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Review: The Liminal War by Ayize Jama-Everett

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Earlier this month on The World in the Satin Bag, Shaun Duke posted on his increasing weariness of long novels, particularly those over 500 pages. I personally don’t mind a hefty volume, particularly in epic fantasy where simply being immersed in the world (even its bloat) is just as enjoyable as the story itself. But, I get his frustration. Most books don’t need such length. A compact novel can pack a satisfying spectrum of literary punches without demanding an epoch of reader commitment. Ayize Jama-Everett’s The Liminal People had just this sort of effect on me with its mere 190 pages. Originally published by Jama-Everett in 2009 and subsequently reprinted by Small Beer Press, the novel shares elements of pulp noir and Octavia Butler’s Patternmaster series. The sequel, The Liminal War, is newly released at a similarly slender 224 pages.

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Book Review: Radiant by Karina Sumner-Smith

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Sitting squarely in the borderlands between science and fantasy, Karina Sumner-Smith’s first turn into novel length fiction (after a number of well received stories, including the Nebula nominated “An End to All things”) is the strongly crafted story of the ghost-seeing young woman Xhea in RADIANT, the first in the “Towers Trilogy”. The science fantasy city of the Lower City and the Towers floating above provides a secondary world urban fantastical environment for Radiant’s story. Class in this world is very much a function of the ability to use magic. Those who can and do practice magic competently live in the floating Towers that serenely hover over the ruination and post-apocalyptic state of the Lower City left behind. The dregs of society, on the other hand, live in those lower city ruins, in quarters ranging from makeshift shelters in ruined subway tunnels to skyscrapers that try and reach the sky.

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My Superpower: Michael R. Fletcher (Beyond Redemption)

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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 Michael R. Fletcher to talk about how the power of manifesting delusions as reality relates to Beyond Redemption. My new novel, Beyond Redemption, takes place in a world where belief defines reality and the deranged—those capable of believing the impossible—can twist the world with their delusions. My superpower, fittingly enough, is that my delusions manifest as reality. It is less handy than you might think. I’m not delusional about everything. I’m no god; I can’t bend the world to my mad whims. My delusions are rather narrow in focus. First, a short non sequitur: I wish my superpower was swearing like Chuck Wendig.

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Hardholders, Drivers and GunLuggers — Mad Max: Fury Road and the Apocalypse World RPG

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The Apocalypse World RPG is a seminal game in recent, if not all of, roleplaying history. The game allows the GM and the players to create, and play in a world ravaged by an apocalypse whose nature is mysterious, somewhat lost to time, and has left a mess of a world for people to try and survive in. Written by D Vincent Baker, the game features relatively simple mechanics, niche protection by defining classes for player characters, and tons of tools for the GM to up the stakes, bring the pain, and make hard moves to get the players to make the ugly bargains and hard choices in a post-apocalyptic society.

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Book Review: The Dragons of Heaven by Alyc Helms

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In the darkened streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown, Missy Masters is struggling to take up the vigilante-hero mantle of her retired, estranged grandfather, Mr. Mystic. Missy shares his stubbornness, his intimate connections with Chinese culture, and his uncanny ability to cross into a realm of shadows and exert limited control over the creatures within. Just as she literally straddles worlds, Missy also dances a line of pretending to be an aged, but expert, male superhero while training to advance beyond her actual novice abilities. She aspires to the strength and moral right that her grandfather embodied while battling against memories of his emotional distance, his personal secrets, and the prejudices common of his generation. Typical of masked superheroes, she has two lives, the separate worlds of Missy Masters and of Mr. Mystic. And she has past experiences, a world away in China, that have led her to be the woman and vigilante of the present.

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Retro Nostalgia: Mortal Kombat (1995; dir. Paul W.S. Anderson) and Ruining Your Childhood

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I’ve just re-watched Mortal Kombat, the less-than-stellar 1995 video game adaptation directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.  The same director who would two years later direct a far better film, Event Horizon (2007), which has the unfortunate reputation of being a movie most people hate. Why did I watch Mortal Kombat…again?  Two reasons.  First, I needed something to write about for this column, and it just seemed fitting that a 20-year-old film from my childhood happened to be streaming on Netflix.  Second, I wanted to re-experience something from my childhood to see how well it would hold up.  An experiment, if you will.  And while other films from the 90s (and 80s) have not so much held up as become interesting in other ways as a result of age, Mortal Kombat is one of those gems that, frankly, has always been ridiculous.  I just couldn’t see it when I was 11.

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