safe bet they will continue to do so for the next 200 years.

Rocket's Red Glare

Who says short fiction is dead?  Not Kieth West:

"From distant galaxies to the mean streets of Hollywood . . . from the war-torn skies of France in 1918 to the far side of the moon . . . The stories in Rocket’s Red Glare exemplify the adventure, courage, and sense of discovery so vital to the American spirit. Whether daring to cross interstellar space or battling alien conquerors when they come right to our own back yard, the characters in these tales never give up, never stop fighting for their country, their lives, their honor. Featuring all-new stories by Sarah A. Hoyt (part of her USAian series), Brad R. Torgersen, Martin L. Shoemaker, Lou Antonelli, James Reasoner, and more, Rocket’s Red Glare is packed with space opera excitement, dazzling scientific speculation, gritty action, and compelling characters."

 I've got a copy burning away on my Kindle - can't wait to read it, because there are a lot of great names on that cover.

Get your own copy here.

Modern Pulp Adventure

Not the official mock-up cover,
but a man can dream...

It's been done before, but never quite like this. A G-plus discussion on the suitability of the pulp ethos for tales set in the modern world got completely out of hand over the weekend. Somebody threw down a gauntlet and Misha Burnett scooped it up with a call to keyboard arms:

We are looking for 21st Century Pulp Revival stories. Who’s we? Well, there’s me, Rawle Nyanzi, Kevyn Winkless, and Sky Hernstrom. There is also a good chance that, once complete, the anthology will be published by Superversive Press.

Take a read through the submission guidelines, and if you think you've got what it takes to show the word there's more to pulp than fast action and empty adventure, throw your hat in the ring.  I've already written a 4,500 word Karl Barber adventure, so you might just wind up having your work beta-read and amateur edited by me.  And the chance of that alone is worth taking a stab at Misha's project.

In all seriousness, this is an important project for the #PulpRevolution.  We talk a big game, stirring up hard v. soft pots, shouting "you're doing it wrong" at other pulp practicitoners, running serious analysis of why the old pulps worked, and so on.  What we don't have much of right now is proof that the concepts work.  We've got Rawle Nyanzi's under-priced Sword and Flower, my own Sudden Rescue, and the works of Brian Niemeier and Misha himself*, but churning out the works is a glacial process. 

Misha's elegant solution is to share the load.  If everybody throws in 2K to 10K words, we can pump out a collection much faster than anyone could an 80K book alone.  Not only does this give a unified title to point to show that the Pulp Revolution works, it also gives a single point of contact where readers can read a sampler of the different writers.  Not all will appeal to everyone, but everyone can find a few writers that they'll enjoy.  Even more, it's a way to showcase the depth and scope possible within the pulp revolution, even when it is constrained to a near-real modern world.

Misha's a treasure, and I have no shame in riding his coattails, because I know they are going more places than I could ever go on my own.  I'd like to ride your coat-tails, too, so be a pal and throw a work into the pile, won't you?

* The latter two really pre-date the birth of the revolution, but we're claiming them anyway and there's nothing you can do to stop us.

Cirsova Four, Part One

This was a long time coming.  Cirsova Issue #4 has been in my hands for months, this copy has travelled across the Pacific twice, and I’m just now getting around to reading through it.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day for all the great fiction raining down on our heads, but I’m trying to consume and write about it all anyway.  My goal is to write at least a few sentences about each story, but this might take a while given that number four is double-stuffed with creamy genre goodness.

The story that kicks off this latest edition left me cold, which is ironic given that it revolves around the a city surrounded by fire and lava.  Wall Wardens, by Lynn Rushlau, tells one chapter of the tale of the last city in the world, and one of the wizards charged with maintaining the massive magic barricade that keeps the fire and the drakes outside, looking in.  The setting is fantastically creative – a literal safe bubble in a sea of fire, and I could see many a role-playing game revolving around the politics of the city and foiling the numerous attempts by apocalyptic cults to bring down the magic barricade.  In this short story, however, the villain’s motivation didn’t make enough sense, and I didn’t have enough reason to root for the protagonist to give this story a solid recommendation.  It’s not a bad story, but it doesn’t stand out among the usual Cirsova affair.

