Blog Posts

Guest Post: Tremontaine's Karen A. R. Lord shares her Philosophy of the Sword

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This blog post originally appeared at Serial Box, where you can find serialized fiction released in episodes week after week. Karen Lord is one of the writers on Tremontaine season 3. Tremontaine is the critically acclaimed prequel to Ellen Kushner’s beloved Riverside novels, which developed a cult following beginning with Swordspoint in 1987. The “Fantasy of Manners” focuses on decadent world building and interpersonal intrigue, and has been noted for its progressive expression of gender and sexuality. Team-written by some of today’s most exciting authors, Tremontaine season 3 is brought to you by Ellen Kushner, Joel Derfner, Karen Lord, Delia Sherman, Racheline Maltese, Paul Witcover, Tessa Gratton, and Liz Duffy Adams. The first episode is available for free at Serial Box and can be found here. Being a writer is like being a director with a crowd of characters demanding ‘So, what’s my motivation?’ Like real-life actors, they don’t always listen when you tell them your plans, which is why flexible plots and rewrites are a part of my process. It’s a process that works when I’m writing a book by myself, but a joint writing project like Tremontaine is a different beast. The world belongs to Ellen Kushner, the characters belong to Ellen and the full team of Tremontaine writers, and being on the same page is not a mere metaphor, but an absolute necessity. The Tremontaine writers are passionate about the world and the characters, and it’s been an exciting experience to work with them.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

Signal Boost #22: Tonya Liburd and Stephen Graham Jones

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost22LiburdJones/Sandf–SignalBoost22–LiburdJones.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSIn today’s episode of Signal Boost, Jen talks to Canadian-Born Trinidadian horror writer, Tonya Liburd, about the horror of losing identity, how horror allows you to talk about taboo subjects, and her short story, “A Question of Faith.” Then Stephen Graham Jones — award winning author — joins Jen to talk about how he first got into horror, his first published horror novel, Demon, and about the compact between horror writer and reader. 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

#63. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) — A Shoot the WISB Subcast

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/ShootTheWISB63CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind/ShootTheWisb63–CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSPinocchio, man-children, and mashed potato towers, oh my! In honor of the film’s 40th anniversary digitally remastered theater release, Shaun, Jen, David, and Joyce discuss the 1977 Spielberg classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They explore how this film still evokes the science fictional “sense of wonder”, how it fits into Spielberg’s career within the context of America in the 1970s, how the French New Wave played a role in the concept, and how communication is a consistent theme throughout the film. We go a bit longer than usual, but only so we could really dig into all the bits and pieces. 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):

Blog Posts

Book Review: Valhalla by Ari Bach

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Valhalla, written by Ari Bach, is dark, gritty, dangerous, and subtly representative.  Bach unpacks his new world, layering loud violence, subtle queer identities, and a disturbing dystopian premise that promises an interesting alternative.  Valhalla pushes the boundaries of science fiction to make you question the lines drawn between dystopian governments, outside companies, and the people who make up the world those entities control, and sets up the foundation for a strong trilogy that centers around a queer female protagonist. Violet MacRae is our wonderfully violent narrator, living in the year 2230, when war is obsolete and most everyone knows their place.  With her propensity for violence and her less than spectacular intelligence, Violet doesn’t fit in, and doesn’t want to.  Faced with uncertainty about her immediate future, and ostracized from the only place in polite society that she had even a slight chance of fitting into, Violet returns to an empty home and is subsequently snatched up by Valhalla.  That is a secret military-esque organization that keeps the outer world in line with their unique methods, and there, Violet finds a real home.  But Valhalla and her new friends are in danger, and Violet finds her new skills are stretched to the limit as she defends her safe haven from genetically enhanced criminals.

Blog Posts

SEA Quest: Malaysia and Singaporean SFF anthologies

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Southeast Asia is a region rich in cultures and mythologies woven together by migration and trade routes. Its people are both indigenous and diasporic. The countries are born from syncretism, synthesis, assimilation and integration. Likewise, there have been colonizations, wars and occupations, with all these traumatic periods impacting the psychological, emotional and cultural landscape. Our fiction is a product of these shifting tides and collective psyches, joined by the sea and grounded by the land beneath our feet.  Our ideas are a mishmash of (often) conflicting identities and motives. We speak in English, the dominant tongue used by the British. Many also use Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch or French, also languages of the various colonizers who made their mark in many countries. These tongues collide with our own native and diasporic languages, producing identities that are indeed biracial, variant and syncretic.

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