Book be done!

As Professor Farnsworth would say, "Good news everyone! The final draft of my novel, GAEBREL'S GAMBLE, is almost ready for publication. Barring any unforeseen problems, it should be out there within a month.

Testosterone Poisoning

That sound you hear is that of the Internet exploding, for there is nothing this side of Heaven or Hell that can withstand such concentrated pure manliness.....

Rock of ages

And yet there is no Def Leppard...that's almost Zen

Sigh...yet another intelligent critic who just doesn't get it....

 "Adolescent boys, of the kind who take up books in the first place these days, already experience their lives as a series of ordeals: tests, in every sense. A narrative whose purpose is not to push the hero or heroine toward a moment of moral crisis, à la “Huckleberry Finn” or “Little Women,” but to put him through a telescoped series of ordeals, which aim only at preparing him for the next series of ordeals: this is the story of their life...Kids go to fantasy not for escape but for organization, and a little elevation; since life is like this already, they imagine that it might be still like this but more magical. By the time they’re ready for college-admissions letters, they’re already dragon riders, if not yet grownups."


While it tickle my cockles pink to see a hallow publication like THE NEW YORKER (where the snootiness is of such a rarefied variety as to reach heights condescension hitherto known only to long-dead French royalty....) take on our most beloved genre, yet again it takes what might have been an intelligence and piercing article and ruin it with that old preconception that FANTASY IS FOR KIDS! Only Children Will Read This, Thus Saith The Literary Establishment, for whom only the more obscure novellas written by Ivy League English majors for their professors (yet another reason the Literary Genre is counts for little and less...and yes, it is a genre.)

Adults read this as well...in fact do more than read it. I don't see many twelve year old boys tearing through R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series.The day the genre finds itself restricted to the boundaries of the Y/A section of the bookstore or library is the day it officially dies.

COOL SONG!

The measure of how much you are loved...

It seems to be a universal truth that the measure of how much something is lived is marked by the rapidity of how quickly people are willing to steal it....

Case in point: the latest Twilight movie (which I will confess to seeing...) It came into the theatres only five data ago, and already it's possible to see it for free online. Now, can you see someone making this kind of effort, risking all manner of legal punishment, for say Eragon?

In other words, theft is the sincerest form of flattery.

The End of All Things..

Displayed on a wall for future generations to ignore...



Remember, repent and regret...

NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My legs have finally stopped hurting

Three days of nonstop walking through the Javits Center take their toll...you will never truly experience Comic Con NY until all feeling has been lost below the knees and your hips feel like iron spikes are being driven in with each step.

Painful...yes. Excruciating...undoubtably. Worth it? Without question.

One observation-paranormal romance/urban fantasy continues it's conquest of the reading public, judging from the offerings at the publishers booths. I recommend the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearn. Think Harry Dresden but only more Irish and with more bloody swordplay...

COMIC CON!!!

New York that is....

Death to the Snark! (or a brief rant on the decline of polite discourse)

SNARK
	noun  Combination of "snide" and "remark". Sarcastic comment(s).  Also snarky (adj.) and snarkily (adv.) His commentary was rife with snark.  "Your boundless ineptitude is astounding," she snarkily declared.

We live in a golden age of the biting comment, the ironical putdown, the hurtful rejoinder. When snideness and low-cutting bitchery replace wit and intelligent observation. Where taking the high road has resulted in a wrong turn down into the deep end of the green sea of envy.

Yea, weep my brethren, for are cursed to live in the Time of the Snark.

You see it everywhere, in ads on the street, in all the hip post-modern nonsense clogging the cable channels and movie theatre. Most of all, we see it on running wilds in the untamed frontier of the Internet, a eight-legged, nine-headed beast consuming all in it’s path and leaving behind a long trail of cutting sarcasm defecated on the skeleton of what was once Western culture. The snark is an omnivorous beast, taking of a fertile forest and leaving behind a parched desert of irony and ennui from which nothing worthwhile shall ever grow…

Well I say enough! Time to put an end to this. Hunt down the snark, beard the beast in his den! Shoot him a thousand times with silver bullets soaked in holy water, burn the corpse to ash, then shoot the ash. Load it into a cannon and fire the remnants into the sun! A fitting fate for such a beast, the devourer of intellect, the bane of intelligent discourse! Death to the Snark!

Here endeth the rant….

Comic Outrage

Something to add a little perspective to 

all the controversy, courtesy of MTV....

