Review: Manchukuo 1987 by Yoshimi Red

Holding on and fighting on when your society is falling away

Mainstream Western alternate history fiction has a tendency to view Imperial Japan as a sidekick to the Nazis. This is doubtless because most writers in that tradition are Western and as such are more culturally comfortable writing about Germans rather than Japanese (and it’s not like the Italians get much devoted to them either). In Axis victory works, the Japanese are vaguely mentioned as ruling the Pacific most of the time when the action is set in America or Europe; the only major narrative alternate history about this that comes to me is Peter Tieryas’s trilogy beginning with The United States of Japan. That trilogy is very much influenced by anime, and has an accelerated pace of technological development to allow for mecha. Here, on the other hand, is what I believe to be the first instance of published alternate history involving a relatively realistic victorious Japan: Manchukuo 1987 by Yoshimi Red (published on Itch).

The novel is set somewhere between the fourth and fifth paintings of Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire. In this world, Japan has waged a number of costly, bloody, and ultimately pointless wars as it tries to hold onto its empire, which has only lasted as long as it has by virtue of never having to fight the Americans. Korea has already wrested its independence. Now, understanding that this last vestige of empire is now a sunk cost, the puppet state-cum-settler colony of Manchukuo is now about to be handed back to the Republic of China. But, of course, something goes wrong, and the wrong people end up in the wrong place.

This is a very grotty novel, and by virtue of its grottiness it refuses to engage in the common allohistorical trope of giving losers of a war in our world technology beyond our own. The novel is the story of a community and a way of life, that of Japanese settlers in Manchukuo, that is rapidly becoming superfluous. They are now encountering the fate which has encountered pied-noirs or Ulster Loyalists or Russians in the Baltic in our world: they love their imperial masters far more than their imperial masters love them back, and their identity is falling out from under them. What is the point in your way of life, when the object of your devotion openly views you as a drain? The Emperor becomes the butt of jokes and the segregation laws are now laxly enforced. Japanese youth now eat McDonald’s and pepper German slang liberally into their spoken Japanese. What is to be done, when their whole worldview is imploding?

This novel, in one sense, does something very common in mainstream alternate history, and it is in making a good chunk of its plot a detective novel. This only makes sense; the whole point of reading alternate history (and, let us be frank, the whole point of writing alternate history, as I can personally attest) is to poke around in another world, peeking in nooks and crannies for odd little details. On the novel’s Amazon page, Robert Harris’s Fatherland is openly cited as an influence; I can also detect more than a whiff of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which likewise involves a political order that is about to end for good. Our investigator, a Japanese settler, a soldier-turned-Kempeitai investigator with skeletons in his closet, is a bit more Xavier March than Meyer Landsman. He knows what he has done is wrong, and is ever-so-slightly beginning to realize that the whole basis of his life, indeed the whole basis of his identity as a Japanese settler in Manchuria, is based on something atrociously evil. This is coming into conflict with his own basic sense of decency, and it is that conflict that drives him deep into the underworld of Manchukuo, where he meets powers both Japanese and Chinese looking upon the ever-nearer handover with trepidation and fear.

But to call this simply a detective novel is to reduce a sprawling panorama of a society about to be liquidated to merely one of its several parts. It is a crime story, with a complex criminal underworld. There are the remnants of the military, who show up mostly as Kempeitai officers, who are dragging the embers of war with them wherever they go. There is the portrayal of a small teenage social circle whose life is upended by something shocking. There is the Chinese underclass that interacts with great trepidation with their Japanese overlords, and looks forward to the day that the Japanese will simply no longer be overlords. This novel takes the intimacy of a few characters, a few situations, and a whole little world slipping away and turns it into an epic of a time that never was. What makes this so compelling is that the novel’s characters feel both universal, with broadly equivalent situations throughout history, but also very of their world. Murakata could not exist in our world, even if he resembles a jaded French policeman in Algiers on the eve of Algerian independence; this novel is a very good demonstration of K. S. Villoso’s argument about how the best characterization and best worldbuilding in speculative fiction are deftly woven into one another.

Another thing that struck me about this novel is just how rich it is, on a literary level. There are plenty of little details that concatenate into something astounding, of course, but just on a prose level, it is striking. I expected this book to take me three days or so, but it ended up taking me four. I have a hard time pointing my finger at exactly what makes the prose like this (one user on a forum I’m on attributed the effect to run-on sentences that work surprisingly well), but I found this novel’s prose to be a rich, immersive experience, one that can’t be wolfed down too quickly. It has to be savored. It has to be taken a bit more slowly than other novels like it.

Thematically, one could say that the core of this novel is striving, or struggling, or enduring. Everyone here is looking towards the future with great anticipation, some positive, some negative. Criminals want to rule more, as does the Japanese ascendancy in Manchukuo, whereas the regular Chinese folk simply want to live free as the masters of their own destiny. Imperial Japan promised Asia a ‘co-prosperity sphere,’ but there are too many holes in the sphere that have, by the time of the setting of the novel, made themselves glaringly apparent. The Japanese, in particular, are facing the fact that all is vanity, that everything is temporary, that all empires fail. To quote a song about another historical empire: “what’s the point of it all/when you’re building a wall/and in front of your eyes it disappears?” The novel seems to make the case that there is a profound narcissism, a profound vanity, in trying to maintain an empire, a theme that is quite poignant as America lashes out to stave off obvious decline, as Russia turns Ukraine into a charnel house in a desperate attempt to remain relevant, and Israel razes Gaza to the ground and drags the Middle East into a conflagration in the search for an ever-more elusive permanent state of security (and we ought to remember what A. Dirk Moses said about ‘permanent security’).

I have not felt this way after reading an alternate history novel since I read Arturo Serrano’s novel To Climates Unknown back in 2021 (a series of events which culminated in Serrano becoming a good friend of mine, and me joining the staff of this illustrious blog). I have seen in Manchukuo 1987 what I want the genre of alternate history to be in the coming decades: a genre more human, more willing to see that history is not merely the province of stultifying, dreary, power-worshipping history books. I for one would look forward to a sequel to this book, and I certainly want to see more by Yoshimi Red.

