I Make SF-Signal’s Top 25 Posts … :)
… for the month of January, and I clock in at No. 23, but hey—hey I say, “doin’ alright” for a gal from the far side of the world!
Well, I’m stoked anyway! And you can check out the evidence, here. 😀
The post, if you haven’t checked it out already, is “Making Epic Fantasy New—Do We Need To?” and it’s right here.
Speaking of posts, you’ll have noticed that I haven’t done any ‘big’ posts in the last wee while—fear not, the well is not dry, but I’ve just been a little busy juggling writing the new book, with doing the final proof round for The Gathering of the Lost, and also taking up the creative writing residency. All good stuff, but there are only so many hours in a day (cliche alert—but like most cliches they get to be that way for a reason!), and ‘after hours Helen’ has been a tad over-committed too. But I’ve been jotting down ideas as I go along—because there’s never any shortage of ideas ;-)—so like Arnie, I shall “be back.”
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OK, pop culture references in this post:
“doin’ alright” — the way they actually sing it in the refrain from “Doing All Right” by Queen (one of my favourites from—can I say, just about forever!)
“the far side of the world” from the book of the same name by Patrick O’Brian (& one of the Aubrey/Maturin series, of which may I say: awesome!) as well as the Peter Weir film ‘Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World’ (which is two books in one movie title, but never mind—it was based far more on The Far Side of the World.)
“I’ll be back” — first and most famously used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first The Terminator movie in 1984
(You can let me know if you think I’ve missed anything on the pop kultcha front! ;-))
I only got Arnie. Sadly, not that onto it.
Or perhaps my ‘droppa kultcha’ is not so ‘pop’? Glad you got Arnie, anyhoo.:)
I agree with your interesting post about epic fantasy. I think its a fallacy to say that we need to ‘make it new’. These fantasies exist in a sort of ‘outside’ mythological time. We can make the patterns of existing stories new and these can be fascinating works. I’ve just read Elizabeth Hand’s wonderful ‘Illyria’ which mirrors the relationships and twists of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night.’ Your own Thornspell adapts (for want of a better word) the story of Sleeping Beauty. But there’s no sense in either your or Hand’s wonderful books that the original stories need to made new. I have the opposite sense—the stories are so good that they can be re-imagined.
Harvey—hear, hear! And thank you for such an insightful comment.