Terra Nova?

Terra Maybe...

RENT

Just saw the Off-Broadway revival...kind of wish I was around to see the original production. Of course, as one reviewer already pointed out, it was already a relic the first time around. Nowadays the only artists living in the Lower East Side are trust fund babies...starving musicians, actresses and dancers have to find someplace more affordable to duffer for their art...

Brave new world...

For independent writers. Digital self-publishing has blown down the gates at least according to The Economist. Now anyone with a story to tell and the moxie to put it out there can (hopefully) make a few bucks...

Just wish they hadn't referred to it a "dross." such an ok'd media mindset...

Irene'd

Well, I'm back, as Sam Gamgee at the end of LOTR...though in my case the cause of absence was not the departure of the elves from Middle Earth, but the drenching of Hurricane Irene and the subsequent loss of power...plenty to say but still a but to waterlogged to say it...bloody weather...

How To Write Feministly-Reimagined Historical Novels

HI-LARIOUS!!!! And such a throwback to mine halcyon college days at a mid-sized liberal arts school in the Northeast, early to mid '90's... (of course I did emerge from the experience burdened by loans that in all likelihood will never repay....)

OFFICIAL RULES FOR WRITING “FEMINIST RE-IMAGINGS & RE-IMAGININGS” 

HISTORICAL NOVELS
by India Edghill

1. All heroines are goddess-worshippers. If necessary (i.e., they are the daughter of the Jewish High Priest of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem), they are secret goddess-worshippers.

2. To be Politically Correct and not Offend Anyone, all gods are one god and all goddesses are one goddess. This means you don’t need to research their actual names or attributes, which is a real time-saver. Just remember that the deity the heroine worships is called simply “The Goddess”. To remain PC, from time to time try to remember that The Goddess has a Consort, The God (a deity who bears about the same vital relationship to The Goddess as Ken does to Barbie).
2a. In pre-Christianity historical novels, the goddess is properly called “the Great Mother”, even when the goddess actually worshipped has a perfectly good name, such as Isis, Asherah, or Inanna.
2b. In post-Christianity historical novels, Jesus is properly referred to as “the White Christ”, not to be confused with either the Lone Ranger or the Man from Glad. He may, however, be confused with the Goddess’s Consort.
2b.1. In which case, the Virgin Mary may, if you like, be confused with the Great Mother.

3. All goddess worshippers are pacifistic, politically-correct, and ecologically sound.
3a. All cultures that worship goddesses treat women well. All monotheistic cultures treat women badly. This holds true even though it requires ignoring such facts as sati in India (which has lots of goddesses) and female infanticide in pre-Islamic Arabia (which had lots of goddesses).
3b. All monotheistic cultures deny women any rights. This holds true even though it’s the Holy Qu’ran that grants women a half share in their father’s inheritance, rather than the zero share they got under the pan-Arabic pantheism that preceded Islam.

4. All monotheists are Bad
4a. Although they are pantheists, the Ancient Achaeans are Bad because they worship a Sky Father and drive out the Earth Mother.
4b. Although they are pantheists, Vikings are Bad because they worship an All-Father.
4b.l. Unless the book is a Viking romance, in which case I suppose the All-Father and the Great Mother can elope to Las Vegas for the weekend....READ THE REST HERE

Foundry of Doom

Escape your head with the smooth mellow strains of the finest DOOM METAL! In other words, 'tis a sonic head-trip that will leave you in a different place than when you started....

Times Square Crockery

They're called meeting bowls...

Skinny/Fat

Here's a thought: given that half this country is overweight, why do clothing stores persist in using starved-to-the-point-of-death models of perfection to sell clothes a large percentage of their customers will never fit into?

Or in other words, why is it so hard to find a pair of Dockers that'll fit my fat backside at Macy's? I call discrimination! 42 and above waists of the world unite!

Extending Extremes of Ennui...

What has been will be again,
 what has been done will be done again;
 there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
 “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
 it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.

Ennui is the most terrible of punishments afflicting the modern soul...anything us pitiful moderns could say to describe it, Ecclesiastes has done - and will always do- better....

Conan

Three thoughts on the upcoming movie...

First, Jason Momoa is perfect casting, too bad he was born 30 years too late.

Second, PLEASE let them use the Poledouris score.

Third, I refuse to see it in 3D, the biggest scam ever inflicted on the movie-going public.

