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Worlds Without End Blog

J. R. R. Tolkien vs George R. R. Martin. Epic Rap Battles of History Posted at 4:03 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Don’t know how I missed this before but it’s so very nerdy I had to share. Thanks to Sable Aradia for the tip.

2016 Derleth and Holdstock Awards Shortlists Announced Posted at 1:45 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

The British Fantasy Society has released the shortlists for the 2016 British Fantasy Awards.

2016 August Derleth Award Shortlist (Horror):

A Cold Silence The Death House Lost Girl Rawblood The Silence Welcome to Night Vale


2016 Robert Holdstock Award Shortlist (Fantasy):

Guns of the Dawn Half a War The Iron Ghost Signal to Noise Sorcerer to the Crown Uprooted

Our congrats to all the nominees. You can see the complete list of nominees in all categories on the official press release.

What do you think of the lineups for these 2 awards?

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee Posted at 4:25 PM by Scott Lazerus

Scott Laz

Yoon Ha Lee—a familiar name to short fiction readers—has published over forty stories since 1999 in most of the major venues, receiving several award nominations and numerous appearances in Year’s Best anthologies along the way. With Ninefox Gambit, Lee has made the transition to the novel (and thus to the possibility of a much larger audience) in a major way, with the first volume in a promised trilogy collectively titled The Machineries of Empire. A highly inventive far future military space opera filled with complex political intrigue and strange technologies, it may take an greater-than-usual amount of the reader’s patience and attention to come into focus, but the effort pays off as we are ultimately rewarded with a trip into a unique future setting for the story of a soldier who gradually discovers her role in a series of power machinations between an authoritarian status quo and a rebellion with the potential to move humanity (as well as some sentient robots) toward a more individualistic and democratic future. The same heavy use of specialized jargon and unfamiliar technologies that make the novel a challenging, fascinating and rewarding read also make it somewhat difficult to summarize and review, but here we go…

The ruling Hexarchate of numerous worlds is made up of six factions, each with a specialized role within the governing structure. Kel Cheris, whose mathematical abilities would have suited her for the math-based Narai faction, chose instead to join the Kel military faction. The Kel are known for their unwavering loyalty and obedience to the hierarchy they are part of, a loyalty ensured by their artificially instilled “formation instinct”. Like many of the concepts in Ninefox Gambit, the precise nature of this “instinct” is not entirely clear, though its effects are plain enough. For the Kel, instant obedience to orders is necessary for their military success, which is based on the use of mathematically derived soldier formations adapted to the particular circumstances of battle. Cheris’s mathematical talents allow her to rise within the Kel ranks, as her ability to quickly calculate these formations is highly valuable to the Kel and thus to the Hexarchate.

Prior to the events in the novel, the Hexarchate had been a Heptarchate, but the seventh faction—the Liozh (the philosophers and leaders) broke away in a rebellion, and Cheris has been recruited to lead the forces being sent to counter this latest turn in the rebellion. The Liozh have captured a strategic “nexus fortress”, and the Hexarchate desperately wants it back. In the world of the novel, rebellion against the Hexarchate takes on the character of religious heresy, as the stability of the Hexarchate, echoed in a sense by the stability of the Kel military formations, is dependent not just on each faction and each individual maintaining a proper role within it, but by the maintenance of belief in this system, based on a mathematical “high calendar”: “consensus mechanics meant the high calendar’s exotic technologies would only work if everyone observed the remembrances and adhered to the social order,” and the more important these technologies become to the Hexarchate, the more rigid the social system must be. Social rigidity, however, inevitably leads to rebellion, and deviation from orthodoxy leads to “calendrical rot.” (I may be reading too much into the mathematical aspects of the story, but I found the pattern of the Hexarchate reminiscent of a fractal pattern, and the concept of the numerical stability of Kel formations similar to electron shells in physics. In any case, math fans will find much of interest in this novel!)

