Recently, SF Signal ran another of their fabulous Mind Melds, this one on the topic “What ‘Wrong’ With Epic Fantasy?”

The range of contributing opinion is well worth a look as always—but I must admit I couldn’t help wondering why this question is asked so consistently in relation to epic fantasy (since I know the reason da Signal asked it is because it is topical!)  Yet my perception is that I rarely see posts that ponder: “What’s wrong with…” Fantasy (generally), say, or Steampunk, or Dark Fantasy, or even Paranormal Urban Fantasy…

Similarly, I rarely see crime fiction afficionadoes, again for example, worrying over “What’s wrong with…” the police procedural, the psychological thriller, the courtroom drama, the noir novel…

In both these cases, there seems to be a far greater acceptance that: Yup, it’s a genre/subgenre and as a reader I either like its tropes and what it offers in general, or simply vote with my feet and read another subgenre or style of fiction altogether. Generally though, readers don’t seem to spend a lot of time reading and analyzing what the genre does offer if it’s not to their taste.

So I guess I’m puzzled, but also curious as to why epic attracts such an intensity of scrutiny. (I will not say “naval-gazing”…Oops, just did! 😉 )

Is it because of its origins in epic literature (e.g. The Illiad, The Morte D’Arthur) that as readers we feel it should somehow offer “more” of “something”? Or is it simply that more people are passionately committed to this genre than any of the others mentioned and so it occasions more nit-pic—I mean, debate! Alternatively, maybe it’s that the genre is so closely associated with Tolkien, who was an Oxford professor, that followers feel it should achieve a higher literary standard, or conversely, that there must somehow be something inherently pretentious about the genre, that means it must be constantly examined and re-examined?

Questions, questions… My own view on the ‘wrongness’, or otherwise imho, was also canvassed on SF  Signal, in a 2012 post titled “Making Epic Fantasy New: Do We Need To?”

I am still of the same view—but also wonder if genres may not be a little like plants: if we’re forever pulling them up and examining the roots to see if they growing ‘properly’, then they’re probably not going to develop, let alone evolve, terribly fast, if at all!

by Rebecca Fisher

Introduction:

I was initially rather reluctant to do a write-up on Orphan Black, as I honestly think that the less you know about it, the more you’ll enjoy watching it. So if you want to simply take my word that this is one of the best shows I’ve seen in years, then stop reading now and go track it down!

 But if you want a little more bait to go with that hook, I would recommend Orphan Black by saying it has a compelling premise, an incredible lead actress, and a riveting science-fiction/conspiracy-thriller plot that doesn’t slow down for even one second over the course of its ten episode season.

Premise:

How’s this for a set-up? Sarah Manning is at the train station, as desperate to get rid of some cocaine stolen from her abusive ex-boyfriend as she is eager to get back in touch with her young daughter after a ten-month separation. Arguing with her foster-mother on a pay phone, she only half-notices a distressed woman on the other end of the platform.

As Sarah approaches, the woman takes off her shoes and jacket, turns to face Sarah, and steps out in front of an oncoming train. As horrific as it all is, Sarah was able to register something truly bizarre in the moment just before impact: that the woman looked just like her. As in, identical to her.

Sarah notices something odd…

Being something of an opportunist, Sarah grabs the dead woman’s hand-bag, finding keys and an address inside. Her driver’s license identifies her as Beth Childs, and it doesn’t take a lot of digging for Sarah to discover that she has seventy-five grand in her bank account. Hatching a plan with her foster-brother Felix, she takes on the persona of Beth in order to get her hands on the money.

But impersonating a dead woman comes with a whole new set of problems, and Sarah can’t help but get embroiled in her doppelganger’s life. She’s getting frantic phone-calls from someone called Art. She finds an array of birth certificates in Beth’s safety-deposit box. She sees flashing lights from a parked car outside her flat. What the heck’s going on?

Story:

Okay, so without giving too much more away: clones. That’s the concept this show rests upon, and with each day that passes Sarah gets sucked deeper and deeper into the mystery of her own origins. It turns out that Beth was not the only clone out there, and soon Sarah tracks down two more: soccer mum Alison Hendrix and scientist Cosima Niehaus, both of whom have been grappling with the situation for far longer than Sarah.

The resemblance is uncanny.

They’re edgy and they’re frightened, and it soon becomes clear why: someone has been assassinating their “sisters” one by one. As Cosima researches their genetic makeup and Allison struggles to hold her family together, Sarah is put on the trail of a killer that threatens all of them.

And at this point, I’m definitely not giving anything else away. The tightly-plotted structure of Orphan Black means that each episode is crucial in getting a clear picture of what’s going on, making it feel more like a long film than an episodic TV show.

The viewer is swept up along with Sarah as her con-job gets increasingly more complicated, and the show’s most exhilarating element is the position you’re put in while watching. On the one hand, you initially know nothing about Sarah’s immediate situation, sharing in her confusion and distress as she flounders along, on the other, you’re in the know about other plot-points, anticipating the ball to drop when supporting characters begin catching up with what Sarah already knows.

Sarah and her brother Felix plot their next move.

