(1) MST3K+PO. Patton Oswalt has agreed to join Mystery Science Theater 3000 as the Forrester’s newest Evil Henchman, TV’s Son of TV’s Frank. Joel Hodgson explains:
I first became aware of Patton around fourteen years ago, when he was doing “commentary” for the MTV Awards – live in the room during the event! I realized right away he was a kindred spirit, and damn funny too. Since then, obviously, he’s bloomed into this amazing comedy/internet dynamo, and I’ve gotta tell you: I’ve seen a lot of stand-ups over the years, but – no lie – Patton really is one of the best ever. And just as important, he’s a very fun, articulate and witty soul – just the kind of person who we’ve always tried to bring onboard for MST3K.
That’s probably why, when I started putting together my dream roster of special “guest writers” for the next season of MST3K, the idea of Patton kept coming back to me. I knew he was a Mystery Science Theater fan from way back – he even moderated our 20th Anniversary Reunion panel at San Diego Comic-Con)–and I thought he’d be terrific at writing riffs. Then I started to wonder if he might be a good fit on camera, too.
Remember last week, how I said my creative process usually starts with visuals, and then I work backward? Well, in this case, I first imagined Patton dressed up like TV’s Frank. I figured maybe he’d be Frank’s son, or at least a clone. But yeah: the idea of Patton wearing black lab assistant’s garb, with a big mound of silver hair and a spitcurl…? It was just really funny to me, in a visual / cross-referential / meta kind of way.
(2) HIGH CASTLE. Marc Haefele, once the editor for some of Philip K. Dick’s later books from Doubleday, praised Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle on an NPR affiliate’s show “Off-Ramp.” BEWARE MINOR SPOILERS.
Juliana (Alexa Davalos) — Frink’s estranged wife in the book, his girlfriend in the series — was that rarest of Dick characters, a strong, positive, effective woman. She is even more so on the screen. The substitution of various film reels for the original fictional novel McGuffin generally works, albeit there seem to be a few too many abandoned operating 16 mm projectors left around.
And there are some clunkers. Like when the Nazi elevated monorail from which-side-is-he-on Nazi/underground operative Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) descends bears the label “U-Bahn.” Whoops, that’s a subway folks. The elevated is an “S-Bahn.” Or why is “Mack the Knife,” a song by a Communist (Bertolt Brecht) and a Jew (Kurt Weill), being sung at an otherwise terrifyingly well-imagined Aryan Victory Day picnic in occupied Long Island?
(3) BEST STAR WARS MOVIE. Michael J. Martinez marches on: his Star Wars rewatch has reached movie #5 — “Star Wars wayback machine: The Empire Strikes Back”.
In this rewatch, we have the crown jewel of the entire saga: The Empire Strikes Back. Pretty much everything we love about Star Wars is front-and-center here, and this one stands up to the test of time as well as any classic film you can think of. Yes, it’s as good as I remembered.
(4) FICTIONAL HISTORY. Jonathan Nield delivers “A defense of historical fiction” at Pornokitsch.
…Perhaps this introduction may be most fitly concluded by something in the nature of apology for Historical Romance itself. Not only has fault been found with the deficiencies of unskilled authors in that department, but the question has been asked by one or two critics of standing – What right has the Historical Novel to exist at all? More often than not, it is pointed out, the Romancist gives us a mass of inaccuracies, which, while they mislead the ignorant (i.e., the majority?), are an unpardonable offence to the historically-minded reader. Moreover, the writer of such Fiction, though he be a Thackeray or a Scott, cannot surmount barriers which are not merely hard to scale, but absolutely impassable. The spirit of a period is like the selfhood of a human being – something that cannot be handed on; try as we may, it is impossible for us to breathe the atmosphere of a bygone time, since all those thousand-and-one details which went to the building up of both individual and general experience, can never be reproduced….
(5) RIDING HIGH IN APRIL, SHOT DOWN IN MAY. We all have those days.
When you find out a prominent member of the SFF community thinks your work isn't any good. pic.twitter.com/Zi8DeOlUOg
— Paul "Princejvstin" Weimer (@PrinceJvstin) December 9, 2015
(6) BURSTEIN IN TRANSLATION. Michael A. Burstein had a short story in a recent issue of the Chinese prozine Science Fiction World.
