Category Archives: Words

The Blade Itself

I just finished listening to the audiobook of The Blade Itself, volume one in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy. This was my first exposure to his work. The associations I had picked up over the years was dark and gritty, so I was expecting something like Hobbesian low fantasy (Joe Abercrombie’s Twitter handle is @LordGrimdark, after all). It took me some time to warm up to the story. In fact, a few hours in I was on the verge of cutting my losses and moving on. It struck me as something like a fantasy version of The Sopranos, at least in style, Logen Ninefingers some discount bin Conan, Inquisitor Glokta a caricature of petty tyranny. Why should I care about these characters, this relatively generic fantasy world with its savage northmen and bestial humanoids? About 25% in, however, my reaction had shifted diametrically.

It helped that the performance (narrated by Steven Pacey) was excellent, but in any case I am glad I persisted.

In some ways, The First Law seems something like what A Song of Ice and Fire could have been had it reached its potential, in the rough subgenre of low fantasy that assumes the worst about human nature. This is probably an unfair comparison, because I did enjoy the first two books of A Song of Ice and Fire, before I lost patience with the pace of releases, and I have yet to see how The First Law concludes. But I think Abercrombie has a reputation for satisfying endings (and it is already done). We will see.

Most important was the handling of the characters, both how Abercrombie gradually brings them together in the narrative, and how they begin to rise above their initial caricatures. Abercrombie seems like he actually cares about his main characters, even those that are unpleasant, and is disappointed and sympathetic (if not surprised) when they stumble and suffer, though he does have a tendency to revel ghoulishly in their flaws from time to time. I also found the story funny. One example of many: the chapter where Glokta first meets Logen and the wizard Bayaz—the juxtaposition between the seemingly basic honesty of everything Bayaz and company say with the totally reasonable but wrong distrust of the obviously intelligent, but rather repulsive, Glokta—is some solid writing. Pleasantly anticipating volume two.

Over the past few years, I have been catching up with a few of the popular genre fantasy authors that I had, for whatever reason, not gotten around to reading. Among that crew is also Brandon Sanderson, of whose work I’ve now heard the first three volumes of The Stormlight Archive and the first Mistborn book. More on that at some point in the future.

A Wilderness of Building

frus·trat·ed fan·ta·sy nov·el·ist, n. A caricature of a tabletop roleplaying referee who has developed a complex imaginary world, or particular plot, and would really much rather show players around or tell a predetermined story than play a game.

From Piranesi’s Carceri d’Invenzione

The frustrated fantasy novelist approach has rarely, if ever, tempted me. Perhaps, though, there is another loosely related set of motivations that might apply to some degree: frustrated fantasy architect. By architect, I mean specifically a planner of built spaces. I find few things as compelling as exploring, or watching players explore, the remains of a vast buried city, or derelict spacecraft, or lightless underworld. This thought occurred to me many times as I was listening to Susanna Clarke’s 2020 novel Piranesi. Though the setting for the novel is primarily a stage upon which to present the protagonist’s experience rather than an unknown expanse to explore in a cartographic sense, the end result brings to mind the mysterious otherness of the best tabletop roleplaying game dungeons.

I will avoid talking much about the plot, both because part of the pleasure in the story is gradually realizing the nature of the situation along with the protagonist and because I want to focus more on the evocation of imagined space. What drew me in was the limited viewpoint that grows to slowly encompass greater realization, and the sense of destabilization and shifting beliefs that accompany the expansion of knowledge. The story begins in a labyrinth, which is also the world; it is a tangle of architecture, tides, and uncountable statues; an endless expanse of halls. If you have seen etchings by the historical Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Venetian artist, you probably already have some approximate image of this space in your mind. The Piranesi of Clarke’s story knows of 15 people, and for Piranesi the labyrinth is the whole of existence.

