Giant Squid Creations

I had some free time so I was browsing Wikipedia and ended up reading the articles on Sword and Planet and Planetary Romance . They clearly haven’t been written by the same people as they differ on a number of points. The Sword and Planet article, which I think is a better constructed piece than the other, argues that it is a distinct genre from Planetary Romance, whereas the latter article has a non-committal discussion on ‘sword and planet’. Once the article on Space Opera is added to the mix things get even more confusing as it had a section arguing its definition in opposition to Planetary Romance – since one happens in space and comes from Westerns and Seafaring epics whereas Planetary Romance happens on a planet and is tied to lost world and lost civilisation tales. Who knows what happens when stories go from outer space to a planet and back again? Now, I know opponents of Wikipedia will jump on this opportunity to say it’s more proof of its inaccuracy and inconsistency, ...

This month was mainly marked by two books, Kevin J Anderson’s Hopscotch and Frank Herbert’s High-Opp . I did also read issue 62 of Aurealis. Let’s start with Hopscotch . The concept behind this is really intriguing; basically at some point in human evolution we gain the ability to swap bodies with each other, which makes the old adage of ‘live a day in another person’s shoes’ seem rather quaint – shoes? Bah, I was in their feet. The possibilities with this are huge and unfortunately the book tries to cover a lot of them. It follows four orphans as they leave the orphanage and enter this brave new world. They each have their own paths and the stories wind their own ways, overlapping only in characters for the most part. At first it was like reading a series of interrelated short stories and I was enjoying that, but as the stories began to spin out I kept waiting for more to happen. So while I did enjoy it, Hopscotch could have been much better I feel. It explored too many ideas, the...

Clark Ashton Smith came from a poor background and spent much of his early life trying to earn money for his family. But even while young he displayed a love of story and a passion for language. Some of his earliest works were written as a teenager and they were strongly influenced by the Arabian Tales, an influence that would linger. He abandoned prose for some years and was a fairly successful poet. After his first published volume he was taken under the arm by George Sterling and mingled with fellow poets of the time including Ambrose Bierce. Nowadays he’s remembered for his short fiction works which he wrote primarily for pulp magazines like Weird Tales. In fact, in terms of the ‘weird’ fiction of the pulp era he was one of the three heavyweights along with Lovecraft and Robert E Howard, and while those two may be better known these days I would argue Smith is the better writer of the group. The ties between the three, while primarily through letters, were highly influential...

I want to say a few words about last Saturday night but I’m having a hard time finding them. In short, my wife, my teenage niece and I went to see Amanda Palmer and The Grand Theft Orchestra at The Enmore and the concert was brilliant. It was one of those nights where you can feel the energy and the positive vibes just radiating around the room. The performers were all full of life and bursting with energy and the mosh area was a wave of human activity and joyousness. What’s more, this energy wasn’t just for Amanda and her band, it was for the support acts too. Sure it built to its fever pitch when Amanda came out to perform and almost immediately crowd-surfed, but it was pretty high even as people were gathering and DJ S… was doing her thing. So when Die R… came out to do their thing the mood was ready for fun. If only Otto and Astrid could deliver – oh wait. So, Die Roten Punkte or The Red Spots in English, are … how does one put this? … insane? Hmm, not quite. Hilarious woul...

Since my promise of regular posts I’ve been quiet, sorry about that. I have been busy though – preparing the house for a baby, which is ongoing, writing some freelance articles, studying some free courses via Coursera and watching my wife get a kiss from Amanda Palmer. I’ll write more about that last one soon, but first, before I completely forget, an August Reading Round-up. I finished Clarke Ashton Smith’s Emperor of Dreams . I really recommend it to anyone who enjoys visiting distant vistas of the imagination; the places I went to while reading it are amazing. I wouldn’t want to go to them for real but I’m very happy I could tour them in my mind. Some of the stories were a bit lack-lustre I admit and most of the plots weren’t great, but that wasn’t the reason for reading them. The atmosphere and the landscapes of these stories are their real strength. I also finished the Legends II anthology put together by Robert Silverberg. I had read most of this book years ago but still h...

Inspired by various people (Felicia Day, Amanda Palmer, Wil Wheaton, Neil Gaiman et al) and by life events (impending fatherdom) I’m going to try to treat the whole Wandering Friar enterprise – which is mostly to say my writing and this blog – as a business. As such I’m going to endeavour to post more regularly and have regular features, like my reading round-ups and author profiles, which will now be monthly events. I have also been thinking of ways to expand Wandering Friar and pursue my dreams more fully. One of the things I’m planning on is to record audiobooks. These will be of public domain titles, particularly Gothic and post-Gothic works and Metaphysical poetry. Another plan/dream is to develop my own RPG set in one of the many worlds I’ve dreamt up over the years. I’m thinking The Destroyed Continent will make a good start. It’s a huge archipelago which, funnily enough, used to be a continent until some cosmic disaster I haven’t yet determined the nature of. So there’ll ...

