Author name: Skiffy Fanty

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Book Review: The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2014 edited by Rich Horton

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My diverse reading (which extends well beyond SF/F) makes it unfeasible for me to catch everything of interest or of merit. I, thus, appreciate the multiple anthologies each year that offer their unique selections of noteworthy short stories. This marks the sixth year of Horton’s relatively young Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy series, but it happens to be the first one that I’ve read. It will be hard to fit in past years to catch up, but I’m going to strive to make it part of the future annual reading queue. The extensive breadth and diversity of this collection strikes me foremost. The sources for the stories include a balance of major print and online magazines to smaller outlets and stand-alone publications, and the stories themselves extend through the many forms and combinations of science fiction and fantasy. A part of me wishes that literary outlets were also included in this mix, as genre elements are increasingly found within their pages. Yet another part of me recognizes that the literary world often ignores the genre, so the reverse is just as appropriate.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

225. Godzilla vs. Kaiju Panel at CONvergence 2014

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode225GodzillaVsKaijuAtCONvergence/SandF%20–%20Episode%20225%20–%20Godzilla%20vs%20Kaiju%20at%20CONvergence.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSCritters, giant lizards, and monster movies, oh my!  Earlier this year, David and Shaun were part of the “Godzilla vs. Kaiju” panel with Dave Margosian and Melissa Kaercher.  We began with the following questions:  Is the new Godzilla movie a true Godzilla movie? How does it relate to the past movies and to the genre as a whole?  From there, things took on a life of their own! We hope you enjoy the episode! Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 225 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: Dave Margosian’s Facebook Melissa Kaercher’s Twitter Tin Lizard Productions Xanadu Cinema Reel Edu Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

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My Superpower: J. Giambrone

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My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome J. Giambrone to talk about how the power of Seeing Metaphors relates to Transfixion. ——————————– In the 1999 M. Night Shyamalan film, The Sixth Sense, a boy is blessed, or cursed as it were, with the ability to see ghosts. “I see dead people” was his memorable catch phrase. Well, I see metaphors. All around us. Lingering in the background like vermin crawling in the shadows. So I’d better write about them, before someone else does. A “superpower?” Shhh. Let’s just leave it as a gift — a gift that keeps on giving.

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The Disquieting Guest — Bracing for the Universal Monsterverse

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In 2012, we witnessed an unusual (to put it mildly) phenomenon: The Avengers was simultaneously the start of a new franchise, and a sequel to four other franchises:  Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Incredible Hulk. There was, however, a precedent. Almost 60 years earlier, in 1943, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man was a sequel to both The Ghost of Frankenstein (and thus the fourth Frankenstein film) and The Wolf Man. The two series merged into one, and Dracula would be added to the mix in the films that followed. The continuity was very loose, but it was there all the same. Now, Universal has announced that it is rebooting (yet again) its monster titles with the purpose of aping the Marvel Cinematic Universe. All the icons from the 30s and 40s will be present:  the Frankenstein Monster, Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman, and the Invisible Man. Also present is the late arrival from the 50s, Universal’s last classic monster:  the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Though the official start to the Monsterverse is the Mummy reboot in 2016, it appears that Dracula Untold has been rejigged slightly to act as a prologue (assuming it isn’t a miserable failure).

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“Where Are the Wise Crones in Science Fiction?” by Athena Andreadis (Reprint)

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[This essay first appeared at the Astrogator’s Logs of Starship Reckless.] “The childishness noticeable in medieval behavior, with its marked inability to restrain any kind of impulse, may have been simply due to the fact that so large a proportion of active society was actually very young in years.” — Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century Until recently, women died on the average younger than men, primarily in childbirth – though they also died from overwork, undernourishment and beatings, like the beasts of burden they often resembled, or were killed in infancy for having the wrong hardware between their legs. However, this changed in the last few decades. UN records indicate that most of the world’s aged are now women (ignoring the “girl gap” of China, India and other cultures that deem sons a sine qua non). Concurrently, biology is (reluctantly) coming to the conclusion that grandmothers, particularly maternal ones, may have made humans who they are.

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The Heist is King: Greg Van Eekout’s CALIFORNIA BONES

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The influence of Leverage is spreading throughout genre fiction. Leverage (2008-2012) was a drama TV series that centered around a group of con-artists led by a former insurance investigator. Nate brings together a team with diverse skills to stage cons and jobs on behalf of those who cannot find redress by more legal means. With witty banter and dialogue, crackerjack plotting, and a seasoned and well executed formula, the show is enormously entertaining and forms the template for heists and cons for any sort of genre. Story twists, the various defined roles of the team (the Mastermind, the Hitter, the Thief, etc), a strong sense of characters and much more are hallmarks of the series. These tools, perfected in Leverage, have clearly been recognized and scooped up by other writers for their story toolboxes (Scott Lynch comes immediately to mind).  I’ve borrowed these ideas for my roleplaying games, myself. And so we come to Greg Van Eekout’s California Bones. Greg has written one prior novel for adults (Norse Code) and several Middle grade novels subsequent to this newest work. California Bones, projected to be the first of a series, takes that aforementioned Leverage-style heist and character banter and makes it the central set-piece of the novel. In between that, we get a fascinating alternate world fantasy set in a familiar, but drastically different, Los Angeles.

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