Creative Burn

Sometimes you have no choice...the creative burn comes upon thee and one can do naught but burn in those glorious flames until they fade away or you are consumed...

Flower

?

I'm sure there's a meaning in this, bit damned if I can figure it out...

Paradise Lost: the film?

Apparently theres a Paradise Lost movie in the works, starring that dude from The Hangover (not the one with the beard!) which actually makes sense in a weird sort of way...but it does make one wonder how they'll handle a few of the more unusual scenes. Like the one where Satan meets his daughter...who is also the mother of his son...(squick)

Midnight in Bohemia

Just saw MIDNIGHT IN PARIS...interesting flick by any measure...certainly a fine alternative to the usual tits and ass blockbuster that seems to be the usual summer fare.

Two thoughts come to mind after seeing it. First, the danger of nostalgia. The character Gil yearns for the Paris of the 1920s, imagining it as an artistic paradise inhabited by the likes of Hemingway, Picasso, Gertrude Stein and Fitzgerald (kudos to Allison Pill as Zelda!) And indeed who wouldn't want to walk alongside such giants? But the character Arianna, in her dissatisfaction for her time and her desire for the Paris of the Belle Époque shows that all wonder is subjective. Periods that would magical to us are mundane to the people who actually lived in them. Which begs the question how people seventy years hence will see our own time...will there be generations of artists yet unborn yearning fir a chance to spend just a single night in the New York or London of the early 2000's, when Lady Gaga walked the earth and indie rock was the soundtrack of a generation? (or maybe not....)

The other thing that comes to mind is the character Inez and her family...basically caricatures of the social climbing bourgeoisie...portrayed as only some like Woody Allen, spending so much time in France, could do so. As human beings they're fairly repulsive - hence their being caricatures - but it occurs to me that the Bohemian as a person or subculture could not exist without the Bourgeois, since it is the Bourgeois which gives the Bohemian identity, by serving as something to stand against. What's the point of being enlightened with having masses of brutish, grasping philistines to despise? Art arises from conflict, which means an enemy is needed. A fine bit of hypocrisy, since it is the Bourgeois and their disposable income who support Bohemian artists in the end. Who else has the money to buy avant-garde works of art and literature...or the interest to do so?

Just something to consider...

Outer Reflection

Taken on MetroNorth

On Attachments

If you do not love, you have no cause for hate.

If you have no loyalties, you won't be betrayed.

If you have no wife, you won't ever be divorced.

If you have no children, you won't ever be disappointed.

If you have no friends, you will have no enemies.

If you own nothing, you will lose nothing.

If you want nothing, you have nothing to be lost.

No attachments...no misery. A loser has no expectations and nothing to lose. A loser is the freest of all men.

The Critics Were Right

I usually put little stock in anything the critics say, the elitist mob that they are...but when it comes to "Cowboys and Aliens," I will concede a point in their favor. It is two great movies mashed into a single mediocre flick. Also...why does every film out there nowadays star Olivia Wilde? She's not that good...decent but not great...

Alphas

New show on SyFy (why did they change the name?) that has become my number one reason for staying home on Monday nights.

Barsoom Blues

If there is any commonality in the sate of the fantastickal these days, it would be that the old is new, retro is the new…er, new-tro would be the best way to describe it. Writers, comic books artists and filmmakers are looking back at the past for inspiration, more specifically at older genres like pulp scifi and crazed mashups of westerns and who knows what.

Consider the following…A Princess of Mars being made into a movie by Disney (renamed as John Carter?) along with no les than three comic books coming out based on the Barsoom stories. Conan is being remade (looking forward to it…hope they recycle the Poledouris soundtrack…) Cowboys and Aliens…nuff said. All well and good…enough with the angsty irony-laden crap of the last decade. Many are in the mood for some good old-fashioned pulpy fun. As much as people liked to mock the old-timey stuff, you can’t deny it was a blast to read and watch…unlike all that doomy and gloomy pretentious nonsense that came out when scifi and fantasy began to take itself waaaaay too seriously as “art….” (Sword of Truth, anyone?)

Hopefully they soon turn to resurrecting Buck Rogers, the mother-lode of pulp. Flash Gordon too…now that the stink from the failed SciFi series has dissappated. But what would be really cool, what would really get the blood flowing (and make all the self-righteous lefty and righty bastards choke on their own bile) would be a FAITHFUL series adaption of John Norman’s Gor stories in all its S&M, masculine, defiantly politically incorrect splendor….

