Book Review: Breath of Earth by Beth Cato
In an alternate early 20th-century world where Japan and the US have created a powerful alliance, a secret geomancer struggles to protect herself and the city she loves from forces seeking to shake San Francisco to pieces in Breath of Earth, the first in a new alternate history fantasy series by Beth Cato. In the alternate world that Cato depicts, there is magic in the world, and the primary form of magic are those magicians who are sensitive to the movements of the earth. These geomancers not only can keep San Francisco tectonically stable, but can channel the bled off energy into a mineral, kermanite, whereupon that energy can be discharged to do work, to power vehicles and other things in the same way that a battery can. Thus, kermanite is an extremely potent strategic resource, and its acquisition and control is part of the reason for the Japan-US alliance. Even better, the novel shows the clear costs and dangers of geomancers. It’s a potent form of magic, but one that can cause not only destruction around the user, but actively be harmful for their health. There are also social costs to being a geomancer, a theme that Cato has explored previously in the Clockwork Dagger series.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
In our world, the duchy of Burgundy, the Middle Kingdom, has had a fascinating, and often strange history. Wedged in the middle of Europe, from the Mediterranean and up toward the North Sea, parts of which are now France, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium, the Dukes of Burgundy have often been as powerful or more powerful than some of the full blown kingdoms they have dealt with. Burgundy is a hell of a lot of fun to play in the computer game Crusader Kingdoms 2. By accidents and turns of fortune, Burgundy disappeared from our history in a rather sudden fashion. That sudden disappearance of Burgundy from history is the historical seed for Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle. Gentle uses secret history, alternate history, and the moldability of history to explore a 15th century that wasn’t … but perhaps once was.
Book Review – Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine
Imagine if the Royal Library of Alexandria had not been destroyed in flames. In Ink and Bone, Rachel Caine uses this alternate history speculation to craft a universe where the “Great Library” has survived and flourished through the centuries, expanded with satellite institutions around the world. The cultural influence and political power of the Library is significant, holding absolute control over written knowledge. Ownership of printed books is illegal, but Library-approved materials are ‘mirrored’ from the original texts through alchemy by Obscurists to personal blank ‘book’ instruments of Library design called Codexes.
Hard and Soft Alternate Histories: The Time Roads by Beth Bernobich, The Shadow Master by Craig Cormick and Rod Duncan’s The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter
“There are no correct alternate histories, there are only plausible alternate histories.” – Will Shetterly Will Shetterly’s statement above hinges on the word plausible. Shetterly’s statement is facile, but it hinges on the unspoken assumption that everyone can agree on what a ‘plausible’ alternate history is and is not. For example, to a first approximation and for a lot of casual readers, George Washington taking the monarchial crown that was offered to him might seem like a rich and interesting alternate history. King George of America! Those more versed in the biography of Washington, however, would reject such an alternate history as being flatly impossible, given his attitudes and basic nature. The reverse is true for small, seemingly innocuous changes that casual readers might consider not large enough of a hook to change the world, but experts in the subfield might consider crucial to the flow of history.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: PAVANE by Keith Roberts
In 1588, Queen Elizabeth, the Faerie Queen, was assassinated. Without her leadership, and with the rise of English Catholics in response, Spain found it easy to occupy England and bring her back to Mother Church. And with England so tamed, the throne of St. Peter took back the entirety of Europe from Protestantism, and then the world. James Cook had the flag of the Pope, not of England, when he landed in Australia. Spain controls the entirety of the New World. The Church keeps a tight control over technology and culture, as well, shutting down obvious lines of development. Semaphone wires, coal fired trains, and a residual feudal culture dominate England and the world. Black powder guns are still state-of-the-art weapons. Such tight control has its costs, and its victims. Now, though, almost four centuries after Elizabeth’s death, in a small region of England, the dominance of the Church in matters temporal and spiritual — in England and the world — may finally begin to loosen. All of this can be found in Keith Roberts’ alternate history classic, Pavane.