Reference: Red, Yoshimi, Manchukuo 1987 (self-published, 2025).

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

Novella Project: Eynhallow by Tim McGregor

The rare sidequel that finds the right question to answer

It's very hard to come up with a derivative work that adds something valuable to the original. No one asked for Han Solo's backstory, for example. To craft an expansion of an existing narrative, you need a good nose for the questions the text left hanging in the air. And even then, not every question will matter to readers or be able to make a sufficient case for itself.

Author Tim McGregor has found a worthy void to fill and created a great story of his own to put in that space. As you may recall, in chapters 19 and 20 of Frankenstein, the terrified doctor takes refuge in the Orkney islands to build a female mate for his lonely creation. For some reason, Mary Shelley included very little details about the location and the rhythm of its everyday life. But it would have been interesting to know more. How did the inhabitants of the islands feel about that mysterious stranger who took residence among them? Did Victor make any friends there? Any enemies? McGregor's new novella Eynhallow offers a gradually enrapturing answer to these questions Shelley didn't see fit to explore.

By giving a true-sounding voice to the unwitting neighbors whom Victor put in danger without a second thought, Eynhallow sets itself up not so much as a reimagining of the original novel and more as a missing chapter, one that makes the reader reevaluate Victor's evidently more self-serving account of the events. Life in the Orkneys is portrayed as harsh and precarious, and McGregor uses the arrival of a rich visitor as an opportunity to pry deeper into Victor's personality. The version of the doctor we get in Eynhallow is an oblivious manipulator who doesn't pause to recognize the exploitative dynamic he establishes with the locals. Far from the lonely genius of Romantic lore, he's a parasite who consumes people's time, possessions, and dignity. And that's before we even address his gravedigging habit.

Narrated with impressive believability in the voice of a housewife exhausted by the daily demands of subsistence work, the secret creation of an artificial person is filtered through the referents of Orcadian culture, equal halves influenced by tales of Celtic fair folk and Norse giants. We know what Frankenstein's creature is, but here the reader learns what the creature strikes common people as. Let's recall that the doctor never shared the steps of his method with the world; for the rest of humankind, his creature would exist at the other end of an insalvable epistemic gap, describable only in the vocabulary of myth.

Moreover, Eynhallow gives a bone-chilling answer to an urgent question that wasn't even spoken in the original text: if the doctor was trying to build a reanimated woman from dead parts, whose parts did he take? Who was that woman in her community, and how does her loss affect the people who knew her? By making intimate acquaintance with the victim of such macabre arts, we get a deeper glimpse into the corrupted soul of the man capable of using them on her.

Here the book boasts another advantage of not having Victor as the narrator: freed from clinical jargon, the process of being transformed into a walking corpse is described with sincere panic by an unforewarned lay observer. If you think it's scary to watch Bride of Frankenstein, imagine being her.

This short but memorable book goes beyond finding a hole in the story and inventing what could fit in there: it grows into its own rotten limbs and increases the tension until it escapes in a howl of fury, despair and confusion. Long after Victor has left the Orkneys and forgotten about their people, the consequences of his scientific profanation continue to haunt the place. For powerful men, their irreparable depredation of a defenseless community may be a minor episode beneath mention, but for those who have to endure it, it's the defining event of their history. Eynhallow not only provides an entertaining addition to a classic of literature, but also honors the lives ruined by progress pursued irresponsibly.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

Reference: McGregor, Tim. Eynhallow [Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2024].

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

Review: Underland by Maxime J. Durand

A cosmic horror setting without cosmic horror characters is a brilliant combination

You may remember that in 2007, Brandon Sanderson wrote that magic in fantasy stories should have logical rules that make sense, and later, in 2012, N. K. Jemisin wrote that the whole point of fantasy stories is that magic exists beyond all logic and sense. With all due respect to the inimitable quadruple-Hugo-and-quadruple-Locus winner, on this specific topic of fantasy literature the esteemed Ms. Jemisin is totally wrong and Mr. Sanderson is totally right. Magic is more interesting (rather, it's only interesting) when it has rules. And one demonstration of the wonders that can result from a strictly systematic magic system is Maxime J. Durand's dark fantasy novel Underland.

Originally posted as a web serial, Underland follows the quest of multiclass summoner/necromancer Valdemar to find a new world for humankind. Centuries ago, an evil moon blocked out the sun, dooming the world to the terrors of the night. Suddenly overwhelmed by unimaginable monstrosities, civilization quickly collapsed, and humans migrated to underground caverns where they'd be safe from the cold and the ghosts that roam the dead surface. Once resettled, humans discovered the magical potential in their own blood, and used it to rebuild a semblance of the stability they had before. Today the human territories are under the absolute rule of Dark Lords, immensely powerful mages with debatably compatible agendas. But other creatures already lived in the Underland before humans arrived, and some aren't willing to be nice neighbors. To be fair, too often humans haven't shown the noblest behavior toward other sentient creatures. What looks like peace conceals numerous tensions that may snap at any time.

But the worries don't stop at the mundane. In their study of magic, some have unwisely contacted extraplanar powers that can't be trusted, much less controlled. Such spells have been declared illegal, but that hasn't stopped the proliferation of clandestine cults that seek an escape from life underground. One cult in particular involved an entire family, the Verneys, who were exterminated by an order of knights dedicated to keeping those mysterious entities from invading the living world. The only survivor from the Verney family was Valdemar, back then a child, who now secretly experiments with planar travel to find a more inhabitable place for humankind to move to. Suspected of trying to continue his criminal family's loathsome rituals, he's been put under arrest, but one of the Dark Lords has taken an interest in his abnormally strong magical skills and has offered him the tools to finish his research... at an unspecified price.

