MetaFilter posts tagged with fantasy

The pictures and sketches of JRR Tolkien

nthdegx — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:01:53 -0800

The pictures and sketches of JRR Tolkien

Bang Barstal

Pope Guilty — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:01:34 -0800

The now-defunct Bang Barstal tells the story of a man and his baseball bat after everything went wrong at once.

Inspiration

fearfulsymmetry — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:36:49 -0800

Concept Art World - For example: Michael Kutsche, Marek Okoń, 25 Inspiring Examples of Spaceships and Aircraft, Star Trek XI Concept Art by Ryan Church plus lots more.

Sci Fi Songs

gemmy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:47:37 -0800

John Anealio records songs inspired by science fiction and fantasy. Sing along about Cylons, Summer Glau (Firefly/Serenity), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and about how "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch" (previously).

Inner Space

fearfulsymmetry — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:37:49 -0800

Where I Write 'Fantasy & Science Fiction authors in their creative spaces' Photography by Kyle Cassidy

"Magic missile!"

Artw — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:05:54 -0800

The New York Times profiles Jack Vance (but fails to mention Vancian Magic. (Curse you Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition!)

New Worlds and Old

Artw — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:16:08 -0800

The Readers of Boing Boing interview Michael Moorcock

RIP David Eddings

reptile — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:39:27 -0800

According to the BBC, US fantasy author David Eddings has died at 77 due to natural causes. More coverage at the Guardian. (via bureau42)

Fire and Ass

KokuRyu — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:46:09 -0800

Fire and Ice (YouTube playlist) Ralph Bakshi's 1983 collaboration with Frank Frazetta. The animated feature, based on characters Bakshi and Frazetta co-created, was made using the process of rotoscoping. The real highlight of the 1983 cult animated movie, I quickly discovered, is Teegra’s ass.

Tell me a secret.

hpliferaft — Sat, 23 May 2009 15:42:07 -0800

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. Popularized artifacts have included a radio, "a metal tube" (or was it?), a disc, a stylish lapel pin (@ 1m14s), and, of course, a fish. Many other inventions persist. Oh, and when the universe was much smaller, it took a more prosaic form.

The Sinister End-of-the-World Homerun

Miko — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:50:03 -0800

"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.

'Bottles of wine, covered with dew, and otters.'

fearfulsymmetry — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:45:19 -0800

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.

This Would Save a Lot of Time

netbros — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:12:18 -0800

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.

There is actually a fantasy adventure series on television

The Devil Tesla — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:15:33 -0800

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.

Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere!

shoesfullofdust — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:27:54 -0800

How Science Fiction Found Religion

The Other Side

Artw — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:05:33 -0800

"These are like cool Magic Cards!" - the sometimes disturbing (and sometimes NSFW) art of Alfred Kubin.

Fantastic art by John Jude Palencar

mediareport — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:04:24 -0800

Just some cool dark fantasy art by John Jude Palencar, including covers for Lovecraft, de Lint, Tolkien and other popular books.

A merry "Bah, Humbug!" to us all

JHarris — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:24:05 -0800

Robert E. Howard-themed fantasy blog The Cimmerian posts a different take on a holiday classic.
Mystery Science Theater presents A Child's Christmas in Space, A Patrick Swazye Christmas, Merry Christmas (If That's Okay), a critique of Christmas movies and shows, and a little yuletide hysteria.
Tom Lehrer: "A Christmas Carol"
Futurama: The Elves' Christmas Song
Finally, there's The Colbert Report's book-burning Yule Log, both on the web and downloadable for Windows and Macintosh.

A year or so I linked the Escape Pod's recording of "In The Late December" here. It still fits. So does "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men." (But this link is to the World of Warcraft version.)

Crom!

Artw — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:28:32 -0800

Why Conan the barbarian isn't just some big dumb-dumb.

"just numbers on a piece of paper"

Kattullus — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:18:24 -0800

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.

Preliminary sketches of Tony Blair invariably had the PM knocking off the head of a robot.

infinitewindow — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:22:49 -0800

When the House of Commons required a portrait of outgoing PM Tony Blair, to whom did they turn? Phil Hale. Philip Oliver Hale got his start very young indeed, co-founding with Rick Berry the Newbury Studio in 1980 at age 16. He took over the paintbrush from Michael Whelan for Volume II of Stephen King's fantasy saga The Dark Tower in 1 9 8 7. (He later revisited The Drawing of the Three with new illustrations for the second edition in 1998.) The twenty-first century has seen Hale's standing improve among critics. In 2001, he published GOAD (sadly now out of print). In 2003, he finished a portrait of composer Thomas Adès for the National Portrait Gallery. He had a 2005 show in London's Jerwood Space, and 2007 brought him the a commission for new covers for Penguin Classics UK's line of Joseph Conrad collections. He is represented by Allen Spiegel Fine Arts in the US.

Speculative Poetry

cupcakeninja — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 05:08:53 -0800

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. Speculative poetry has little in the way of defined form, though the SciFaiku has its adherents, but it focuses on speculative subject matter: fantasy, horror, science fiction. How is it? Sort of like all poetry: some great, some horrible, and much in between. Rhyme and meter seem a bit more common than in poetry generally these days, but not universal. Many speculative poets belong to the Science Fiction Poetry Association, as well as an annual award. If you want an idea of who writes this stuff, click that last link, and you may see names of SF writers you know. Who else writes this stuff? Well, did you know Robert E. Howard wrote poetry, and rather a lot of it? Conan's creator wrote many volumes of weird, wonderful verse, all worth hunting down. One of Howard's contemporaries, Clark Ashton Smith, was a prominent poet in the earlier part of the 20th century who lived a typically poetic life of penury, wrote many volumes, was well reviewed, and is today best known for association with matters tentacular. Joseph Payne Brennan came along a bit later, but was likewise prolific. Many SF aficionados remember his stories, but I've always preferred his verse to his fiction. Sadly, ~~a few minutes poking around on Google~~ an exhaustive search revealed none of it online. Get thee to a library if you care about fantastic and subtly disturbing poetry. The audience for speculative poetry is, as you might guess, not humongous. The web has allowed for much flowering and greater publicity, however, from online publications to online symposia. Poets give interviews about their work, and there's help out there for those who want to learn how to write it. Finally, where do you go to read more of it? Check the online symposia links in the previous paragraphs: lots of links in there. Also, check the Wikipedia entry for speculative fiction for online venues for speculative poetry.

Rosenbaum, The Plausible-Fabulist

ninebelow — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:13:41 -0800

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." Benjamin Rosenbaum is not a character from The Scarlett Pimpernel, a poet or a writer of children's books as 'Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes', by Benjamin Rosenbaum' makes clear.

So you want to be a hero?

Glow Bucket — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:11:15 -0800

The remake of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is finally finished The 1990 adventure/rpg game from Sierra has been almost eight years in the making by AGDInteractive Studio, who already remade Sierra's King's Quest I and II. The game is fully integrated into the original series by Sierra, meaning you can import a saved hero from the original first part and continue playing with your character in original part three. The download is about 85 megabytes and the game runs on Windows only.

Fallen Lights

homunculus — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:20:13 -0800

Artwork by Laura Pelick. [Via]