1996. Year 11. My memory of that year is that it was always overcast. When I try to think of sunlight all I remember is the girl I had a huge crush on at the time, her face was never in shadow. It was the year my chronic fatigue was at its worst and life was all a bit hard and confusing. It was also a transformative year. I wrote most of our drama class’s recreation of the Eureka Stockade, I studied Hamlet and I discovered Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead . Suddenly, amidst the bleak mists of illness teenage and addlement I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to write plays. I don’t think I can overestimate the impact Ros & Guil had on me at the time. It was hilarious and demonstrated a high level of wit, but it also had these speeches of philosophical quandaries. Quite simply it was breathtaking and life-changing. But I never saw it performed – live anyway and the film is a different beast, still brilliant but different, and well, it’s a film so it can’t b...

Having said I’d blog more I’ve not done much at all, sorry about that. So I figure a little reading round-up wouldn’t go astray. I finally got through Clash of Kings – that’s Game of Thrones Season 2 for TV folks – and I’m looking forward to A Storm of Daggers . I also decided not to watch season 2 of the show; I watched season one and enjoyed it but it lacks some of the depth, the story is shifting away from the book and … I don’t need to see that stuff. Finishing it opened the way for me to read Neil Gaiman’s latest, The Ocean at the End of the Lane . It really dragged me in and was a charming tale; I don’t think it’s a match for his other novels but it’s still an addictive read with some great characters and ideas. And finishing that, which didn’t take long, meant I could finally read Shine Light , the third book in Marianne de Pierre’s Night Creatures trilogy. It took me a couple of chapters to get back into the world but once there the story moved along at a good pace. I t...

Last year I planned to read 50 Plays and write a response to each one. I read far less than 50 and only wrote one response. But I figure I might as well share it with you so here it is. Described as a play in five acts, Peer Gynt is very much an episodic narrative with the ongoing fantastic encounters of our ‘hero’ heading inexorably to the final conclusion where, Faust-like he gets an unexpected reprieve. Structurally, the play can be divided more into three than five. The first three acts are adventures in Peer’s youth where he meets Solveig and culminating in his mother’s death; the two together seem to drive him to flee the country. The fourth act is a sample of Peer’s adventures overseas while the fifth act is his return home in old age and his attempt to run from fate (O Sinner Man, where you going to run to?) The episodes in the first phase all follow on one after the other, but there are jumps in time thereafter, which seems slightly incongruous. I can see this play wor...

When I was a little boy I had a princess in just the same way other young children might have. She was beautiful and wore sumptuous gowns – sometimes – and at one point needed rescuing by a dashing young hero or three. But that wasn’t why she was a princess or at least why she was important to me. You see my princess could look after herself and had sass. When someone told her they were going to execute her, she gave him lip. She fought her own battles, commanded soldiers and didn’t take crap from anyone. But she did all that without losing one iota of ‘femininity’. There is nothing ‘butch’ about Princess Leia. So I grew up with a strong female hero figure every bit as cool as her male counterparts. Yesterday I got to meet, ever-so briefly, the real woman who brought that character to life and it was a wonderful experience. My own interaction with Carrie Fisher was very short, she got the photo I wanted signed, said my name as way of greeting/confirming I was the right person and w...

I don't know how the site does the analysis but if you insert text you've written into it, it analyses it somehow and tells you what famous writer you write like. So I put the first page of The Scarlet Ring in and was pretty chuffed with the result. Here's hoping I get the success he's had. I write like Neil Gaiman I Write Like . Analyze your writing! Keep dreaming!

In her essay, On Ghosts, Mary Shelley laments the way the world is changing to a more rational, more understood and more linear place. The way the sun is known to be a star filled with gas as opposed to a mysterious orb that might be the chariot of a god, for instance. In this she neatly summarises a general feeling within the Romantic movement and with the Gothics in particular – that the new ways following the various revolutions at the end of the 18th century were potentially robbing us of our sense of wonder; hence the romanticising of the past and the insistence (at times) in the existence of the supernatural. As progress has not slowed since that time it is little wonder these feelings have lingered and the rebellious medievalist spirit of the Gothics has continued in many forms of storytelling as well. But while mad monks, ghosts, mouldering castles and star-crossed lovers gave escape from the modernising of the world, Shelly went further and commented on the very progress she...