TARL CABOT FOR PRESIDENT!

First Draft

As Professor Farnsworth would say, Good News!

Just finished the first draft of my novel. Now follows a months percolation before the editing begins...in other words the real work has only just begun...

Setting Course On The Sea Of Eternity....

I'm thinking about using this as the cover art for my book...built it in Photoshop...surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it....

Zarkana

Got to see the latest Cirque du Soleil show at Radio City...loved the stunts and effects, but couldn't make heads or tails if the plot...there's a man named Zark. He's some sort of musician. He has a girl named Lia, who either leaves him of disappears. Clowns are involved in dome way, as is a giant snake...that's about all I could see from the back of the orchestra.

Maybe it was the French-Canadien accents?

On last nights party....

Free form essay follows...I head to my new friend Casey's (not his real name!) house on the lake. First sight of Casey a few hours earlier is an aging hippie who wears a pro-union T-Shirt. Nice guy, brought some free beer. Words lets slip that after the standard Fourth of July festivities in out town he's having a party at his place on the lake. i decide not to go, but then change my mind.

I find the place. Not bad, small house by the lake side...garden is overgrown with weeds, there are vines on the terrace that gives it something of a artfully disheveled look. free food being passed about...I forgo because I ate at a diner earlier.

I don't stay long, the party is a bore and there's no one there i know., but three things kind of stand out (and one of these things is made up, BTW.) First, that Casey has a dog which he named Marx. Friendly animal, better than naming him Spot. Second, a group of wanna-be artists sit in a corner discussing the pros and cons of polyamory and how it might apply to their lives....odd, hopefully they won't take the next step and film it. Third there's a fellow with studs in his cheeks and massive holes in his ears (a wanna-be punk if I ever saw one) holding court in a corner about the evils of religion and how the vast majority of people are gullible fools to follow anyone wearing a funny hat. I bail at that point - being catholic, I feel uncomfortable hearing religion being disparaged by undergraduate gurus...at least not without three shots of whiskey.

On the drive back, on reflecting, a few thoughts occur. Wen live in an age of nostalgia...the right-wing tea baggers at my martial arts dojo (another story for another time) equate Saint Sarah Palin with the Virgin Mary. They dream of a nation where the government never collects a penny in tax, yet somehow the roads get paved, and they get their Medicare and free gummint bennies. This is supposed to be libertarianism or something close to it...which boils down to essentially letting the rich people run the show...nostalgic for a country that never was.

But of course none of this had anything to do with the people down by the lacked, if anything they're on the other side of the argument. But it occurs, they're nostalgic for something else - a revolution that didn't so much fail as fade away. Listening to them gas on about the evils of Capitalism and Religion and America-Is-Evil-WesterS-Civilization-is-Evil-Christianity-Is-VERY-Evil...their rhetoric wouldn't have been out of place back in 1968 and back then it was cutting edge, but today its just old. They want to wave the red flag of revolution and build a new Utopia on these shores...problem is, their arguments seem filled withing but hot air and more than a whiff of hypocrisy. It's hard to take armchair revolutionaries seriously when they're preaching from an air conditioned house by a lake filled with recreational boaters...just one can easily dismiss the anti-tax ramblings of someone whose head would explode of there was even the slightest hint of talk about reducing his social security benefits...

Nostalgia...it seems that those who have the strongest opinions are the ones who never have to face the consequences should those ideas become reality. A good reason for any for everyone to shut the heck up.

Transmogrification

Three thoughts upon seeing the latest Transformers flick...

First, my IQ just dropped 30 points.

Second, I prefer the last piece of eye candy...

Third, a big enough FX budget will overcome any deficiency - or complete lack - in regards to plot, character or story.

Fantasy Inspiration

From the website:

A Digital Magazine dedicated to Fantasy concept art, showcases, reviews, interviews,inspiration, features and artists.

Translation - excellent brain food for those looking for visual fantastickal stimuli...seriously, this website is awesome, check it out.... (click on the image above...of the link below...)

Fading of the cries

What the heck ever happened to this?

Wowza!

Interesting idea...

Now all we need is a Steampunk MMORPG...that would be awesome....

Thought for the day

The older I get, the more I realize that the wanting is better than the having...

No Escape - Rie Sinclair

Good song for a strange mood...

