First Scare: Dracula (1958)

The one sadly afflicted with pink eye

A few years ago, I did the experiment of watching all three film versions of Carrie on one day. It taught me a lot about the minutiae of adaptational choices: what effect it has if a certain dialogue scene is moved to a different moment in the story, what actions need to be condensed if a location is removed, how far an emotional setup needs to be from its eventual payoff. (My verdict is that 2013 has the best Margaret, 1976 has the best Carrie, and 2002 has the best prom massacre.) Watching various adaptations of Dracula is turning out to be a similar learning experience, with Terence Fisher's 1958 film a fascinating example of how drastically you can strip down a story while keeping its core intact.

If I was surprised by how much the 1931 film shuffled around the novel's characters, this version goes even further: Renfield and the sanatorium are entirely removed, as is Dracula's journey by ship, while Dr. Seward is reduced to a very minor role. Arthur is now Lucy's brother instead of suitor, and he's married to Mina. The bulk of the action is moved from England to Germany so that trips to and from Transylvania are less impractical. The most consequential change is that Jonathan Harker doesn't visit Castle Dracula as an innocent clerk bringing paperwork, but as a sort of secret agent already tasked with killing the vampire. This means that it's not the Count who lures Jonathan to his land, but Jonathan who takes the initiative to seek the Count. It also means that the Count's evil nature is known all along, so he doesn't get to mingle with human society.

Removing the Count's pretense of being a normal human massively reduces the contact he can have with the rest of the cast, which forces the director to make the most of his very few on-screen appearances. The tradeoff works: this is one of those monster movies where we get to see the monster very rarely, but each time we do, it lands with full impact.

The changes to the whole Jonathan/Mina/Lucy axis help provide a practical solution to the biggest loose thread in the novel: why did Count Dracula want to leave Transylvania in the first place? In this interpretation, Jonathan sneaks into the castle crypt in the first act and kills the Count's bride, who may or may not be desperate to be rid of the vampiric curse. This event gives the Count a clear motivation: you take my bride, I take yours. And that's why he goes after Lucy, who in this version is Jonathan's fiancée.

Jonathan doesn't make it past the first act alive (for which I was thankful, what with actor John Van Eyssen being rather mediocre in the role), so the film promptly shifts to introducing Dr. Van Helsing, who ends up being the true protagonist. As Van Helsing, Peter Cushing does a stellar job. He's helped by the script, which cleverly remolds the novel's crusader/pest exterminator into a detective-esque figure. He's apparently been on Dracula's trail for a while, and he frames his mission in terms of protecting the world from what could become a plague of vampirism.

However, precisely because the story has been stripped down to the basics, this whole talk of a threat to the world sounds incongruous. The action is confined to about half a dozen sets, beyond which the rest of society might as well not exist. Van Helsing does visit a customs officer and an undertaker in the course of his investigation, but those spaces just play their part and are quickly done with. If not for the dialogues, we wouldn't even know that Arthur and Mina are living in Germany instead of England. And the Count doesn't help sell his menace factor either; he's more interested in replacing his dead bride than in going on a biting rampage. The main conflict in this film is a strictly private affair, but the dialogues insist that Dracula sits at the head of a "reign of terror" that must be defeated yet is nowhere to be seen.

So instead of the usual dynamic in a Dracula story of the foreign Other quietly invading the civilized metropolis, here we have the civilized heroes going out into the land of the foreign Other to stamp down the threat it represents. Not a very subtle sentiment for a film produced while the Cold War was getting started (it doesn't escape the viewer that the undertaker's shop where the Count first goes to hide has the last name Marx, of all things).

This version of the vampire doesn't bother with theatrics. No beastly transformation, no fog cloud, no magical stares. His power is raw, brutal hunger (and his female victims welcome his assault with equal hunger). When he finally meets Van Helsing, he doesn't try to control his mind, as in the 1931 movie; here he goes straight for the jugular, and is only thwarted because he lets himself grow overconfident.

For a limited special effects budget, Dracula's death in this movie is impressive. Instead of erupting in flames when exposed to the sun, he simply crumbles down into a pile of ashes. It's very simple, very repulsive, and very effective. Unfortunately, the Technicolor process left many scenes more illuminated than they're implied to be, which makes it look like Dracula is walking outdoors under more sunlight than he should, so the dramatic shock of having the sun hit his face at the end is somewhat less effective. Still, this is a enjoyable watch. It's like going to the doctor's office for a needle jab: just the briefest glimpse of blood, and it's over before you feel any pain.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Film Review: The Wild Robot

The new law of the jungle is survival of the kindest

With an eye-catching art style reminiscent of its earlier masterpiece Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, DreamWorks' adaptation of Peter Brown's 2016 novel The Wild Robot gives off a warm aura that soothes and uplifts the weary soul. This is a surprisingly deep story for such a contained scenario: it begins in the near future, when a shipment of domestic helper robots crashes against the rocky coast of a small island, leaving only one surviving robot. The emotional nucleus of the movie concerns the incompatible values between a creature built to serve and the law of the jungle.