I’ve decided to start a series of author profiles. Not just any authors of course, but ones who have influenced me – positively – or that I’m interested in, intrigued by or who fit in the nebulous conglomerate of sub-genres I’m most ‘in’ to. So who better to start with than Edgar Allan Poe who is all those things? It’s worth noting that in more recent times he would probably have been known as Allan-Poe as he adopted Allan into his name from his foster father who was a more positive role model than his biological one. So from the get-go Edgar had emotional damage and an alcoholic father. The course for this tormented genius was pretty much set from there. I won’t get into his biography that can be found out easily enough if you’re interested. What I do want to talk about is his broad scope of influence. Some call him the father of modern horror, which is debatable but certainly he is best known for his macabre works. He’s also possibly the father of modern crime fiction, with his ...

Sometimes as a means of procrastinating I go to certain sites and look at free ebooks. I've downloaded a heap of books and short stories in the process many of which I'll never read but when the only cost is a click of the mouse and they take up no physical room and very little room in terms of file space I don't see the harm and those I do read are a bonus in many more ways than one. I started off getting things by authors I knew or knew of and wanted to know - Wells, Verne, Lovecraft, Howard etc. But I found it took more time and was therefore a better form of procrastination to look into authors I'd never heard of before. As such I downloaded books that 'might be interesting'. Since doing that I've forgotten what most of them were and who the authors were too. I have made some great discoveries this way though. Through a link I followed and a snippet someone had written about it I discovered Thomas Peacock's Nightmare Abbey, for instance. It's...

As mentioned on my Facebook page , I recently finished the first draft of The Silver Ring . This is a completely unprecedented step for me. I’ve finished short plays, even fairly long plays, and I’ve finished short stories – but a novel is a whole different scenario. I have no methods for revising something this long. Which I admit is somewhat daunting, but also pretty exciting. I know the story has some problems in terms of plotting. People are in one place when they don’t actually get there for several days. That came about because of the way I wrote the strands separately without detailed planning, so there’s a lesson for book two, keep a diary for every character so I know how many days they have to do things. Which is how I’m going to fix it; I’ll do a day-by-day account of events – and finally come up with fixed times for how long it takes to travel from one place to another. All of which probably should’ve been done before writing the first draft but yar, lesson learnt. Once...

Okay so I went away for a couple of weeks to explore Tasmania with my wife. I had hoped to do little entries here via the app, but very early on I realised mobile coverage down there is terrible in most places so it never happened. I did keep a journal however and I will sporadically type the entries up and post them here for those who are interested. For now I just want to mention the reading I did while I was down there. The bulk of it was catching up on Nightmare Reader No 1 and the issue of Lightspeed Magazine I got as a bonus for backing Nightmare on Kickstarter (it was the October 2010 issue). I started with Nightmare and it was more than worth my paltry $3 pledge, which is a bad way of saying it was a solid literary journal with great stories. The one that’s stayed with me the most is Afterlife by Sarah Langan , which uses ghost children and ‘crossing over’ to present a tragic picture of very real woman whose non-supernatural plight was the genuine cause of distress if not h...

We recently rearranged some furniture and moved books around – including our collection of children’s books. Lots of gems in there. And it got me thinking about how if childhood is our most formative period – which it must be if you think about it – the books I most loved then must have played a role in who I am today, particularly in terms of my literary interests and practices. So what were they? Early on I suspect the big names were Where the Wild Things Are , as discussed in a previous blog, and the Mr Men books. Particularly, Mr Nonsense , Mr Impossible and Mr Muddle … read into that what you will. And of course books like The Balloon Tree and There’s a Monster in my Bathtub – more the former – began to instil in me that sense of wonder beyond the ordinary world. But when I think about this, which I actually do far too often, it always comes back to Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle. My mum had three old hardbacks: Dr Dolittle’s Post Office ; Dr Dolittle’s Zoo and – my absol...

I have some posts planned for here so expect a bit more activity in coming weeks. But for now I just want to quickly mention last night. I went with my lovely wife to see Neil Gaiman at the City Recital Hall. It was a fun and inspirational event as he read from two forthcoming books and generally said entertaining things. Fourplay was also in attendance and played a couple of tunes - including the Doctor Who theme - and also accompanied Neil as he read one of the books. They also accompanied him as he sang the FireballX5 theme song which was fun. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the main novel he read from and we luckily got a sample to keep. It's an adult novel but the narrator is remembering events from his childhood so there's a mix and young feel. There's no mistaking the sense of dread floating over the black humour and jokes about burnt toast. The first three chapters have definitely got me hooked, bring on June and the full release. In the meantime ... Keep dr...

So it's back to work tomorrow and hopefully that will also mean getting back into the swing of things in general. After the success of November, December was ... well it was mostly a write-off. But, new year, new start. The only other thing I really have to say at the moment is thank you. Yes, you reading this. Thanks for reading this. Thank you everyone who showed support for me last year and is continuing to do so now. This year I aim to give you all something more to show for it. Watch this space. Till then - Keep dreaming!