Author name: Skiffy Fanty

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My Superpower: Tansy Rayner Roberts

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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 Tansy Rayner Roberts.   My superpower is making extra work for my publisher. When your publisher is one of your best friends, and you’re invested in her success almost as much as your own career, it’s a very different relationship than when they are a distant, shiny corporation in a big city somewhere in the world. I’ve had quite a few publishers over the last 19 years as a professional author, and I am very attached to many of them, but Twelfth Planet Press feels like my baby almost as much as it belongs to its publisher, Alisa Krasnostein. I’ve been there from the beginning; watched her projects and aesthetic evolve. I was there as the idea for ‘hey what about monthly collections by female authors’ developed into a massive, sprawling 4 year project.

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Guest Post: Writing the Monster by Scott Oden

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When Thomas Hobbes called the life of a man “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, he could easily have been referring to the life of an Orc. Since their humble beginnings as song-croaking goblins in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, these dim-witted, often Cockney-speaking brutes have grown well beyond the Professor’s intent; they have seized a place of their own in the annals of Fantasy. While some fans will never see them as anything other than sword fodder and servants of this Dark Lord or that, others have embraced them as noble savages, maligned and misunderstood – and worthy of their own books. Long have I pondered the question of how mere spear-carriers in the epic drama of Tolkien’s legendarium captured the imaginations of so many readers. 

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

Signal Boost #9: Sarah Dodd (Samovar) and Rod Faulkner (The 7th Matrix)

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost9SamovarAndThe7thMatrix/Sandf–SignalBoost9–SamovarAndThe7thMatrix.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSIn today’s episode of Signal Boost, Sarah Dodd, co-editor of Samovar Magazine, joins Jen to talk about what Samovar is, the challenge of finding non-English speculative fiction, and the importance of their collaborations in bringing a translated spec-fic magazine to life. Then Shaun is joined by Rod Faulkner, founder and editor of The 7th Matrix, to discuss speculative short films and web series, the democratization of film, including how important this is for marginalized voices, and some of his recommendations for short films. 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):

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

#59. Alien: Covenant (2017) w/ Jeannette Ng — A Shoot the WISB Subcast

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/ShootTheWISB59AlienCovenant/ShootTheWisb59–AlienCovenant.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSByron, Shelley, and Wagner, oh my! Shaun, David, and Jen, discuss Ridley Scott’s newest edition to the Alien universe, Alien: Covenant, with special guest, Jeannette Ng! The group travel deep into the weeds of the literary and theological references in the film (dragging Shaun along kicking and screaming), Ridley Scott’s ambitious vision, and David’s (not to be confused with the David on the podcast) role as the protagonist of Prometheus and Covenant. It’s a bit of a heavy hitter. 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):

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

Signal Boost #8: A Conversation about the Importance of Wonder Woman

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost8OnTheImportanceOfTheWonderWomanFilm/Sandf–SignalBoost8–OnTheImportanceOfTheWonderWomanFilm.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSIn today’s episode of Signal Boost, Shaun and Jen discuss the importance of the new Wonder Woman film succeeding — both for the representation of women in front of and behind the silver screen. Don’t forget to wait for this week’s boosts at the end! 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):

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Guest Post: Growing up in Fandom in the 1970s, by LJ Cohen

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I’m not sure if this still holds true today, but if you came of age in the 1970s, were a strong early reader who had read through all the books specifically written for children, and you were lucky enough to have a sympathetic librarian, you’d be directed to the science fiction and fantasy shelves. At least that’s my story. The Heinlein juveniles had been published a decade before I was born, but they were the first genre books I read. From there, I found all the Lensman books — written even earlier! I may have only been 10 or 11 when I read these, but even then I was frustrated by the insistence that only one special, fierce woman — to be born in some far future — could be a Lensman. Lenses were objects of power that amplified the qualities within a person. The message I got was that girls, as a rule, didn’t deserve power and couldn’t wield power. That I didn’t deserve power; that I was wasn’t good enough. It angered me that girls weren’t the ones leaping up to explore the stars. Asimov’s Robot books fascinated me, but the only woman portrayed in them — Susan Calvin — was more robotic than the robots.

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