Cheris, then, is tasked with taking back nexus Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics—a station/fortress that is itself a “microcosm of the Hexarchate,” and one of whose functions is to “project calendrical stability throughout the region. If it had fallen to calendrical rot, the Hexarchate’s exotic weapons would be of limited use there. The Hexarchate lagged in invariate technology, which could be used under any calendrical regime. In particular, too close to rot the voidmoths’ [spaceships’]primary stardrives would fail. Without the voidmoths to connect the Hexarchate’s worlds, the realm would unravel. If the heretics converted the Fortress to their own calendrical system, the problem became critical. The Hexarchate would have to contend with a rival power at the heart of its richest systems.”

One of the exotic technologies available to the Hexarchate is the “black cradle”—a device that stores an uploaded mind, conferring a sort of immortality on the chosen individual. The black cradle is rarely used, however, since living bodies are required to bring the stored personalities back to life, not to mention the tendency of its use to lead to violent madness in its subjects. The importance of Cheris’s mission is thus indicated by the decision to retrieve the mind of the legendary general Shuos Jedao to help with the mission. Jedao’s mind is removed from the black cradle and moved directly into Cheris’s mind, where the two personalities must co-exist for the duration of the mission. Jedao has been dead for four-hundred years, executed for treason after purposely destroying his own forces in a crucial battle against heretics—an action attributed to madness. His mind is preserved for its strategic brilliance, however, since he never lost a battle during his military career. Cheris, then, must try to make use of Jedao’s advice on military strategy, while keeping her own personality intact against the possible onslaught of Jedao’s madness.

Yoon Ha Lee

The combination of Jedao’s strategic knowledge and experience and Cheris’s mathematical talent and adaptability make them a formidable combination, as she/he/they approach the Fortress of Shattered Needles, where the spread of calendrical rot makes their technologies unreliable. Computational attacks, kaleidoscope bombs, invariant ice shields, logic grenades, threshold winnowers, carrion bombs: these are just some of the “exotic technologies” that come into play in this calendrical war.

As the battle unfolds, Lee gradually reveals some of the politics that underlie this “game between competing sets of rules.” At one point, the nature of the Liozh heresy is suggested: “’An obscure experimental form of government where citizens choose their own leaders or policies by voting on them.’ Cheris tried to imagine this and failed. How could you form a stable regime this way? Wouldn’t it destroy the reliability of the calendar and all its associated technology?” The readers’ sympathies are with Cheris, but we have to wonder from the start about the cause she fights for, and the means used by the Hexarchate to maintain their power. (The too-easy sacrifice of individuals for the good of the group is a recurring theme, for example.) Judgment must be reserved, however, as the underlying motivations of those involved in both sides of this war are not fully revealed, and I suspect that the readers’ tendency to choose democracy over authoritarianism (or, in the context of the novel, heresy over orthodoxy) may be too simple a judgment. Setting up questions and doubts about the players and politics involved in the story, though, is clearly one of Lee’s goals in Ninefox Gambit, whetting the reader’s appetite for the rest of the trilogy. In the sequels, which I’m definitely anticipating, I’ll be looking for how Lee resolves this underlying theme of the balancing of the benefits of social cohesion and the rewards of individualism.

Much as I enjoy speculating about the political implications of science fictional futures, then, judgment must be reserved in the case of Ninefox Gambit, as much will be determined by the direction of the sequels. This opening novel is well worth reading, though, for its intriguing setup of a unique space opera setting, a taste of which I have tried to give in this review, and for the Cheris/Jedao character arc. Not much can be said about the specifics without spoiling the story, but the nature of his/her/their relationship evolves unexpectedly with events. Cheris learns things about Jedao that were not in her history books, and that shed light on the longer-term conflict between the Hexarchate and the heretics, while the mechanics and psychological implications of the two personalities in a single mind/body are interesting in themselves. This strange relationship does reach a resolution within the novel, but this conclusion, in the best trilogy tradition, also serves to raise the urgent question of where the story and our combined protagonist will go next.

