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.

Josh is Five. Josh is Always Five.

Jeffty is Five, the Locus-winning classic short tale by Harlan Ellison, has long held a melancholy spell over me. (It is on page 71, and the book takes a little while to load).

It traces long lines into my own sense of the memorable (and malleable) past, touches on the eternal and the transient, and places nostalgia and reality on parallel tracks which intersect at tragedy. The beautfully-written story of the friendship between a five-year old boy who never ages and his normally-aging pal got its title from a misheard bit of conversation.

At a party, Ellison overheard actor Jack Danon * saying something like "Jeff is fine. He's always fine!" but thought he said "Jeff is five. Jeff is always five." The man who said it was a guest at a party hosted by Walter Koenig, Star Trek's "Chekov."

I had no idea, until today, that the character inspiration for "Jeffty" was another person at the party: a five-year old Joshua Andrew Koenig.

In the words of the author: "Writers take tours in other people's lives. Jeffty is me; he is also you. This is a short, memory-filled trip through your own life."

*Danon, incidentally, started his career in radio shows, like Fibber McGee and Molly, which casts an interesting, if wholly unrelated, light on the strange transoms of inspiration that helped carry this particular story to its fullness.

Which Zombie Will You Be? [Personality Test]

Every zombie movie has a set number of zombie types - a horde, a random guy, the first one to get shot.

But these zombies were once people, you know, with lives and dreams and ambitions.

Like you.

Which one will you be? Take the quiz and find out.

The Man With Hammered Nails for the Pupils of His Eyes

I'd been chopping most of the day. Chips of granite spread at my feet, dusted my sweaty shirt, clouded my spectacles. But I'd made progress. The boulder had scars on it: closer, certainly, to the monument I wanted than it had been that morning.

A man walked out of the Infinity building, grey suit, red tie, briefcase in hand. He stumbled against my rock, and staggered to his knees. I put the axe down and helped him up. It was there, his uncertain hand on my tricep, elbow in my palm, that I looked into his face and saw the pupils of his eyes: they were the heads of nails, and his eyes, I am quite certain now, were wooden balls, smoothed on a lathe.

He blinked, one lid catching, and slowly crossing over the nail.

"Your shoulder," he said. I smiled, proud of the muscle my endeavors had built. "It is torn. You are ruining yourself. You don't look well."

I helped him up and stepped back, annoyed. "How can you see anything?"

"I can't."

"Why do you have nails where your pupils ought to be?"

"They keep the eyes inside my head."

After a silence too long, he wandered down the sidewalk. I did not look to see if he navigated the intersection safely, but returned to my task, my shoulder throbbing.

---

This is completely and wholly, as usual, the fault of a far greater writer.

The History Channel Trick

In an age that unworships at the non-altar of the relative experience, I recommend co-opting a trick perfected by the History Channel, both for some of their more standard history programs and their whack-a-doo pseudohistory programs, such as the "prophecies" of mystics, or the alien origins of the pyramids, or alien ghost autopsies, or whatever.

It is five magic words:

"There are those who say..."

Throw these in any time you would like to make an outrageous claim without any footing. It will sound authoritative and mildly suggestive that those who disagree will find themselves in an impossible situation.

Gremlins vs. Zombies: The Grempocalypse

The worst thing that could ever happen is that you get your pet gremlin wet* on the same night that a radioactive thunderstorm turns all the dead people into zombies.

Sure, the gremlins would fight the zombies, and the zombies would fight the gremlins, and that would super exciting, especially since the rain would turn the gremlins into more gremlins, and the zombie bites would turn the gremlins into zombie gremlins, and then the zombie gremlins would have to decide which side they would fight on, or if they would form their own army, and fight them both.

But eventually, they'd turn on you. Fun's over, and all of a sudden, you find yourself running through the streets, praying for Gandalf's eagles to swoop in at the last minute to save the day like they did in the Battle of Five Armies. Maybe you can make it until sunrise, and hope that the gremlins have re-killed all the zombies before bursting into flames. The giant birds never come, the sun doesn't rise and you aren't even left with the choice of whether to be turned into a zombie or become gremlin food - the choice happens to you.

Yet, there's a market for these spectacular, doomed experiments in fantasy:

Alien vs. Predator
Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons
Mermaid Yakuza vs. Terminator
Wolfman vs. Dracula
Moriarity vs. Fu Manchu
King Kong vs. Godzilla
Giant Squid vs. Sperm Whale

and of course, the penultimate conflict:

Satan vs. _________

Please tell me you didn't fill in the blank with "God." Because this particular titanic struggle between nasties doesn't include Him, for pity's sake. The word that belongs in that blank is "Us."

As one-time (and in many cases, current) subjects of the "god of the air" we also are locked in mortal - rather, immortal - combat with Old Scratch and his maniacal kin. But we aren't guys in white hats. If the devil is Predator, we're Alien. He didn't think up lying, pride and greed all by his lonesome, you know. Or if he did, we've become quite practiced at the dark arts of his making.

