WE RANK 'EM: Villagers from Untitled Goose Game (House House)

If you've been following the internet at all recently, it will have been hard to escape the meteoric rise of a certain set of memes and crossovers, involving a flatly rendered goose staring dead-eyed out at the viewer, ready to cause problems on purpose. This is, of course, the doing of Untitled Goose Game, the low-stakes sadism simulator in which you take the role of a horrible goose terrorising the residents of an otherwise idyllic English village. Its a game that delivers exactly what it promises in a deeply satisfying way, and which very much deserves the place in cultural consciousness which it is noisily honking its way into.

Having sunk a significant amount of time into the goose uprising - learning the ways of the village, its routines, and what happens to all the items I've been throwing down the well - I have decided, rather than undertaking a review, to resurrect a hallowed Nerds of a Feather institution: the We Rank 'Em post. I now bring my extensive goose game expertise to bear on the objective ranking of the villagers of goose game, from my omniscient perspective as the objective arbiter of their destinies. This ranking has been cross checked using the most advanced scientific principles available to game character analysts today, and was also compiled while I was hungry and therefore very motivated to put down the most straightforward, no-nonsense reasoning I could so as to get on with the more important business of reheating leftover noodles and maybe making a mug cake. With these factors in mind, I present to you: the definitive ranking of untitled goose game villagers.

Honourable mention/God Tier: The Ladies at the Pub

Alone among the villagers of Untitled Goose Game, this pair of endlessly chatting ladies resist any sort of inconveniencing over my horrible goose antics - indeed, they seem more charmed than anything about my ability to honk and flap on command (all for the purpose of flower thievery, of course). Why? I feel there is some deep, complex relationship here; a hard-won truce or pact, perhaps, which the franchise has barely begun to scratch the surface of. I sincerely hope this is something that gets explored via the inevitable proliferation of Untitled Goose fanfiction. For now, the ladies must remain the most enigmatic of the Goose Game's human cast, and must sit outside the powers of ranking in a God Tier category all of their own.

6: The Publican and her Husband

Look, I do a rail commute across London most weekdays, and I get quite enough unwanted jostling from that real life adventure - so this pair of uptight small business owners, with their constant desire to bodily force me out of their space, don't endear themselves to me. Plus, they're landlords, meaning they are clearly even more opposed than the rest of the village to my anarchist anti-property agenda, and it shows - they'd rather have me smash all their pint glasses on the floor rather than accept the impermanent nature of possession and the inevitability of me stealing them all and making everyone drink beer straight from the barrel. The fact that they have spent some of their ill-gotten capitalist gains on creating an actual printed metal "no geese allowed" sign for their property, rather than the endearingly ineffective handmade signs of the rest of the village, cements their place at the very bottom of the village index (aside from the other people I haven't even bothered to rank).

5: The Shopkeeper

Like the Publicans, the Shopkeeper's excessive capitalist agenda and overzealous enforcement of her right to exclusive use of shop land are traits that get tiring quickly, and which regularly interfere with the activities of me, a goose, just trying to go about my totally normal daily activities. She does get some extra points however, for her calculated indifference to the suffering of the kid wandering around outside her stall due to his recurring goose troubles (more on those later), and for her penchant for profiting off the items I bring to her stall by making their "owners" spend money on them. Her support to the goose agenda may just be an unwitting side effect of her own personal awfulness, but at least it does sometimes work in my goosely favour. The Shopkeeper is also the villager most likely to actually be called Karen.

4: The Tidy Neighbour

The Tidy Neighbour likes cricket, and tea, and his newspaper, and does not like having anything in his garden unless he has carefully curated it to match one of those three interests. Everything else - even the items which I might carefully present to try and further one of those interests, like a delightful lightly-used thermos - gets tossed over the fence without any regard for my effort in bringing it to him. Yes, sometimes this is useful, like when I want to fill up the house two doors down with garden implements and then watch them all get thrown out the front door in a giant wood-and-metal tangle. But often it hurts my delicate goose feelings. when I go to such great lengths to bring him delicacies from across the village which just get thoughtlessly wanged onto the messy neighbour's  patio. Other than this relentless thoughtlessness, there is not much to say about the tidy neighbour. He's boring. His pond is boring. His garden is boring. Yawn. Next.