The second story starts as a standard King Aurthur as a young boy story, and then takes an unexpected twist into a Lovecraftian nightmare.  That this twist surprised me actually surprised me given that it’s right there on the cover.  The Lady of the Amorous City, by Edward M. Erdelac, uabashedly mashes up heroic knights with damsels in distress, tentacled monsters, and bottomless lakes housing things best left undisturbed.  Thought it starts slow, when the action ramps up, the story doesn’t relent until the end.  Even with everything I’ve said already, this story still contains a few surprises for readers.  All in all, this winds up a tight little read with a little bit of everything mixed in. 

An Evolving Canon

A canon need not be a static thing.  Even the canonical example of a canon - that of the Roman Catholic church - changes over time.  Additional knowledge, wisdom, and study, can all add detail, depth, and breadth to a canon. 

You know what I'm talkin' bout, Willis.

But before you can add to a canon, you first have to acknowledge that a canon exists. 

For one thing, you have to admit that there exists a body of work that has been most influential in shaping the culture that you're talking about.  You have to admit that a few select examples of a culture serve as fundamental instances of what that culture does, what it stands for, and what it means.  For some, the very notion that a canon exits is problematic.  They feel it constrains and hampers them, rather than simply defining them as part of the culture or not.  That litmus test can be a very scary thing - it feels like a measuring stick that would shine a light on their own deficiencies.  It would out them as imposters to the culture that they dislike, but very much want to control, to shape it more to their liking.

And so they claim such a thing simply doesn't exist. 

This also results in the happy circumstance that the thing they don't really like - not really - can be remade to fit their own ideas.  Rather than simply scuttle off and make their own thing, they co-opt an existing culture, and turn it to their own ends.  Without a valid definition of the culture, without shining exemplars of the best that culture has to offer, they are free to redefine the culture.  Which feeds back into the idea of "No Canon".  They can then show those who built the culture that not only is there no yardstick, but even if there was, the early examples of the culture don't even fit the 'new and improved' culture.

How convenient.

Ah, but once a canon is shown to exist, then things get interesting.  Then new works can enter the canon.  The culture can change and evolve over time, and the additions to the canon will inevitable reflect the new spirit of the culture.  Of course, that leaves in place the older canonical works, which allows them to continue exerting influence over the newcomers.  And, more importantly, it takes a lot more time, effort, and skill to nudge a culture in a new direction.  Why, one would have to compete with the old guard on a level playing field!

And so, if you want to change a culture, but are too stupid, too lazy, and too venal to participate in it, then your best bet is to deny the culture exists.  Destroy its pillars, and then start stacking bits of rubble up in the ruins.  With no majestic temple to be seen, you can point to your pitiful little stacks of broken rock and proclaim yourself the definitive example of the culture.

But those of us who remember the Cathedral you leveled will always know that you for the fraud you are, and we have ways of rebuilding the temple just as it was.  And the more people see that temple and compare it to your sad little pile, the less influence you will have over the culture you so desperately wanted to control.

Sleep tight, frauds!

Find Your Own Gatekeeper

Look at this thing from HuffPo:

It would be easy to go after the low-hanging fruit here.  This woman you've never heard of has written three memoirs.  Three.  Because her life is just that interesting.  She is a "journalist". Because writing a blog on HuffPo counts.  The obvious self-contradiction of a blogger sneering at self-publishing.

 

Instead of dwelling on these things, let's look at a far more mature and thorough takedown by Richard Alan Chandler.  He doesn't go for the easy insults to an obviously flawed piece, he cuts to the heart of the matter by focusing on how her wrong-headedness about gatekeepers amounts to her lament that things are better for readers today:

No, my point is that she is wrong about the lack of gatekeepers. There are actually more gatekeepers now than there are editors and publishers and agents in the entire publishing industry.

