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Quest — A Fantasy-Writers.org Anthology
There have been a few moments in my writing life that have changed everything. One was a long walk I took the family dog on when I was fifteen, in the course of which I thought up and planned a story which proved to be the germ for much of what I’ve written since.…
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A Fantasy World That’s All Grown Up
There’s a very clear traditional idea of what a fantasy world is supposed to be like. It has warriors riding horses and wielding swords and axes. It doesn’t have them travelling on planes and operating computers. It just doesn’t. But why not? After all, our world has had all that and much, much more,…
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The Aryan Fallacy
Note: This is an updated version of a post on my old blog from 2015. Recent events suggest that it may need saying again. In 1938, J.R.R. Tolkien received a letter from a German publisher who proposed to publish a translation of The Hobbit. According to the laws under the Nazi government, they requested…
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Doctor Who Series 1 — or Series 14 — or Series 40
The most recent series of Doctor Who finished a couple of weeks ago. Due to Disney’s dictates, it’s officially described as Series 1, which has angered a lot of fans, who insist that it’s actually Series 14. Whereas, as us old-timers know, it’s really Series 40. Whatever it’s called, though, I’ve now had time…
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Who Wants to Live Forever?
About forty years ago, I wrote a short story exploring the idea of immortality. The main character (a kind of everyman — or everywoman in this case) does a favour to a supernatural being who, in gratitude, offers to make her immortal. As she’s a bit unsure what to make of this, he takes…
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Empires, Evil and Otherwise
You don’t have to travel far within either fantasy or science fiction before you trip over an empire. If anything, in fact, they’re even more prevalent in SF than in fantasy, from the empire of the Klingons and the one that strikes back to the enemies of the Foundation and of the Atreides. Most…
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Hanging Out With the Kids — Recent YA Fantasy TV
In general, the best stories don’t have an upper age limit, and this fact has been traditionally recognised in fantasy more than most genres. The Hobbit, the Chronicles of Narnia, His Dark Materials — they were all published as children’s books, and the all-ages phenomenon of Harry Potter put kids’ books and films firmly…
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What’s in a Surname?
It used to be simple enough. Fantasy names were Conan the Barbarian, Elric of Melniboné, Aragorn son of Arathorn. That even applied to sophisticated SF races: Vulcans and Klingons made do with a single name each, for instance. No self-respecting fantasy character would have such a thing as a surname — unless, of course,…
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My Writing Goals for 2024
New Year is a terrible time for resolutions. We make them because we feel under pressure to do so, not because we really want to. We “ought” to go on that diet or join the gym, and the commitment quickly runs out because it comes from outside. Far better to make the resolution at…
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Introducing Loshi vi Assarid — The Thief of Shimeth
Back in the late 1970s, I wrote a short story called The Gift of the Outcast. It was a deliberate attempt to write something that was closer to traditional sword & sorcery than the more elaborate fantasy I was writing. It concerned a young thief, Loshi, in a city called Shimeth who was hired…