For all the cuteness in its visual design, the island is not a safe place: every creature there seeks its own survival, and that pursuit is often bloody. Inasmuch as the island can be said to constitute a society, it's one built on mutual hostility. It's eat or be eaten. And here's where our protagonist, which doesn't need to eat and cannot be eaten, will try to find a place and a purpose.

In the original novel, the author's note explains, "animal instincts are kind of like computer programs." Both computers and animals have certain core routines that they follow automatically. The relevant instincts/programs in dispute here are, on one side, those of the wildlife, organized around relations of competition and predation; and on the other side, those of an obedient machine, designed for relations of altruism. Will the friendly newcomer succumb to the hierarchy of violence, or will the ubiquitous hostility of nature adapt to accommodate a gentler touch?

What ends up happening is that the two types of programs exchange useful routines. Our protagonist, the stranded robot, acquires a new type of relation: responsibility. After accidentally destroying a goose nest, the next logical task is to take care of the only surviving egg. And the closed environment of the island also acquires a new type of relation: openness. The robot's presence and the way it disrupts the usual flow of the circle of life force the various creatures, big and small, to reconsider the roles they've been unthinkingly performing up to that point.

By the rules of the jungle, that egg ought to have perished. But our robot, without realizing it, introduces love into the cold equations of survival. For their part, the animals in the island do have some inborn notion of emotional attachment, but it's restricted to members of their respective species. It ought to be unthinkable for a goose to love a being that is not-a-goose. And yet, the miracle happens. A piece of machinery with no role to play in the food chain becomes a friend, a mother, a leader, a heroine. What until then had been a battlefield of all against all becomes a home.

One has to allow for a certain measure of poetic license in a story like this. The characters that the movie presents as becoming companions forged in adversity include several natural enemies; while witnessing the formation of a cross-species alliance to defend the island, one isn't meant to think too hard about which of those comrades the bear and the fox will need to eat tomorrow.

No, there are more urgent concerns. Our protagonist has owners, and they're eager to recover their property. Scattered hints indicate that this world has undergone a serious climate catastrophe, and the robot helpers are crucial to maintaining the standard of life of what appears to be a very limited human population. On top of that, this particular robot has learned to communicate with animals and earn their cooperation, making those digital memories valuable beyond measure. The threat left unspoken is that the same humankind that let ecological disaster happen at a global scale wouldn't recoil at the chance to turn the animal kingdom into another tool to control.

The movie doesn't lose sight of these macro events while it aims a finely sharpened scalpel at the audience's heart with its poignant interpersonal drama. The anxieties of sudden parenthood and the insecurities of growing up feeling different don't change substantially when your family is composed of a gosling that can't figure out small talk (let alone swimming and flying), a fox that used to try to eat said gosling multiple times, and a helper robot that inadvertently killed the gosling's family. And these messy, profoundly incompatible, woefully unprepared characters manage to create exactly the kind of unbreakable love bonds that can save a community.

All this is clothed in the most exquisite colors digital cinema is capable of. The Wild Robot is not only a hard punch right in the feels; it's a banquet of textures and shapes and deftly timed movement. One is simultaneously overcome with the personal catharsis evoked by the main family plot (complete with tears of bittersweet self-recognition) and a sense of historic good fortune for being alive at a time when such heights of visual artistry can be reached. Combined with its spectacular soundtrack, the experience of watching this movie is, without exaggeration, unforgettable.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Book Review: The Gods Below by Andrea Stewart

The start of a new fantasy series set in a world where a pair of separated sisters are at the core of a story of theocratic conflict and ambition.

We start with a pair of sisters, Hakara and Rasha. They have only each other, eking out life in a bay in a devastated land. The elder, Hakara, dives for pearls for the thin living the sisters are eking out in the wake of their parents' death. This precarious existence ends when the black wall comes. The god Kluehnn is remaking, renewing the tired world - a world devastated, according to accounts, by man’s greed and the horrors of the other gods, gods that must be hunted and destroyed. But that remaking of the world necessarily transforms or kills half of the population as an area is remade is a harsh way to remake a world. As the black wall comes for the Bay area, our sisters are separated. Rasha is transformed, and Hakara, still ever professing to try and find her younger sister, finds employment diving not into the ocean, but rather into the earth itself in search of magical gems that could change the world themselves.