I am pleased to announce that my short story “The Soldier WIthin” has been translated and published in the November 2015 issue of [Chinese characters]. (In English, the magazine is known as Science Fiction World.) This is my first time having a story translated into Chinese or published in China. I’d like to thank Joe Haldeman for having purchased the story for the anthology Future Weapons of War back in 2007, and the editor of SF World, Dang Xiaoyu (I hope I have that right), for choosing to reprint the story .
In theory, this means the story will be read by approximately 1 million people in China. That would make it the most widely read story of mine.
(7) THE BILLIONS NOBODY WANTED. Remember when no film buyers wanted Star Wars for their theater chains? Me neither. But several swear it happened in “’Star Wars’ Flashback: When No Theater Want to Show the Movie in 1977”, an article from The Hollywood Reporter.
LENIHAN I was 23 and booking country towns in Northern California for United Artists, which also owned the Coronet Theatre in San Francisco. I tease Travis all the time that the only time I ever won was when he picked The Deep for a theater in Redding, Calif., while I picked Star Wars. On opening day at the Coronet, there were lines around the block. It played there until Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in December, and we were still hitting our holdover numbers.
(8) FAMOUS COSTUMES. The “Star Wars and the Power of Costume” exhibit will be moving to Denver where it will run from November 13, 2016-April 2, 2017.
Included in the show’s 60 costumes, which will be displayed in the museum’s Hamilton Building Anschutz and McCormick galleries, are such classics as Princess Leia’s bikini, Darth Vader’s menacing black uniform, and the royal red gown Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) wore in 1999’s ” Star Wars: Phanton Menace.”
In addition to featuring costumes and conceptual art, the exhibit includes videos with designers, actors and George Lucas talking about the creative process.
(9) UNHEARD OF. New York Magazine discovered it takes less than 90 seconds to repeat all the dialogue spoken by women other than Princess Leia in the entire original Star Wars trilogy.
(10) STAR CHOW. And if that doesn’t give you a case of Star Wars-related indigestion, here’s a couple more things to try.
You’ll need:
Donut holes
12 ounces white candy melts
Black icing
Blue icing
Orange Icing
Lollipop sticks
- An idea for making Stormtrooper butter:
When it comes to setting up a holiday dinner table, why not make it more festive by incorporating Star Wars! Flavored butter can be made to be savory or sweet. Pumpkin Spice and Cranberry orange butters are warm and seasonal and taste great with breads and scones. Garlic Herb and Sriracha Lime have a kick that goes well with crackers and sandwiches made of leftovers.
By shaping them into stormtrooper helmets the butter becomes a unique and fun way to add Star Wars to your traditional holiday meal.
(11) HOLY ANDY WARHOL! Or failing that, an entire line of Campbell’s products in Star Wars-themed cans.
(12) HOUSE CALL. Should you need an antidote, try paging through Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook by Chris-Rachael Oseland.
Your taste buds are about to take a wibbly wobbly, timey wimey adventure through the 2005 Doctor Who reboot. Megafan and food writer Chris-Rachael Oseland spent a year rewatching all of series one through six and experimenting in her kitchen to bring you a fresh recipe for every single episode. There are recipes in here for every level of cook. If you’re terrified of the kitchen, there are things so simple even Micky the Idiot couldn’t get them wrong. For the experienced chefs, there are advanced fish and beef dishes that wouldn’t be amiss on the Starship Titanic. Along the way, you’ll also find plenty of edible aliens to decorate the table at your next Doctor Who viewing party.
This book is a treat for any Whovian who wants to offer more than a plate of fish fingers and a bowl of custard at your next viewing party. Want to host an elegant dinner party to show off your new Tardis corset? Start the evening with a Two Streams Garden Cocktail followed by Baked Hath, Marble Cucumber Circuits with Vesuvian Fire Dipping Sauce, Professor Yana’s Gluten Neutrino Map Binder, Slitheen Eggs, and some of Kazran’s Night Sky Fog Cups for dessert.
(13) PARODY. Ed Fortune wrote and produced a homage to the world of sci-fi fandom called This Is Not The Actor You Are Looking For, the story of an actor from a popular movie franchise with a confession to make.
(14) THEY MIGHT BE. The BFG official trailer #1. A girl named Sophie encounters the Big Friendly Giant who, despite his intimidating appearance, turns out to be a kindhearted soul who is considered an outcast by the other giants because unlike his peers refuses to eat boys and girls.
