95 posts tagged with fantasy. (View popular tags)
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The Readers of Boing Boing interview Michael Moorcock
posted by Artw
on Jun 18, 2009 -
42 comments
According to the BBC, US fantasy author David Eddings has died at 77 due to natural causes. More coverage at the Guardian. (via bureau42)
posted by reptile
on Jun 7, 2009 -
84 comments
Fire and Ice (YouTube playlist) Ralph Bakshi's 1983 collaboration with Frank Frazetta. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on Jun 2, 2009 -
51 comments
Published speculation first appeared in 1911, although others point to 1945 for its first modern phrasing. It originally looked like a flashlight on Star Trek. In Star Wars, it walked, talked, and was fluent "in over six million forms of communication." Many narratives have just abandoned the idea entirely.
Previous iterations have been quite limited in scope, but now it appears that the first learning, dynamic universal translator has finally arrived. And its futuristic aesthetic has been relegated to fiction in favor of a much more familiar object.
[more inside]
posted by hpliferaft
on May 23, 2009 -
30 comments
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved" .... and mad enough to play fantasy baseball. In the new book Kerouac at Bat: Fantasy Sports and the King of the Beats, a NY Public Library archivist considers documents revealing the author's detailed obsession with the imaginary exploits of players like Pictorial Review Jackson and teams like the "Pontiacs, Nashes, and cellar-dwelling LaSalles" in his finely grained, fictional Summer League.
posted by Miko
on May 21, 2009 -
22 comments
There was no way to simply say, "I read a really bad description in this book last night." I had to scan it and share it for you to understand just how bad it truly, truly was. It is the sort of bad that causes pain and must be shared with other people so you can feel better.
Part 1, Part 2. This really is prose so purple that it verges into the infra-red. Some NSFW descriptive naughtiness.
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Apr 1, 2009 -
149 comments
World Builder by Bruce Branit. A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves. There's more at Not Possible in Real Life, dedicated to identifying and sharing well conceived and realized content creation in Second Life® that would not be possible in real life.
posted by netbros
on Mar 28, 2009 -
23 comments
Legend of the Seeker is a syndicated TV show based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels from some of the people behind the mid-90s Hercules show and Xena: Warrior Princess. It is in a similar vein, yet now with more earnestness. The entire series is available on Hulu for your enjoyment.
posted by The Devil Tesla
on Mar 16, 2009 -
58 comments
How Science Fiction Found Religion
posted by shoesfullofdust
on Mar 13, 2009 -
72 comments
"These are like cool Magic Cards!" - the sometimes disturbing (and sometimes NSFW) art of Alfred Kubin.
posted by Artw
on Feb 22, 2009 -
8 comments
Just some cool dark fantasy art by John Jude Palencar, including covers for Lovecraft, de Lint, Tolkien and other popular books.
posted by mediareport
on Dec 25, 2008 -
11 comments
Why Conan the barbarian isn't just some big dumb-dumb.
posted by Artw
on Dec 8, 2008 -
89 comments
I do not want to spend too much time beating a dead war-horse, but your average D&D game consists of a group of white players acting out how their white characters encounter and destroy orcs and goblins, who are, as a race evil, uncivilized, and dark-skinned. To quote Steve Sumner’s essay again, “Unless played very carefully, Dungeons & Dragons could easily become a proxy race war, with your group filling the shoes of the noble white power crusaders seeking to extinguish any orc war bands or goblin villages they happened across.” I would argue with Sumner’s use of the phrase “could become,” and say that unless played very carefully, D&D usually becomes a proxy race war. Any adventurer knows that if you see an orc, you kill it. You don’t talk to it, you don’t ask what it’s doing there - you kill it, since it’s life is worth less than the treasure it carries and the experience points you’ll get from the kill. If filmed, your average D&D campaign would look something like Birth of a Nation set in Greyhawk.- Race in Dungeons & Dragons by Chris van Dyke, a powerpoint talk given at Nerd Nite. Via Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog where there's a smart discussion going on about the essay.