3. The Wimpy Kid

Is this the only child in the village? Is he reduced to weakly kicking around a football by himself on the tarmac because there's nobody else to play with him, or is there some super fun adventure playground in another part of the village that our poor weedy boy has been kicked out from? Either way, the Wimp presents the most sadistic avenues for goose mischief, which generally take the form of making him run into things, stealing his glasses and forcing him to follow the sound of pattering goose feet across the village in the vain hope of retrieving them, and untying his shoelaces then honking until he trips in a puddle. If the pub ladies are characters indicative of a deep, barely explored backstory to Goose Game's relationships, the Wimpy Kid is the character on whom the sequel potential clearly rests: an endlessly tormented child, falling for the same tricks ad nauseum, whose future disposition is inevitably going to be shaped by my actions in this game. Until he reaches that potential, however, wimpy kid must sit in the middle of these rankings.

2 The Gardener

Bring people gifts to unlock human/goose romance options

As my sole interlocutor for the first part of the game, I feel a special affinity for the gardener and the rivalry we play out through our different conceptions of what his garden should look like. He thinks the trowel should live on the chair; I think it should live in the pond. He insists the carrots should go in the basket; I think they should live in the pond. He thinks the radio is best left on the cooler; I think... well, you get the idea. His willingness to chase me into said pond for some items and not others (like his special hat) makes me feel like there's a deep, thoughtful full of quirks here that in another game, I might consider getting to know better. If Goose Game were made by Bioware, the Gardener would be the default heterosexual female romance option, complete with a tragically dead previous flame, who I'd roll my eyes at and tell myself I wasn't going near but then accidentally get invested in on my first playthrough anyway. Tell me about your charming, safe feelings, Gardener! I promise they are not wasted on this, uh, goose!

1. The Messy Neighbour

We come now, at the pinnacle of this ranking, to an uncomfortable truth: when we see the goose game for what it is, we must inevitably contend with the fact that, were we to be transported to its world, we would not identify with the agenda with the loathsome get awe-inspiring goose, but with the ordinary residents who rail, however ineffectively, against the transportation of their worldly possessions to a rubbish island near the village green. There comes a point at which we must search ourselves for some modicum of empathy towards these hidebound cretins, lest we fail to recognise the mirror they hold to our own selves. In doing so, it becomes clear who the unsung hero of the Goose Game's villagers truly is: the woman who has filled her garden with weird statues, entertaining windmills, a bath full of flowers that for some reason still has soap on it, and other non-conformist delights. Of course, what truly sets Messy apart from her peers is her subtle yet unmistakable assimilation into the Goose agenda. For one thing, she'll let me build a pile full of things her neighbour has thrown over the fence into her garden, and even dress up one of her statues in the detritus I bring her. She also shares my love of spying on her fellow villagers for maximum mischief, though her options are limited in this regard. Sealing the deal, and her place at the top of the list, is the giant garden bell. Never change, Messy Neighbour: the village resident we should all aspire to be.

Honk

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. She is, as this post might suggest, better with animals than people. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

6 Books With K V Johansen

Originally from Kingston, Ontario, K.V. Johansen has an M.A. in Medieval Studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto and another, in English Literature, from McMaster, where she wrote her thesis on Layamon’s Brut, an Early Middle English epic poem. She’s been writing fantasy since childhood and has a lifelong fascination with history, archaeology, trees, and language. She also plays guitar with great determination and dedication, moderate technical skill, and to her enduring regret, an utter lack of musical talent. In addition to her secondary world fantasy for adults, she is the author of two works on the history of children’s fantasy literature, two short story collections, and a number of books for children and teens, some of which have won awards and various of which have been translated into French, Macedonian, and Danish. She lives in New Brunswick on the Bay of Fundy and spends too much time on Twitter, @kvjohansen. Her website is at www.kvj.ca.