From Piranesi’s Carceri d’Invenzione

In a roleplaying game, satisfying architectural exploration for me requires some degree of concreteness and detail, akin to procession through a region in Dark Souls or a creatively designed stage for a first person shooter. Different areas must relate with a strict spatial logic. Though this logic need not by conventional or Cartesian, it must involve more structure than a narrative sequence. As a tangential point, practical architecture that is suitable for use in the prosaic world is too repetitious, predictable, and symmetrical to be ideal for exploring as a dungeon. The most effective and interesting dungeon spaces are like expressionistic recasting of identifiable architectures. The labyrinth in this story is too abstractly depicted to be a good example of a roleplaying game dungeon, being loosely sketched to evoke the feeling tone of the story protagonist. Though Piranesi often mentions specific halls by name, and describes distinctive features in detail, the spaces are floating vignettes that emerge and fade away to support scenes rather than spaces of complex relation. I intend this not as negative judgment, since the depiction works well in the context of the story, but instead to make it clear how the story communicates the feel of a dungeon-like space without taking the audience through a process of exploration.

The story was not what I was expecting, though afterwards I can see similarities to Clarke’s other work. Though much shorter than her more well-known novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), Piranesi still reaches a length that I think most people would say “counts as a novel” (a web search tells me 272 pages). Despite this, it feels like a short story, and I mean this in the best possible way; the story is tightly crafted, with few extraneous events or digressions when seen as a whole, and though the pacing is languid on the surface, I found the story to be enthralling, even riveting. It is without question one of my favorite novels published somewhat recently (recently in the historical sense; say, after the year 2000). Despite that acclamation, Piranesi is a concept album of a book, and while Clarke avoids ostentatious experimental literary technique, the approach is still something other than conventional third person realism. I could see how this might lead some people to come away feeling like the book is somewhat contrived or affected, but the approach landed for me.

From Piranesi’s Carceri d’Invenzione

The version to which I listened, from Audible, was read by Chiwetel Ejiofor. It may be the best audiobook performance I have come across, and I have listened to quite a few audiobooks since covid began. (Also, one of my parents worked in audiobook publishing for a stretch, so I heard many when I was younger. Even considering all of those, and with the caveat that it has been a while, this may still be the best reading I have heard.) The publisher has made available an excerpt you can listen to on YouTube. Chiwetel reads slowly, very clearly, in a way that perfectly captures Piranesi’s curious demeanor but also his fundamentally strange and alien beliefs about the nature of reality. Unfortunately, I see only a few other audiobook performances by him, but at least one of them is an audio dramatization of Othello (along with several other performers), which I am now anticipating.

I conclude with a brief nested quotation. What follows is Thomas De Quincey quoting a section from book two of Wordsworth’s poem The Excursion. Before this quoted section, De Quincey described (with considerable creative license) Coleridge recalling a plate from Piranesi’s Carceri d’Invenzione.

With the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of my malady, the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural: and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet I cite part of a passage which describes, as an appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep:

The Appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty City—boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendor—without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires;
And blazing terrace upon terrace high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars—illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded, taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky., &c. &c.


De Quincey (1986). Confessions of an English opium eater. Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1822)
Piranesi (1761). Carceri d’invenzione. Rome.
Wordsworth (1814). The Excursion. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.

Chronological Vampires

Interview with the Vampire, p. 226 (1976)

One of my pseudo-quarantine entertainments has been to read or reread most of the vampire stories I have on hand. So far, this has included I Am Legend, Interview with the Vampire, and Let the Right One In, with Dracula waiting in the wings. Along with providing an effective symbolic or allegorical nemesis, the vampire story seems particularly well suited to tell a story with extended historical sweep. To my surprise, when I went looking for examples of vampire stories that take this approach, Interview with the Vampire (along with Rice’s other work in this fictional continuity) was the only obvious example, though Interview goes all in, with a narrative that spans several hundred years and themes of change and adaptation.

I brought this up elsewhere, and someone mentioned the “Anno Dracula” collection of novels by Kim Newman, which is set in an alternative history where the events depicted in Stoker’s Dracula occur, but imagines what might happen were Dracula victorious. Though this series does include entries that occur in various historical time periods, the stories themselves seem to be more like a collection of separate historical vignettes (based on a quick wikipedia dive). For example, it looks like there is a Jack the Ripper story and a modern Japanese schoolgirl story. I have heard some of these works are enjoyable, so this is not meant as a criticism, but they seem to have a focus different from what I describe above.

