look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,

If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.

Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.

What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.

Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.

Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.

"Somebody" wrote it? That was Poul Anderson, seven time Hugo winner, three time Nebula winner, SFWA Grand Master, founding member of the SCA, author of over 100 novels and several hundred short stories. At least give the respect of crediting him for his work.

autumn butterflies

I love when people are like “this character is a war criminal” and show a character from a setting where we have no idea what the rules of war are. Like yeah they’re a torturer or murderer or whatever but if you wanna call them a criminal over it you gotta back it up with some kind of indication of what things might be in their conventions.

They don’t even have a Geneva

lots of planets have a geneva

We stan one monarch.

We’re doing a big collab project in comic class where we have to draw a landscape seen through the window of a panel from “The Bus” by Paul Kirchner so here’s mine

someone recommend me some good fantasy books that aren’t centred on a war, please, my crops are dying

The Greta Helsing novels by Vivian Shaw - practical doctor to the undead defeats mildly ominous interdimensional threats with the aid of domestic vampires and a demon accountant.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley - practical baker is captured by vampires, escapes, reluctantly teams up with better vampire to kill the bad one.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - young hat maker ages 60 years overnight, proceeds to upend the life of a disaster wizard while learning self-confidence.

the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett - hard to encapsulate, but equally funny and hard-hitting, tackling race and gender and corruption and other forms of inequality while also, like, making fun of post offices and Hollywood and Shakespeare. Three or four tackle war, true, but there’s something like 35 others to choose from.

the Accidental Turn series by J.M. Frey - recent Ph.D of colour lands in the Fantasyland™ she did her thesis on, goes off about agency and diversity while recovering from the Dark Lord’s attentions and learning the truth about her fictional crush.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire - evil alchemist creates superpowered children to assist world takeover; children just want to be a family; family is complicated.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - young woman takes over family business, must outwit fairies with a love of gold.

the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede - princess runs away to become a dragon’s housekeeper, fights off rescuers, solves problems large and small, melts wizards.

the October Daye novels by Seanan Mcguire - Half-fae detective solves murders, finds missing persons, develops found family, can’t stop self from upending the social order.

The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker - A quiet golem, a tempestuous djinn, Gilded Age New York. Immigrants, identity, friendship, hope, and self-discovery.

An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard - A witch from an outsider House enters New York’s magical Hunger Games, to prove a point. The problems of magic were not intended.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes - Part-time con artist gets hired to find two missing pop stars, with the help of the magical sloth on her back. Noir ensues.

Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica - Nature photographer lands on water-world, discovers lost family, tries to convince self magic is impossible.

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips - Greek gods, washed up in North London, curse Apollo to fall for the cleaner. Existential crisis, meet rom-com.

Among Others by Jo Walton - Loner teen sent to boarding school, discovers science fiction, might know fairies and do magic.

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton - Austenesque story except all the characters are dragons.

Every Heart a Doorway (and sequels) by Seanan McGuire - the children of portal fantasy end up in boarding school coping with being kicked out of their various worlds, then some of them start getting murdered. 

The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan - the world is flooded, there’s a lady who works with a bear at a circus that sails to different places to perform, and a lady who is sort of an undertaker, and they fall in love

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees - there are fairies but no one talks about them anymore because That’s Just Not How We Are except this state of affairs cannot possibly last and people start getting lured to fairyland

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - fifth son of emperor who’s lived his whole life away from court abruptly becomes emperor when his father and older brothers are killed in an accident, spends entire book trying to make friends and figure how the fuck to do a) confidence and b) ruling ethically

The Various by Steven Augarde - girl spends summer at uncle’s farm, finds the group of “various” (no direct parallel, but think somewhere between gnomes and pixies) that live in the woods, mysterious history, flying horse, The Cat Is Evil (this is technically middle grade but it’s so good I can’t even)

Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan - working on the translation of an ancient text is complicated when it might have a huge impact on the public perception of a highly stigmatised group; subterfuge, found family, mythology, and the rejection of men who steal other people’s work. 

My crops are watered

Oooo, good list. Already includes faves of mine but lots of new stuff too.

