Not the movie. No, that was an okay movie, but this book? It’s pure gold. It’s beautiful. It’s enchanting. You should read it.
What: The Last Unicorn is, as you would expect, the story of the last unicorn. She must find out what has happened to the other unicorns, aided by a fraudulent magician, a fierce butterfly, and a would-be Maid Marian. You’ve formed a story in your head from reading that last sentence. The book is nothing like that. It’s better.
Who: I do not think anyone should call themselves a fantasy writer that has not read this. I’m sure there are reasonable exceptions. But I’m not seeing any of them.
Why: Read this for characters that will tangle themselves up in your heart and never let go. Read it for Beagle’s skill with prose, the sly humor, the sheer beauty.
When: Don’t read this when you are feeling insecure about your own writing, because it will only make it more so. Read it for inspiration as well as entertainment.
Where and how: Copy passages out and try to figure out how Beagle DID that. How the butterfly enchants us in only a few sentences. How the Bull menaces in even less space. (Be aware that Beagle did write about some of these characters again; they appear in novelette “Two Hearts,” which I only see available in The Nebula Award Showcase 2008 and The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Volume 24.
If it’s any help, “Two Hearts” was also anthologized in “The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction”, which I think is out of print but is a *stellar* anthology well worth hunting down. And it’s also in Beagle’s single-author collection “The Line Between,” which has a couple other uniquely Beagle-ish treasures as well.
(“Two Hearts” was my own introduction to Beagle, and was it ever a wallop to my heart and mind. A worthy creation in its own right.)
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Jeff VanderMeer's Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
It's a gorgeous book, and I've skimmed through some tasty tantalizations in it so far.I’ve been following Jeff’s posts about this book, which is a very VanderMeerian approach to writing theory, for a while, and so I danced around a bit when this arrived in yesterday’s mail.
If you haven’t heard of it, here is the description from the Amazon listing:
This all-new definitive guide to writing imaginative fiction takes a completely novel approach and fully exploits the visual nature of fantasy through original drawings, maps, renderings, and exercises to create a spectacularly beautiful and inspiring object. Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few.
It’s a freaking GORGEOUS book (to the point where I’m surprised by the relatively low price, given how glossy it is). I spent some of last night flipping through and being delighted. I’m looking forward to a more careful read. Highly recommended.
In the last year or so, I found a genre that hadn’t previously been on my radar, but which I really enjoy: furry fiction. Kyell Gold had put up his novel Black Angel on the SFWA member forums, where members post their fiction so other members have access to it when reading for awards, and I enjoyed it tremendously. The novel, which is part of a trilogy about three friends, each haunted in their own way, showed me the emotional depth furry fiction is capable of and got me hooked. Accordingly, when I started reviewing for Green Man Review, I put out a Twitter call and have been working my way through the offerings from several presses.
Notable among the piles are the multiplicity by T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon, and two appear in this armload. Clockwork Boys, Clocktaur War Book One (Argyll Productions, 2017) is the promising start to a fantasy trilogy featuring a lovely understated romance between a female forger and a paladin, while Summer in Orcus (Sofawolf Press, cover and interior art by Lauren Henderson) is aimed at younger readers and will undoubtedly become one of those magical books many kids will return to again and again, until Vernon is worshipped by generations and prepared to conquer the world. Honestly, I will read anything Kingfisher/Vernon writes, and highly recommend following her on Twitter, where she is @UrsulaV.
Huntress by Renee Carter Hall (Furplanet), which originally appeared in 2015, and whose title novella was nominated in the 2014 Ursa Major Awards and Cóyotl Awards, is a collection of novella plus several shorter stories. I’d love more in this fascinating and thought-provoking world, particularly following the novella’s heroine, the young lioness Leya, and the sisterhood of the huntresses, the karanja.
Always Gray in Winter by Mark J. Engels (Thurston Howell Publications, October, 2017) demonstrates one of the difficulties with furry fiction, which is the reader’s uncertainty where to site the fact of furry characters, primarily whether to take them as a given or have some underlying science to it, such as bio-modified creatures. Here Pawly is a were-cat, but the unfamiliar reader is forced to spend so much time figuring out whether this is something people take for normal or not that the story sometimes gets confusing, and with multiple POV shifts, the reader keeps having to re-orient themself. It’s tight, sparse military SF that readers familiar with the conventions of the genre will find compelling, entertaining, and quickly paced; newer readers may find themselves floundering a bit.
The Furry Future, edited by Fred Patten (Furplanet, 2015) is a solid and entertaining anthology that showcases how widely ranging the stories that use the rationale behind the existence of anthropomorphic beings as part of the narrative can be. Authors in the collection include Michael H. Payne, Watts Martin, J. F. R. Coates, Nathanael Gass, Samuel C. Conway, Bryan Feir, Yannarra Cheena, MikasiWolf, Tony Greyfox, Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden, NightEyes DaySpring, Ocean Tigrox, Mary E. Lowd, Dwale, M. C. A. Hogarth, T. S. McNally, Ronald W. Klemp, Fred Patten, and David Hopkins with illustrations by Roz Gibson and cover art by Teagan Gavet. This book is one that scholars writing about furry fiction will want to be including on their reading lists for reasons including its focus, its authors, the snapshot of the current furry fiction scene that it provides, and the variety of approaches to anthropomorphic body modification.
Along with the furry fiction, I wanted to point to an indie humorous horror collection that is one of the most specifically themed I have yet encountered, Ill Met by Moonlight by Gretchen Rix (Rix Cafe Texican, 2016), which features evil macadamia nut trees, including “Macadamias on the Move,” “Ill Met by Moonlight,” and “The Santa Tree” in a lovely sample of how idiosyncratic a sub-sub-niche can get. The production values of this slim little book show what a nice job an indie can do with a book and include a black and white illustration for each story.
One Response
Such an amazing book.
If it’s any help, “Two Hearts” was also anthologized in “The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction”, which I think is out of print but is a *stellar* anthology well worth hunting down. And it’s also in Beagle’s single-author collection “The Line Between,” which has a couple other uniquely Beagle-ish treasures as well.
(“Two Hearts” was my own introduction to Beagle, and was it ever a wallop to my heart and mind. A worthy creation in its own right.)