(15) INSTANT CLASSIC. Kyra’s lyrics to “Old Man Zombie” –
Old man zombie,
That old man zombie,
He don’t say nothing
But won’t stop moving —
He just keeps shambling
He just keeps shambling along.It might be fungal,
It might be viral,
We might be trapped in
A downward spiral,
But old man zombie
He just keeps shambling along.You and me, we sweat and swear,
Body all aching and racked with fear,
Bar that door!
Hide that pit!
I wandered off alone
And I just got bit.I’m infected
Your brain I’m eyeing,
I’m scared of living
And tired of dying,
I’m old man zombie
And just keep shambling along!
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Hampus Eckerman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Josh Jasper.]
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Recent reads this week fall into the category of Small Village Life.
Soundless, by Richelle Mead. Mead is someone I usually find a great beach / comfort read. Her Succubus books are tons of fun, even if the series fails to stick the landing in the last book, and the Vampire Academy books are better than you might expect. However, she’s also written some books that do nothing for me, and this is one of them. The set-up sounds interesting — an isolated village where no one can hear — but the execution was seriously lacking.
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons. This was hilarious. (There was the occasional “Oh, this was written more than 80 years ago, huh” jarring throw-away comment, but I was willing to forgive it those.) I’m still giggling over the starred paragraphs.
@Petréa: Crap crap crap crappity crap.
I had not known any of this was going on.
How horrible.
@Standback, I enjoy Audible. I always go for a full cast production if one is available. I find them great for long car trips. A few months ago, my roommate, my Dad and I recently had a mini-break in California Gold Country. I downloaded a copy of a book that I had loved as a child By the Great Horn Spoon and we listened to it on the way. I was very excited to learn that Placerville was Hangtown!
I also loved the full cast audio version of World War Z.
I never appreciated the beauty of the language of Lord of Light until I listened to the audiobook. I have a tendency to get too wrapped up in the plot and read too fast. You can’t do that with an audiobook.
If the narrator isn’t one that I recognize, then I listen to the sample and see if I can stand the reading style. Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I think that I can but I’m wrong.
Last audiobook I listened to was The Girl with All the Gifts. Excellent production but I couldn’t retain my interest in the story.
On regular reading, finished The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Highly recommended. This story never went where I expected it to go.
Just started The Good, the Bad and the Smug. Enjoying it so far. It’s really different, and funny, but the book has to stick the ending. If I don’t like the ending, it kills the entire book.
@Worldweary: I generally dislike “full cast” recordings. I like unabridged books read in a single voice. I don’t particularly mind including the “he said” bits, although it doesn’t usually bother me if the reader leaves some of them out. Occasionally, there will be a voice I intensely dislike, but I’m pretty tolerant of readers. Under most circumstances, my experience of listening to a book is very similar to reading it with my eyes. I find that full cast recordings actually interfere with my ability to fall into the book, they are distractions. I’m not real fond of background music, either, especially not at chapter breaks, which I find intrusive.
I think my favorite full-cast recording is Audible’s production of Dracula, where a bunch of people (including veteran narrators like John Lee and Alan Cumming, and Tim Curry!) each do the chapters written/dictated by one of the characters. Dracula’s format is perfect for it.
It turns out, while I’m mentioning him, that Tim Curry is great at the audio book business. I have yet to hear something by him I didn’t like.
@Kyra,
Re Cold Comfort Farm
You should check out the 1996 movie, it’s very funny and the cast is brilliant, Rufus Sewell, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, and Kate Beckinsale has never been better (I know… that’s not a very high bar to clear)
Lis Carey: “Kevin J. Anderson–What was that thing I read earlier this year?”
I could’ve sworn it was The Dark Between the Snores
I really enjoy audiobooks for those books that–for one reason or another–I just can’t plow my way through in print. (Some examples: Macchiavelli’s The Prince, Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Dante’s Divine Comedy.) Oddly enough, I also really prefer audio for some YA books, especially ones with a prominent narrator’s voice. I don’t think I would have enjoyed Lemony Snickett’s work half as much on the page. (Heck, I think I never would have read past the first book.)
I’m currently consuming the Tremontaine serial in audio form rather than print, because it fits better into my daily schedule that way, but I have mixed feelings about it. There are aspects of the prose that are grating on me and I have no idea whether they’d grate on my in print as well. I think I’m going to have to work through at least some of it in print before writing a review to be fair to the story.