When the House of Commons required a portrait of outgoing PM Tony Blair, to whom did they turn? Phil Hale. [more inside]
posted by infinitewindow
on Nov 15, 2008 -
22 comments
When we think of contemporary poetry, what comes to mind is difficult footnotes, scorching confessions, bardic combat, or maybe a new translation of a classic. Look to the land of children and you spy the sidewalk's end or a pack of Thneeds. Somewhere between the gravid and the childlike is the realm of speculative poetry. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja
on Nov 2, 2008 -
31 comments
Like others before him Benjamin Rosenbaum is making his debut short story collection, The Ant King And Other Stories, available from his publishers, Small Beer, as a free download. More than this though, he is holding a competition to find the best derivative work inspired by it. These include "translations, plays, movies, radio plays, audiobooks, flashmob happenings, horticultural installations, visual artworks, slash fanfic epics, robot operas, sequels, webcomics, ASCII art, text adventure games, roleplaying campaigns, knitting projects, handmade shoes, or anything else you feel like." [more inside]
posted by ninebelow
on Sep 19, 2008 -
19 comments
The remake of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is finally finished [more inside]
posted by Glow Bucket
on Aug 25, 2008 -
50 comments
Artwork by Laura Pelick. [Via]
posted by homunculus
on Jul 31, 2008 -
9 comments
Jesse van Dijk paints fantasy and science-fiction scenes. Some of these paintings include a little shot of narrative about the astonishing imagined worlds they depict. His work has appeared in a mediocre PSP game and won a Gnoman Workshop challenge. Mr. van Dijik does his thing with Photoshop, and this is how he does it.
posted by EatTheWeak
on Jun 30, 2008 -
23 comments
Stephen King has described The Dark Tower as his "Jupiter." The epic series, inspired in part by Robert Browning's poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", has spanned 22 years, 7 books and nearly 4000 pages. The first book in the series, The Gunslinger, begins with a simple, memorable declaration, "The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." [more inside]
posted by kbanas
on Apr 18, 2008 -
160 comments
Free Speculative Fiction Online is a database of free science fiction and fantasy stories online by published authors (no fan-fiction or stories by unpublished writers). Among the authors that FSFO links to are Paul Di Filippo (14 stories), James Tiptree, Jr. (4 stories), Connie Willis (3 stories), Eleanor Arnason (3 stories), Bruce Sterling (5 stories), Robert Heinlein (7 stories), Ursula K. LeGuin (3 stories), Jonathan Lethem (5 stories), Michael Moorcock (6 stories), Chine Miéville (2 stories), Samuel R. Delany (3 stories), Robert Sheckley (8 stories), MeFite Charles Stross (33 stories) and hundreds of other authors. If you don't know where to start, there's a list of recommended stories.
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 5, 2008 -
34 comments
Rick Cook, the author of the 5 novels in the "Wizard's Bane" series of computer-infused light fantasy from the early 90s (the first two are available, free, and legally, courtesy of the Baen Books Free Library) was in the middle of writing a sixth in Spring 2000, when he underwent emergency heart surgery. The result of that, and the meds that followed — he says in his blog — is that he has the sixth book (The Wizard Recapitalized) about 90% complete, but can't finish it, and he wants to know if he should release it anyway. Not all that much [more inside]
posted by baylink
on Feb 22, 2008 -
22 comments
Some Thoughts On Balrogs.
posted by homunculus
on Feb 15, 2008 -
45 comments
Terry Pratchett diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. Turns out last month's stroke was a symptom of a greater illness. While there's still some time to go before we have to worry about Discworld substitutions, it has been a pretty tough year for fantasy authors. [more inside]
posted by robocop is bleeding
on Dec 12, 2007 -
113 comments
This link goes to an discussion with 'Future Noir' author Paul Sammon... then this one goes to a Q&A with 'BR' director Ridley Scott, talking about the upcoming re-release.
