Category Archives: A to Z 2012
Reflections on A to Z
A to Z. This was my second year doing this, and obviously I enjoyed it enough in 2011 to return. (It wasn’t just that I’m an indexer and alphabetizing appeals to my sense of order, honestly!) I did things differently … Continue reading
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Z is for Zelazny and Zette
Roger Zelazny largest body of work is The Chronicles of Amber. Amber has everything you could want in an epic fantasy — magic, swordplay, internecine rivalry, missing persons. . . . I hate to call it epic, though, as our … Continue reading
Y is for You Never Know
I had real trouble with this one. I couldn’t come up with any Y words that directly said “epic fantasy.” I played with ideas, like using a list including words like yataghan and yogurt to talk about how specificity aids … Continue reading
X is for Xanadu
Xanadu is not, properly speaking, epic fantasy. Xanadu is the Mongolian name for the summer capital of the Yuan Dynasty, Shangdu. However, the name has passed into Western culture filled with overtones of a more magical place. From its first … Continue reading
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W is for world-building
World-building is an important exercise, even outside of speculative fiction. Authors need to decide where to set their story, and if they use a fictional town or city, it still has to feel real. Still, for me, I find more … Continue reading
Posted in A to Z 2012
Tagged Kate Elliott, Patricia Wrede, secondary worlds, world-building
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V is for Vallejo
That’s Boris Vallejo, illustrator extraordinaire, in case there was any doubt. He’s done other work — at least one Star Trek tie-in novel cover, and National Lampoon’s European Vacation poster, for example — but one of his illustrations of a … Continue reading
U is for unicorns
Unicorns — and other magical beasts — are hallmarks of fantasy. They do not, often cannot, exist within our world, so their mere presence tells us that we are elsewhere and elsewhen, even if we see no overt magic. Unicorns … Continue reading
T is for Throne of the Crescent Moon
If you love the Tales of 1,001 Nights (also known as The Arabian Nights), you must read the books of the Crescent Moons Kingdom, by Saladin Ahmed. So far, only the first book is out — but that means you … Continue reading
S is for scope and stakes
First, I’d like to apologize for being late with this post. S was supposed to be up on Saturday, but life’s been a bit rocky for me lately. I’ll try to get the rest of the posts up on time. … Continue reading
R is for Range of Ghosts
Even if I didn’t already love Elizabeth Bear’s writing (see my review of Carnival last year), I would have wanted to pick up the book as soon as I saw her basic description on The Big Idea on Scalzi’s blog: … Continue reading
