fantasy books
Happy (very slightly belated) birthday to Ursula K. LeGuin
Happy 80th birthday to one of my favourite all time authors! I just read Four Ways to Forgiveness a few months ago and was once again totally overwhelmed by the power of her writing. If you haven’t already go read the Earthsea cycle (all of – including the Other Wind and Tales from the Earthsea which has a wonderful Ged story in it), The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness or pretty much anything else by this hugely prolific writer.
(Thanks to Andrew Wheeler for the reminder)
A Ton of Links
I’ve been busy – what can I say? But I’ve been saving stuff up to post!
- Inquisitor – Another cool looking isometric indie RPG. I hope that and Age of Decadence come out!
- The Magicians – this book looks pretty cool and based on this interview, the author Lev Grossman is pretty cool as well! He’s also writen a great article about the improtance of plot in the Wall Street Journal.
- Erik Mona is doing a new blog – there’s no RSS but Erik Mona, Publisher at Paizo is going a blog over at ENWorld. The 1st entry is all about his history as a gamer.
- DragonAge‘s lead writer – here’s an interview with David Gaider! Pretty interesting stuff…
- A huge list of sci-fi – writen by people who aren’t white men.
- Tim Holman’s new blog – Mr Holman is the Publisher at Orbit. He’s writen some cool stuff including the state of the Urban Fantasy sub-genre and what gets onto the covers of fantasy books.
Phew.
Introductory sci-fi fantasy books? Not the New Yorker’s list!
The New Yorker, one of my favourite magazines, has posted a little ‘intro to fantasy’ which is shockingly pedestrian in its recommendations. Well, that’s unfair. Tad Williams and Terry Goodkind are shockingly pedestrian. Terry Brooks is pretty pedestrian. Robin Hobb is actually pretty good and the sort of thing I’d suggest if making recommendations to someone who had just read Tolkien, as is Patrick Rothfuss. Guy Gavrial Kay is also great but Steven Erikson is just wacky. For new fantasy readers? Hell no.
What’s sort of interesting about this is that there’s no George R. R. Martin on the list. I thought it might be because it was an unfinished series, but so are the Erikson and Rothfuss series.
So what would be on my list? Well, I think I’d keep Robin Hobb, at least the Assassin trilogy, and Patrick Rothfuss. Then I’d add in George R.R. Martin and Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea books (yes, all of them). Then I’d toss in Scott Lynch’s wonderful Gentlemen Bastards stuff and probably, for a kicker, put in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station. I’ve tried to keep this in the spirit of the original list – easy books that are within the mainstream of fantasy, but Miéville is there to show that it can be so much more as well…
Mark Charan Newton has already posted a list which does the opposite – it tried to completely counter the New Yorker list. I’m sure it will be the first of many.
How much would that dragonlance rip off in my bottom draw earn me?
Interested in SFF writing, but now sure how much you’ll get paid? Tobias Bucknell has done a survey of author advances and he answer is: not much. Median advance on a first novel is US$5,000 in both fantasy and sci-fi But still, 5 grand isn’t bad…
And fantasy at least, is surviving the recession nicely, with sales up about 10%.