posted by Rajamadan
on Dec 8, 2007 -
12 comments
Imagine a world without lightsabers—where, instead, every big Star Wars finale consists of a 10-minute slap fight. Thank the maker we’ll never have to witness such a spectacle, because magical and impossibly high-tech weapons are staples of nearly all of our favorite entertainments! ToyFare Magazine presents the 50 Greatest Fictional Weapons of All Time.
posted by cmgonzalez
on Nov 21, 2007 -
59 comments
If you like 'fantasy' art (as opposed to comics :) and you're in DC I'd highly recommend checking out the JMW Turner exhibit at the NGA! [more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Oct 20, 2007 -
11 comments
Build your dream home. Answer a page of questions and real fortune-tellers on a steady diet of tea leaves and tarot cards will show you the house of your dreams.
posted by Mitheral
on Sep 28, 2007 -
15 comments
In the world of fantasy art, he is an icon. Some argue Arnold would never have become governor without him. Though his arrogance is second only to his skill, Frank Frazetta suffered for his art: for eight years an undiagnosed problem left him unable to create at all, while a series of strokes in his later years led to the artist having to learn to paint all over again, this time with his left hand. Since I was a girl, only this artist ever came close to inspiring me half so much as Frazetta did.
posted by misha
on Aug 15, 2007 -
33 comments
We've discussed David L. Cunningham before, especially the controversial 9/11 docudrama he made. But there's more to the man who's the son of Christian reconstructionist and University of the Nations founder Loren Cunningham. There are a lot of movies he claims to have directed on his IMDB page that don't have any external verification outside of self-published websites, which seems to contradict IMDB policy. Then there's the fear from both pagans and various political bloggers and fans of the books that his upcoming adaptation of the The Dark is Rising fantasy books is going to completely butcher the source material. The movie is produced by Walden Media, the production company owned by conservative christian billionaire Philip Anschutz, who's trying to "clean up Hollywood", in association with 20th Century Fox.
posted by Joakim Ziegler
on Aug 14, 2007 -
9 comments
If you like looking at maps of imaginary places, you should take a peek at the Fantasy Atlas, a German-language collection of maps of literary fantasy and sci-fi worlds. For a more obsessive (but just as interesting) take on maps of imaginary places, you can check out the work of Adrian Leskiw, who's been creating road maps of non-existent places since the age of 3. (Previously on Metafilter.)
posted by dersins
on Aug 1, 2007 -
31 comments
Kerwin Mathews, 1926-2007. The genre actor may be best remembered as the title character in one of my favorite movies, the classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot
on Jul 18, 2007 -
8 comments
Anyone who has spent time browsing through Deviant Art has almost certainly run into the cartoons of a young Australian woman named Gemma Wilson. She is fond of Harry Potter, snakepeople and (occasionally) torture and hermaprodites. She has a fan club. And she has detractors. Make of this what you will.
posted by metasonix
on Jun 26, 2007 -
29 comments
Parting the Veil of Faery: The Colmore Fatagravures, said to date from the 1890s. "A Scottish adventurer, inventor, and photographer named Neville Colmore claimed to have constructed a device capable of '...parting the veil of Faery...' The device, which he called the Spectobarathrum, along with all of the images he claimed to have made were believed destroyed in a fire. I believe some of these images and related artefacts may have survived." [via Apothecary's Drawer]
posted by mediareport
on Jun 19, 2007 -
16 comments
Gamers and their avatars
posted by CunningLinguist
on Jun 17, 2007 -
85 comments
Paramount does Neil: Gaiman's book (illustrated by Charles Vess) is being made into a film called Stardust. You can watch the trailer or read the first chapter online. The film is directed by Matthew Vaughn, who doesn't exactly have a strong fantasy background. Cross your fingers, Gaimanites.
posted by chuckdarwin
on May 16, 2007 -
46 comments
Imaginary places in detail: Start with a wonderful overview of megastructures in science fiction and examine a dictionary of 76 locations from recent fantasy novels. Then move on to the interactive maps: Mordor, Narnia, the Simpson's Springfield, England as seen in many stories, New York in fiction, Lovecraft's New England, maps from almost any video game, Star Trek, the Marvel Universe, and the DC Universe.
