A Guile of Dragons starts at the very beginning of Morlock Ambrosius’s life, in King Arthur’s Court. A betrayal and capture winds up dragging the parents of Morlock, Merlin (*that* Merlin) and his pregnant mistress Nimue across the Sea of Worlds to the Wardlands, Merlin’s home plane. (A nice touch to Amber and Moorcock). Our […]
Mary Robinette Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey has been glibly described as “Jane Austen with Magic”. This shortchanges the depth of worldbuilding and characterization to be found in Kowal’s work. It captures a 19th century very much like our own with a depth that is recognizable to any author writing in or of the […]
Beyond the mighty Opal mountains and the civilized worlds of the kingdoms of Koenigswald and Juddua, lies the Half-Made World, where reality is still fluid, and in the uttermost west, turns toward formlessness and lack of definition. Here, two arcane powers, the technological remorseless of The Line, and the chaotic nature of The Gun, compete […]
“ all things good of this Earth flow into the city because of the city’s greatness. “–Pericles of Athens Cities are one of the most enduring and peculiar of human inventions. We’ve had cities for ten thousand years, as soon as humans started gathering together in groups larger than villages. We’ve built cities on canals, […]
Rejoice! The Deliverer has come back to help mankind against the nightly threat of the demonic corelings that rise out of the earth every night. But there are two men that might be the Deliverer. How can there be two? Is it Arlen Boles, the so called Painted Man, who travels between the cities of […]
Interview with Jack Campbell, author of the Lost Fleet Series “Jack Campbell” is the pseudonym for John G. Hemry, a retired Naval officer (and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis). As Jack Campbell, he writes The Lost Fleet series of military science fiction novels. The newest novel in that series, Guardian, was recently […]
On a distant world, night is the dark time for the guttering, flickering remnants of human civilization, in more ways than simply the setting of the sun. Every night, demons called corelings rise out of the ground, demons intent on feasting upon the remaining humans. Reduced from a once great civilization to some few communities […]
On the planet of Jeroun, every ten years, the followers and detractors of the god Adrash meet in a grand martial arts tournament in the city of Danoor. It is an opportunity to present and show the superiority of one’s point of the view in the most visceral way possible–grand combat. The world of Jeroun […]
Welton University is a leading University in the wilds of Minnesota. Much like the isolated and bucolic University of Minnesota at Morris, Welton University has a rustic setting that takes full advantage of the beautiful Minnesota countryside. There, students like Kim, Robert, Liesel and Julian take courses like Historical Tarot, CM, Combat Shielding, and PK […]
To create the ultimate forgery, what you need is, unsurprisingly, is the ultimate forger. And when the forgery is of the arcane variety, to forge and affix a stricken emperor’s very soul, who better than someone capable of magically forging items to the most exacting detail? Fortunately for those who wish to keep the Emperor […]
It’s been rough for Oscar Britton, Army officer turned Sorcerous Operations Corps portamancer turned outlaw selfer. After the chaos of his escape from the U.S. Army base in The Source, living life on the run while being true to his developing philosophy and ideals for what should be the future of magic users like himself […]
The Lands of Faerie, after a struggle and a near-death experience, have a true High Prince again. The rule of the false Basilisk Prince is over, and the long process of healing the damage caused by his reign can finally happen.There are holdouts, those who do not want to submit to the new Prince, and […]
A familiar skeleton of a tale. A lost ruler or aspirant to rule of a magical land has been banished, and lost his allies, friends and even his memory. He lives his life on Earth, unaware of his true role and nature, until a meeting with an ally from his old realm shows up at […]
Thematic Shared-world anthologies used to be, once upon a time, all the rage, and one of my favorite forms of genre reading. Wild Cards, Thieves World, Heroes in Hell, Forever After, Time Gate, the Man-Kzin Wars…at one point, I couldn’t scan a shelf in a bookstore without running into one I had not seen or read before.Thematic […]
As a barista at a cafe/comic book store in a fictional California college town, Ree Reyes has a pretty typical life for a genre geek. Talk with the regulars about the latest Watchmen prequel, gather with her group of equally geeky girlfriends after work. Try and pay the rent and the bills in a recession. […]
Babylon is the madam of a brothel in Scalentine. Scalentine has two moons, and is a hub of the multiverse, with portals to many other worlds. As such, a madam of a brothel who is also a good swordsman is fairly straightforward and ordinary compared to lizard races, a werewolf chess playing police captain, and […]
Drothe is a Nose. In a city of thieves, his role is as an information gatherer and curator for his employer, a roughhewn boxer of an Upright Man (think mob boss) called Nicco. It’s a decent life, one that Drothe has developed over years as one of the Kin. On the side, Drothe likes […]
In the bustling coastal California city of San Ventura, there is an uneasy tension between the Cowl, supervillain extraordinaire, and the Seven Wonders, the resident superhero group. Despite the group’s continual efforts to stop his nefarious plots, the Cowl and those who claim to swear them have often made San Ventura a city under siege. […]
Amy is five years old, somewhat stunted for her age, but otherwise a happy go lucky innocent girl who is about to graduate from kindergarten, an only child with a loving father and devoted mother. Amy is also not human, just like her mother is not human. Both are Von Neumann machines, android form artificial […]
Across the galaxy from Lost Earth, the youngest, dissolute and disreputable scion of the noble house that rules a stellar empire flees his responsibilities, his privileges and station on the eve of the ceremony marking his maturity. Little does the ne’er-do-well Brandon know, however, that at the same time, a plot decades in the […]
There is something special about books and reading. The ability to transport a reader into another world, into the lives of characters is a very powerful thing. One might even go so far as to say that reading and books are a form of magic. For Isaac Vainio, that magic is literal. He is, […]
The term Science Fiction applies if there is a science somewhere at the bottom of the fiction. Be it the “hard” sciences of physics, astronomy and chemistry, or the “soft” sciences of sociology, psychology, anthropology, and biology lying somewhere in between, there is always an underlying science for the fiction to be considered science […]
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