I’m talking about you, the reader – both individually and collectively. Individually, because you now have a vastly broader range of works to choose from. And collectively, through your actions on a site like Amazon. When you and all the other readers go to Amazon, you are informing each other about what is good or bad by what you buy, or not, as reflected by the Amazon ranking (conveniently divided by subgenre), and what else is good through the “Also Bought” mechanism. And individually, again, through your star ratings and reviews. Your actions are both informed by those who have gone before you, and they guide those who come after you.

To which I would add that the changing nature of gatekeepers puts the burden on the reader of choosing his own gatekeepers.  And that the process of finding, following, and supporting your chosen gatekeeper crew need not be an onerous one.  You already enjoy reading, and most of the gatekeepers out there are communication via the written word.  So if you dedicate just a few moments of your day's reading to the social media output of even just a handful of trusted individuals, you'll be able to find works that target your interests like a laser beam.

New Schedule

Source

Between writing my own little novellas, keeping up with posting on three blogs (that I'll admit to), and now working on recording a pair of new books for Castalia House, the cup that holds my free time workload truly doth runneth over.

Something's gotta give, and it's going to be this blog, but not by much.  We live in a new golden age of literature, and those of us trying to midwife a new culture of bright, energetic, and fun works have no shortage of materials to draw on for inspiration.  Rather than fill up this blog with a bunch of filler posts pointing to those other blogs, we're just going to pull back here for a bit. 

Until I can get caught up on my writing - I'm pushing to get two more novellas out by the end of the year - we're just going to pull back from posting a bit.  You can expect posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until further notice.

The Shallows: A Female Protagonist Done Right

The Seagull does not talk about movies very often.  For the most part, he only looks at Hollywood through the rearview mirror. 

They clearly don't like me.  They've made that fact abundantly clear over the last few years.  They might want my money or attention, but until they stop berating me and mocking me, they'll get as little from me as I can manage.

For various familial reasons, my daughter wanted to see the shark attack suspense movie The Shallows, and sometimes family movie night takes the wheel and kicks principled objections into the back seat.

It's a great suspense movie.  The threat builds, the reveals steady, and the resolution fast, violent, and brutal.  The most impressive part of the film is the successful use of a genuinely feminine protagonist who survives by dint of cleverness and determination.  The decision to cast the survivor as a female might have been driven by the more appealing cheesecake factor, but it adds to the suspense given her relative weakness.  That vulnerability heightens the suspense, and makes the viewer care even more about her fate. 

It might be accidental.  It might be patriarchal.  It might be a lot of things, but one thing it might not be, is bad film-making.  Worth note is that the violence is particularly well done.  Most of it happens off camera or is obscured by waves or rocks, and leaving the gore to the viewer's imagination is a refreshingly effective throwback to earlier film-making techniques, while leaving the movie accessible to more mature pre-teens.

There are a few idiot moments early on the story, but the producers made a few token gestures to explain the motivation behind them.  The viewer, having seen the trailer and understanding common safety rules, knows these are mistakes, but can at least understand why the girl in the water puts her desire to get into the water ahead of basic water safety.  Besides, the few mistakes she makes are critical to putting her in the dangerous situation that she spends the next eighty minutes struggling to escape.

And boy does she struggle.  Every time she solves one problem another one rears its ugly head.  The universe clearly has it in for her, and she frequently pauses to acknowledge these little moments with a slight, "You gotta be kidding me," look.  It's endearing and makes her a far more sympathetic heroine than another cut and paste badass dude with boobs and a womb.

All in all, this is a tight little movie with great pacing, and just the kind of believable and sympathetic female protagonist that Paul Fieg, JJ Abrams, and Joss Whedon only wish they knew how to create.

Down the Dragon Hole

Click to buy

After the heavy mythic fare of Thune's Vision, Make Death Proud to Take Us serves as a light chaser - at least the stories I've read from it so far.

Down The Dragon Hole, by Morgon Newquist, is a fun romp of a fantasy tale featuring...well, just what it says on the tin.  A bookish wizard teams up with a burly and clever soldier to kill a dragon.  That one sentence description dorsn't do the book justice, but the tale features enough little surprises and twists that saying anymore would do you a disservice.