I made The Witches’ Daughters for Terrestrial, an anthology of earth-themed fantasy comics edited by Amanda Scurti. You can also read it at its forever home on my portfolio website.

The anthology debuted at SPX 2014, and now you can buy it here! It’s full of lovely comics and illustrations, and I’m very happy to be included in such good company. 

listen don’t get me wrong i love epic fantasy and sci-fi but it is very very important to me that we get fantasy & sci-fi on a smaller scale as well. i’m tired of reading about the Special Person Who Will Save The World. that’s not relateable. i want to hear more stories about bit players on the world stage! a traveling theatre troupe of goblins struggling to write a new play, two rival families of smugglers living on the same space station transport hub, a rom-com about a young hedge witch, a coming-of-age story about a dryad

give me more weird clever small stories

You want Becky Chambers Wayfarers series.

The first book ‘The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet’ is about the crew of a small star ship. They aren’t important in the grand scheme of things. They are space road builders (they punch holes in normal space to connected two different points in space so that other ships can get around quicker). The journey is the important thing and its very character driven. It’s a found family story and a story about growing as individuals. These are not people who save the universe. At most they are a footnote in the history books.

The second book ‘A Closed and Common Orbit’ is about identity and love, who you are and what you can become. It’s about never losing hope and fighting for what’s right. That doesn’t mean saving the universe. It means fighting the everyday cruelties and discriminations that you and others face.

I cannot recommend these books enough. Humans aren’t the most important species, the aliens have very different cultures to humans and that’s treated as fine, there are nonbinary and genderfluid characters, a character with a lisp who is never made fun of, polyamorous aliens and a great w/w relationship. They deal with survivor’s guilt, discrimination, gender, identity crises etc.

The ability to participate in a SFF adventure without having to worry that the actual fabric of the universe will be rent is important to me. (Side eyeing MCU with my entire face!)

Ofc humans are weird!! How hard is that?

@marlynnofmany – I just found out about your Humans Are Weird anthology project TODAY [sighhhhhh…], and I’m wondering what the exact problem is with the submissions that you have received. Taking the theme in wrong directions? Not humorous enough?

I was just thinking that, if I could tell all several of my highly creative followers what you WERE looking for, as opposed to what you WEREN’T, some may be inspired to contribute what you ARE looking for!

[I know I’ve got some ideas, but I can’t write an entire anthology on my own. That would kind of defeat the purpose of an anthology…]

I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last few months. I always intended to post it during Pride Month, and hey, here we are. I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now, so this might be the last book rec post for quite a while.

When possible, I’m linking to the Queer SFF Book Database since it has information on trigger warnings and links to reviews by queer readers. When not in the database of 6/15/20, I’ll be linking to Goodreads. Links are all below the cut.

Do not recommend cis authors on this post. This post is for centering trans and nonbinary authors. Please note that trans people write all sorts of stories and protagonists, and these books don’t automatically have trans or queer protagonists. 

My master list of book rec posts is here, if you want to find more.

If you’re looking for a starting place on trans SFF, I strongly suggest the Transcendent anthology series as an overview. It’ll introduce you to a wide array of incredible stories from trans and nonbinary authors. 

This list does not cover all of the amazing trans and nonbinary authors writing science fiction and fantasy! There are many more, and please feel free to suggest them here.

If you see any exclusionists or TERFs on this post, let me know without engaging and I will block them ASAP. I would prefer to keep this post a safe, positive place for trans readers. 