Winner gets to take on God. Unlike, however, the final target in Gremlins vs. Zombies, God isn't about to take off running. In fact, He's got just the sword to cut us to ribbons: His very word that formed us out of nothing is the same thing that will send us on our merry way to the wrong side of Winner-ville.

Yet he doesn't do that. In his wisdom, he reserves the destruction for Satan and his blokes, but for the other half in the wicked match-up? Mercy. Sacrifice. Humilty. A free ticket out.

Weird God, that God. Weirder than Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Monster.



*A refresher: 1) Never get them wet - they'll spawn more gremlins. 2) Never feed them after midnight - it turns them evil. 3) Never expose them to light** - it hurts them.

**Unless, of course, they've eaten after midnight - then sally forth, Gremlin Hunter. Sally forth.

Fear of Girls: FoG of IGN

Oh, jeez. I'm pretty sure this post title just summoned Cthulhu.

If not, enjoy the new Fear of Girls Channel at IGN.

If it did, uh, sorry for the apocalypse.

2009 Heisman Candidate Lovecraftian Nickname Awards

Held annually on the campus of Miskatonic University, the Lovecraftian Nickname Selection Committee goes through an arduous and painstaking (as well as pain-staking, if necessary) process to determine who, among the Heisman finalists, is worthy of a prestigious Eldritch(tm) Nickname.

The time of waiting has come to a close. This years selections include:

Tim "Yith" Tebow - Because he's not of this world.

Colt "Automatic" McCoy - Because all fled--all done, so lift me on the pyre--The Feast is over, and the lamps expire.

Toby "Jugg" Gerhart - Because he haunts Notre Dame to this day.

Mark "John Henry" Ingram - not just because he can hoist a jack, but, more importantly he set history to right.

Honorable mention: Dez "Danvers" Bryant - Because I’ve heard personally of more’n one business or government man that’s disappeared there.

And finally, our top vote-getter:

Ndamukong "Necronomicon" Suh - Because if he gets a read, you're dead.

The Sheer Genius of Sheared Gnus

The difference between "sheared" and "shorn" is subtly insane. A sheep is sheared. A man's hair is shorn.

The shorn locks fall to the floor.
The sheared wool falls to the floor.

Unless the locks are sheer, in which the sheer, shorn locks fall to the floor. If the wool is sheer, it is still sheared, for sure.

Don't get me started on shoeshine from Poland, because if I dab Polish polish onto sheer sheared wool and streak it through my sheer, shorn hair, call the police, unless they are Polish. They'll polish me off.

Hey! What about the gnu? Not much, what's gnu with you?

Note: When teaching English as a second language, I recommend saving this lesson for last.

Inventor of the Catapult

Dionysus the Elder of Syracuse is most frequently cited as the inventor of the stone-hurling catapult, circa 400 B.C.

I wonder what King Uzziah of Judah (circa 770 B.C.) would have to say about that?

Going Deep In Strange Places

He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness, and light resides with him.

Never Mind the Truth, Here's the Sex Pistols

"Never mind" is a retort perfected in the lie mines of hell for this present age. The moment a lie is exposed, it can be easily veiled in a thick coat of "outdated anyway," and replaced with a shiny new untruth.

If you believe in progress, if you believe in the evolution of ideas, in the importance of taste, you may have swallowed poison in your time. If you have, you may have reached for "never mind" instead of an antidote.

Who Quotes the Watchmen? Quiz!

I doubt you've heard it, but there is a little internet rumor that a Watchmen movie might be coming out someday.

Test your Watchmen IQ with some important quotes:

"We can do so much more. We can save this world... with the right leadership."

"If you’ve got really smart people who are all focused on the same mission, then usually you can get some things done."

"The only person with whom I felt any kinship with died three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander of Macedonia, or Alexander the Great, as you know him."

"I saw east and west, locked into an escalating arms spiral, their mutual terror and suspicion mounting with the missiles, making the possibility of disarmament progressively more remote."


"This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."



"The brutal world he'd relished would simply cease to be, its fierce and brawling denizens rushing to join the mastodon in obsolescence... in extinction."


The Quiz Question:

Are these quotes from the mouth of Ozymandias or from President Obama*?


Here's a hint:


They were all spoken by a comic book character.


















One more quote:


"It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems."


Unlike Obama, Ozymandias had a Comedian who tried to contradict him once:

"No, but it takes a room full of morons to think they're small enough for them to handle."







*Apologies for the rare dip into human politics. You know I care very little for the petty management affairs of men. I'm far, far more interested in what your literature has to say about your culture and your leaders. Of course, I'm the only one, troll or human, I've ever met who actually found the ending of the Watchmen graphic novel to be upbeat and inspiring.