Today she shares her Six Books with us:

1. What book are you currently reading?

I’m often reading several novels at once in fits and starts, and some non-fiction too -- right now, Timber Castles, by Robert Higham and Philip Barker, and Eric Christiansen’s Northern Crusades. At the top of the fiction stack of things on the go is RJ Barker’s Blood of Assassins, the second in his Wounded Kingdom trilogy. I’d read the first one a while ago, but only picked this one up recently, in part because I couldn’t make my mind up whether I liked the protagonist and narrator Girton, the apprentice assassin, or not. I’m still not sure if I like Girton as a person, but he fascinates me as a character, and I’m still chewing over why I feel as though I’m holding him off at a bit of a distance, emotionally. That’s success, from a writer’s point of view, of a kind (I hope RJ sees it that way!) -- creating someone that people can have a complicated reaction to. There’s some excellent writing in these books. One thing that really impresses me about the series as a whole, from the technical point of view, is the excellent use of the first person; it’s a rich secondary world and story that is very complex in psychology, plot, and politics, which can be difficult to do justice to with a point of view limited to one person, even when the narration provides some historical distance and space for reflection on the part of the narrator. It’s just a great story, too, lots of twists and turns, and beautifully-written.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

There are several. Martha Wells’ Murderbot novel, and K.D. Edwards’ The Hanged Man, are two that are high on my must-read-as-soon-as-available list, but the one I’ve been particularly waiting for a while now is Sidewinders, the sequel to Robert V.S. Redick’s Master Assassins. It’s the story of two brothers, conscript soldiers on the run from a theocratic tyrant, with an complicated family history behind them. One’s a very responsible, serious sort of man; the other’s possibly mad, or possessed, or damaged by something in his past, or just irresponsible and impetuous. Even his brother isn’t certain why he fits into the world so badly. They don’t like each other, but they’re brothers, both feeling they’re bound together by that regardless. The world is an interesting concept -- a continent quarantined by the more technologically-advanced rest of the world because of a deadly disease to which its inhabitants seem to have resistance, but which sends medical missions out to them, kept carefully isolated from any contact with contagion, magic, a theocratic tyrant with some rather horrific forces at her command. By the end of the first book Mektu and Kandri have survived everything sent to destroy them so far, acquired some equally well-developed and interesting companions, and discovered a little more about the mysteries of their world. They’re at that point where you and they can pause, take a breath, and face up to the next onslaught you know is coming. According to Redick’s blog, it is coming, but there’s no date yet.

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to re-read?

Re-reading is interesting. Sometimes it’s just a quiet impulse, or you pick up something because you’d like to enjoy that again or remind yourself of it in some way, but sometimes it’s an intense craving. When it’s the latter, it can be a need to escape into something familiar from some stress or worry or heavy weight on you, but often I find that the thing I felt such an urgent desire to re-read turns out to have something in it that resolves some quandary that I’ve been wrestling with in my current work -- it’ll be something to do with the narrative approach, or how difficulties in a character are set up, or a way of touching the story, that reminds me of what I need to be doing or sparks off something that solves my problem, shines a bit of moonlight on the path I’ve been stumbling in the dark to find. It’s like some underlayer of my brain knows what’s missing or where I’ve gone wrong in the WiP but doesn’t have any words of its own, so it points me at something that will show it to me. I’ve had that experience with LeCarré and Bujold, though most often it will be Diana Wynne Jones or Cherryh. The thing I most recently had an intense desire to reread was McKillip’s Kingfisher, which I’ve read a couple of times, but this time I bought the audiobook because I felt like I needed to have it read to me. Aside from the sheer enjoyment of the work, which is one of her best, what I’m taking from it on this re-read is a reminder of her lightness of touch, something I’m trying to achieve in my current project.