posted by blahblahblah
on Feb 21, 2007 -
29 comments
Mark Leung's College Saga (pt 1) (2)(3)(4)(the entire 40 min. youtube) is many things, but it's mostly a massive live action homage to Final Fantasy and having way too much free time at Babson College. Points for tremendous effort. (Related Retrovideogamepopcultery: Collegehumor's Street Fighter: The Later Years.)
posted by Stan Chin
on Dec 30, 2006 -
18 comments
"Dear Tokyo, why don't you have a building like this yet?" There are a lot of other ideas found on Ironic Sans.
posted by myopicman
on Dec 6, 2006 -
21 comments
Iraq: The War of the Imagination. "Anyone seeking to understand what has become the central conundrum of the Iraq war—how it is that so many highly accomplished, experienced, and intelligent officials came together to make such monumental, consequential, and, above all, obvious mistakes, mistakes that much of the government knew very well at the time were mistakes—must see beyond what seems to be a simple rhetoric of self-justification and follow it where it leads: toward the War of Imagination that senior officials decided to fight in the spring and summer of 2002 and to whose image they clung long after reality had taken a sharply separate turn." By Mark Danner. [Via Tomdispatch.]
posted by homunculus
on Nov 23, 2006 -
83 comments
Death of a President...the first six minutes [youtube]. This slick mockumentary imagines the assasination of George W. Bush. So far, most critics have panned it; apparently the filmmakers have managed to take the premise of Bush being killed and made it...boring. Still, for those of you who'll gladly pay $8-10 to watch Bush get shot, here's where it's going to be playing (and yes, some theater chains have refused to show it)
posted by Deathalicious
on Oct 29, 2006 -
53 comments
Ultimate Wingnut Fantasy Wankball: "Fantasy football" (??) played with right wing bloggers. (Me, I think I want a raise.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste
on Sep 3, 2006 -
25 comments
Write your name in Tengwar, the Elvish language/alphabet created by JRR Tolkien. You can work with Tengwar fonts based on Middle Earth languages and runes and see many examples of the script via a Google Image search. According to Tolkien, "there is quite a bit of linguistic wisdom in it." There are certainly websites devoted to his languages and thier history. And It took some thought and work to make the speech sound right in the movies.
posted by persona non grata
on Aug 29, 2006 -
27 comments
Nivbed's artwork
posted by nthdegx
on Aug 5, 2006 -
13 comments
Surreal, fantastic realist, psychedelic and visionary artists, sculptors and forum. Sites created by Jon Beinart.
posted by nickyskye
on Aug 4, 2006 -
8 comments
The His Dark Materials movie is taking shape. The award-winning children's series, considered the "anti-Narnia", is due on the screen in 2007, starring a actress found in open casting, along with Nicole Kidman (as Mrs. Coulter, for those who know the books). Unfortunately, the screenplay by Tom Stoppard has been dumped, though the new one appears to be to the author's liking. There is no official trailer yet, but there are several more or less painful fan-made ones. The series has also been made into a successful play, and a radio program. For those who haven't read it, an excerpt is here; and for those that have, try the interactive alethiometer or find out your daemon's name. Previous discussion on the debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury was here.
posted by blahblahblah
on Jul 31, 2006 -
52 comments
David Gemmell has died.
posted by essexjan
on Jul 28, 2006 -
13 comments
Tim Hildebrandt, half of the Brothers Hildebrandt artwork team, died yesterday due to complications from diabetes.
posted by WolfDaddy
on Jun 12, 2006 -
28 comments
The Kingdom of Redonda. In 1865, a Caribbean trader laid claim to a small island near Antigua, and declared himself king. His son, M.P. Shiel, was an author of fantasy fiction. When Shiel died in 1947, he left the island to a young poet, John Gawsworth, King Juan I of Redonda.
posted by steef
on Mar 24, 2006 -
7 comments
