Exile
She made a false step in the darkness, maybe even two steps, and stumbled off the road and couldn’t stumble back. It was insane; how hard could it be to turn around and undo a thing as simple as a step?
Archive for April 2010
The Year’s Best SF and Fantasy, 2010 Recommended Reading, Part 2
For the month of April, FM will be presenting in four segments, all the recommended reading selections listed in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2010 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, which is forthcoming in June 2010 from Prime Books.
Stories Are How We Define Ourselves : Elena Gleason
Tales of my story inspirations are almost uniformly quite mundane and un-profound, so prepare yourself to be underwhelmed: One day, out of the blue, I thought, “What if whispers were some sort of creature?” And I made a note.
What YA Fantasy Means for Movies
A few years ago, there was a cinema boom in children’s fantasy with an eye toward entertaining (or at least accommodating) adults. Harry Potter led the charge, with animation studio Pixar on his heels, and as Harry’s adventures got darker and Pixar’s movies went from Finding Nemo to Wall-E, the quality and profitability of YA fantasy films went up. Soon, hopeful franchises were blooming left and right, some successful (The Chronicles of Narnia), some not (The Golden Compass). Now the market for YA fantasy films is growing almost as fast as the stable of YA books from which they’re adapting. How did this happen, and where is it going?
The Sorcerer’s House by Gene Wolfe
By Wolfe’s standards, The Sorcerer’s House is fairly simple. Told in the familiar—almost naïve—first-person prose of many recent Wolfe novels. it’s also quite absorbing, a very nice read, and for all its relative “simplicity” stuffed with puzzles and such Wolfean obsessions as twins, shapechanging, and virtue. em>The Sorcerer’s House is, in the end, an entertainment, clever and satisfying—not great Wolfe, but good Wolfe, which is recommendation enough.
Whisper’s Voice
The whispers fly home at dusk, rushing to the castle. They flow through windows and holes in the ceiling and the spaces between collapsed walls, eager to share what they’ve learned since their last gathering.
The Year’s Best SF and Fantasy, 2010 Recommended Reading, Part 1
For the month of April, FM will be presenting in four segments, all the recommended reading selections listed in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2010 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, which is forthcoming in June 2010 from Prime Books.
Author Spotlight: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
“Hi Bugan ya Hi Kinggawan” isn’t just the story of Bugan and Elsa (Kinggawan) but it’s also the story of the place and a way of life. If I had set the story in a place like Manila or Cebu, it would not have been Bugan and Kinggawan’s story. It would have been someone else’s tale.
Double Review: Foiled by Jane Yolen & Mike Cavallaro / Zeus: King of the Gods by George O’Connor
Two graphic books from the First Second (:01): Foiled, written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Mike Cavallaro parries with plenty of well-known themes, including role-playing games, but for younger readers they are fresh and the execution is clever enough to capture the more jaded as well: a real winner. Zeus: King of the Gods by George O’Connor supplements classics such as D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths well.
Hi Bugan ya Hi Kinggawan
The Mumbaki came, as did the elder warriors, and they sang of Bugan the sky goddess who descended to earth to marry the warrior Kinggawan. They sang of how the lovers lost each other and how Kinggawan seeks his Bugan to this day. When the Mumbaki poured the wine over your head you did not cry.