4. How about a book you’ve changed your mind about -- either positively or negatively?

How about a series? Discworld! (I hang my head in shame ...) The thing is, when I was a teen, people kept telling me, oh you like fantasy and science fiction, you’ll like/the bookseller said you’ll like X, and I always hated X because it was always appallingly poorly written, clunky, bad imitations of Tolkien by (usually) Americans utterly tone-deaf in language, writing plots about swaggering teen boys (even if they were ostensibly adults) in which girls were barmaids and prostitutes and rape-victims and prizes. So all that, “Oh you like fantasy so you should read Boy On Quest” stuff that older people kept pushing at me was just trash and I stopped even trying it. And since it was so hard to find the kind of fantasy I was hungry for, I had no patience with the shallow it’s-all-a-game stuff, though I did stick with Aspirin’s Myth for a few books. No stomach for cotton-candy when I was having such a hard time finding proper bread. With a few exceptions -- Bellairs, Blaylock, Cherryh, Cook, McKillip -- when it came to adult fantasy I mostly trusted British writers, when I could find them, and the British publishers tended to have quite distinctive art -- either landscapey, or Robert Gould. And there was Pratchett, and those covers, either original Corgis or the even worse (because not even good art) Roc editions, said to me, “Hey, we know this is not a real story but just a silly game.” So I dismissed it on sight as just another shallow spoof, or worse, another bad Tolkien imitator who was going to be a waste of my five dollars. (Why did I not open it up and read a few pages? I do not know. My friends and I could all quote numerous passages of Hitchhiker’s; we’d have loved Pratchett if only one of us had bought one back in 1985.)

And then many years later, I picked up a copy of Johnny and the Bomb that my sister was reading. I read it in one go, and then I started it again. Then I went into town, to the used bookstore (there wasn’t a new book store in that place), and by some miracle they had Guards! Guards! and Maskerade. So that was that. I wonder if I’d have bounced off the Discworld again if all I’d found was The Colour of Magic? I think not, because having read Johnny, I knew Pratchett could write, and write a story that felt real and true at the story level even in the moments when it was being utter farce, and that was the most important thing. But I am very glad that the two I did find to take me into the Discworld at last were from the start of the apogee.

Moral: don’t judge a book by its cover. Really. Don’t do that.

5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

I’m torn as to whether to answer The Lord of the Rings or The Lantern Bearers. The Lord of the Rings is the obvious answer for many reasons: poetic prose, the sheer range of tone, of diction that changes to suit character and mood and mode, landscape you can see and feel and smell, layer upon layer of history sinking back into a legendary past, languages and trees and archaeology pushing through. The slow-gathering doom. The need for individuals to take heroism upon themselves, the importance of finding wonder and delight in the world. I read it repeatedly one winter when I was eight and it’s the one book that has shaped me in so many ways -- it sank language into my bones. But another profound and lasting influence is Rosemary Sutcliff, in particular her books like The Lantern Bearers and Dawn Wind, strong characters, dark but hopeful, with light always breaking through, beautiful writing and such a sense of place, or the more grim Mark of the Horse Lord and Song for a Dark Queen. I think the tone and mood of Sutcliff at her darkest leaks through into The Last Road more than I realized, now that I look back over it.

6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?

My latest book is The Last Road. It’s the fifth and final book of Gods of the Caravan Road, which is secondary world epic fantasy, silk road fantasy. Why is it awesome? Most of the main characters, the no-longer human ones, from the earlier four books (and the short story “The Storyteller”, which is the very beginning of it all), are still around, and come together in this, because a threat against all the gods that has been quietly simmering underneath everything else that was going on right from Blackdog has burst out of the shadows and is sweeping east across the world, destroying people and their societies and their gods as it comes. The mood of The Last Road is darker than what’s gone before. Hope seems harder to come by. But finally, we get to see Moth and Yeh-Lin together, which I’ve been wanting to do for several books now. It turned out not to be the scene I had in my mind, involving them hanging out drinking wine in a tavern which looked suspiciously like the place where Navarre acquires Philippe in Ladyhawke, but something with less wine and sunshine, and rather bloodier. (Yes, rather bloodier even than that.) And of course, Moth being Moth . . . and very, very angry in this book . . . things will burn.