There are several tabletop games that use vampires as protagonists which feature the longue durée as a core design element, none of which I have played. (I have played Vampire: The Masquerade, a long time ago, but that is very much histoire événementielle if it has any particular temporal disposition.) There is Undying, by Paul Riddle, which applies the Apocalypse World design formula to vampires. I read this a while back but have yet to see it in play. This is how the game describes itself:

Game play revolves around brief periods of intense conflict, where old rivalries and new slights spark an inferno, and long stretches of intrigue, where intricate plots are set in motion. … Then, the long years unfold and selfish aims ferment. Plotting and scheming over long periods of relative calm are summarized so that the narrative focuses on decisive events across the gulf of time.

Undying, p. 12 (2016)

There is also Thousand Year Old Vampire, which I have not read or played. This is a single-player journaling game, however, and I am mostly uninterested in solo tabletop play.

Though I am moderately-read in this area, I am hardly a connoisseur. It is likely I am missing some good examples of vampire stories that make use of historical narrative sweep. Does anyone have any recommendations for other hidden gems? In terms of style, I am more interested in works with kinship to the novels I mention above and less interested in urban fantasy or supernatural drama. So, more like Let the Right One In or Only Lovers Left Alive and less like True Blood or The Vampire Diaries.

Modes of Fantasy

What are the most influential works of adventure fantasy? If you consider, somewhat arbitrarily, the last 10 years, I suspect the list would be something like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones—all due to Hollywood and television. Recently, I was thinking about Game of Thrones, and how it seems in many ways to lie apart from other influential works of fantasy, despite sharing tropes both in terms of content—dragons, sorcery, undead—and narrative—sword fights, heroism, prophecy. So what distinguishes Game of Thrones? The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy, but also updates the medieval form of tapestry romance1. The Harry Potter stories have many epic fantasy elements, drawing as well from coming-of-age Bildungsroman and mystery traditions. Acknowledging the futility of thinking about genre in terms of essences, Game of Thrones still seems to wander alone; I think this is because it draws more from a different major narrative tradition.

Game of Thrones is cynical regarding human nature, grim in aspect, and employs a soap opera chronicle, but none of these elements seem to account for the difference in feeling. Most works of fantasy live primarily within the narrative traditions of epic and romance. Game of Thrones, however, works more like a tragedy; the fantastic elements occasionally take center stage, such as with the dragons or the fight against the Night King, but then fade, with less influence on the broader story. Examining the patterns, the core conflict in the story is basically Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses cycle (the eight play sequence of Richard II through Richard III), with the ending and ultimate theme of Julius Caesar—sic semper tyrannis. If the ending is unsatisfying, I think that is due to the joining of these disparate elements. People expecting the satisfying reveals and perpetual curiosity of a well-crafted soap opera were betrayed by the political moralism of the Caesar ending; adventure and heroism are taken up and discarded with little sense of cosmic resolution or advancement.

The epic tradition generally celebrates the deeds of a hero, possibly as prototype for a nation, such as the Aeneid (for classical Rome) and the Kalevala (for Finland), or a culture, such as, arguably, The Lord of the Rings (the Shire as preindustrial England). The traditions of epic, romance, and myth fit together more comfortably, compared to soap opera and tragedy. In terms of popular culture, Game of Thrones was one of the biggest shows in the US of 2018, number three after Big Bang Theory and Roseanne2. The rest of the top 10 are all sit coms, procedural dramas, and talent shows. This ranking is America-specific, but the popularity looks similar cross-culturally. For example, Game of Thrones is popular in China3, South America, and Europe4. Game of Thrones will probably shape for a long time how people everywhere think about fantasy.

I used to enjoy The Wheel of Time, another extended fantasy epic, though I never got past book seven, as at some point I made a personal rule to avoid unfinished multi-volume works of fantasy. After thinking about this, I was curious what my reaction now would be to Jordan, so I read the first part of The Eye of the World, book one in The Wheel of Time. One thing that strikes me now is the generic feeling of many aspects of the setting, common fantasy tropes through a lens of Americanisms, though presented with consistency using invented vernacular and mythic resonance, mostly with Christian apocalyptic eschatology. I also wonder how I could have seen Jordan’s story as so distinct. The first third of The Eye of the World shows a sorceress who comes to protect a farm boy of cosmic significance, pursued by riders in black sent by the Dark One. Apart from some minor variations, this basically recapitulates the first part of The Fellowship of the Ring, and even back then I had already read The Lord of the Rings. I mean this more as description than negative evaluation—there are many worse things than echoing an effective narrative structure.