Web serials are usually friendly bedfellows with fanfiction, and Underland unapologetically bears the marks of its self-published origins. The novel is evidently shaped by Dungeons and Dragons: its setting brings to mind the classic Underdark expansions; it is populated by the usual suspects—dark elves, dark dwarves, troglodytes, golems, and liches; some of the extraplanar locations namedropped in the text resemble those used in the game; and the plot is punctuated by quests, side quests, and downtime training. The rest of the worldbuilding samples liberally from Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and the Lovecraftian corpus to depict a setting precariously enveloped by unsuspected powers that are just one wrong incantation away from crossing into material reality.

The prose in Underland is effective at setting a macabre tone. Consider this chapter opening:

He dreamed of rats that night. They crawled in a grotesque pit dug in black oily stone, squeaking and gnawing on the flesh of the innocent.

The author knew to keep the alluring aesthetic of cosmic horror without the worst ingredient of cosmic horror, which is its attitude. This is a world of gory witchcraft, unnatural transformations, painful rituals, obscene ruins, threatening dreams, widespread pestilence, boiling blood, imprisoned demons, moldy tunnels, abhorrent experiments, and costly secrets. And yet, the author is deliberate in his selection of focus characters. Even though the book's setting has all the recognizable signs of cosmic horror, its characters are very emphatically not cosmic horror characters. Even though nothing more than a thin veil separates visible reality from tenebrous chaos, the mages we meet in this novel don't adopt the attitude of helpless desperation that is so annoying in traditional cosmic horror. They don't believe that the hidden forces that control the universe are beyond human comprehension; they don't accept the eternal superiority of the ancient gods; they don't fear the mysterious; they don't tremble in awe at the unearthly. It's like walking through the tired grimness of Black Mirror and finding Ted Lasso living there. With a beautiful, admirable ethos of humanism, these characters approach the unknown and make it known. Instead of submitting to the supernatural, they study it, find its practical applications, deduce its laws. These mages may be gifted with fantastical powers, but their sharpest tool is human reason.

And here we arrive at the greatest pleasure of reading Underland: watching our protagonist use creatively the rules of magic to make up combinations of spells that are wholly surprising yet follow logically from the established facts. It's an irresistible type of nerdy catnip to inhabit the inner thoughts of a smart hero as he reasons his way out of impossible plights. Either with inventive solutions born from a desperate moment of improvisation, or with procedures coldly planned with meticulous care, Valdemar is an inspiring hero who understands the unlimited power of lifelong learning.

His impressive talents notwithstanding, Valdemar is far from a perfect person. The execution of his entire family has stunted his ability to form connections to other people, and in some scenes his unconventional moral intuitions come off as appallingly heartless. At the same time that he makes progress in the challenging techniques of advanced sorcery, he undergoes an equally strenous education in interpersonal contact. It has a moving effect to watch this formidable spellcaster, who is no stranger to commanding demons and transmuting his blood into an interdimensional portal, discover for the first time the simple joy of making true friends who support his dreams without judgment.

Although the text always highlights the moral questions where Valdemar's position has defects, it's worth noting that, as a whole, the society of Underland rests on some surprising assumptions that go against the grain of what fantasy literature has usually considered acceptable. In Underland, to seek immortality is not viewed as inherently evil. Multiple methods exist to cheat death, including soul receptacles, mechanical bodies, youth potions, and even undeath, which causes no scandal. It's actually taken for granted that everyone who can afford it will resort to one of these methods, and that it would be inexcusably foolish not to. This is another manifestation of the novel's underlying humanism: just as mystery is the enemy, and thus shall be overcome, death is the enemy, and shall likewise be overcome.

Underland is the first part of a duology that continues in Underland 2. The reader must be warned that this novel ends in a cliffhanger, but what a howling hell of a cliffhanger it is. Now, it may be argued against this choice of ending, and against the novel in its entirety, that the author relies too much on the fact that Lovecraft's œuvre has become public domain, and such an accusation wouldn't be without merit. The reader may also feel distracted by the repeated appearance of narrative conventions inherited from Dungeons and Dragons, which carry unwelcome baggage in the form of bioessentialism, territorial expansionism, and unquestioned monarchism.

Once these missteps are admitted, there remains plenty to enjoy in Underland. Its unusual treatment of the aesthetic of cosmic horror is a refreshing change of direction from the undue reverence that puny mortals are typically expected to profess for the darkness. Even in the deepest bowels of the earth, the undying flame of human reason lights the way.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

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

Reference: Durand, Maxime J. Underland [Podium Publishing, 2022].

Report from the AWP book fair: buy more indie SFF!

Last week, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs held its annual conference, filled, as usual, with discussion panels, author readings, dozens of offsite events, and a copious book fair described as "the nation's largest marketplace for independent literary presses and journals, creative writing programs, writing conferences and centers, and literary arts organizations."

This year's AWP conference was held in Seattle, and I had the good fortune of attending with my husband. The book fair was truly gigantic, with aisle after aisle of little-known publishers offering countless creations you'll rarely hear discussed in literary journalism. So I'm posting this article to help remedy that lack of visibility. I'm going to share with you what hidden gems caught my eye at the 2023 AWP book fair:

A Cage for Every Child by S. D. Chrostowska
(Sublunary Editions, 2021)

"Their bodies lingered, vanishing only when you, who glimpsed
them vivid and felt their breath inside your ear, vanished first."

And if That Mockingbird Don't Sing, edited by Hannah Grieco
(Alternating Current Press, 2022)

"My daughter is two. She still giggles when she sees
her reflection. She has not yet seen her ghost."

As if Fire Could Hide Us by Melanie Rae Thon
(The University of Alabama Press, 2023)

"And they were young again, it's true,
transformed by the plasma of humans."

At the Edge of the Woods by Masatsugu Ono,
translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
(Two Lines Press, 2022)

"The trees would pat each other familiarly on the shoulders and
back and sometimes wriggle their hips as they hurried on ahead."

Buffalo Is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowel
(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022)

"She realized she could not move, not even to blink, helplessly
watching that black figure cross the lake at an impossible speed."