Audiobooks work best for me for long driving trips (e.g. to the North Shore, a 6 hour round trip) or other such destinations. Although, with my frequent SFF audio appearances (and not enough trips to soak up the books we discuss), I’ve learned to work to audiobooks, too.
Macchiavelli is easier to read when you realize it is satire.
Heather Rose Jones: Interesting comment about works you made it through with the help of audiobooks.
The last time I read Dante was as part of a discussion group. It helped that I felt I was keeping up for the benefit of someone besides myself.
My hearing is such that I limit how much amplified sound I resort to, otherwise it’s harder for me to follow ordinary speech assisted by my hearing aids. Audiobooks would be perfect for filling in time on long LA commutes.
Though I didn’t manage to finish The Dark Between Stars either I’m a bit uncomfortable with the “fun” that’s being had at its expense. (I guess Anderson will comfort himself with the size of his bank balance.)
Thank you, Soon Lee. That made me uncomfortable as well.
I’m experimenting with a new way to hide spoilers in my reviews, and I wonder if I could ask people to help me confirm that it works on different kinds of browsers.
I just wrote a review of The Log Goblin, by Brian Staveley, and I’d like people to confirm that the spoiler text appears upside-down until you click on the “click to view–possible spoilers” link.
If people could check that it works and then post back to let me know what browser and what OS they tried that would be great. So far, we’ve tested Chrome, IE 11, Edge, and Firefox on Windows 10. Some results from phones and Macs would be great, as well as results from older browsers.
If you’re worried about this test spoiling the story, you can read it on Tor first. It’s only 1,300 words long, and although it’s a simple story, it’s a delight to read.
I can’t go out much, but I listen to audiobooks on the treadmill, and also doing grindy tasks in computer games. 🙂
Did I tell anyone I finished Cambias’ Corsair? I liked it and would liked to have seen more non-technical extrapolation (climate, etc.). Oddly, the crook, David Schwartz was a lot more interesting and engaging than the Air Force officer part of the book.
I also finished Warren Ellis’ Injection which reads a lot more like earlier Ellis in the mad, strange beautiful category with entertainingly obnoxious people as characters.
Working on The Scorpion Rules and Promise of the Child. Promise is slow going, but may be interesting. Scorpion is interesting because the opposition is not stupid. Its a super genius AI that controls orbital weapon systems and so far, its not making idiot ball mistakes.
That is a cute way of showing spoilers. Worked for me Firefox 42.0 on Mac OS 10.9.5.
Also in the spirit of pedantry: ‘urban fantasy’ about a man ‘who lives alone in the woods‘
@Camestros Felapton on December 10, 2015 at 10:09 am said:
Greg Hullender on December 10, 2015 at 9:45 am said:
Thanks!
I’d love to have a better term. “Fantasy in the real world” is just too long. Fantasy does seem to divide fairly cleanly between “high fantasy” and “fantasy in the real world” (aka “urban fantasy”) but it does create a problem when there’s no city involved. “Rural fantasy” seemed a little too cute. 🙂
Greg: Works for me on Firefox and Safari. And you’re right, that is a nice little story, a fine evocation of the need to feel connected to places through memory and commemoration. I might read it at the solstice bonfire party of a friend of mine who lives in the country and cuts wood.
I love audio books due to the fact I often make six hour drives between home and my second home.
Wil Wheaton is a favorite –I loved the way he did Scalzi’s Red Shirts and Lockin
Modern folkloric fantasy?
Suburban fantasy?
Frontier fantasy?
Sovereign fantasy?
Autonomy-fantasy? (I’m writing this too much. It’s starting to look weird to me, as if it ought to be French or something, “Autonomie-fantasie”)
ETA: This was in response to @Camestros Felapton and @Greg Hullander’s brief discussion of the aptness or inaptness of the genre name “urban fantasy” for a story of someone living in the modern day alone in the woods.
@Vasha
It’s a curious thing that a story can be fun and moving and yet not really be a serious contender for an award.
Greg Hullender:
Works fine for me with both Chrome & IE 11 in Windows 7. And yes, it is a sweet little story.
@Greg Hullender
Works great from my Android phone (both default Internet program and chrome).
@Greg Hullender,
For those of us reading form the Southern Hemisphere it was just like reading normal writing…
(Works fine on Chrome browser, on Android phone spoiler text is right-way-up while page is loading & only gets upside-downed once page load is complete so if you read on a slower connection…)
@ msb
re: women in sff movies
The standing jokes at our house about old sf movies are “When does she offer to make coffee for the men?” and “How loudly does she scream when menaced/rescued?”