And so we are off and running in Andrea Stewart's The Gods Below, first in a new series for her, following her Bone Shard Daughter trilogy.

The story of the two sisters, as they find lives apart and on opposite sides of the Wall, as it were, is where we get the main backbone of the novel. The separate lives of the two sisters slowly converge (after a ten year time jump), as they find themselves not only on opposite sides of a barrier, but also ideologically and theologically on opposite sides as well. It is a slow burn as they struggle through their own lives, growing and changing, and becoming people who are definitely not the close sisters they once were.

In addition to the two sisters, we get three other points of view as well. One pair are a set of characters who are related but have rather different paths. Mullayne is an inventor, a creator, and an adventurer. He is determined to penetrate the depths of the earth to find the realm of the other, lost Gods, in an effort to find a cure for his terminally ill beloved, Imeah. Love drives Mullayne to follow his research, even when it is a path no one has gone in centuries, and may kill him and his entire team in the process.

And then there is Sheuan. Mull is her cousin, but while Mull and his companions are descending into the depths of the earth like Arne Saknusseum, Sheuan is trying to keep her family with some semblance of power and strength. Her clan is ready to slip and fall from the ranks of the nobles, and that would be a disaster. Her mother has put all of her efforts into trying to put Sheuan into a position to be a savior for the clan. With such pressure, Sheuan soon finds herself borrowing ideas and equipment from her absent cousin in order to try and keep her family afloat. While Mull might want to use his masking technology to delve into the earth, Sheuan has other ideas in mind.

The last point of view, used sparingly, is hundreds of years in the past of all of these otherwise contemporaneous points of view. And it is a god, Nioanen. By the time we get our first point of view for Nioanen, we’ve already had a number of chapters setting up the theological setup of the novel - man despoiled the earth, one god, Kluehnn rose to fight the avaricious fellow deities who were oppressing humanity in the bargain. It is Kluehnn who protects and helps humanity, all other deities are evil and to be opposed and fought. So Nionaen’s point of view, when it first appears, is our first in text direct opposition to this narrative, and gives us concrete information that the story Kluehnn has been putting out may be only one side of the story. Or worse, that he is fact, been lying to humanity for centuries.

In addition to the plotting and characters, we get a rich world to explore and develop here. Using the various points of view immerses into a world where the world broke... and now is slowly being rejuvenated, but at a cost and by methods that are not clear. Although the novel isn’t a mystery per se, there are plenty of questions that are slowly revealed for the reader about the true nature of the world, how and why it broke, and what is happening now. This is a world rich in magic, a world of competing clans, grasping nobles, devotees of the god, and much more.

There is some lovely language, Stewart’s talent for word choice and phrasing I noticed in the Bone Shard Daughter series is in full effect here as well. Her word choice and phrases are evocative, emotive and often pluck at the heart. Even more than the plotting, worldbuilding and strong characters that the novel offers, the way that this novel evokes emotion, and feeling with her word choice, as well as describing and evoking all of the above, really stands out. There are painful choices and hard bargains throughout the novel, and Stewart’s writing puts a light on the difficult choices the characters are faced with, and makes the reader really feel the pressure and consequences of those decisions.

The novel that comes to mind that pairs with The Gods Below is Hannah Kaner’s Godkiller. Like that novel, this novel explores theological frameworks, and internecine politics on a human level that have origins and reflects with the gods and their concerns. There are in fact, Godkillers in The Gods Below, and how those conflicts play out in both novels help distinguish them together in epic fantasy. Godkiller is significantly darker in tone and content, much more in the grimdark mold of fantasy than, ultimately, The Gods Below is.

Overall, this is the first novel in the story, and the stopping point here has some reveals, there really isn’t a resolution for readers who want to get off here. I am invested enough, particularly in the story of Hakara and Rasha, to see where Stewart intends to go with the next novel in the series. I do note, though, that this is a case where the series name, The Hollow Covenant, does in fact constitute as a bit of a spoiler. While it is easy to guess that Kluehnn is not all they're cracked up to be as a protector of humanity and restorer of the world, it does tip the hand even before one opens the book.

--

The Math

Highlights:

• Strong pair of primary characters with a excellent story and characterization
• Excellent and vividly evocative writing
• Interesting and well developed worldbuilding
• Really strong cover art by Lauren Panepinto

Reference: Stewart, Andrea, The Gods Below  [Orbit, 2024].

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

First Scare: Dracula (1931)

The one with the intense stares

Tod Browning's Dracula is derived from a 1924 stage adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, and it shows. It keeps several of the hallmarks of a traditional theater script: lengthy infodumps via dialogue; time jumps that relegate some plot developments (especially the violent ones) to the implicit space between scenes; extended, continuous use of the same set for several consecutive conversations; and a marked preference for telling over showing. I understand that Western theater has a long tradition of keeping the violence offstage; what I cannot understand is how, when you translate the stage play into a movie, you produce what eventually becomes the most memorable, most revered, most iconic interpretation of The vampire without showing me one single instance of biting.