Dance of the Returned by Devon A. Mihesuah
(The University of Arizona Press, 2022)

"He was born repeatedly, and the memories of innumerable ancestors
flashed through his mind, all complex and too indistinct to recall."

Dioramas by Blair Austin
(Dzanc Books, 2023)

"Millions and millions of years pass in the outside
world, but the diorama appears unchanged."

Erase and Rewind by Meghan Bell
(Book*hug Press, 2021)

"Louisa discovered she could reverse time on a dim suburban
street, thirty-eight minutes after leaving Nick's house."

Everyday, Monsters by C. M. Chapman and Larry D. Thacker
(Unsolicited Press, 2021)

"Down the way was what was left of a woman, still stuck in her vehicle, barely
clawing at the windows and doors, baking for days, decomposing in motion."

God Isn't Here Today by Francine Cunningham
(Invisible Publishing, 2022)

"Midday light poured in through the large windows.
God had a corner office. Small, though. And dusty."

Infinity Ends Soon by Joseph Avski,
translated by Mark McGraw
(Mouthfeel Press, 2023)

"Sometimes memory is a shallow grave, sometimes a
black abyss where all the forms of the universe are hidden."

Keeping Time by Thomas Legendre
(Acre Books, 2020)

"If I make a circle it doesn't matter where I start, so
let's begin with Aaron appearing from the future."

Loving Monsters by Laura Eppinger
(Alternating Current Press, 2021)

"It's not easy being the kind of ghost who haunts a house decorated
out of an IKEA catalog, but that doesn't mean I'm giving up."

One Person Away from You by Andrew Bertaina
(Moon City Press, 2021)

"I told Sally about the earth spinning in a different direction today.
I asked her if she had noticed the change in the quality of light."

Only and Ever This by J. A. Tyler
(Dzanc Books, 2023)

"We dream, too, of escaping before Our Mother
goes transparent, before she becomes a ghost."

Ring by André Alexis
(Coach House Books, 2021)

"All had passed the ring on to their daughters.
But not all had used the three wishes."

Ship of Fates by Caitlin Chung
(Lanternfish Press, 2019)

"The gold was carried in the belly of a whale that swam for
seven days and seven nights while Mei rode on its back."

Split Aces by M. L. Schepps
(Korza Books, 2022)

"I stared at JD while JD stared right back at me. I felt a reflexive
urge to look away but instead I held the reflection of my other self."

Temporary by Hilary Leichter
(Coffee House Press, 2020)

"My job was to open the doors, then close them, every forty
minutes, every day, all day long, until otherwise notified."

The Anchored World by Jasmine Sawers
(Rose Metal Press, 2022)

"I kept the Moon in water and moisturizer
and conversation. The Earth began to suffer."

The Enhancers by Anne K. Yoder
(Meekling Press, 2022)

"Pomegranate minds were more common, with ideas packed together side
by side then sealed off, like apartment tenants, like networked computers."

The Man with Wolves for Hands by Juan Eugenio Ramirez
(Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2022)

"The left wolf sniffs at the trunk above his head. The right wolf sleeps
across his lap, occasionally growls, probably dreaming wolfy dreams."

This Side of the Divide, edited by Danilo John Thomas
(Baobab Press, 2023)

"The bird's stomach would be filled for another day. But it refused to
speak again until it had taken a gooey dump at the foot of my mailbox."

Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai
(Jaded Ibis Press, 2022)

"Perhaps there was a way, I questioned, that I could use a laser to
sculpt an embryo out of material in ways we had never considered before."

What Makes You Think You're Awake? by Maegan Poland
(Blair, 2021)

"Once the knob clicked tightly into the frame, it was as though she had
pushed pause on the outside world and the scene beyond the window."

To be honest, I haven't yet begun reading the books I bought at the conference, so instead of a review, this is an invitation. The indie market is the asthenospheric convection cell that periodically renews the felsic crust of literature via decompression melting. Or something. Be more curious about indie books, is what I'm saying.

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

Microreview: Endurance by Elaine Burnes

Imagine Star Trek Voyager, but done right

In a future solar system, subject to the same greedy competition that has always plagued newly explored territories, the equivalent of a luxury cruise is a sightseeing trip around the planets. One company involved in private space travel, Omara Tours, has arranged a special itinerary to take advantage of a rare alignment of Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Its cruise ship Endurance, captained by veteran explorer Lyn Randall, is approaching the moon Enceladus when a mysterious space anomaly instantly transports it and a handful of nearby ships 4 light-years away, to the Rigil Kentaurus system. There's no hint as to what caused the jump, there's no one nearby who can help, and it would take thousands of years to try to return to Earth. What comes next is trying to survive in the middle of nowhere.

Elaine Burnes's novel Endurance wears its Star Trek influences on its sleeve, most notably in the social interactions within the spaceship, but the setting of the story is all its own. Earth is still recovering from a catastrophic war plus environmental collapse that led to a new start from scratch in the form of a feminist revolution. Spaceships have artificial gravity, matter recycling, and talking computers, but there aren't teleporters or warp drives or alien civilizations. So the novel sort of feels like it lives in Star Trek, but only as far as the worldbuilding needs to draw from it. While openly inspired by Star Trek, it's far from derivative.

There isn't a conventional antagonist here. The core conflict isn't between the protagonist and an enemy, but between the protagonist and the harshness of the universe. To be sure, Captain Randall has numerous inner demons, but instead of defining her, they organically inform the way she makes hard decisions for the safety of the people under her responsibility. Much of the plot resembles those classic pulp stories where smart engineers had to solve a technical challenge to save the day. Unlike most pulp adventures, Endurance keeps a finger on the pulse of human desires and fears. The point of figuring out the mystery isn't just the intellectual satisfaction; the point is always the characters' reaction to being stranded and helpless in the void. Without losing sight of the nerdy intricacies of interstellar jumping, Endurance gives primacy to its character's inner lives and relationships.