Just Because....

Cracked Wisdom

Cracked.com…distilling pure wisdom in gleefully obscene nuggets. Anyone looking for a reason why the state of American movie-making resembling nothing more that a reincarnated landfill in 3D could do worse than to consider this perceptive bit of insight:

If you're reading this, then those movies weren't made with you in mind. They were made for the international box office (Transformers 2 made $400 million overseas, for instance). Now, before you even have a chance to think it, we are not saying foreign audiences are stupid. The movies made in their home countries, for them, are no doubt just as deep and thoughtful as any Best Picture winner.

What we're saying is that to make a movie that appeals equally to American, Japanese, Korean, German and Mexican teenagers, you need to simplify that shit down to things they all understand equally. Anything dealing with, say, the subtle trials and hardships of everyday life in the American Midwest is going to be totally lost on someone from the other side of the planet.

But there is one thing that everyone in the world can understand and sympathize with, no matter what their culture or ethnicity: The need to run away if you are being chased by giant robots.

In other words, the worldwide infotainment complex conspiracy has succeeding in blanding everything to the lowest of the lowest common denominators…turning what was once a veritable buffet of delights into the international cultural equivalent of a McDonalds Happy Meal…


Full article HERE

Variation On An Act of Mind-Numbing Boredom, With Inspiration From American History and Nature

Our fantasies come to life...

Someone once wrote that Science Fiction describes the plausibly impossible, while Fantasy is about the impossibly plausible. Scifi also has the additional glamour of imagining the future, coming up with concepts that may seem outlandish at the time, but more often than not end up being true. Fantasy on the other hand is stuck creating worlds that by definition cannot actually exist. But here’s the thing…what if this might no longer be thew case? Science is getting to the point where it might very well resemble magic to the untrained eye. Elves, dwarves and orc’s might merely be flickering’s of overly imaginative minds at the moment…but whose to say that at some point in the far-to-near future someone might not cook up strange creatures resembling them physically in a test tube somewhere, thereby creating whole new races that may their roots in H. Sapien’s genetic mud, but are then branched out in different ways. Transhumanism, some might call it…or bringing what was fantasy into a no longer mundane reality. Imagine the theme parks of the future, where the Snow White really does frolic with the Seven Dwarves, the ren faires of tomorrow, where The Dragons Are Real! Pointy ears and all the rest… Come to Orc World! Kill three beats and get a fourth one for free! -Axes not provided…. (What the porn industry might go with all this…no, let’s not go there. I just had lunch.)

Scary thing, the Brave New World that might come. But when figments of the imagination can be turned into reality…what does that leave for imagination?

A Source Of Unexpected Bliss

Here's an idea for those seeking a total head-exploding mental escape...

Load the full version of Sleeps Dopesmoker in your iPod 9see previous post on this most excellent classic of stoner doom metal from the guys who went on to form High on Fire....)

Go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Walk to the right of the main staircase through the miniscule Byzantine Section while taking out the iPod and placing the buds in your ears. Start the song while in the reproduction of the medieval church. Wait five seconds...then walk through the European Decorative Arts section with the song playing as loud as your ears will tolerate....

Trust me, it works.

Pelican - Glimmer

At the Met

At the Met yet again...almost like a pilgrimage I am compelled to make...so much beauty... Inspiration on tap...

Emancipation Manifesto

Sleep - DOPESMOKER

More than a song...it's a religious experience....

Bohemian Manifesto

Just started reading THE BOHEMIAN MANIFESTO by Lauren Stover. First impression...the lifestyle she describes and the people who live it sounds like half the hipsters in Williamsburg...the ones with money.

No ones a square anymore...we've all become rounds...

Raven and Nebulous Tree of Life

Be honest with thy greed

The glut of superhero flicks retuned thus summer. Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh. He gave an interview where he gave a lot of hot air about how he was attracted to the character/story/mythos...or something along those lines. Probably better than the likely truth which runs along the lines of "they waved a big bag of money in my face and try as I might I can't say no because while Shakespeare may be a gleaming pillar of the Western canon it doesn't get the fanboy bums in seats and that's where the money is instead of four-hour long versions of Hamlet featuring all the bits most directors cut out in the name of sanity and what that says about modern culture is best left unstated because if people are willing to stump up ten dollars to see a flick with a hackneyed plot and an overabundance of CGI in place of actual art then who am I to say no...."

