E.E. Knight: Desparkler of Vampires

E.E. Knight has a great hometown write-up (In the photo, Knight is the one on the right.) If you aren't into his spectacular Vampire Earth series, then you should at least check out his Age of Fire books.

After all, there are only two kinds of people on this planet: Vampire People and Dragon People - you must be one of them.*

Anyhoodle, Knight's vampires are of the decidedly Lovecraftian sort - otherworldly, grotesque, uncaring. Not an ascot to be found among them.

"Beneath the heavy robes of bullet-resistant material the Kurians wear is a bony, angular physique of wiry muscle. Their knees and elbows can bend either way in an unsettling manner. Aside from the grotesqueness of its motions, this allows the Reaper to coil its entire body for a leap, climb rapidly, and change position in a hand-to-hand fight with terrifying speed. Their bones are not white, but rather a dull black, as are their pointed seizing teeth within their snake-hinged jaws. Their blood turns into a thick, tarry substance when exposed to air, so they rarely bleed to death.

...they use their long, flexible, beaked tongues to stab into the prey, using their teeth to fix on the victim as a lamprey does while they pierce poor wretch's heart with their stabbing lingular syringe...They are hard to kill, vulnerable only to massed firearms, burning, or decapitation....

Only a fool takes on a Reaper alone at night."

Entirely unrelated (unless they are a front for a vampire hunting operation): have you ever wondered what the most beautiful website in the solar system for a Ukrainian Orthodox Church might look like?

Me too. (The photo gallery alone is worth the price of admission.)

*I'm both. This places me in the unique class of "First to Die" during the Vampire/Dragon apocalypse.

Doomed at the Ford of Bruinen

"At that moment there came a roar and a rushing: a noise of loud waters rolling many stones. Dimly Frodo saw the river below him rise, and down along its course there came a plumed cavalry of waves. White flames seemed to Frodo to flicker on their crests and he half fancied that he saw amid the water white riders upon white horses with frothing manes. The three Riders that were still in the midst of the Ford were overwhelmed: they disappeared, buried suddenly under angry foam. Those that were behind drew back in dismay."
-- "Flight to the Ford" - Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien

At the Ford of Bruinen, we are outnumbered, we are outgunned. One might say that Elrond and Gandalf, by their combined magic, save Frodo, or perhaps even Glorfindel's horse, Asfaloth. In the movie, it appears that a sword-raising Arwen is the hero.

But what comes before the rescue?

A fading, mortally wounded Frodo, least among us, turns back. Before the saving water begins to rise, before the "cavalry of waves" becomes a team of trampling water horses, drowning the enemies' steeds and carrying the Ringwraiths to ignominous (if temporary) defeat, he turns at the water's edge, drawn to the Nazgul. Before any sign of salvation, he defies the overwhelming agents of death, who already have him in their grip, already have him pierced with soul-eating enchantments - both the morgul blade in his shoulder and the deadly ring around his neck.

"'By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair,' said Frodo with a last effort, lifting his sword, 'you shall have neither the Ring nor me!'"

His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.

Let Us Hunt Some Orc

When Frodo flees for Mordor, Boromir dies, Merry and Pippin are captured and those who remain behind have lost the purpose of the Fellowship (to defend the carrier of the One Ring), there remains practically no hope.

Their number of 9, matching, body-for-body, their opposites, the Ring-Wraiths, has disintegrated with shocking acceleration:

Gandalf to the Balrog
Boromir to the arrows
Merry and Pippen to the orcs
Frodo and Sam to the mission

Leaving 3: Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas, an exile, a mourner, and an alien. A large group was decimated, its purpose thwarted, its new mission unclear.

They had options: return to Rivendell and regroup, seeking revised orders from authority, disband, or focus on the next possible objective: to rescue the captives from an army.

In the real world, group decay results in full dissolution 9 times out 10.

What about that 10th time? What are the dynamics that separate a renewed sense of purpose, an enriched belief in success against even greater odds?