I like Peace is My Middle Name’s suggestion of ‘modern folkloric fantasy’ – although it has that problematic word ‘modern’ in it, which has all sorts of additional connotations.
The genre of mixing people who are living in a contemporary time to their audience but whose world is co-inhabited by the magical is an older genre than urban fantasy. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is like that (sort of).
Flipping in the other direction, I’d call Perido Street Station urban fantasy – not just because of its setting in a city but because it is about cities being fantastical.
[Just thinking out loud – I reserve the right to say the exact opposite of this in the next message 🙂 ]
World Weary,
I must have also been guilty of reading a little to fast since I had to go back and check what you said about this book called The Good, the Bad and the Smaug. I wonder what what the Tolkien equivalent of a Mexican stand-off featuring a dragon would look like?
@ Bruce Baugh
Wait! Youcan get The Great Courses at Audible??? Or is this the name of a series by Edwin Barnhart? Which still sounds cool, as I’m interested in archeology. I don’t have an Audible account and haven’t ever really checked out what they offer.
The most sensible term (imo) for fantasy set on our Earth is “primary world fantasy.” Less precise but more commonly used is “low fantasy.”
@Greg Hullender: “fantasy in the real world”
I usually call that “contemporary fantasy” if “urban fantasy” doesn’t fit for some reason. For me, “modern” suggests when it was written, while “contemporary” is when it takes place.
@ Greg Hullender
re: spoiler review formatting
Worked just as you described for me using iPad 3, OS 9.0.2 with the mobile version of Safari included.
@Junego: Audible has a growing collection of Great Courses series. 🙂 In addition to Edwin Barnhart’s courses on Mesoamerica and South America, I really, really loved Robert. W. Hazen on the origins of life.
@Bruce Baugh: Oh, wow, I hadn’t even thought of using Audible for nonfiction. That’s a fascinating idea. Hearing fiction still feels a little weird for me, but nonfiction might be lovely. At the moment I’m super focused on Hugo-eligible material, but I’m going to bookmark your recommendations, for both the books and the narrators. I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to them 🙂
@Lydy:
Oh, hear, hear. My preference is that an audiobook is a very different beast than a radio play. I want something close to reading, not to a show. Obviously, YMMV.
(Right now I’m listening to an intriguing book, but I find myself thrown off a bit because the narrator does these very exagerrated voices for most of the cast. When she’s narrating the POV, everything’s great – but when additional characters come in, things sound less real and natural, to me – the exagerrated voices throw me out of it. I wouldn’t do voices if I was reading; I’d just, y’know, read.
P.S. I am a picky, picky snob. 😛 )
@Heather:
It’s so funny you should say that! I loved the Series of Unfortunate Events, but I’ve always said that I read it in the best ideal way for the series – to wit, as bedtime stories to my then-12-year-old-sister, one or two chapters a night, in a very bad attempt at a British accent. That’s… almost what you said. But possibly more so 😛
Not only that, I saw the books in the store, and wasn’t sure if they’d be fun or gimmicky. My aunt happened to have the audiobook of the first book, and that’s what sold me on ’em…
Suburban Fantasy has the advantage of being SF.
Rural Fantasy, although to some of
usyou, that might involve sheep.I thought that “low fantasy” didn’t refer to primary vs. secondary worlds but instead was a contrast to “high fantasy”‘s focus on the heroic and grand — could either center on humble, mundane characters within a world-shaping plot, or be a small-scale story. “Bryony and Roses”, say.
@vasha. That’s the definition I use for low fantasy– “Small stakes” versus the larger stakes found in Kingdom or Epic fantasy. The story of a swashbuckling swordswoman swaggering in a port city, versus the epic quest to save the world from the dire threat of the Demon Crystal of Aahz.
@ Greg Hullender
It’s a curious thing that a story can be fun and moving and yet not really be a serious contender for an award.
Funny, that. The opposite is also true. You can dislike or be aghast at a story (for a variety of reasons) and still think it is an award contender. I have a short story on my long list like that and I felt that way about Three Body Problem this year for the Hugo.