It goes without saying that Bela Lugosi carries this movie on his shoulders. Despite the excessive wordiness of the script, the obviously fake bat puppets, the lack of a music soundtrack, and the scattered, ill-advised attempts at humor, it only takes one look at the titular vampire's intense gaze to fall under his spell. When he's not engaged in the social pantomime of small talk, in a strenuous but futile effort to pass as a hot-blooded, cheerful human, his presence fills the screen with an unblinking, commanding aura of evil. Wikipedia tells me that almost a dozen actors were considered for the role, but now that I've seen the movie, the possibility of giving the Count any other face strikes me as inconceivable.

Fancy clothes and impeccable haircut aside, this version of the vampire is still very close to Nosferatu, an almost irrational monster guided by the hunting instinct, without the sentimental appeal that later reinventions would add to the archetype to create a more relatable figure, desperate to find love but cursed to see people only as food. When his character is free from the need to pretend to be a normal human, Lugosi puts on the face of a predator, giving his victims not the natural recognition of a fellow person but the hungry stare of a beast preparing to jump. He delivers a terrific performance, which anticipates later occurrences of the single-minded, uncaring killer that can be found in Alien or The Terminator.

The liberties taken with the source material are a double-edged sword. For one part, the early scenes about a real estate lawyer visiting the Count's castle are given to Renfield instead of Jonathan Harker, a change that strengthens the causal cohesion between the first and second acts. Also, Dr. Seward, who is in charge of the hospital where Renfield ends up locked in, is rewritten to be Mina's father instead of Lucy's suitor, which gives the Count a convenient reason to get close to Mina. The downside is that the role of Jonathan Harker is greatly diminished, Mina is reduced to sexy lamp status, and Lucy's death and subsequent undeath lose the weight they should have in the plot. There isn't even a scene to purify Lucy's corpse; she's simply forgotten halfway through the movie.

From our position in this century, accustomed to hundreds of variations on the vampire mythos, it would seem easy to forgive such misfires; there's always another version out there with its own aesthetic, its own vision, its own reinterpretation of the story. But in 1931, Dracula was yet to enter the public domain. The choices made by Universal Pictures did more than express artistic freedom: they set canon. There's an entire period in the history of horror during which Universal's Dracula was the only authorized Count on screen. Just like the present generation only knows Ian McKellen's version of Gandalf, and will forever think of Gandalf in that image, there was a generation whose idea of the Count was shaped by Bela Lugosi's acting style. It's the kind of first-mover advantage that forces every subsequent moviemaker to make their art as a response to it.

The irony is that Nosferatu came first, however illegally, which makes Universal's Dracula, for all its intentions of defining the character on its own terms, a response. Whereas Orlok is a cadaveric nightmare heralded by pestilence, Lugosi's Count comes across as a dusty relic of the Ancien Régime, a ruler over the human heart who repays obedience with madness. Both are corrupted, bloodthirsty abominations, but Lugosi's version knows the tricks of a stage magician, most notably the dramatic effect of a well-timed fog machine. Moreover, Nosferatu is silent, while Dracula lets Lugosi make full use of his heavy Hungarian accent to leverage the audience's learned Orientalism. Orlok feels like the fearsome Other because he's a walking corpse; Lugosi's Count feels like the fearsome Other because he's a foreigner with weird tastes.

My notion of the vampire was shaped by the film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire and Coppola's reinvention of Bram Stoker's material (plus smatterings of The Munsters Today, Forever Knight, Count Duckula, Drak Pack, and Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School). Somehow I never came into relevant contact with Dark Shadows, Salem's Lot, Hellsing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Castlevania, True Blood, or The Vampire Diaries. I did meet Blade, Underground, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Twilight, although at an age too late for them to influence my personal mythology. (Namely: if you ask me to think of vampires, the thing about sunlight that hurts them is not the UV light, they are not at war with werewolves, they have no connection with Biblical characters, and they Do. Not. Sparkle.) I don't view vampires as tragic figures or forbidden seducers; I view them as the perfect symbol for the parasitic nature of aristocracy.

Alas, I am a child of my time. This version of Dracula didn't particularly frighten me. Some of the scenes where the Count uses his mind control powers straddle the very thin line between the sublime and the ridiculous, and the uneven editing kills all sense of dramatic momentum in the last third. Worst of all, in consonance with the theatrical conventions of its time, but absurdly for a big classic of horror, we're not allowed to see the Count die. I feel sorry for the masterful lead actor who was dragged into this less than expertly made movie.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Film Review: My Hero Academia: You're Next

Despite a predictable opening, the anime feature film finishes strong in the second half. 