Although enough loose ends are left for an implied sequel, Endurance satisfies on its own. From among the hundreds of already existing novels about travelers lost in space, this one achieves the right mix of physics and humanism to build a well-rounded story. The various everyday complications of space survival are enhanced by the context of personal histories, unresolved regrets, and lingering suspicions that prevent this seemingly simple premise from ever getting boring. As Burnes's first foray into science fiction, Endurance proves unmissable.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

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

Reference: Burnes, Elaine. Endurance [Mindancer Press, 2022].

A look back at Ancestry & Culture, an Alternative to Race in 5e

OneD&D still doesn't know how to fix the game's long-standing racism problem, but an independent publisher already offered a solution two years ago

Must all elves know how to shoot bows? Must all dwarves be talented at masonry? Must all halfings have a knack for sneaking where they're not supposed to?

All these are more learned than inherited traits, yet Dungeons & Dragons has consistently failed to acknowledge the difference. It was Tolkien who first popularized the image of elves as ethereal paragons of beauty and orcs as savages basically made of evil, but in the decades since Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons has reinforced and cemented that bioessentialist paradigm in the popular consciousness.

The current owner of the D&D brand, Wizards of the Coast, has been taking tiny steps toward removing the problematic implications of bioessentialist descriptions of fantasy creatures. Last year, errata files were published that removed default moral alignments from playable characters and some monsters. This change aims to do away with the decades-long trope that certain populations of intelligent beings are innately evil. Of course, attributing one single moral stance to an entire people is not only lazy storytelling, but also an extremely dangerous mindset with real historical consequences. So, for example, sending the heroes to raid an orc encampment just because they're orcs and they must be killed on sight is no longer an acceptable plot point. It's bad enough that Tolkien reinvented orcs as the incarnation of a plethora of Orientalist clichés; we don't need to add on top of it the idea that there's a group of people whom it's always OK to kill.

However, this update to the rules did little to correct the fundamental problem, which is linking behavior to lineage. In the Fifth Edition Player's Handbook, the description of elves still says they "love nature and magic, art and artistry, music and poetry, and the good things of the world," while halflings "are easily moved to pity and hate to see any living thing suffer," and half-orcs "are not evil by nature, but evil does lurk within them." You'd think these behaviors must have a cultural origin, which would make them contingent and malleable, but the manual treats them as fixed elements of their respective heritages.

In a further attempt to separate characters' cultural and biological traits, Wizards of the Coast has recently released playtest material for an overhaul of the Fifth Edition rules. This new project, called OneD&D, consists so far in a revision of the steps for character creation. The proposed update would take into account a character's background in addition to their ancestry (an approach that competitor game Pathfinder has been using since 2019). For example, a character with the Cleric class and the Acolyte background would begin play with different skills and proficiencies compared to another Cleric with the Pilgrim background.

While this system is a move in the right direction, it's definitely not enough, and in some respects it goes backwards. The OneD&D playtest links languages to backgrounds, resulting in absurd assumptions such as all characters with the Farmer background speaking Halfling, or all Hermits speaking Sylvan. It still carries heavy bioessentialist baggage to designate Draconic as the language of nobility or Goblin as the language of warfare. And the core ancestries of the game keep much of the original problem: dwarves are still assumed to be trained in forge tools (presumably from birth), gnomes instinctively know how to magically create a tiny machine, and halflings are born with Stealth proficiency. And when it comes to characters of mixed heritage, the suggested mechanics make no sense, and the text reaches a degree of exoticization you'd expect from a 1980s game.

D&D has a lot of catching up to do. Strangely, it still uses the term "race" to refer to Tolkien's canonical humanoid species. Replacing "race" with literally any other descriptor should be the very first step to keep D&D relevant to future generations of players, and the immediate next step should be to pay attention to the inexcusable missteps that keep occurring and keep damaging the good faith the game has cultivated.

This discussion is by no means new, and fans have been thinking of alternatives faster than Wizards of the Coast can make up its mind. In 2020, independent publisher Arcanist Press saw the problem with D&D "races" and launched an unofficial supplement: Ancestry & Culture, which contains a clearer, more practical set of rules for character creation. The approach is, in a nutshell, what it says in the book's title: each character is born from a certain lineage and is raised in a certain culture, and the two can be freely chosen in any combination. Biological traits are limited to lifespan, size, speed, senses, monstrous body parts, and when aplicable, physical resistance to damage. Cultural traits refer to everything that comes from education and training: languages, weapon proficiencies, ability score increases, and starting cantrips. So, if you want, you can have an elf raised by tieflings, a dragonborn raised by humans, an orc raised by gnomes, and so on. Notably (and rightly), alignment is neither an inherited nor a learned trait. Alignment is a strictly individual matter, unrelated to whichever society your character comes from.

Furthermore, Ancestry & Culture contains remarkably sensible (and sensitive) rules for creating characters born with mixed lineage and/or raised in a multicultural environment. If you've ever wanted to roleplay the child of a halfling and an orc who grew up near a dwarf-gnome border, this supplement is exactly what you need. For an even more granular method of character creation, there's an appendix for you to build your own combination of cultural traits. As unofficial material, it only includes the ancestries enumerated in the Open Gaming License, but, anticipating the players' understandable wish to adapt other ancestries to this system, the author explains how to generalize the application of these principles.

The standard of quality of this supplement received the highest endorsement when it won two ENNIE awards: Best Electronic Book and Best Supplement, in addition to a nomination for Product of the Year. Since the publication of Ancestry & Culture, Arcanist Press has gone on to launch half a dozen other similar rulesets, with a total of over a hundred alternative ancestries to choose from. As a final treat, Ancestry & Culture includes two playable adventures, one centered on protecting a multicultural city, and one about convincing various peoples to cooperate.

So we don't need to wait for Wizards of the Coast to learn its lesson. We're living in the middle of an explosion of creativity in the roleplaying community, and it's evident that players and independent creators have moved on from the outdated mindset the game was created with.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10.