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

The Hugo Initiative: Cyteen (1989, Best Novel)

 Dossier: Cherryh, C.J. Cyteen [Warner, 1988]

Filetype: Novel

Executive Summary: Cyteen is set in C. J. Cherryh’s Alliance / Union Universe, a future expansionist history of humanity in the stars. The opening pages of Cyteen provides a full background of the colonization and political history of that universe and how the various factions got started. It takes all of four pages and is perfectly fascinating on its own. Then Cherryh rolls into the story and introduced Ariane Emory, an aging scientist potentially nearing the end of her life. Emory is a member of the Union governing Council of Nine and the founder of Reseune, the leading science laboratories in the universe. Emory is known as a brilliant woman (she is one of very few certified as a Special), though also a difficult woman. The reader is given all of this introduction, which Cherryh quite naturally handled far better than I am right now, and it serves to create a sense of the political and social landscape of Reseune. Cherryh reveals the Reseune plans to clone and recreate Specials so the Special brilliance is not lost when they die. There is one notable previous attempt and failure. 

When Ariane Emory is murdered early in the novel there are several major developments put into play. First, another Special at Reseune is implicated – Jordan Warrick. Warrick and Emory had a once close professional (and personal) relationship which strained. Emory, shortly before her murder, began a relationship with Jordan’s son Justin – except the relationship was not an equal one, it was a very dominant one on the part of Emory. The second major development is that the cloning program goes forward – only with a particular change. Because Reseune needed Ariane so badly, they cloned her and attempted to recreate as much of her upbringing as possible in order to bring out the exact genius that was Ariane Emory. It is a long term strategy. 

That’s the background and set up of Cyteen. Cyteen spans perhaps fifteen to twenty years and provides two major viewpoints during that time: Justin Warrick and young Ariane Emory (the clone). Justin’s storyline is that of survival, of trying to fit in at Reseune with all of the political drama and upheaval caused by Emory’s death AND by his father’s confession. Note: the reader never sees the murder occur, so what we don’t know is if Jordan Warrick told the truth with his confession. We assume not, but can be wrong. Emory’s storyline is of a young and isolated genius child growing up and figuring out her place and potential power.

Legacy: Cyteen won the 1989 Hugo Award for Best Novel and it is regarded as one of Cherryh’s best novels. Cyteen has loomed large in my reading history as it was the first novel I read from C.J. Cherryh after years of avoiding her work for no good reason that I can come up with. Cherryh’s Hugo Award win for Cyteen was her third Hugo Award, following a Short Story Hugo for “Cassandra” in 1979 and Best Novel for Downbelow Station in 1982. The most significant aspect of Cyteen may be the bolstering to Cherryh’s reputation in the genre, which has always been strong – but being a two time winner for Best Novel puts her in elite company. Cyteen remains a major novel in Cherryh’s oeuvre and is a major novel by anybody’s standard, though it doesn’t get discussed nearly as much as Downbelow Station. Cyteen may be her strongest and most accomplished novel, it is Downbelow Station which has had the longer reach and conversation. Perhaps it is because Cyteen is so tightly compacted onto the station and the politics of Union and Downbelow Station looks at Union from the outside and deals with clashing cultures, but we’re much more likely to see references to Downbelow Station than Cyteen, yet Cyteen is the novel I’d recommend first.


In Retrospect: Cyteen starts out strong, but the novel only improves at the story progresses and the reader meets Ariane Emory as an incredibly precocious teenager – one who is led, in part, by the writings the older Ariane Emory left for her clone. Cyteen is many things at once – political drama, social commentary, coming of age (for both characters, really), science fiction, a story of morality, and probably a handful of other things I can’t quite work out on the first read. 

Cherryh quietly and subtly asks questions about morality in terms of artificially created humans called “azi”. Azi have few rights and are property of Reseune. They are grown / born to do a particular job and are raised to spec and taught by “tape”, a method of deep teaching that programs (in a sense) learning and behavior. Cherryh looks at the responsibilities of those with power over azi and a bit on the morality of such a workforce. 