The popular, long-running, manga, My Hero Academia has ended its ten-year print run this year and the accompanying kid-friendly anime series has just confirmed that 2025 will be its final season. In the midst of the excitement and sadness at the impending conclusion of the story, the latest feature film in the franchise opened in U.S. theaters after a run earlier this year in Japan. My Hero Academia: You’re Next is a stand-alone story set between the destruction of Japan / Liberation Front war arc and the final war arc (approximately between Season 6 and Season 7, in case you’re wondering about certain characters). 

My Hero Academia is set in a future version of Earth, where most humans have some variation of special powers (quirks), and children with extraordinary superpowers are sent to academies to be trained as licensed superheroes. The protagonist, pure-hearted Izuku Midoriya (aka Deku), receives a transferable superpower from the most powerful and beloved hero All-Might who can no longer maintain it due to a critical injury. Throughout the series, Deku and two of his friends (loudmouth, explosive Bakugo and brooding, fire and ice powered Shoto) eventually become the top heroes among the students at their hero academy. The current film You’re Next takes place after the villains in the Liberation Front have destroyed much of Japan and decimated the hero system. As a result, the students often find themselves as the first line of defense in the current lawless society. Early in the film, Deku encounters and tries to help a girl, Anna, being chased and eventually recaptured by her kidnappers (later revealed to be the Gollini crime family). A cyborg boy, Guilio, also appears and tries to intercept the kidnappers. He is, confusingly, both kind to Anna but also trying to kill her. Deku, Guilio, Bakugo, Shoto, and the other students are also caught by the Gollini family and trapped in a giant floating fort. The head villain idolizes the former hero, All Might, and, after an angry conversation with the former hero, the villain names himself Dark Might. Dark Might creepily copies All Might’s appearance and clothing and declares himself the successor to All Might’s hero leadership, planning to bring order to the country by force and subjugation of the people. Throughout the film, Guilio and the students struggle to escape from Dark Might’s fort while also trying to free Anna. Anna’s quirk is over-modification which gives strength to some (including the villain) but hurts others and will eventually destroy basically “everything” (a la X-Men’s Jean Grey / Dark Phoenix) if it gets out of control. We later find out that Anna and Guilio have a special symbiotic relationship because of their respective quirks and we find out why Guilio feels he must kill Anna. 

The first half of the film is mostly running and chasing and feels like rehashed storylines and fight choreography from prior seasons. We also get an interesting dream-trap sequence that is reminiscent of the final dream capture arcs of Naruto Shippuden. The lead villain Dark Might is fun visually but he is thin in character and motivation. Interestingly, instead of the usual futuristic hero versus villain scenario, we have retro, steampunk vibes and visuals. The characters, inexplicably, dress in Victorian attire and the backstory feels like we have time traveled to a different setting with Dark Might’s murderous Gollini crime family attacking and massacring Anna’s wealthy Scervino family. The vibe is reminiscent of early prequel seasons of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures. Fortunately, the second half of the film digs deeper into the characters, particularly Anna and Guilio and their tragic motivations. The final conflicts feel like an homage to the X-Men “Dark Phoenix” story arc. But the best part of My Hero Academia: You’re Next is the stoic, slick, stylish Guilio, whom Bakugo refers to as the “cool side character.” Guilio’s backstory and character design fit all of the great orphan hero tropes and the final scenes, with him as a broken cyborg and Anna as a lethal damsel in distress, are gorgeously drawn.

My Hero Academia: You’re Next works best for existing My Hero Academia fans who will understand the overall setting and character context. However, the new villains and new heroes are unconnected to the main series’ story arcs and, like most My Hero Academia features, the film is not required for the anime continuity. Unfortunately, that likely means we won’t see more of brooding cyborg, Guilio, especially since his character and aesthetic overlap with that of Shoto. Instead, the film works well as an entertaining side quest for those who need a little more of My Hero Academia before we say a final farewell to the teachers and students of UA’s class 1-A. If you can get through the unoriginal opening and the two-dimensional lead villain, the final half delivers a nice payoff in both character study and action.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

• Lackluster opening half
• Excellent new side character
• Worth it for the final finish

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Interview: Oliver Brackenbury and New Edge Magazine

Today at Nerds of a Feather, we talk to editor Oliver Brackenbury of New Edge Magazine about two Mongol themed Sword and Sorcery novellas at the center of a crowdfunding campaign.