Along with Sarah’s attempts to fool those close to Beth, we follow along in a variety of other subplots: a police investigation, the shady dealings of a scientific corporation, the trail of a serial killer  – there’s even time for a comedic interlude when the clones collide during a potluck lunch.

On the way, Orphan Black grapples with the ethical implications of human cloning, but more importantly, explores the issue of personal identity. When you share your face with at least half-a-dozen others, what is it that differentiates you? Are you shaped by nature or nurture? How are you an individual?

Characters:

Which brings us to Tatiana Maslany, the lead actress. Though she’s backed up by a strong supporting cast, it’s safe to say that she carries the entirety of the show on her shoulders. To talk about her performance is to discuss at least six different characters, four of which she plays on a regular basis.

She gives each of them distinctive body language and speech patterns; even more impressively, she manages to keep track of her performance when the time comes for the clones to start impersonating each other. And such is her range that you never loose track of who’s who. If she doesn’t eventually win an Emmy Award for what she achieves on Orphan Black, there is no justice in the world.

Tatiana Maslany shares the screen with herself – twice over.

For the most part though, she takes on the role of Sarah Manning, a streetwise heroine who can wriggle out of all kinds of scrapes with just her wits. Watching her come across obstacles and frantically try to think her way out of them in a matter of seconds provides plenty of adrenaline kicks across the course of the first season. With each day that passes she gets more involved, more invested, more wrapped up in the mystery of her life and the desire to keep her newfound “sisters” safe.

There is a large cast of supporting characters, from siblings to partners to spouses, all of whom are intriguing characters that may or may not be trustworthy. As the episodes go on, it become apparent that any one of them should be in on the conspiracy that surrounds the cloning experiment…

Conclusion:

Just watch it.

Alison and Sarah come face to face.

They say the best special-effects aren’t the ones the audience appreciate, but the ones they don’t even notice. In this case, the techniques used to bring the clones together are utterly seamless, and at times it comes as a surprise to remember that they’re all being played by a single person.

Seriously, this is one of the few shows that I’d have very few qualms about recommending to anybody. It’s a little dark at times, and it demands your full attention in order to understand what’s going on, but it’s a fantastically suspenseful and thrilling drama series. I can’t wait until season two.

—

Next Time: Gargoyles

There’s no better way to introduce the next show than by using its own introductory narrative: “One thousand years ago, superstition and the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness. It was a world of fear. It was the age of – Gargoyles!”

—

Rebecca Fisher

About The Reviewer:

Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her LiveJournal blog.

To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, as well as preceding reviews, click on:

Big Worlds On Small Screens

quiet along the river —
running water, insects
wind in the poplars

© Helen Lowe

—

Toward the end of last year I spent upward of 5 weeks in a remote coastal location, working on my current book.

I also wrote a number of haiku during that time, which I am currently featuring as Tuesday Poems. As these are works in progress, your feedback/critique is welcome.

—

To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

On January 23 I began sharing what I like to call a few “Terribly (Un)Important Thoughts” on writing. 😉

Last week I followed up with another—all subject to the same codicil: ‘from my experience of the art’ (which may not reflect anyone else’s, at all, at all!)

In last week’s post, I commenced by mentioning that “we hear  a great deal about the importance of routine and writing every day.”

I then went on to talk about what I see as the importance of not getting locked into an unvarying routine, but since then—in a flow-on effect way—I’ve been thinking about the maxim that if one is serious about being an author then must “write every day” (with or without a spirit of joyful exhilaration.*)

But you know what? I think that’s complete and utter rubbish. Well (more moderately) it is for me anyway. My writing needs downtime—not just the occasional, change-of-scene downtime I talked about last week, but doing something completely other than writing every few days or so. I find that if I don’t do this I get jaded and the creative flow gradually dries up.

In my case, manual work is best for taking a break and recharging the creative batteries, whether I get out and garden, or make food — working with the hands and reality possibly, rather than the head and imagination.

Sometimes, though, it takes more than a couple of hours to ‘re-ground’ yourself and better still, get perspective on the work-in-progress, standing back so that you do see the whole of the forest instead of all the individual trees—sometimes even a  couple of days away from the writing desk.

The trick—and it is a good one, if you can pull it off consistently—is knowing when the right course is to step back, and when it is to stay focused and push on.

Consistent writing and a regular schedule is important—but so, too, is consistent downtime and regularly scheduled breaks.

—

* “train every day with a spirit of joyful exhilaration” — exhortation attributed to O-Sensei, founder of the martial art, aikido.

“[the two Wall of the Night books]…are really good and on the par with…Tolkien and Moorcock…I have enjoyed reading the story and find it very engaging and starting to get hard to put down. I am pleased to know we have great talent in our city.”

—

This comment came to me via webmail from Rodger, who is a fellow Christchurch, NZ resident. 🙂

As a longtime Tolkien and Moorcock fan, I am honoured to have my books share “shelf space” with their work.

Today is the third anniversary of the earthquake that devastated my home city of Christchurch on Tuesday February 22nd, 2011.

I must admit that I am trying to move on from those events, even though it’s difficult with the the after-effects still very evident in every aspect of life: physical and emotional, psychological and social.