Bonuses: +1 for beautiful character illustrations that show precisely how the various combinations of bloodline and upbringing can produce wonderfully unique stories.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

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

Reference: Marshall, Gwendolyn. Ancestry & Culture: an Alternative to Race in 5e [Arcanist Press, 2020].

Microreview [book]: Gathering by Brian G. Turner

An empath, thief, martial artist, barbarian, blacksmith, cleric and time traveler walk into a bar...

I've been pretty checked out of second-world fantasy lately. I'm continuing with the series that I've started, but have felt little urge to start new ones. This happens periodically; fantasy is incredibly predictable, even for genre, and typically requires a massive page commitment to see a story through to the conclusion. So the idea of embarking on another 500,000 word quest to another restoration of the status quo is just...not that appealing right now. In all honestly, it's been a couple years since I was really excited about a new series.

That changed last November, when Brian G. Turner contacted me about reviewing his self-published debut novel, the first in his Chronicles of Empire series. I've known Turner for some time, as he is the proprietor of SFFChronicles and I have been a part of that community. Over the years the site has evolved the functionality of an online writers' workshop for its users, many of whom are published or aspiring authors. In that capacity, I have observed Turner posting sections of his work-in-progress, engaging in conversations on the craft of writing and narration, and posing big questions about fantasy tropes and conventions, good and bad. Knowing first-hand how deeply Turner has thought about this project, I was quite keen to see how the finished product turned out.

What I found is a highly enjoyable but somewhat uneven book--a roughhewn tale that could use some polish, but which also breaks the narrative mold in ways that feel fresh and exciting. As such, you could say that Gathering encapsulates both the promise and problematics of self-publishing. 

Gathering is the story of a motley group of companions gathered by the empath Jerine, who is contracted by Councilor Amberlin of Corianth (i.e. the Imperial capital) to investigate odd comings and goings in the city. In that capacity, Jerine's band stumbles upon warehouses packed with mysterious explosives. This, in turn, illuminates a series of interlocking conspiracies: to return an exiled religious figure, to topple the Empire and to alter the future by meddling in past (i.e. present) events. 

The time travel story marks Gathering, like Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, as an SF/fantasy mashup--a story that adopts the superficial guise of fantasy, but in which everything can be explained by some form of science or technology. The device works well, and feels natural to the world Turner has created.

Gathering is also notable for tying an epic story to the narrow scope and slow pace more commonly associated with sword & sorcery. In fact, Gathering is even narrower in scope, slower in pace and more keenly character-focused than most S&S. All of the companions--empath Jerine, her martial artist sister Tillerine, thief Sirath, barbarian Ulric, blacksmith Dalatos, cleric Erin and futureman Ezekiel--get their own perspective chapters, and by the end of the book we know them quite well. This, by itself, is not remarkable; but the fact that so little time elapses during the first third of the book, which is almost entirely set in an inn over the course of 24 hours, is quite an abrupt change from genre norms. Some might be turned off by this idea, but to me it was intriguingly different. Plus it's a fairly common approach in other genres and media, so why not fantasy?

Turner also plays with expectations for these characters. Ulric, the barbarian, hates violence. Dalathos, the rough-hewn blacksmith, is commonly (one might say bizarrely) mistaken for an aristocrat.* Sirath and Jerine, who at first seem like polar opposites on the scale of morality and ethics, develop an unexpectedly tender relationship that feels intuitive. And in general, all the companions are sympathetic and relatable. By the end of the book, I was deeply invested in what happens to them.

All of this gives Gathering a distinctive feel that contrasts with the standard form of traditionally-published fantasy. I suspect that, because of this, Gathering would have struggled to get past the gatekeepers at most literary agencies and imprints. But by breaking with genre conventions on how narrative is structured, Gathering reminded me that fantasy can still be surprising and unpredictable. This is the promise of self-publishing, and a major reason why it has caught on with readers.

There are other notable aspects of Gathering. The action scenes are all very well done, capturing the surreal confusion of violent events in vivid color. And the world of Gathering is well rendered. I particularly liked the political map of Corianth. It is ostensibly ruled by an Emperor, but in reality there is a carefully maintained but inherently unstable balance between several competing factions, each with their own means of violence.

Nevertheless, Gathering still feels like it would have benefitted from the longer and more systematized editorial process that traditional publishing provides. There are too many changes of perspective in the first third of the book, making it difficult to keep all the characters straight and inhibiting flow. Among the companions, I thought that the Sirath, Tillerine and Ezekiel chapters were strongest, and the Erin and Ulric chapters weakest. Actually, I could have done without the Erin chapters altogether, as I found they distracted from the main plot points; more than once I wondered if they might have worked better if integrated into other characters' perspective chapters.

There are also maybe 5 or 6 non-companion characters who get their own perspective chapters, but really only Rodrigan and Molric (i.e. the big bads) are essential. There's nothing wrong with the others, per se--some, standing on their own, are quite good. It's just that the sheer number of perspective characters created some reading fatigue issues for me. I would have preferred pruning the number by about a quarter to a third.

Similarly, despite the potential described above, the political intrigue storyline never quite gelled for me, and would have benefitted from more exposition of the allegiances and alliances, which are vital to understanding the implications of events, but often feel obscure to the reader. And there are several plot twists, related to this storyline, that feel unintuitive and out of the blue given what has been revealed. As such, this is another area where Gathering could have benefitted from structural simplification, as well as better pacing in terms of how information is delivered to the reader.
    

In the end, though, none of this detracted from my enjoyment of Gathering. It's a really fun book that feels fresh in many ways, and features great characters in a compelling world. And it passes the ultimate test for the opener in a fantasy novel: were it already available, I would have immediately started the sequel!

*This does strain believability at times, like when actual aristocrats fall for the ruse. But mostly it works, and sets up some neat plot points.


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1 for unusual but effective pacing; +1 for great, likable characters

Penalties: -1 for ...but there are too many of them with perspective chapters; -1 for ...and the pacing doesn't work as well on the political intrigue storyline as elsewhere.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10. "An enjoyable experience."

