The History of Fantasy, Part I: Books of Monsters
Some people like to date Fantasy as starting with Tolkien, some like to reach back to the tales of the ancient world, but I like to split the difference and start with Beowulf. […]
The Ten Greatest Wizards of All Time
A bit problematic, this list. My experience with wizards tells me they are a fickle lot and prone to hubris. And they have powers….Perhaps ranking them might not be such a good idea….
Interview: Black Science Fiction Artist: Eric Wilkerson
My earliest memories are of waking up to watch the Jetsons, Voltron, and many other sci fi–based cartoons of the 80s.
SWORD & SORCERY & J. R. R. TOLKIEN
In September 1937 an English Don named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien published a children’s book called The Hobbit. Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, had been dead for fifteen months. In 1950 Gnome Press […]
Interview: Trenna Keating (aka Doc Yewll) from Defiance
The SyFy Channel is putting a metric ton of financial resources behind their new SF drama Defiance, which airs on Mondays 9/8C. Released this spring, SyFy has also simultaneously launched an online video game for […]
American Tolkien
There is a kind of writer whose name evokes not just the titles of their best-known novels or the characters in them, but a certain way of experiencing the world. If one hears the name […]
Moonlight and Manners: A Review of Goblin Moon by Teresa Edgerton
There was already awareness that a new strain of fantasy had developed when Donald G. Keller first labeled it “fantasy of manners” in his article “The Manner of Fantasy,” published in the April 1991 issue […]
An Interview With Sword and Laser’s Tom Merritt
Thanks to the exciting reach the internet brings us authors and fans of literature are connecting in ways never seen before. What once was relegated to a letter sent across the ocean in the vain […]
The History of Fantasy, Part II: Barbarians and Elves and Jesus Figures and D20s
The nineteenth century closes with two books that will be imitated constantly for the next hundred years or so: Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. To a […]
Of Shadows and Serpent – The First Sword & Sorcery Tale
When people think of 1929 they usually recall the Great Depression and “Black Tuesday” (October 29th). I prefer to think of it as the year Sword & Sorcery was born. For S&S, like its greatest […]
Hobbit Art – Before the Movie (well, almost)
Kia ora and welcome to my new Visual Arts blog on Amazing Stories! First up, let’s have some Hobbit art. Let me state this outright: I am not going to try to determine who is the “greatest artist” in the fandom. I am not particularly interested in who is the most technically proficient, or the most outrageously inventive. Who gets the biggest fees, the most prestigious projects, has the greatest fan base, or who, by whose definition, is the “most famous”. I like to feature art I like.
There and Back Again, or, How I Got Scared Into Science Fiction
Science Fiction is one of the great loves of my life. I have spent some thirty odd years reading, critiquing, discussing, collecting, watching and dreaming it (I won’t talk about writing it, at least not […]
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