1. For those not familiar with you or New Edge, please introduce yourself and the magazine.

My name is Oliver Brackenbury, a Canadian author, podcaster, and screenwriter with a deep love of Sword & Sorcery. Recently I've also become an editor and publisher.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery is an illustrated short fiction and non-fiction magazine featuring original stories, interviews, reviews, and articles all centered on the titular genre. Our motto is "Made with love for the classics, and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling!"

"Made with love for the classics..." means we care deeply about letting readers know what makes classic S&S characters & creators worth exploring. In just two years we've been blessed with the latest Elric story by Michael Moorcock, are on track to publish the first Jirel of Joiry story in 85 years, and have or will soon publish numerous articles introducing new readers to notable figures from the S&S canon like C.L. Moore, Charles Saunders, and Cele Goldsmith Lali.

"...an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling!" means we're working hard contributing to there being a broader swath of humanity on the page, behind the keyboard, and in the fandom. We're also hungry to see how we can expand the possibilities of what S&S can do (themes, story structures, prose styles...) while still being clearly recognizable as itself.

Judging by how things have gone so far, people like the results of our efforts!

Barely past our two year anniversary, we have expanded into publishing under the name "Brackenbury Books", and are currently crowdfunding our second book, "Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery", a pair of Mongol-inspired S&S novellas bound in a single paperback akin to the classic Ace Double line.

2) We've seen Mongol-inspired S&S out of New Edge before, but what prompted you to make it the focus of this crowdfunding effort. In short...Why Mongols?

In short, because it's a fascinating culture & period of history, Asian set S&S is almost always rooted in Chinese or Japanese historical inspiration, and because it allowed me to pair two authors I love in one book, writing characters I'd seen people react strongly to in our magazine, each exploring basically the same setting in their own unique way.

In detail, it was an organic product of how the magazine began, and grew into book publishing.

The magazine started with a sweat equity prototype issue #0, available free in digital and priced at cost in soft/hardcover, and the table of contents was drawn almost entirely from a single online community where a bunch of us had strong feelings about how to take Sword & Sorcery into the future.

This included two authors who set their stories in Mongol-rooted settings yet write with totally unique voices: Bryn Hammond writes the nomad Goatskin having adventures in a more fantastic version of our world, while Dariel R.A. Quiogue writes the deposed warlord Orhan the Snow Leopard's adventures in a secondary world heavily rooted in the same setting & time period - that of Genghis Khan.

Bryn is a respected, published scholar of historical non-fiction about that period, while Dariel is an amateur student of the era with over ten years experience writing fiction set in it. Bryn writes in a awe-inspiring, poetic, Weird-with-a-capital-"W" style, while Dariel specializes in pulse-pounding stories that astound with their action. Both can bring the full spectrum of Sword & Sorcery to a tale, but those are some of their specialties.

As part of the crowdfund we actually did a short story panel discussion livestream where we analyzed one Goatskin and one Orhan story, getting deep into what makes them worth reading.

But yes, having organically lucked into working with two knowledgeable, skilled authors - and great people - writing with complementary voices in a similar setting, Mongol S&S made perfect sense to me for this pairing of novellas.

3) I find that interesting, that you have both a fantasy novella, and a historical fantasy novella, and yet both are sword and sorcery. While sword and sorcery goes classically well with fantasy, what do you think the advantages, challenges and opportunities are for sword and sorcery as a genre to tackle more historical fantasy settings and characters?

Brian Murphy's most excellent book, "Flame & Crimson: A History of Sword & Sorcery", cites historical inspiration as one of the seven common aspects of the genre that make up his definition, saying that this lends "a degree of realism". He also rightly points out that S&S was born from Robert E. Howard deciding to add fantastic elements to an historical adventure story he was having trouble selling, thus birthing the genre with "The Shadow Kingdom" in 1929.

I'd agree there's that degree of realism, even when the story is set in a secondary world with giant snakes, sorcery, etc., and since historical adventure was pretty much a co-parent of S&S, it's always worth considering when reading, writing, or reviewing it. But yes, your question!

I think the advantages include inspiration, grounding the story so that the fantastic elements really shine by contrast when they show up, and providing a foundation for your worldbuilding that will help make the setting consistent even if most of that foundation remains below the surface.

The main challenge is, of course, if you really wed your story to historical fact then you may set yourself up for nitpicking; Lovecraft famously advised Fritz Leiber to invent that most influential Fantasy city, Lankhmar, rather then set his Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories in ancient Alexandria, specifically to avoid getting picked apart by the history nerds. You may also end up being very rigid with yourself, denying your story the ability to go where the narrative would be best suited on account of needing to do something ahistorical to facilitate it.

