Category: Books
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Posthegemony Shows Why Rules Don’t Matter
Game systems are overrated. Roleplaying game designers spend a lot of time and effort trying to create rules which replicate a specific fictional reality — or they take on the impossible task of creating rules which replicate real reality. They do research on the probability of hitting your target with an unaimed pistol shot at…
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Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 6
Party Like It's 1909! The guests begin to arrive for Ozma's birthday party, and L. Frank Baum demonstrates an early mastery of the Superhero Crossover subgenre. All the guests are either characters from other Oz books, or from some of Baum's non-Oz fantasies. This book solidly cements all of Baum's fantasies into a single fictional…
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Steampunk and the End of the Future
Two weeks ago I attended the Arisia convention in Boston and had a wonderful time. One thing which was impossible to miss was the prevalence of steampunk costumes among some of the attendees, especially the younger ones. Maybe this was just because the guests of honor were Phil and Kaja Foglio, creators of the steampunk…
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Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 5
We're going to summarize a lot here, because there's a long boring section between the time Our Heroes get into Oz and their arrival at the Emerald City. Most of it is taken up with introductions. Dorothy introduces her companions to Tiktok and Billina, who have come to welcome them. Then she introduces everyone to…
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Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 4
After escaping the Scoodlers, Dorothy and Company come to the end of the road, literally. It reaches the edge of the Deadly Desert, an expanse of gray sand which completely surrounds the Land of Oz. In the course of the books the Deadly Desert becomes more and more Deadly. The first time we see it,…
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Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 3
Our Heroes continue along the road, which they now know to be the Road to Oz. (The reader knew that from the book title.) The landscape is pleasant — if you haven't noticed, this journey is considerably less perilous than Dorothy's past exploits. The travelers have spent every night in bed, and aside from involuntary…
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Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 2
Dorothy and Company arrive at a very odd village. It's inhabited entirely by anthropomorphic foxes. The fox-people are initially suspicious of the newcomers, but the power of the Love Magnet quickly turns that to friendship. Our heroes are conveyed to the throne room of King Renard IV, the ruler of the foxes, known to his…
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Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 1
The Road to Oz is the fifth of L. Frank Baum's immortal Oz series, published in 1909. Like its predecessor Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, it follows Dorothy on another difficult journey to Oz with a group of entertaining companions. Sure, by this point it's a formula, but it's a winning formula and Road…
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How I Did It #7: “See My King All Dressed In Red”
This was the first story I wrote for an anthology, as opposed to a magazine, and it's also the only story of mine (so far) which has come true. "See My King . . . " was written for the anthology Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, edited by F. Brett Cox and Andy…
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Fantasies of Freedom
I've been thinking about stories lately (actually, I always think about stories), and something has occurred to me. In many stories — especially in genres like science fiction, fantasy, and thrillers — one of the attractions is that the protagonists are more free than the reader. Sure, they may be faced by evil overlords or…