Based on this opening gambit, there’s a good chance that this series will be seen as an important addition to the space opera resurgence of recent years. While Lee has developed a singular combination of military SF, mathematical elegance, and futuristic strangeness (as Gareth Powell puts it in a cover blurb: “As if Cordwainer Smith had written a Warhammer novel”), readers may note echoes of or similarities to Iain M. Banks, Hannu Rajaniemi, C. J. Cherryh, Ann Leckie (and, yes, Cordwainer Smith). Admirers of these authors, or anyone interested in state-of-the-art space opera, ought to give Ninefox Gambit a try.

Guest Post – Yoon Ha Lee: Tarot (and Other) Cards as Writing Inspiration Posted at 1:53 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Yoon Ha LeeYoon Ha Lee is a Korean-American SFF writer. He has published short fiction in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed Magazine and elsewhere. Three of his stories have been reprinted in Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies.  Yoon’s new novel Nine Fox Gambit is out now from Solaris.


My first exposure to Tarot was through science fiction, specifically Piers Anthony’s books. I can’t remember which one–I think he used the imagery in a number of his novels–but I liked playing cards and I was fascinated by the symbolism. It wasn’t until I got my hands on Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, however, that my interest in Tarot really took off–and it wasn’t just the novels, it was Erick Wujcik’s Amber Diceless Roleplaying.

In Zelazny’s books, the royal family of Amber can be called upon by their Trumps or portrait cards. Even better, Amber Diceless Roleplaying wrote up Zelazny’s major characters as potential non-player characters (NPCs) and included beautiful black-and-white illustrations of their Trumps by Michael Kucharski. (I have a crush on Corwin’s portrait.) The idea of having characters represented by cards never left me.

corwin_rpgOver the years I have amassed a very small collection of Tarot decks, from the grunge-flavored Darkana Tarot (the Wheel of Fortune is a revolver, and it has an extra card, the Badass) to Nathan Never’s science-fiction-themed Tarocchi del Futuro, and even a Tarot Ambre (a gift). At some point in the future I’m hoping to treat myself to a copy of Stephanie Pui-Mun Law’s Shadowscapes Tarot as well. When I’m stuck on a story, sometimes I dig one out and do a Tarot spread to help myself brainstorm.

One might consider this a very advanced form of fox-waxing. My favorite way to do this is to focus on a character so that I can get a sense of their story arc, especially in a longer work. Half the fun is poring over the set of cards and deciding what card should serve as the character’s significator. For example, when I was working on the first two hexarchate books, I thought of General Shuos Jedao as the Knight of Swords. Of course, then I went on to do a reading for him using an app where you don’t choose the significator, it just shuffles the whole spread, and freaked out when the Knight of Swords turned up in the “self” position anyway. I try not to be superstitious, but this doesn’t help!

example-charsheet-01I play pretty fast and loose with the spread, but sometimes the cards that look the most counterintuitive are the ones that make me think the hardest. Sometimes I reject what the spread tells me and go with something else. I mean, who’s going to stop me? Still, having a randomized source of archetypes to apply to my plots gives me a starting point.

As you can tell, I am not a Tarot expert; I do my best not to apply this stuff to real life. I often have to look up the meanings of the cards. But sometimes even that isn’t necessary–the pictures on the cards are enough to suggest to me what I want to do with my characters. It’s one of the reasons I collect different decks, because the art is different on all of them, and suggests different things to me.

I use a variant of this with collectible card game (CCG) cards, largely because my husband and I are sitting on a collection of them. (Misspent youth.) I pulled the ones example-charsheet-02with pretty, evocative art and put them in those plastic binder pages, arranging them to create a sort of associational portrait of the character. Here are some examples, mostly Legend of the Five Rings with a side of Shadowfist. Legend of the Five Rings works for me because it was one of the inspirations for the hexarchate setting, but you could probably find something out there for anything.