Or something along those lines. When did I get so cynical?

A pouring out of words....

Where to begun...this post (the first in a long time....) was supposed to be about Game of Thrones, but the mind just won't concentrate...Spring is coming, Summer not far behind, warm weather being a salve on the worst hurts of the world. Modern society is set up to slowly grind the human soul underfoot, until nothing left can be used, they take it all, hope, joy, happiness...all the things you are supposed too want will destroy you in the end. Born, live, die, have kids, find a wife, go to work, day in day out until one day you crack and either gain enlightenment from sheer boredom or more likely dive to the bottom of a whiskey bottle or eat a bullet....guilt is a useful thing in this particular situation, which explains the continuing allure of Catholicism, since it makes watching the steady decline of what used to be known as Western Civilization relatively painless....I dream of bohemian freedom, a life lived soley for art and beauty, but the problem with illusions is evetually they get crushed under the steel boot heel of reality, yet our world is one run for illusion, it is an illusion. We spend our lives chasing green pieces of paper that in another context would only be good for cleaning up that pile of gunk left behind by your cat. If our ancestors could travel in time from ten thousand years before and look upon the world we created, would they marvel at the steel and concrete towers, the glories of the internet and the conquest of nature, or would that shake their heads at the way we kill ourselves eating bad food, having worse sex, breathing polluted air while nature shrivels and dies around us without anyone even noticing, and chasing the next dollar, the next piece of paper with the head of state of your choice printed on the front? At least when you brought down the mammoth with your stone spear, your got a handful of meat, something that was real and that you could eat....

All right...done. Mind had finished spewing out all thing negativity. This has been a purge of boredom induced madness...one of these days I will tell the boss to stick this job someplace unpleasant, and walk out into the sun, walk into the woods and never come back, seek out the hidden world spoken and myth and find out if it's real. And if it isn't, I will make it real.....

Game of Thrones and the death of fantasy?

Game of Thrones is almost upon us. Not since LOTR came out in the theaters has a 

fantasy work been such a focus of critical analysis and acclaim. Thus saith
the New York Times in an appriasal of GoT and the genre in general:

"In this way, fantasy as a genre seems to have an almost unfair advantage at allegorically chronicling our age. Elsewhere, the crudeness and savagery of modern life are artfully encoded in the palm-sweating desperation of the meth-dealing dad in “Breaking Bad,” the terse detachment of the pill-popping mom in “Nurse Jackie” or the quiet machinations of the enigmatic assassin in “Dexter.” But that brand of darkness has so thoroughly become the default syntax of cable dramas that even these sensational figures can’t quite jar us out of our somnambulant state. We apparently require gigantic walls of ice, supernatural wolf puppies, gory jousts, dragon eggs and a nomadic warrior who looks like Dave Navarro after heavy steroid use. Maybe it takes the grand scale of sybaritic kings and imaginary kingdoms to do justice to the perversions and the nihilism of post-empire America."

Far be it from the likes of me to turn away such appluse. Most fantasy geeks my age first turned onto to back back in the Dark Ages of not many years past, where its was still regarded as an outcast thing, suitable only for those two inept to pursue the more socially acceptable pursuits of sex, drugs and what remains of rock 'n roll. After all, if something isn't degrading and deemed 'rebellious' or 'transgressive' with a dash o social commentary thrown in, its deemed unworthy by the cultyural elites who run this country(9or at least like to think they do...)


Which makes all this sudden love and affection from the upper echelons very worrying. In the old days fantasy was a ghetto, basically. It was a fairly large one, and nto withotu it own prejudices, but a gehtoo the just the same, ignored for the most part and despised when noiced. The flipside of course, was that those within its walls could make up their own rules. In that little world they weren't the outsiders but the insiders, and could create to their hearts content. Being ignored has its advantages - if no one cares what you do, then you can do whatever you want.


Times change. What was inside is now outside. The world peeked over the walls long ago, liked what it saw, broke down the gates and installed a highway. The cultural movers and shakers are claiming the beloved genre for its own...bringing alogn their neuroses, fetishes and preconceptions. Gawd help us all the day Fantasy becomes Literary.


In some ways, this is a good thing. It's certainly about time fantasy got a modicum of respect. On the other hand, one can't help but feel that something is being lost, that the things that made this genre are being appropriated and diluyted to the point of invisibility, never to be regained. The old days are passing. For better or worse, it belongs to the world now.