But I think it's worth it, even if you're fantastic elements are really out there, to consider more historical settings and characters when writing Sword & Sorcery. It gives you the opportunity to justify spending time on all kinds of fun research, to use the fantastic elements to draw in readers who otherwise might not learn the historical details you're including with them, to highlight peoples of historical periods who are often neglected (Bryn Hammond is particularly keen on doing so, which works great in tandem with the subgenre's history of outsider protagonists), make historical subtext brightly legible Fantasy text, and so much more.

4. How do you think Sword and Sorcery reflects the current trends in Fantasy as a whole, today? What place does it occupy in its ecosystem?

I'm wary of defining something I love by what it isn't, however in terms of current Fantasy trends I most often see S&S discussed by fans in terms of how it doesn't follow those trends.

With doorstopper thick, trilogy-or-more high fantasy series the standard right now, Sword & Sorcery can be a refreshing break with its shorter, fast paced, more episodic storytelling. Its more inferred worldbuilding and soft or entirely absent magic systems can provide a breath of fresh air from over-explained settings that so often render the fantastic mundane. Meanwhile, a focus on grounded, outsider heroes just trying to survive a dangerous world can be more relatable than chasing chosen ones around on world-saving quests. And so on.

That said, it may grow in other ways to follow, not buck, publishing trends in the broader SFF sphere. For example, if we get to make our Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery book, the two novellas it contains will become Vol. 1 in what I hope will be only the first of several S&S novella series that we'll publish in the future. In that way S&S will be moving closer to the trend in SFF novellas that Tor has been the main driver behind in recent years.

5) Talking about trends in fantasy, and readership, what ideas do you have for introducing fantasy readers who think S&S is only Conan and bring them to see the potential of reading works such as Bryn and Daniel's?

Oh, lots of things! I'm a very enthusiastic promoter, so I've been working hard getting our authors out there for interviews across blogs, booktube, podcasts and so on. Getting contemporary S&S authors into venues where they can share their own unique take on the genre is a big part.

We also do our own regular short story panel discussion livestreams (here's a playlist) that focus on contemporary Sword & Sorcery tales from a variety of publications, with an eye to showing off the wide range of possibilities. For example we covered "Dara's Tale", by Mark Rigney, to show what S&S can look like with an adolescent protagonist in a story with some overlap with fairy tale tropes.

Naturally there's our magazine, New Edge Sword & Sorcery, which not only features a variety of stories where we aim to show off the full breadth of Sword & Sorcery, there's also non-fiction articles, historical profiles, interviews, and book reviews that help spread fun & interesting knowledge about what S&S can do. My note to our non-fiction authors is always to try and get people excited about the present & future fo the genre, not just the past, when they write pieces like Jon Olfert's article on neurodivergence in S&S, Nathaniel Web's upcoming piece on Heavy Metal's relationship to S&S, or even pieces on past figures because hey if this 20th century author could do X in the genre then what could be done to build on that?

And, honestly, crowdfunds are a great way to get the word out - especially if you make them a kind of community event to take part in, not just a chance to pre-order something. We do our best, mainly through livestreams that have included interviews, panel discussions, TTRPG sessions, and even live music as a way of drawing people in to find out what this S&S thing is all about!

There's always more I could say on this, but that feels like a good answer for now.

6) Is there anything else our readers should know about the campaign, or New Edge, or the two fabulous writers?

Well, the campaign ends at noon EST on Saturday, October 19th so you'll want to back it before then!

Some fun items I haven't mentioned yet include...

• The physical editions are traditionally printed, with the softcover a classic mass-market paperback, and there's a very limited run hardcover of the same dimensions that sports a nice bookmark ribbon. We love the Book As Object and do our best to produce a high quality product.
• There's a crowdfund exclusive bonus short story and, if we hit 300 backers, that will have poetry added to it! Both tie into the novellas, but are not mandatory to enjoy or understand them.
• Other crowdfund exclusives include a bookmark with art from each cover on either side, battle-axe logo stickers, signed author bookplates, and more.
• Our crowdfunds are also the best time to buy New Edge Sword & Sorcery back issues, which we discount only when providing them as Add-Ons for backer pledges.
• We aim to have a Final Friday "Telethon" livestream this Friday at 7pm EST! You can watch it right on the crowdfund page, where the trailer sits at the top. Past crowdfund's Final Friday livestreams have featured TTRPG live play sessions, live music, interviews, and other fun treats; I won't spoil what we have coming for this one!

Our authors can tell you plenty about themselves in the recordings of their recent livestream interviews, so I'll let them speak for themselves.

As for New Edge / Brackenbury Books? As I write this we're a mere $225 from hitting 100% funding on this book and we'd love for you to help take us soaring past that point! We're excited to make the book, naturally, and this crowdfund succeeding will put us in a great place for continuing to produce high quality publications featuring titanic tales paired with awesome art, all coming to you from a diverse array of talented creators.