My Superpower: Michael Panush
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 Panush to talk about how the power of dinosaurs relates to Dinosaur Dust. Hello there, my name is Michael Panush and my superpower — though this may seem odd — is dinosaurs. That doesn’t exactly make sense at first glance does it? Well, the great Jack Kirby created comic book lizard king Devil Dinosaur in 1978 and he’s been rampaging around the Marvel Universe ever since, so I’ll say that it counts. What exactly does my superpower entail? Well, I don’t have scales (or feathers), sharp teeth or hilariously tiny arms. What I do have is a deep and abiding love and fascination with dinosaurs, which led me to create the Jurassic Club series and its latest entry, Dinosaur Dust. I’ve had this fascination with me since I was a little hatchling. Most kids are into dinos and I was no exception. I memorized their complicated names and looking back at home videos of my four-year-old self revealed me singing songs about triceratops to the camera. As I grew older, my love of dinosaurs waned, but never faded entirely. I took a class on basic paleontology in college, but the academic side of dinosaurs never really appealed to me. I’m not an expert in dinosaurs and I won’t pretend to be. Instead, I devoured dinos in popular culture, especially when they inhabited mysterious lost worlds. I started studying the Lost World genre, from the Pellucidar tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs to King Kong’s Skull Island and the first Lost World created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the novel of the same name. Naturally, this led to some interesting ideas. What if a Lost World had actually been discovered in the Victorian Era, as is the case in these pulp stories? Most of them end with the heroes leaving the world in the Hollow Earth or the mysterious island and returning to civilization, but what if they stayed and settled? How would the civilized world of the past, with its imperialist ways, react to living dinosaurs? To answer that question, I created the Jurassic Club series. It’s an attempt to bring a modern perspective to these Lost World narratives and show how the racism, imperialism and cruelty of the past would affect a newly discovered prehistoric land. That land is Acheron Island, a place with dinosaurs, mysterious ruins and pre-human natives called the Ape Men. The first novel, Dinosaur Jazz, explored the 1920s and told the story of Sir Edwin Crowe — a dinosaur hunter who must protect Acheron Island from a cruel warlord and a ruthless tycoon. Dinosaur Dust features the 1930s, the Great Depression and the rising conflict of WWII. Its hero is Norris Hall, a bank robber and Mob enforcer, who is dispatched on a mission: find a kidnapped movie star raptor stolen from Hollywood glamour by unknown thieves. Hall’s search of the dinosaur actor will send him to Los Angeles and then to Acheron Island itself, where he is pitted against Nazi agents for the future of the world. The Jurassic Club gives me a chance to examine the world’s fascination with dinosaurs — and my own. I still can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think the fascination stems from the fact that these creatures have all the bizarre qualities of beasts out of fantasy — and yet they actually existed. Furthermore, dinosaurs have kooky appearances that no human mind could conjure up. Take a look at the therizinosaur, with its oversized claws, pot-belly and snaky neck, if you think I’m kidding. These beasts can inspire awe, fear and even laughter and that’s something I always try to reveal when they show up in my stories. I do hope you give Dinosaur Dust a try. I’ve got big plans for the Jurassic Club and I look forward to putting my fascination with dinosaurs to use in several subsequent volumes that follow the history of Acheron Island down the decades. Check it out and enjoy the prehistoric thrills. _______________________ Twenty-Three years old, Michael Panush has distinguished himself as one of Sacramento’s most promising young writers. Michael has published numerous short stories in a variety of e-zines including: AuroraWolf, Demon Minds, Fantastic Horror, Dark Fire Fiction, Aphelion, Horrorbound, Fantasy Gazetteer, Demonic Tome, Tiny Globule, and Defenestration. His books with Curiosity Quills include The Stein and Candle Detective Agency, Volume 1: American Nightmares, Volume 2: Cold Wars, and Volume 3: Red Reunion, all featuring a pair of occult detectives in the 1950s, Dinosaur Jazz– where The Great Gatsby meets Jurassic Park — a story about a Lost World battling against the forces of modernization; and El Mosaico, Volume 1: Scarred Souls and Volume 2: The Road to Hellfire, a Western about a bounty hunter whose body was assembled from the remains of dead Civil War soldiers and brought to life by mad science. For more about him, you can check out his author page, read his blog, or follow him on Twitter.