There's nothing particularly groundbreaking or profound about Down the Dragon Hole, and that is no slight.  Not every story needs to be a grinding statement about the tragedy of life on this mortal coil or an epic tale of the clash of civilizations and the rise of dark lords thwarted by small people.  Sometimes a jaunt through a smaller adventure with a few gratuitous explosions, clever twists, and lighthearted settings is just what the book doctor ordered, and this story definitely fits that mold. 

This is a fun read with compelling characters who start shallow but display a slowly revealed depth that is a delight to read.  One of the characters performs a neat little heel-face turn - or face-heel, depending on your point of view - about half way through.  They might be heroes, they might be regular people thrust into a dangerous situation, and they might be the best of both, if Morgon's blog is to be believed, their adventures aren't over.  The ending certainly leaves that door open in a very natural way.

One thing I would like to highlight is that the point-of-view character is a woman.  She is not a badass chick with only one tragic flaw - that no one understands how truly wonderful she it.  She's a real, three-dimensional character, a bookish type with some moderate level of ability forced to push herself in ways that she never though possible.  She strives against the odds, possesses deeper reserves than she knew, and yet retains the feminine characteristics that allow her to be a fully realized woman rather than another cookie-cutter flawless and boring don't-need-no-man kind of hero.  It's a refreshing change from the usual fare.

On the downside, the story does contain a couple of minor anachronisms that jangle against the medieval fantasy backdrop, giving the setting the midwest-American feel that one sees in most fantasy literature these days.  I prefer a more historical feudal-with-magic, and if the language isn't high medieval English, it should at least avoid modern phrasing.  But this criticism is a personal taste and again, no slight against the author.

So if you're in the mood for a good dragon hunting adventure with a fun pair of heroes, then give Down the Dragon Hole a look.  This is the second story I've reviewed from the series - look for the rest here sometime in the near future.

And if you liked Down the Dragon Hole, you might like my own dragon-hunting novella, The King's Dragon, available at Amazon.com

More Hernstrom: Thune's Vision

Click to buy

There truly is no writer working today who better exemplifies the Pulp Revolution than Schuyler Hernstrom.  I know what you're thinking, but talking about what we're reading lately is the point of this exercise, and I've been reading Hernstrom, so I'm talking about Hernstrom.  I wanted to see if the high quality of the couple of stories of his that made it into Cirsova were a fluke or not, and now that I'm half-way through Thune's Vision, I can happily report that they most definitely are not.

Thune's Vision is a collection of his short stories, and you should already know this because you should already have read them because they are that good.  Hernstrom writes with a dreamy lyricism that reminds me of Zelazny at times and Poul Andersen at his fantasy best at others.

I already told you about the first story in the collection, The Challenger's Garland, and it's epic feel.  The remaining stories, though still strongly Hernstronian, have a character all their own.  The second story, Athan and the Princess, feels more like a Howard story, and not just in the subject matter of a barbarian wandering the wilds.  He departs from that mold by making the titular barbarian the leader of a tribe who sets out, not in an aimless wandering, but on a specific quest to save his people.  Hernstrom imbues this story with a timelessness both in the prose he uses and in the epic sweep of history that both precedes and follows the action of the tale.

The third tale in the collection, Movements of the Ige, is the first wholly science-fiction tale in the collection.  Most of Hernstrom's stories take place in that odd twilight where science-fiction sticks its snout into the fantasy tent, but this one is a straight astronauts and aliens tale.  It is told from the point of view of the aliens, and here Hernstrom plays coy to good effect.  He presents the reader with impressions of the characters and action more than descriptions, and somehow this makes the alien culture and its response to humanity's intrusion into their world all the more strange.  Although the aliens would clearly be considered the 'bad guys' were the tale told from the human point of view, here we sympathize with them even as we curse them for their alien warlike assumptions.