Keep reading

Sci-fi! Fantasy! Trans writers! GNC writers! NB writers! Trans and genderfluid and gender conconforming and straight and cis and queer and ace and all sorts of characters! Books to read!

oh my god….. bioluminescent dwarfs 

okay so

dwarfs evolved in deep subterranean societies, and it shows. their eyesight is shit; their skin is intensely sensitive to the sun. the first human diplomats to come in contact with them mistakenly labeled the dwarfs a war-like people because they were so seldom seen without layers of protective clothing; it was a while before anyone realized that dwarven skin just burns easily and needs to be kept safe under layers.

due to their tendency to stay covered up when aboveground, it was longer much longer before anyone found out that dwarfs also glow.

they’ve since developed much fancier ways of keeping track of each other down in the tunnels, of course, but there’s this fun little holdover, stripes of faint blue or green (think of the way veins look on pale humans) swirling over their entire bodies, each dwarf boasting a pattern that’s entirely unique.

topside they look like nothing more than interesting or possibly puzzling tattoos - why did you need that stripe crossing right over your eye like that? - but get them down in a cavern, let them shed their protective suits, and marvel. they live and work down in the deepest levels, where humans can’t see their own hands in front of themselves but can sure as hell see the familiar lines of their dwarf buddies, shining to show them the way.

or, okay, if we do want to get into fighty dwarfs

nighttime is fine; as soon as the sun goes down they’re free to remove their heavy protective suits (dwarfs going sleeveless to let their skin glow)

and, thus unencumbered, surround their enemies’ little campsite

and the last thing anyone sees before everything goes to hell are ghostly blue and green swirls floating through the night

jesus crust makenzie this is horrifying and i love it

good

Dinotopia is a fictional utopia created by author and illustrator James Gurney. It is the setting for the book series with which it shares its name. Dinotopia is an isolated island inhabited by shipwrecked humans and sentient dinosaurus who have learned to coexist peacefully as a single symbiotic society. The first book has “appeared in 18 languages in more than 30 countries and sold two million copies.”Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath both won Hugo awards for best original artwork.

God these images still send this ENTIRE thrill through me. They just evoke that feeling of being a child with a book too large for you, staying for so long on a single picture that you feel like you could turn around in it.

Gurney consistently produces a world that feels completely reasonable and real. The color, the light, the relationships between fore- and background,

the fact that it seems like a real world, where people are engaging in perfectly reasonable cultural activities…

The natural gestures, implying the personalities and relationships of characters in a single image…

And it’s quite creative. I mean, look at this pair of bagel sellers. WHAT A GREAT WAY TO SELL BAGELS?

I feel like there is so much to learn from the way Gurney does his work - his blog is here http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com 

Fantasy world in which Dwarves are not motivated by greed or love of gold, only by a profound scientific enthusiasm for geology.

I’d love to see this implemented, especially as TTRPG start becoming more self-aware of their racist / sexist foundations and start working to better themselves. 

The legendary Dwarven treasure is not a horde of gold and gemstones, but a paleontology museum with a vast collection of rare and exquisite fossils. Dwarven universities specialize in the natural sciences, Dwarven economies based on the trade of interesting rocks and minerals, Dwarf detectives able to identify different muds and soils on sight.

“You said there were precious stones in here.”

“… yes?  These stones hold pieces of ancient life in them; what could possibly be more precious?”

This is a Good Post, especially because it reminds me of that scene in LotR where Gimli waxes poetic about carefully carefully chiselling into caverns to bring out their potential beauty.

Reminds me of Dwarf Fortress, which has an exhausting list of various sorts of rock, but one variety of gold.  There’s schist and gneiss and marble and everything else, but gold only comes from gold ore – no electrum, no alloys with copper or palladium, or gold tellurides.

I carved a large dormitory out of a marble layer, then smoothed and engraved the walls, and my fortress value shot through the roof.  I hadn’t even minted any coins yet!

Whgskl. Okay.

PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.

Like. Super okay.

I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.

And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.

There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.

Also:

“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”

“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”

“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”

“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”

“But it’s a stempunk nov—”

“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”

Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.

If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.

Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.

It’s a chair. With wheels.

If you have chairs (Do people sit on chairs to eat dinner? Write letters? Rest their aching feet?), and you have wheels (Carriages? Chariots? Oxcarts?), then you have zero reasons they can’t be put together.

Also:

[Image description: black and white image [against a red background] of Hephaestus from an archaic, 6th century B.C.E., Greek drinking bowl, sitting in a winged, wheelchair-like chariot, with his smith’s hammer over his shoulder. The image is surrounded by gold dots, and framed in gold, black and white. Description ends]

In case you missed it, that image was originally painted in the 6th Century B.C.E. (That’s 200 years before Alexander the Great).