So no big post for today, but I did chart the earthquake and its aftermath through the Earthquake Reports and Earthquake Poems (just click on the links or look under categories in the right hand sidebar.)The anniversary has also been commemorated here on the blog for the past two years:

22 February 2012: Commemorating February 22nd, 2011

22 February 2013: Commemorating February 22nd, 2011: “Disintegration”

Sometimes I want to talk about it, others my feelings are more like these lines from Barbara Strang’s poem, For A Song:

“My father had been there,
didn’t talk about it

he withdrew fat volumes
of war histories from the library
to find what it was about.”

Except that I doubt any history could explain what in my own Indifferent Planet I refer to as one of:

“…the random acts of violence
of an indifferent planet”

although they may cover material similar to what I sought to convey in these lines from This Will Be Us:

“…And yet,
how could that future observer
feel more
than a passing wonder,
a flash of empathy …
.
… any more than we do now
when looking at old records
of past disasters:
the great pandemic, say,
that followed World War 1,
or the Wahine storm —
and only fleetingly imagine
the reality that these people —
flickers on a newsreel,
stills in a frame —
experienced, lived through,
endured.”

Kia kaha, Christchurch.

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is traversing the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Each locale is accompanied by a quote from either The Heir Of Night, The Gathering Of The Lost, or both.

This week we enter the marvelous realms of “O.”

—

Old Empire:  the empire said to have existed prior to the Derai arrival on Haarth and to have stretched from the hills of Jaransor in the north to the desert borders of Ishnapur in the south.

.

“The Guild emerged out of the ruins of the Old Empire, when its last vestiges were swept away in fire and fear.  But there were still some who sought to hold to their posts, to wrest some form of sanity out of the chaos of those times, which we now call the Anarchy…”

~ from © The Heir Of Night, The Wall of Night Book One: Chapter 7 — The Tower of the Rose

.

“‘The  island of Emer,’” Malian murmured, knowing that this foothold in the Argent had been the dukedom once, during the troubled centuries that followed the Cataclysm, when war had surged back and forward across what was now Emer. Control of the island with its command over the river and surrounding countryside had been one of the great prizes, but the Black Tower was an Old Empire structure and had never fallen, in part because of foundations dug too deep into rock to be undermined”

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two: Chapter 35 — Caer Argent

The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey —

Reviewed by Karen McMillan

“This is a mind-bending thriller, with aspects of horror, set in a dystopian world that is completely unputdownable and refreshingly original.

Every morning 10-year-old Melanie waits in her cell, eager to go to school and see her favourite teacher, Miss Justineau. The Doctor in the facility refers to her as ‘our little genuis’, but that doesn’t stop Sergeant training his gun on her each morning as two soldiers strap her into a wheelchair. When she jokes that she won’t bite, they never laugh. And her teacher looks sad if she talks about what she would like to do in the future.

The novel is written from Melanie’s point of view and her innocent narrative voice is brilliantly done, and it is only when the strange world that Melanie resides in is finally revealed, do readers understand the true horror of her situation.

There are moments of very graphic violence in this novel (some parts I admit to skipping over as I didn’t have the stomach for them) but there is also a humanity and compassion, and heroism on a very personal scale. Melanie’s character is irresistible and endearing, even when you discover what she really is. Unsettling and deeply moving.”

Publisher: Orbit 2014;  pp 416 [Paperback]

To find out more about the author, click on: M.R. Carey

To read Karen’s previous reviews for ‘…on Anything, Really’ click on:

Citadel by Kate Mosse

Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh

—

About the Reviewer:

Karen McMillan is the author of fiction and non-fiction. Her non-fiction titles include Unbreakable Spirit; Love in Aotearoa (or Love Bytes in the UK); Feast or Famine; Unleash Your Inner Seductress and Dying: A New Zealand Guide for the Journey, an adaptation of a South African guide for the terminally ill and their loved ones. Fiction works include the novel Watching Over Me. Karen lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Previously an award-winning fashion designer, Karen has worked full time in publishing for the past fourteen years. For more information about Karen and her writing visit www.karenm.co.nz. You can also follow Karen on Twitter @KarenMcMillanNZ.

On January 23 I shared an initial “Terribly (Un)Important Thought” on writing. 😉

Here’s another — and subject to the same codicil: ‘from my experience of the art’ (which may not reflect anyone else’s.)

We hear  a great deal about the importance of routine and writing every day — and while I don’t deny that having a routine is important, I actually think mixing it up with a change of scene or variation of the conditions in which we write, but particularly locale, can be equally beneficial, if not vital, to stimulate creativity and help us see the story with fresh eyes. It doesn’t have to be a ‘here and back again’ epic journey either: even a weekend — or better, a long weekend — away, only with the notebook, can deliver benefits.

walking into the nor’easter —
on the horizon
Horomaka* or cloud?

© Helen Lowe

—

* Horomaka is a Maori name for Banks Peninsular

Toward the end of last year I spent upward of 5 weeks in a remote coastal location, working on my current book.

I also wrote a number of haiku during that time, which I am currently featuring in the Tuesday slot. As these are works in progress, your feedback/critique is welcome.

—

To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.