Cyteen is a big novel that hints at an even larger universe with references to conflicts and debates outside of the scope of the novel. It is an excellent place to begin one’s reading of C. J. Cherryh. Published thirty years ago, Cyteen holds up extraordinarily well (though the references to “tape” still make me pause). After finishing Cyteen I immediately bought more of Cherryh’s novels. That’s my ultimate recommendation – Cyteen was good enough to make me spend more money. I was completely sold on C. J. Cherryh. From one novel. From this novel.


Analytics

For its time: 5/5
Read today: 5/5.
Gernsback Quotient: 10/10

[Note: this dossier has been adapted from an earlier review.]


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Burke, Sue. Interference [Tor]
Publisher's Description

Sue Burke's sweeping, award-finalist, SF Semiosis epic continues in Interference as the colonists and a team from Earth confront a new and more implacable intelligence.

Over two hundred years after the first colonists landed on Pax, a new set of explorers arrives from Earth on what they claim is a temporary scientific mission.

But the Earthlings misunderstand the nature of the Pax settlement and its real leader. Even as Stevland attempts to protect his human tools, a more insidious enemy than the Earthlings makes itself known.

Stevland is not the apex species on Pax. 

Why We Want It: Though we were aware of it for some time, we slept on Semiosis for far too long. Semiosis was a very good first contact science fiction novel of colonies and discovery across generations. I can't wait to see how Burke expands the story.

Drayden, Nikcy. Escaping Exodus [Harper Voyager]
Publisher's Description

The Compton Crook award–winning author of The Prey of Gods and Temper returns with a dazzling stand-alone novel, set in deep space, in which the fate of humanity rests on the slender shoulders of an idealistic and untested young woman—a blend of science fiction, dark humor, and magical realism that will appeal to fans of Charlie Jane Anders, Jeff VanderMeer, and Nnedi Okorafor.

Earth is a distant memory. Habitable extrasolar planets are still out of reach. For generations, humanity has been clinging to survival by establishing colonies within enormous vacuum-breathing space beasts and mining their resources to the point of depletion.

Rash, dreamy, and unconventional, Seske Kaleigh should be preparing for her future role as clan leader, but her people have just culled their latest beast, and she’s eager to find the cause of the violent tremors plaguing their new home. Defying social barriers, Seske teams up with her best friend, a beast worker, and ventures into restricted areas for answers to end the mounting fear and rumors. Instead, they discover grim truths about the price of life in the void.

Then, Seske is unexpectedly thrust into the role of clan matriarch, responsible for thousands of lives in a harsh universe where a single mistake can be fatal. Her claim to the throne is challenged by a rival determined to overthrow her and take control—her intelligent, cunning, and confident sister.

Seske may not be a born leader like her sister, yet her unorthodox outlook and incorruptible idealism may be what the clan needs to save themselves and their world. 

Why We Want It:Nicky Drayden has quickly become a favorite here at Nerds of a Feather. Her debut, Prey of Gods, was great and like nothing else we've read. Temper, her follow up, was even better and showed Drayden leveling up as a writer. We can't wait to see what Drayden has in store for us with her third novel.

Hill, Joe. Full Throttle [Harper Collins]
Publisher's Description

In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including "In The Tall Grass," one of two stories co-written with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.

A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in "Faun." A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in "Late Returns." In "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain," two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water's edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality... and other horrors that lurk in the water's shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in "Throttle," co-written with Stephen King.

Featuring two previously unpublished stories, and a bevy of shocking chillers, Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears. 

Why We Want It: It's been fourteen years since 20th Century Ghosts, Hill's last full on short story collection (yes, he had a novella collection two years ago) and in that time he's become a master at horror. If Joe Hill writes it, we'll read it.