***

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

Reference: Turner, Brian G. Gathering [Brite, 2016]

Our scoring system explained. 

AiIP: Let's Talk

Grab a seat. We need to talk. It's about something I usually avoid talking about, for a variety of reasons. But it's something that should be addressed, so we're going to talk about it.

First, though, story time. This is a third hand story, so take it with appropriate grains of salt and/or the spice of your choice.

Back before 3024AD came out, I was talking to a co-worker at that time, telling him about my goals. He related the story of a relative who wrote a book, and was offered a book deal with a solid five-figure advance- on the condition that the protagonist was male- not female, as she had written. She refused, and her book remains unpublished.

For a lot of people, for a five-figure advance, they would change their main character to a cucumber. Hell, if you've sent off fifty or sixty queries, you might do it for a whole lot less than that.

There is a lot to be said about the cons of self-publishing- I've covered a ton here, and on ye olde Deanfortythree(e) blog- editing issues, cover art, overall stories- but there are some definite pros, and this is one of them.

Hear Cap's immortal line "I'm always picking up after myself!"

Because- for whatever reason- there is a fantastic lack of diversity in publishing. The optimist in me (he's in there, I promise) wants to think this is unintentional, just coincidence, but... come on. People will talk about how we should read more diverse authors (correctly), but walk into a bookstore and grab one hundred random books. How many are written by non-straight-white-men? Twenty? Maybe forty if you grabbed a bunch from the romance section? The problem lies higher up than the reader, or the bookstore. It lies with publishers who select what gets published, what gets marketed and how much. The ones who decide that, no, that protagonist just won't sell.

But if you're publishing your own work (or working with a smaller press), you don't answer to those people. You answer to yourself, and to your readers. You can write what-who-ever the hell you want.

Because, here's the thing: I'm a straight(ish) white dude. I'm kind of (totally) in the majority here. But I can't change that, and I'm not going to stop writing, either, so what can I do? The same thing anyone can- write something. Write something diverse, something other than the same thing that's been written for a looooong ass time.

I'm probably not perfect at this, but I doubt there's a perfect formula at all. Stories and books will lose a lot if all you worry about if the literary equivalent of affirmative action. But stories will gain much more if authors take a few moments and make their characters more diverse. It will make for richer backgrounds, deeper characters and better books.

And no one will tell you to change it.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office
tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.

BLOGTABLE: Impending Doom!

Welcome to this month's Blogtable! I'm Dean E.S. Richard, and I will be your host this month. For those of you who may not know me, I write (primarily) science fiction, including the 3024AD Short Stories and the short story 'Far', which you can read for free this week over at QuarterReads. I also love to drink and cook, and even venture outside to snowboard or kayak. Primarily, I am obnoxious on Twitter. But enough about me. Time to meet your respondents:

Respondent the First: SEAN E. WILLIAMS is the NEW YORK TIMES best selling writer of FAIREST: THE RETURN OF THE MAHARAJA for Vertigo, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES and SENSATION COMICS for DC Comics, ARTFUL DAGGERS for Monkeybrain Comics and IDW Publishing, and more. He co-founded the comics publishing company Comicker LLC, which launched with its Comicker Digital label in 2015. You can find him at seanewilliams.com, or on Twitter at @sean_e_williams. Comicker Digital can be found at ComickerDigital.com, or on Twitter at @ComickerLLC.

Respondent the Second: E. Catherine Tobler's fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and SciFiction.  She was a Sturgeon Award nominee in 2013, and is currently senior editor at Shimmer Magazine. Her first novel, Rings of Anubis, is now available. For more visit www.ecatherine.com. Buy her book here.

Respondent the Third: Scott Whitmore Scott is an avid reader, and his most excellent review blog can be found here. He is just past what some may consider the midpoint of life (51 53), but likes to think he is still open-minded and (at least) partially aware of what’s going on in the world of pop culture. He has also written two three novels, his most recent being Green Zulu Five One. (ed: Update your blog bio, Scott)

In Which Dean Ponders the IMPENDING DOOM of publishing!

Prompt: Nearly any commentary on publishing these days reads like a 1950's science fiction movie poster. AMAZON! INDIE PRESS! INTERNET OUTRAGE! LACK OF DIVERSITY! Lost in that mess, it seems, is the fact that people actually read a lot. It's fairly safe to assume people will keep doing so. But in what fashion? Is there a way all the present options can coexist?

Those questions come with myriad options, so let's attempt to narrow them down for the purposes of this post:

1. With the massive variety of reading options out there (ebook stores, WattPad and the like, etc), is there a way to ensure the average reader will get a quality product, or does the medium benefit from a near-total lack of gatekeepers?

2. How, in said mess of options, can authors effectively reach and build an audience for their works?

To our respondents!

Sean: The lack of gatekeepers is a huge benefit in a lot of ways, as it allows for series that might not exist otherwise to reach the marketplace. For example, there's a large call for more diversity in YA fiction (well, in every storytelling medium), but publishers are slow to change their ways, partly because they don't know how well they'll sell, but also because they don't know how to market diverse titles.  I've seen this firsthand as a creator.  Luckily, the tide is starting to turn, like with a majority of the top-selling titles in Marvel's Buy-One-Get-One sale at comiXology being female-led series.  Things are getting better, and having an open marketplace showed that that was possible, and that it was needed.

As far as the quality question goes, readers know what they can expect quality-wise from larger publishers, such as DC or IDW.  It's something we're going for at Comicker as well.  But regardless of if it's self-published or published by the Big 2, user reviews are what people look to nowadays - either in comments, ratings, or via social media. If something's bad, people will let other people know.  It's the whole Yelp phenomenon - people will post a review if they don't like something, but they won't necessarily if they DO like it.  That's why I personally aim to only make recommendations via social media - there's so much negativity out there, I'd rather lift up the quality books than try to cut down books I don't enjoy as much.