Part of Tolkien’s triumph was to make as few concessions to the modern taste for realism in narrative as was necessary to entice contemporary readers. Game of Thrones goes exactly the opposite direction; the aspects that hang together best make up the chronicle of who sleeps together and who gets betrayed or defeated. Sex and gangsters. So the realist mode of political struggle replaces the mythic cycle. Martin manages to avoid the bore of speculative fiction using magic as technology substitute; the magic and mythic backdrop of his setting is wondrous and compelling—winter is coming, the queen of dragons, and so forth. But none of that really seems to matter much in the end, which is more concerned with the Machiavellian heart of darkness. Realpolitik maneuverings could provide the basis for a game, but it seems like such a game would be far from the picaresque pleasures of discovering Vance’s Dying Earth or delving into Moria on the way to fulfill a mythic quest.


1. Thomson, G. (1967). “The Lord of the Rings”: The Novel as Traditional Romance. Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 8(1), 43-59.

2. https://www.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-compared-to-most-popular-tv-shows-of-2018-ratings-2019-4#8-americas-got-talent-tuesdays-nbc-2

3. https://daxueconsulting.com/game-of-thrones-china/

4. https://variety.com/2017/film/global/game-of-thrones-overseas-plaudits-ratings-1202541767/

52 stories

Like many, I make resolutions for the New Year. Unlike many, I avoid resolutions that entail deprivation or significant self-regulation. Instead, I choose some enjoyable activity that I want to be a greater part of my life. Previous resolutions include trying a new cocktail every week, making omelettes on weekends, and working toward a handstand walk (link is the original inspiration; I am still working on this myself). I look for an activity with relatively low bar to entry that I can pursue as a habit, where it is easy to mark progress by doing rather than by level of performance1. I required a resolution with modest level of time commitment due to a number of professional irons in the fire, so for 2018, this past year, I decided to read 52 short stories, on average one per week.

While short stories often lack the ambition and potential of longer fiction, I personally find the form aesthetically superior due to the necessity of tighter constructions and the limited scope for setup and digression. The short story respects the reader’s time rather than simply being a diversion, or, even worse, stringing a reader along extensively while ultimately failing to deliver.

I had an informal bias toward reading hard copies, partly because I have accumulated a number of short story collections. One of my materialist indulgences is the well-bound physical book, and for me reading a nice book facilitates attention and lends a ritualistic aspect to the activity. For fiction in general, my taste leans toward the fantastic and supernatural, as you can probably tell from the list of authors. A few of the 52 were rereads (several of the Leiber stories and Call of Cthulhu), but most were new to me. Ghost stories are heavily represented for whatever reason.

I let the authors themselves define what counts as short, based on the presentation of the story; length ranged from a handful of pages to several hundred pages. Stephen King’s The Mist, which was the longest, could easily have been published as a short novel.

As a further experiment, just after finishing each story I rated my satisfaction with the story, from 1 to 5, where the numbers have the following meanings:

  • 5 Memorable, would surely read again
  • 4 Enjoyable, something made it stand out
  • 3 Decent, but one reading is probably enough
  • 2 Not a total loss, but missing something or caused annoyance somehow
  • 1 Probably would have been better off doing something else

From Green Magic by Jack Vance

Take no strong judgments of quality, originality, or influence from these idiosyncratic ratings. Looking back, there were a few surprises. The few Robert Aickman stories I read fared poorly, despite being one of my favorite short story writers, and Hodgson, whose House on the Borderland might be in my top 10 written works of prose fiction period, also fell short. On the upside, I think every single story I read by Le Guin was a 5. I knew I liked her work before, but that still seems notable. I think my standard for enjoyable stories in the adventure fantasy mode is lower than for, say, ghost stories, where my standard is relatively high.

If I had to pick a single work to spotlight positively, it might be Blackwood’s The Willows. Though Delany’s Nevèrÿon stories ended up mostly 4s, they are remarkable, being, if I had to oversimplify, something like Conan by way of Foucault, flawed only by occasional awkward didacticism. It seems fashionable to hate on Stephen King for his popularity, productivity, and tendency to retell The Lord of the Flies, but when he is good he is on fire2The Mist is one of my favorite stories in the cosmic horror tradition, up there with Lovecraft’s best.