So go on, check it out!

Thank you so much, Oliver!

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

First Scare: The Sixth Sense

A creepy character study that holds up over time

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Oscar-nominated cerebral horror film The Sixth Sense. I consumed a fair amount of Bruce Willis content during his heyday, but this one escaped me. At the time, I wasn’t in the mood for creepy content, so I took a pass. Over the years, the film became a classic, showing up on best of lists, particularly for best plot twists. Thanks to the internet and repeated discussions of the film, many elements of the story were unavoidable even for non-viewers. As a result, the “twist” at the end was spoiled for me long before I saw it this month. But instead of making me less interested, the fact of the twist made me more fascinated by a story that I previously imagined as creepy and subdued. Now, in honor of our First Scare project, I have finally watched M. Night Shaymalan’s award-winning The Sixth Sense.

The story follows Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a successful child psychologist in Philadelphia, who works with troubled children. The film opens with Malcolm celebrating a prestigious lifetime award for his work in child psychology. His loving wife Anna (Olivia Williams) is proud of him even though she notes that his success has come at the cost of putting other aspects of his life second, including her. However, she says it’s worth it for the children he has helped. This comment serves up an ironic twist of fate: their celebration is cut short when Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg), a former patient, breaks into their home and accuses Malcolm of misdiagnosing him and failing him. The psychotic, distraught, mostly naked teen suddenly shoots Malcolm and kills himself while Anna rushes to stop Malcolm’s bleeding.

Later we see a recovered Malcolm starting to work with another troubled little boy, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment). Grade-school-aged Cole has what seems to be delusions and is generally maladjusted and often bullied by other children for his odd and awkward behavior. Malcolm wants to focus on helping Cole as a way to atone for his perceived failure with Vincent Grey. In the process of visiting and interviewing Cole, we meet Cole’s stressed single mother, Lynn (Toni Collette), trying to support her emotionally troubled son. As the therapeutic meetings continue, we also see the world through Cole’s eyes and discover the first plot twist of the story and the explanation for Cole’s stress: as Cole himself explains it to Malcolm, “I see dead people.” Throughout the film, through Cole’s eyes, we see glimpses of half-burned people, hanging people, bloodied or poisoned people lurking around Cole and sometimes interacting with him. The sudden appearances are nicely creepy and provide quite a lot of jump scares. Later we find out why the child is haunted, and we find out a second important plot twist detail about the ghosts surrounding him.

In addition to his work with Cole, Malcolm also struggles with his relationship with his wife Anna. She seems to be distant from him and is generally melancholy to the point of ignoring him. Ironically, the child Cole, at the end of the film, is the one able to give psychologist Malcom advice on how to reconnect with his wife. That reconnection leads to the last big plot twist.

The most powerful thing about the film is Haley Joel Osment’s stunning child acting. His somber, melancholy, moody portrayal of a little haunted boy is quietly mesmerizing, poignant, and creepy. At times, his sweet, young face and soft voice are tragically endearing. At other times, he becomes angry and cruel, adding an extra layer of scariness and complexity to the story. Mostly, he is coldly and defeatedly accepting of his fate of suffering in a world of abusive children and disbelieving adults. The film has a lot of great (but likely unintentional) messaging about the importance of listening to and believing suffering children. The other excellent aspect of the film is Toni Collette. She delivers a great performance as Cole’s long-suffering mother, who is trying to protect her son from bullies while dealing with her own frustrations at his inexplicably odd behavior.

My least favorite aspect of the film was, ironically, Malcolm. My issue is not with Bruce Willis himself—he does a fine job playing basically the same type of character he normally plays (from Moonlighting to Die Hard). But the character of Malcolm is written in a way that is mildly annoying. His handling of the break-in is confusing. His decision to help Cole is ultimately a self-serving way to try to clear his conscience. But when things get tough with Cole, he decides to abandon the child. Ultimately it is the child, Cole, who helps Malcolm find peace, and Cole is most helped in the end by his final emotional exchange with his mother.

The Sixth Sense is my favorite kind of horror film, quietly cerebral and creepy. I’m surprised at how well it has held up over time. For a film that’s twenty-five years old, it still feels mostly timeless rather than dated (other than some passing comments on divorce and a surprising lack of diversity for a story set in Philadelphia). Despite knowing the big twist in advance, I still felt engaged with the main character, Cole. And for me, it’s all about character, even in a horror film.

Highlights:

· Oscar-worthy child acting
· Cerebral plot twists
· Survives the years of spoilers

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris—Multitasking, fiction-writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.