A seed grows that causes a man to stand up after a hurricane of violence and a crisis of identity and say, "Let us hunt some orc."

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us.

Smurfs Wars

Because the one thing that was always missing from the Smurfs saga was tragic civil war. Although, technically, I believe the subject was thoroughly covered in the 1976 feature La Flute a Six Schtroumpfs.

Now, throw in gremlins, tribbles and the tiki doll from Trilogy of Terror to lead an insurrection, and we've got a whole new ball game.

Not Since Straub and King: Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee Team Up

I've got no details from the 2010 Gathering in Chicago, but Ted Dekker's brand manager just mentioned that Dekker and Tosca Lee are teaming up for a book in 2011.

Needless to say, the last time writers of this caliber teamed up, the world got a little surprise called The Talisman.*

No pressure!

*The last time heroes of this caliber teamed up, Batman fought Superman in DKR. And won.

UPDATED: Dekker spills his guts on it.

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy

Short Fantasy Fiction took a massive beating last year. Two premier fantasy publications, Realms of Fantasy and the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror Anthology, ceased publication. Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine switched to bi-monthly publication to stop its own bleeding.

That isn't to say that short fantasy fiction is dead (again) in America. There are still lively and leading outlets: with relative newcomer, Black Gate Magazine chief among them. But short fiction authors wouldn't mind a map to redemption.

I found one.

In long fiction.

Specifically, Theodore Beale's Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy.
This remarkable book is notable for having successfully turned the fantasy novel as it is currently recognized on its ear.

The tropes, icons and themes of what I would call "standard" medievalesque fantasy fiction are challenged directly. Without the convenient cover of parody or satire, Beale plays it straight with his setting: conflicted regions, separated loosely into basic people groups: humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, trolls and other commonly-known fantasy species.

The Catholic Church shepherds (and, if need be, supresses, opposes or spies on) the social, political and spiritual objectives of the land's inhabitants. After all, in a genre (high fantasy) practically predicated on the Divine Right of Kings, how does an author express his story without careful attention to the "divine" governance of that right?

As (surprisingly) innovative as this approach is Beale does something even greater: he avoids writing his epic in epic style, choosing, instead, to tell a novella-length narrative accompanied by short fiction and Church documents.

It works great, but the reviews have been really mixed, or rather, mixed up. I can't tell you the number of reviews that found one of the novel's strengths - its abruptness - to be confusing and disappointing. They laud the short interwoven articles and short stories, but fail to make the connection between the "main" story and its interconnected sublots. For a book purporting to be the comprehensive theological treatise on a cultural controversy, it isn't quite clear why this approach has been so misunderstood.

I hope in time Summa Elvetica's interweaving of created history and unique approach to the problem of Christianity in high fantasy will be recognized for what it is, and not what readers think it is not.

If you read the appendices of Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion, you already know the power of the multi-documental approach. If you write short fiction, one could do far worse than to study Beale.

The Wicker Man Made Me Follow Jesus

Mike Duran's thoughts on The Wicker Man nail it:

"Not only does The Wicker Man serve as a warning against spiritual naivete and complacency, it illustrates the stark, very real differences between world religions."

...and I would add that it does it with the literary and visual mastery of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, C.S. Lewis and Fritz Lang, combined.

I might be biased. I was a pluralist anti-christian growing up (sort of a reverse Animal Farmer - All religions are equal: one religion is less equal than others.) with no interest in really understanding or studying the roots of faith. The Wicker Man gave me a thrilling, devastating crash course in the subject, to shocking results.

I found myself aligning fairly tightly with the odd and complicated residents of Summer's Isles, the pagans, and scoffing at the simplistic faith of the protagonist. He grated on me. But the movie was compelling enough, and though I fully expected some sort of twist that either revealed the hero to be either a villain by the end, or at worst, the unwitting tool of some sort of counterplot against the suspected but innocent Lord Summerisle.

The thing I did not expect - no, could not expect - is the one thing that instantly cemented the picture as a harrowing, strangely uplifting classic, one that I've meditated on many, many times over the past twenty years.