Here are the stories I read, sorted descending by rating. (Order within rating means nothing; consider, for example, Dragonfly and Number Fourteen, both 5s, to be rated equivalently.)

  1. The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (rating 5)
  2. The Mist by Stephen King (rating 5)
  3. Bones of the Earth by Ursula K. Le Guin (rating 5)
  4. Darkrose and Diamond by Ursula K. Le Guin (rating 5)
  5. The Circle Curse by Fritz Leiber (rating 5)
  6. On the High Marsh by Ursula K. Le Guin (rating 5)
  7. Number Fourteen by Sarban (rating 5)
  8. The Finder by Ursula K. Le Guin (rating 5)
  9. Dragonfly by Ursula K. Le Guin (rating 5)
  10. Green Magic by Jack Vance (rating 5)
  11. Celephaïs by H. P. Lovecraft (rating 5)
  12. The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft (rating 5)
  13. The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany (rating 5)
  14. The Tale of Small Sarg by Samuel R. Delany (rating 5)
  15. The Border Line by D. H. Lawrence (rating 5)
  16. The Door to Saturn by Clark Ashton Smith (rating 4)
  17. The Medusa by Thomas Ligotti (rating 4)
  18. Death Nymph by Arthur J. Burks (rating 4)
  19. Odour of Chrysanthemums by D. H. Lawrence (rating 4)
  20. Claws From the Night by Fritz Leiber (rating 4)
  21. A Tropical Horror by William Hope Hodgson (rating 4)
  22. Jewels in the Forest by Fritz Leiber (rating 4)
  23. The Kith of the Elf-Folk by Lord Dunsany (rating 4)
  24. Capra by Sarban (rating 4)
  25. The Sunken City by Fritz Leiber (rating 4)
  26. Ringstones by Sarban (rating 4)
  27. A Rendezvous in Averoigne by Clark Ashton Smith (rating 4)
  28. The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen (rating 4)
  29. The Miracle Workers by Jack Vance (rating 4)
  30. The Tale of Gorgik by Samuel R. Delany (rating 4)
  31. The Tale of Old Venn by Samuel R. Delany (rating 4)
  32. The Seven Black Priests by Fritz Leiber (rating 4)
  33. The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson (rating 4)
  34. The Gateway of the Monster by William Hope Hodgson (rating 4)
  35. The Tale of Potters and Dragons by Samuel R. Delany (rating 4)
  36. The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers by Samuel R. Delany (rating 4)
  37. Hand in Glove by Robert Aickman (rating 3)
  38. The Goddess of Death by William Hope Hodgson (rating 3)
  39. The Red World of Polaris by Clark Ashton Smith (rating 3)
  40. The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis by Clark Ashton Smith (rating 3)
  41. The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence (rating 3)
  42. The Haunted Pampero by William Hope Hodgson (rating 3)
  43. The Inmost Light by Arthur Machen (rating 3)
  44. The Dust by Brian Evenson (rating 3)
  45. The Mitr by Jack Vance (rating 3)
  46. The Men Return by Jack Vance (rating 3)
  47. Time and the Gods by Lord Dunsany (rating 3)
  48. Out of the Storm by William Hope Hodgson (rating 3)
  49. The Rose Garden by M. R. James (rating 2)
  50. No Time is Passing by Robert Aickman (rating 2)
  51. Conversations in a Dead Language by Thomas Ligotti (rating 2)
  52. Helping the Fairies by Lord Dunsany (rating 2)

For 2019, I have decided to play more video games, though I am unsure yet about the details.

…men of power do not swear, it is not safe… —Le Guin, The Bones of the Earth


1. There is some relation here to Carol Dweck’s idea of learning goals and performance goals. See: Elliott, E. S., & Dweck, C. S. (1988). Goals: An approach to motivation and achievement. Journal of personality and social psychology, 54(1), 5-12.

2. For novels, especially check out The Eyes of the Dragon and The Gunslinger, though I would say avoid all the other Dark Tower books with great prejudice.