Moving on to The Ecology of the Unicorn, we get the closest thing to a fairy tale style fantasy featuring a sorcerer, pursued by death himself, travelling into the land of fey to stave off death for a few more millennia.  The sorcerer's tower, the land of the fairies, and the inhabitants of each almost fit the typical clichés.  They could be the carbon-copy characters and places of hundreds of forerunner stories, but Hernstrom scatters just a few little details here and there to put a unique spin on each that gives them more depth and character.

The last tale in the book is The Saga of Adalwolf, but as a novella, I'm going to save a review of that for later.  For now, there are a couple of points that need to me made.  This book reads like a first time self-published author.  That is both a strength and weakness.  The upshot is that he is free to experiment, and those experiments generally pay off.  The downside is that each story contains a few clunky sentences that jangle against his normal fluency.  Working without a net is a tricky business, and though he does it well, any editor worth his salt would have called out a sentence like this:

The sorcerer made himself comfortable in a low slung chair made from the bones of a wyvern as he pondered his predicament over a goblet of mulled wine.

There's way too much going on in that sentence, and it sticks out in contrast when surrounded by passages such as this:

Molok rose from his resting place in the damp earth.  He mounted his black warhorse and rode through gray mist, past broken tombs and stunted trees.  Before a cliff's edge he brought the mount to heel.  Tendrils of fog coalesced in the heavy air, weaving themselves into a bridge of sorts, leading away into the void beyond the sky.  Molok snapped the reins and crossed over, entering the realm of his lord.

Now that's what I'm talking about.  That short and sweet cadence that sounds almost poetic, the light touch of detail that speaks volumes.  That's this book's strong suit.  While Thune's Vision is a step back from the flawless quality of Herstrom's edited works, it is at most a baby step, and shouldn't be off-putting to the potential reader.

Hernstrom's work meets that impossible to describe, but wonderful to behold dream of production companies everywhere; it's the same, but different.  He works well trod ground - fantasy lands that incorporate the ruins of great technological empires long crumbled into dust, or fairy tale-esque fantasies with wicked sorcerer's and tricksy little fey creatures.  But in Thune's Vision, he's doing it on his own terms, and adding a strong voice and just the right mix of new ideas, and new blend of old ideas, to give the reader the sort of sf/f that is in such short supply these days.

Short Fiction: The Challenger's Garland

The first short story in Schuyler Herntrom's collection, Thune's Vision, is The Challenger's Garland, is the worst thing I've ever read by Mr. Hernstrom.

If you've been following this blog you know that doesn't tell you much.  His stories included in the first two issues of Cirsova Magazine, were brilliant, and this very brief tale doesn't reach those heights.  It's still a great story and highly recommended.

The plot is as epic as it is simple, Death's Champion rides forth to challenge the unbeaten White Knight.  It's a basic fight between the white hat and the black hat with the former representing everything good and decent and the latter representing only death and destruction, and yet the story reflects the myriad subtleties that lurk within the details of that constant battle on a fallen earth.

The story does feel like a bit of an experiment - can one strip away the chrome that is normally added to modern versions of a battle between black and white and still wind up with an interesting story? It also reads like a first time author playing with the concept of a fairy tale tone, pace, and theme.  These are not complaints, merely observations.  If anything, they add to the charm of the piece.

Here's a brief excerpt that jumped out at me:

In the Kinniverse jungle the apes scattered from his shadow, scurrying up the massive trees in which stood their wondrous city.  They peered down from latticed towers, unwilling to shower the lone horseman with missiles, as was their usual practice.  The towering trees shrank as the jungle ended.

He entered a land of rolling hills and verdant pastures.

Molok dismounted, walking through a field of flowers.  The grass was still fresh with dew.  Ahead he saw the silhouette of a young woman.  She turned upon the hearing his heavy steps.

"I hear the step of an armored knight.  Are you from the citadel?"

Molok looked into her eyes, two orbs of milky white without iris or pupil. 

That kind of easy and evocative writing, that taps into the timeless tropes of myth and legend, is a joy to read. 

For another take on this book, here's The Frisky Pagan.