One of the reasons I co-founded Comicker, and one of the reasons we launched with our Comicker Digital label, is because digital offers the biggest audience, and one that's growing. There are huge swaths of this country (and the world, in fact) that don't have a good comic shop or book store within driving distance, but tablets are becoming commonplace.  There's no shortage of readers out there, and from what I can see, there's no shortage of quality creators either.  There's room for everyone.

E. Catherine: "Quality product" can be defined in many ways, of course--what one reader finds to be quality, another may not. I would point anyone toward recent Hugo Award controversies as evidence of recent battles over quality, what does and does not "deserve" to have a place at the table. What one editor does not care for will find a home with another; the same is true of readers. What one person loves, another will loathe.

If gate-keepers are defined as editors and publishers, I don't think those are going to vanish any time soon, even among those who choose to self-publish. Certainly there are authors who won't bother, wanting to get their work into the market as soon as possible, but fortunately we live in an age of being able to read a sample before we purchase (oh gosh, we can do that in bookstores, too!), so readers can still determine if a work meets their own definition of quality before purchase.

If I knew the answer to the second question, about authors building and reaching an audience, I would surely be rich by now. I think audience attention is divided now more than ever--there's so much of everything. Video games and TV shows and movies and comics and tabletop games and apps and music. When everything and everyone is striving to be on top of the pile and have their voice be the loudest, it's overwhelming. I think authors have to trust that they will find their audience even if it takes a while. Love what you do, because that will come through in how you promote and speak of it to others.

Scott: I don’t think it is possible to *guarantee* readers get a quality product. First off, everyone has their own opinion on what constitutes quality. I dislike typos, but honestly if I’m paying $1-3 for an Indie author eBook I’m a lot more tolerant than I would be of a traditionally published eBook costing $10-15. As long as the story is good, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the Indie writer because I know what it’s like facing the choice of hiring an editor or paying your mortgage. (PS: I find typos in Trad Pub books all the time, too.)

The wide-open nature of the field these days certainly favors Indie writers. Anyone with a computer and a little knowledge can publish a book (eBook or paperback) and sell it on the web. Anyone lacking the computer and/or knowledge can hire someone with those things to publish a book for them. I’ve helped a couple people do it for free. Personally, I like that it has become easy for people to express themselves creatively.

Now, for readers this is a Good News/Not So Good News situation. There are many, many more books to choose from, some exploring topics previously ignored by Trad Pub (which usually focuses on playing it safe over being inventive) and this is Good. But having so many options can be overwhelming, paralyzing readers who just want to easily find a good book, and that is Not Good. Generally Indie books are much less expensive and that is Good. Stories that are poorly written or technical deficient, and there will be some (many?), are Not Good.

Now may be a good spot to discuss reviews. Ideally, reviews should help readers and writers equally, steering consumers to works they are likely to enjoy while letting substandard authors know they need to work harder. Unfortunately, we all know there is a lot of “gaming the system.” Recently, I’ve seen a surge in the number of websites offering glowing reviews for a fee, and I have been contacted a couple times by writers suggesting a “5-star swap” in which I praise their book and they praise mine. There are even books on how to set up “review circles” and create false personas for writing multiple reviews of the same book. Looking past these ethical lapses, even honest reviews from readers can be misleading and/or useless. My favorite is a one-star review of a novella featuring space ships on the cover: “Too much sci-fi.” One may wonder why the reviewer bought the book in the first place but the bottom line is the review tells me nothing about whether the book is worth my money. 

As to the second point, if I knew, I’d be driving a much sexier car than my 2007 Dodge (Ed: Yeah, right).

Ok, seriously, I think it starts with the writing. The cliché is “the cream rises to the top.” Your story must be compelling, inventive, exciting, mind-blowing, engaging, cool — pick an adjective. What comes next is a bit of a “chicken or the egg” deal. When the story is good enough, you’re going to get readers who will want to tell someone they know about it, and maybe write a positive, useful review, too. But to create that lovely word of mouth you’ve first got to get the story in front as many mouths (and eyes) as possible. Social media blitzes, free giveaways, contests, and targeted adverts are all options. But remember how egalitarian the whole deal is these days? Yeah, everyone else is doing the same things. How to stand out in such a crowded field? I just don’t know (see above re: my Dodge).

AiIP Microreview: Sing Me Your Scars, Damien Angelica Walters

Super quick personal note: I will be at Emerald City ComiCon next weekend. I am not at a table, though I will be hanging out with Adam P Knave & DJ Kirkbride, who make the Amelia Cole comics (which you should be checking out anyway) at A-17/18. I will have 3024AD goodies and maybe even a copy or two to give away if you ask nicely. Poke my on the twitter dot com if you'll be there!

Sing Me Your Scars, Damien Angelica Walters

I struggled for a while to find the write words to summarize this book. It is a collection of short stories, some of which were published previously, others are new to this collection. I have read several of them before, and maybe that's why it's hard to put it in a box or describe a collection such as this succinctly.

But, simply put, Damien writes horror. Now, not every story in here is strictly horror. Perhaps, by standard definition none of them are. The goriest story, Girl, With Coin is the least revolting- and the most touching.

And that is why I say she writes the most perfect horror you will ever read. Not because it is shocking (though saying it's not would also be untrue), but reading it feels like being the victim in a horror movie- you can't bring yourself to look away, even as a scene is painted in front of you of physical gore and emotional carnage, painted with a brush of beautiful prose that contrasts the sadness of the stories.

The Math

9/10 - very high quality/standout in its category (rating system HERE)

 I have nothing to give in the way of bonuses or penalties, even though that is generally the funnest part of reviewing stuff here. On the whole, it is an amazing collection of amazing short stories. They are gripping and vivid from start to finish.

In fact, the only reason this collection doesn't receive a 10 is that nothing does. This is a collection everyone should read, and is definitive of everything short fiction can and should be.

-DESR

Dean is the author of 3024AD and the ongoing SciFi Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, The Venturess. He is an engineer, and geek about many things. He lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. You can listen to him ramble on Twitter and muse on his blog.