July 30, 2011

Scribbled Bits...

Fantasy Magazine is amazing as a resource, and I really enjoy going back and rereading old issues for fun and to provoke thoughts. Most recently I was reading about how steampunk has overwritten fantasy tropes in the May issue. (Since I am once again attempting a fantasy/fairy tale kind of thing, and in our writing group we were recently discussing the Hero's Journey, this trope-twisting struck a chord.) The piece on automatons was really, really cool.

I really enjoyed the reprint of Kelly Link's Swans, which was excerpted from Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow & Terry Windling. Two other nonfiction essays were helpful, one on the princess thing - and how despite Disney and how the princess is still forming and informing a lot of fantasy fiction. (You may not agree), and the other on unicorns. Other than the people who write about them fighting zombies, they did, once upon a time, have literary significance.

And for you great writers of bad prose, the Bulwer-Lytton contest results are in. Oh, be so afraid. Winner: SciFi Category:

"Morgan ‘Bamboo’ Barnes, Star Pilot of the Galaxia (flagship of the Solar Brigade), accepted an hors d’oeuvre from the triangular-shaped platter offered to him from the Princess Qwillia—lavender-skinned she was and busty, with two of her four eyes what Barnes called ‘bedroom eyes’—and marveled at how on her planet, Chlamydia-5, these snacks were called ‘Hi-Dee-Hoes’ but on Earth they were simply called Ritz Crackers with Velveeta."

Greg Homer
Placerville, CA

Happy Weekend to all of you scribblers and readers!

3 comments:

Sarah Stevenson said...

HAHAHA! I love the Bulwer-Lytton contest.

That link about Steampunk fantasy tropes was great! Clearly I am writing a steampunk novel, whatever else it may also be...since I have nearly all of these character types either already present or in the works. :)

tanita✿davis said...

Re: the Bulwer-Lytton - the romance winner was even WORSE, if that could be possible. OY.

I love my ezines! I really find the greatest stuff in them. I wish I had time to do more than skim them every month.

Gail Gauthier said...

That Kelly Link short story was good.