Blog Posts

Blog Posts

My Superpower: Chris Caldwell

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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 Chris Caldwell.   I’ve always been fascinated by illusion and transformation; the concepts of changing a thing into something new, and something appearing to change but remaining the same, go hand in hand. My stories The Beekeeper’s Garden (Fiyah, Spring 2017) and Serving Fish (‘Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, People of Color Take Over’ Issue 2017) explicitly deal with illusion and transformation as they apply to the experiences of marginalized people. I am a skeptic who deeply wants to believe. I know the magician is palming the coin while still hoping she has conjured it from the ether.

Blog Posts

Book Review: The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu

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The second volume in Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series just had its paperback release, so this felt like a good moment to review this sequel to 2015’s The Grace of Kings. If you aren’t familiar with that start to the series, you can find my review of it here, and I would not recommend starting with the sequel or reading further in this review. The plot of The Wall of Storms actually does stand rather well on its own. However, the framework of Liu’s Chinese-history inspired archipelago kingdom/culture is built in the first book and could be harder to appreciate or grasp without starting there. As hefty and epic a tome as its predecessor, The Wall of Storms seems to fit in the overall series plot arc as a transition. As meaningful and impactful as Liu’s debut novel, the sequel continues similar themes of individual and societal struggles to advance and improve, but within a political context shifted from revolt to one of maintaining benevolent power amid threats internal and external. A split between those internal to external threats comprises a hinge both conceptual and physical: forming the transition from events in The Grace of Kings to those to come in the third volume, and dividing The Wall of Storms into roughly equal halves. The novel deals with the ramifications of Kuni Garu’s populist rise to power as Emperor Ragin of Dara, with the consequences of the actions and compromises that he, and other characters, made while seeking the greater good or in yielding to their weaknesses.

Blog Posts

Top 10 Posts and Episodes for July 2017

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Another month has passed us by, and that means it’s time for another stats post. This round was full of a wide range of material spanning nearly the entire history of our blog and show. We blame Twitter… Here are the most popular posts and episodes from July 2017:

Blog Posts

Book Review: Strange California (anthology)

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California is a big state, and occupies an even bigger place in our imaginations, so it’s only to be expected that a collection of stories exploring what makes it so special — so strange — makes for a big book. Which is to say, a promise of value, of bang for one’s buck, is made right up front. As is outlined in what amounts to a manifesto in the book’s introduction, the stories in Strange California explore not only the state’s varied physical and cultural geography, but also what makes it so very different from the rest of the United States — what makes it strange. As editors Jaym Gates and Daniel Batt emphasize in the introduction, however, this collection is not merely an anthology of weird fiction. California is certainly weird, but it’s also strange — set apart, unknown, perhaps unknowable to those of us who don’t live there, who are strangers to the place.

Announcements and Errata

Worldcon 75 (HELSINKI!): Our Schedules and Call for Interviewees!

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We’re just a week away from Worldcon, and we are excited! Five of us will be there next week (Shaun, Paul, Alex, Julia, and Mike, who is last here because he’s wrong about comics :P), and we’ll all be up to no good while we’re there. Whether it’s paneling, exploring Helsinki, or recording guerilla interviews in the dark, you can be certain that we’ll be busy bees! With that in mind, this post aims to let you know where you can find us at Worldcon AND how to contact us if you’d like to be interviewed for the podcast! Here goes:

Blog Posts

Book Review: Blackthorne by Stina Leicht

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Eledore has fallen! In the wake of the near-genocidal attack on the already plague-ridden kingdom, the remnants and survivors of the attack by the Acrasian Empire have several pressing problems. First, the Acrasians, now that they have smashed the Kingdom, consider the flinders to be easy pickings. Kainen hunted for sport, territory conquered, a proud kingdom ruined. Worse, the remaining Kainen polities, like the Waterborne Nations, and Ytlain, have to deal with this new political reality, and Eledore’s fallen status means that its people must often go cap in hand to their brethren, and suffer and bargain for what they once could ask for freely. Even more of a problem is the problem that Eledore has stood athwart for centuries and no longer can: The otherdimensional, eldritch problem of the malorum. Now that the gates are opening and malorum are coming through, the survivors of Eledore are under literal siege from this threat. Not that the Acrasians are as well off as they might be. Yes, the great victory against the Eledorean menace has occurred. But in the wake of that victory, the local and resident nonhuman population, overt and covert, have been restive. Some have even been seeking escape from the Regnum, to get beyond the borders of a state slowly and inexorably tightening into Caesarism. Besides the high level political problems, seen only at a distance and remove, the street-level problems of life in the Regnum are multiplying. The malorum are now a looming threat on the streets of Novus Salernum itself. 

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