@ Camestros
[Just thinking out loud – I reserve the right to say the exact opposite of this in the next message 🙂 ]
I think I’ll coopt this as my byline! From now on whatever I say is subject to complete negation in a subsequent post. BE WARNED. :-9
@ Rev. Bob
“Contemporary fantasy” sounds like a good choice for these kinds of stories with urban fantasy a subset.
Tintinaus — If Smaug is the Ugly, then I guess Bard the Bowman would be the Good (i.e. the Clint Eastwood role), which suggests that Smaug and Bard may have been doing this bowman and dragon thing for a while. I don’t know who the Bad would be; Sauron would be too over-powered, I think. Maybe an Orc?
I don’t know who the Bad would be; Sauron would be too over-powered, I think. Maybe an Orc?
I think you could make a case for Thorin.
@junego on December 10, 2015 at 11:44 am said:
That’s how I feel about Calved, by Sam J. Miller. I wouldn’t say I dislike it, but it’s definitely not a feel-good story. “Shattering” was the word I used in my review.
“Nightfall” wasn’t exactly a feel-good story either, come to think of it. 🙂
@Greg Hullander
Looks just fine (as in bassackward) to me and I’m using Opera 34/Windows 8.1
(Yes, yes, I know I’m probably the only person in the world who uses Opera. Bah. I like it.) 😛
@Vasha, Paul,
Well, as I said, “low fantasy” is an imprecise term (which is part of why I don’t care for it myself).
Here’s what Wikipedia says about it, though: “Low fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy fiction involving ‘nonrational happenings that are without causality or rationality because they occur in the rational world where such things are not supposed to occur.'[1] Low fantasy stories are set either in the real world or a fictional but rational world, and are contrasted with high fantasy stories which take place in a completely fictional fantasy world setting with its own set of rules and physical laws.” (Source.)
And then the examples provided are mostly (entirely? I don’t know all the titles) primary world fantasy, such as The Dark Is Rising, Good Omens, I Dream of Jeannie, and Supernatural.
@tintinaus
I wonder what what the Tolkien equivalent of a Mexican stand-off featuring a dragon would look like?
Bambi vs. Godzilla?
https://youtu.be/n-wUdetAAlY
I just upgraded my ipad to the new OS and now the site looks just like the normal desktop site, with the list of latest posts easily accessible at the top right instead of at almost-but-not-quite-at-the-bottom of a *very* long page to scroll down.
Deuced convenient, even if the new keyboard typeface looks thin and small.
You might save space editing your files. Many ebooks have utterly unnessisary embedded fonts that bloat their size. (Very often, it is a font family called Charis, consisting of files for regular, italic, bold, and bold italic for a total of 5.5 MB uncompressed, 1.5 MB compressed.) You may be dedicating memory space to dozens of copies of the same set of fonts.
Unless a book makes use of some non-English standard characters that conceivably might not display correctly on an ebook reader, I strip out the embedded fonts. Even if it does need some of those characters, I have Calibre subset the fonts, embedding only the characters actually used in the book. The subsetted fonts may make up only 200 or 300 kilobytes compressed.
The cover image may also be an insanely large file of 1 MB or more—you can increase the compression on that without visible (unless you zoom and press your face to the screen) degradation of the image. For a book that is only a few hundred pages of text plus a cover shot, there better be a damn good reason for the file to be bigger than 500 KB.
Looking at my reader, I see that 1632 fiction books and short stories take up 747 MB, averaging around 450 KB each. Toss in the illustrated non-fiction and fiction and the total is 1971 books taking up 1218 MB, averaging around 618 KB each. At my reading speed (slower than many here) that is literally enough books to last the rest of my life on my reader right now in little more than a gigabyte. (Never mind the extra order of magnitude of epubs I have on my HD.)
@Greg: Have you read Sam J. Miller’s “To Die Dancing”? What a downer, and yet the main character’s actions are so true and insightfully drawn.
“The Heat of Us” is happier and also contains moments of insight. I find everything Miller writes at least worth reading.
Does anyone still use the term “Low Fantasy”?
“High Fantasy” seems to have been generally accepted as a descriptor for Tolkienesque and Wagnerian epics and things like that in wholly imaginary fantasy worlds.
But I haven’t heard anyone use “Low Fantasy” in donkey’s years. It’s all been “Magical Realism” and “Urban Fantasy” and things like that. (A friend of mine has referred to a few things as “Lyric Fantasy” and “Pastoral Fantasy”.)
I believe that “swords & sorcery” has subsumed a lot of what people used to use “low fantasy” for.