Michael Swanwick on Ursula LeGuin

Michael Swanwick writes about the new collection from Ursula LeGuin.

"Among other things, it tried to establish that what distinguished good fantasy from bad was that it went all the way into the strangeness and otherness of the fantasy world, stating that "the point about Elfland is that you are not at home there. It's not Poughkeepsie. It's different."

Headlopper

Holy shit. Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart did a pin up for Headlopper?!?!

I love when smart folks break down storytelling into simple, visual arcs. This piece from Kurt Vonnegut on "The Shape of Stories" is one of the best.

"You will see this story over and over again. People love it, and it is not copyrighted. The story is ‘Man in Hole,’ but the story needn’t be about a man or a hole. It’s: somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again [draws line A]. It is not accidental that the line ends up higher than where it began."

In this episode of "Lessons from the Screenplay," Michael Tucker breaks down the similar story arcs between "Whiplash" and "Black Swan" - diving into the themes of sacrifice and greatness.

Act 1: Inciting Incident, Desire, and Dramatic Question Every story has its first turning point. The moment at which the protagonist can no longer maintain the status quo and embarks on their journey. …The second act of a screenplay is where the protagonists encounter obstacle after obstacle, and in doing so are forced to change in a way they wouldn’t otherwise. …Act 3: Transformation And Perfection. …Both protagonists have destroyed their old selves.

"In a real fight, and most fights are real, not the artifice of a formal duel, it's fatigue that's the big killer. A sword is a heavy chunk of iron. You swing that around for a few minutes and your arms start to get ideas of their own about what they can and can't do. Even when your life depends on it." - Prince of Thorns, Mark Lawrence.

"What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa." -Michael Moorcock

"O ill-dispersing wind of misery! O my accursed womb, the bed of death! A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world, Whose unavoided eye is murderous.” - Shakespeare, Richard III

"Their love laughs at locksmiths We're smashing through the windows Of delicate dream homes"

Two days of nearly uninterrupted writing time. 10,000 words to write. Easier said than done.

"Strife whose wrath is relentless, she is the sister and companion of murderous Ares, she who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making men's pain heavier." Homer, The Illiad

“Ultimately, Chaos brings a more profound stagnation than anything it despises in Law. It must forever seek more and more sensation, more and more empty marvels, until there is nothing left and it has forgotten what true invention is.” Michael Moorcock, Corum - The Queen of Swords

I've abandoned the Evernote list I've kept for the last seven years. I've traded it in for a Goodreads account. I'm not sorry and I am not looking back. See what I'm reading - and let me know what you're reading - here.

This week I've been thinking about what kind of weapon chaos magic wielding, black-sheep princeling would prefer. I'm becoming attached to the idea of a different kind of sword: two-handed, wide, serpentine and forked at the tip. Something used more for an aggressive, chopping style of fighting.

Of course, none of this is entirely original thinking - I'm borrowing liberally from concepts articulated by Gene Wolfe and Mike Mignola.

I first thought of Terminus Est, the executioner's sword wielded by Severian in Gene Wolfe's "Shadow of the Torturer." I read this series when I was a kid and the have never stopped admiring the way Wolfe conceptualized the sword and made it such a unique tool for the apprentice torturer.

I don't know if this one has a name, but it's the hyperborean blade used by Agent Howards in Mike Mignola's BPRD. This came to mind primarily because of the forked tip but also because I love the wild and aggressive way Howards flings himself into the fight.

And - because I'm going for something more exotic, less practical and more serpentine - I've been thinking about that strange the Javanese Kris.

I'm so glad to see that "Stranger Things" has done good things for D&D!

Inspiring feature on Elegy for a Dead World - a video game about the power of writing that mashes up formats, media and writers.

"To you the bold and foolish lambs. To you who are intoxicated with riddles, let's go. Who take pleasure in twilight. Whose souls are lured by noise to every treacherous abyss. For you do not feel for a rope like cowards, and where you can guess you hate to calculate. And where others would poison, you dismember." ― Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche

Exploring concepts of order and chaos in modern fantasy. Reading:

• Sabriel, Garth Nix 
• The Knight of Swords, Michael Moorcock 
• Three Hearts & Three Lions, Poul Anderson

"Power, according to Foucault is the relationship between two or more entities. Within this relationship, entites struggle and maneuver for position and advantage. So, for instance, factory owner and factory workers confront each other in a field of power that contains both opportunities and constraints for both parties. There is no such thing as capital 'P' power; there are only specific, concrete relational forms that interaction takes." -John Ransom, 1995

Natalie Shau.

The art of Natalie Shau. Rabbits. Ravens. What's not to love here?

The Magicians.

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, was published this week by Penguin Putnam. I loved this book and it's meta-narrative, dissatisfaction with work and life, anti-quests and amazing, lyrical prose. Go buy it now and check out Lev's excellent blog, Nerd World.

It was my great pleasure to interview Lev at Book Expo this year for Borders Media. The video interview, including too many embarassing shots of yours truly is here.

You can also hear the NPR interview with Lev here, including a guest appearance by the extremely talented Elizabeth Hand.

Thomas Pynchon's Los Angeles.

I've have never spent any time in Los Angeles, and I've only read one Thomas Pynchon book completely - V.

I have started The Crying of Lot 49 twice and made it through 677 pages of Mason and Dixon. I have passed through the L.A. airport three or four times.

It's a city I am certain I would love and revile in equal measure, but really, who cares about my experiences or lack thereof?

Wired magazine did this awesome map to celebrate the release of the new Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice. Check out the user submitted google map at their page as well - great idea!

From what the publisher told me and from talking to friends who've read it - Inherent Vice is certainly more accessible than his last several works.

From the Wired website:

"Little known fact: Thomas Pynchon, the paranoid poet of the information age, is LA's greatest writer. To be sure, Los Angeles—whose aerial view he likened to a printed circuit board—has always been central to the elusive writer's weird weltanschauung, his hallucinogenic stir-fry of Cold War hysteria, high tech anxiety, and low-brow pop-culture references. But did you know he actually lived there in the '60s and early '70s, while writing Gravity's Rainbow, the Moby-Dick of rocket-science novels? "