Other repurposed CCGs I have lying around include Blood Wars, Star of the Guardians, and Babylon-5 Wars. I imagine that if you write fantasy, you could get a lot of mileage out of Magic: The Gathering. My local game store sells old commons and uncommons for fifty cents apiece, and the beautiful thing about nabbing cards for the art rather than their play value is it’s not hard to find old, cheap commons that will do the job!

2016 Mythopoeic Award Finalists Posted at 5:34 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

The Darkest Part of the Forest The Buried Giant A Thousand Nights Uprooted Shadowshaper

The Mythopoeic Society has announced the finalists for the 2016 Mythopoeic Award. They are:

Our congrats to all the finalists. The winners of this year’s awards will be announced during Mythcon 47, to be held August 5-8 in San Antonio, Texas.

Clifford Simak Doubts His Religion Posted at 9:34 AM by James Wallace Harris

jwharris28

A Heritage of StarsClifford D. Simak became the third SFWA Grand Master in 1977, but few contemporary SF fans know his work today. A Heritage of Stars is one of his later books, one so obscure that Wikipedia doesn’t even have an entry for this 1977 novel. Simak was born in 1904, and died in 1988, so A Heritage of Stars was written in his mid-seventies, towards the end of his career. I think that’s significant because the book feels like a summation of Simak’s thoughts on science fiction. I know the older I get, the more I want to make sense of a lifetime of reading science fiction.

We’ve been reading A Heritage of Stars in my book club this month, and the consensus was it’s ho-hum. However, this is my second reading, and the story has improved — significantly. Simak cranked out sixteen novels in the last two decades of his life. Most of them have no entries on Wikipedia. Simak is famous for City (1952) and Way Station (1963), with his first story published in a 1931 issue of Wonder Stories. He wrote science fiction for six decades!

When you consider Simak’s unique perspective, A Heritage of Stars, takes on new meaning. It’s still just an average SF novel cranked out by a prolific writer, but I think it has something insightful to say about the genre we all love. I met Simak at a convention around this time, and I was shocked by how this Grand Master was ignored by young fans. Star Wars had just come out, and new fans were streaming into fandom. At the con they flocked to guests from media related science fiction, not old writers. Simak even looked from the past.

Writers of Simak’s era wrote science fiction as a gospel preaching promises of wondrous futures. Today, science fiction has become something different. Stories are often like fantasy, good storytelling and entertainment, with a bit of pop culture wisdom. Modern science fiction appears to inhabit the dreams of science fiction past. Something happened to science fiction when we stopped going to the Moon in 1972, and then spent over forty years just circling the Earth. NASA in the 1960s, with Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo felt like it had grown out of 1950s Astounding Stories. Reading science fiction in the 1960s convinced fans we’d get to Mars in the 1970s, and the rest of the solar system by the 1990s. The 21st century would be beyond amazing. Here it’s 2016, and we’re still just jawboning about going to Mars. What happened?

Clifford D. Simak

Clifford D. Simak

Science fiction came of age with Simak in the 1950s, and peers like Heinlein, Asimov, Norton, Williamson, and Clarke. 1950s science fiction asked a lot of questions and generated its own theology. Science fiction’s true believers knew humans would go to the stars, build intelligent robots and evolve psychic powers. That’s the heaven 1950s science fiction promised, the collapse of civilization was its hell and brimstone.

A Heritage of Stars is Simak’s reevaluation of that theology. This is not a book review, so I’m going to give spoilers. If you don’t want to know them, read no further.

One thing that came through loud and clear in this novel is the legacy of L. Frank Baum and his Oz books. I read the fourteen canonical Oz books when I was a child in the early 1960s. Writers like Simak and Heinlein read them in the 1910s. Oz books became a tradition, published in time for Christmas. The original series ran from 1900-1920. Shelves of dissertations could be written on the impact of Oz books on science fiction writers. But there’s something else to note. Around the time the country was banning DC Comics, librarians decided not to carry Oz books because they claimed those books inspired unrealistic expectations in children. Couldn’t we say that about science fiction too?

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