Sure, that image was painted on the inside bottom of a drinking bowl, and was probably meant .as a joke against one of the Olympian gods (you’d only dare do that if you were drunk), and not a depiction of a mobility aid actually in use. But if some ancient Greek dudebro could imagine a wheelchair, so the physically disabled god can get around, you have no excuse.

— Rabbi Julia Watts Besser, “God On Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology” (Tikkun Magazine) 

Which anyone who can get access to the full article should read in its entirety, it is beautiful and amazing.

Whgskl. Okay.

PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.

Like. Super okay.

I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.

And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.

There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.

Also:

“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”

“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”

“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”

“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”

“But it’s a stempunk nov—”

“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”

Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.

If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.

Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.

It’s a chair. With wheels.

If you have chairs (Do people sit on chairs to eat dinner? Write letters? Rest their aching feet?), and you have wheels (Carriages? Chariots? Oxcarts?), then you have zero reasons they can’t be put together.

Also:

[Image description: black and white image [against a red background] of Hephaestus from an archaic, 6th century B.C.E., Greek drinking bowl, sitting in a winged, wheelchair-like chariot, with his smith’s hammer over his shoulder. The image is surrounded by gold dots, and framed in gold, black and white. Description ends]

In case you missed it, that image was originally painted in the 6th Century B.C.E. (That’s 200 years before Alexander the Great).

Sure, that image was painted on the inside bottom of a drinking bowl, and was probably meant .as a joke against one of the Olympian gods (you’d only dare do that if you were drunk), and not a depiction of a mobility aid actually in use. But if some ancient Greek dudebro could imagine a wheelchair, so the physically disabled god can get around, you have no excuse.

By Cassandra Jean

Where is the fishperson romance for dark-skinned Black women?

I mean, I know why there is such a paucity of these stories (it begins with “miso-” and ends in “-noir”), but I’m interested in delving the ways that it manifests in how we conceptualize and talk about this type of story, or at least examining these types of stories from a Black feminist or womanist lens. I tried broaching it a few times (though with a heavier emphasis on the gothic heroine as protagonist) but the responses have been scant, almost as if people are afraid of looking deeper.

Tagging @elfyourmother, @idreamtofmanderleyagain, @alwaysatrombonist, @undertheteacup for reasons.

Y’know what? Lemme ask a better question: When does Bella Swan or Sookie Stackhouse or Clary Fairchild get to be Black? Or are such characters even possible without being white?

I think it’s less of a question of these characters being possible, but these characters being accepted by non black audiences, and hell even black audiences is heavily in question.

The feedback I get when I write black women who aren’t #strong black women makes it pretty clear that people want black women in the media they consume to fit into an archetype they are comfortable with. I have literally been told I am degrading the race because sometimes I write black women who share a number of traits with me.

And this is unfortunate, because there clearly is at least somewhat of a market for all the facets of our Humanity as black women, as illustrated by a romance novelists like Alyssa Cole and the like. I had really hoped that Sleepy Hollow was going to give us this in Abbie Mills, but we all see where that went.

A lot of these characters are supposed to be relatable to the average reader, and the average reader or viewer is of course assumed to be a white person, and a whole lot of white people have not been socialized at all to be able to relate to black women.

And further, black women are not aspirational, so why pin your wish fulfilment on a black female character?

Gonna respond to this and the following by @elfyourmother (go to bed!) since they share a theme of wish fulfillment.

maybe part of it is also that fantastic romances even more so than regular ones are just so nakedly about wish fulfillment, and that’s not something we’re ever allowed to have as black women. we’re not supposed to have wishes or dreams of our own, just facilitate other people’s. sometimes as literal magical negroes, if we’re about fantasy.

The point about such characters being relatable and aspirational, and how often dark-skinned Black women stand in stark contrast to that, is an interesting one.

Now I wonder how putting dark-skinned Black women at the center of these stories change their meaning. How does the story change when the main character is a dark-skinned Black woman and not some pale, willowy white girl?

Reblogging for Just Getting Up Tumblr