McGuire, Seanan. Laughter at the Academy [Subterranean]
Publisher's Description

From fairy tale forest to gloomy gothic moor, from gleaming epidemiologist’s lab to the sandy shores of Neverland, Seanan McGuire’s short fiction has been surprising, delighting, confusing, and transporting her readers since 2009. Now, for the first time, that fiction has been gathered together in one place, ready to be enjoyed one twisting, tangled tale at a time. Her work crosses genres and subverts expectations. 

Why We Want It: It's Seanan McGuire. We love October Daye and Incryptid and Wayward Children and Newsflesh and The Ghost Roads and we're thrilled for McGuire's short story collection. We're ready.

Pullman, Philip. The Secret Commonwealth [Random House]
Publisher's Description

Lyra Silvertongue’s adventures in the North are long over–the windows between the many worlds have been sealed, and her beloved Will is lost to her. She does still have the alethiometer: the truth-telling device given to her by the master of Jordan College, which guided her journey.

Lyra doesn’t know the full story of the alethiometer, though. Or the role that young Malcolm Polstead played in bringing both the instrument and baby Lyra to Jordan. She’s now a twenty-year-old undergraduate at St. Sophia’s College. To her, Malcolm is Dr. Polstead, an overly solicitous professor she would prefer to avoid.

But intrigue is swirling around Lyra once more. Her daemon Pantalaimon is witness to a brutal murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past. They learn of a city haunted by daemons, of a desert said to hold the secret of Dust.

Powerful forces are about to throw Lyra and Malcolm together once again. And the dangers they face will challenge everything they thought they knew about the world, and about themselves. 

Why We Want It: We were apprehensive about the publication of La Belle Sauvage two years ago because it had been so long since Pullman had written His Dark Materials that we couldn't see a way it would live up to our expectations or even just our hopes. It was excellent, and now we're excited for Pullman to move the story and timeline forward and visit an older Lyra.

Westfahl, Gary. The Rise and Fall of American Science Fiction, from the 1920's to the 1960's [McFarland]
Publisher's Description

By examining important aspects of science fiction in the twentieth century, this book explains how the genre evolved to its current state. Close critical attention is given to topics including the art that has accompanied science fiction, the subgenres of space opera and hard science fiction, the rise of science fiction anthologies, and the burgeoning impact of the marketplace on authors and works. Included are in-depth studies of key texts that contributed to science fiction’s growth, including Philip Francis Nowlan’s first Buck Rogers story, the first published stories of A. E. van Vogt, and the early juveniles of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein. 

Why We Want It: We're trying to read more science fiction and fantasy focused non-fiction and Gary Westfahl is mining the early days of the genre.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

Thursday Morning Superhero

The other day the wife and I decided to check out Stumptown.  The show appeared to have some solid buzz, had a decent splash at SDCC, and was based on a book by Greg Rucka that is also supposed to be quite good. We haven't watched the second episode yet, but enjoyed the first one to the point that I would recommend giving it a shot. I was impressed with the cast of characters and after watching the first episode I might have to pick up the Oni Press book as well.

Pick of the Week:
Dark Ark: After the Flood #1 - This book is built on the premise that there were actually two ark that were built in preparation of the great flood. There is the Noah's ark that most people are familiar with that held two of every animal, but there was another one that carried a much more sinister cargo. This ark belonged to the powerful sorcerer Shrae and has an origin associated with the destruction of a city and its residents. Cullen Bunn is one of my favorite creators and does an amazing job drawing the reader in as we learn about the origin of Shrae's daughter, Kahlee, and a bit about the world following the flood.  It is quite a bit different from the story I was told as a child and I am very excited to learn more about Kahlee and the how and why she survived.

The Rest:
No One Left to Fight #4 - After briefly squaring off with the Hierophant, Vale and company make their way to Arboreal Sanctum. Despite seeking refuge, Kaya is not too keen on opening the door to Vale and the drama that tends to follow him. The Arboreal Sanctum was created as an escape from the rest of the world and trouble seems to follow Vale as he attempts to understand what is happening with him. This is a bizarre, but wonderful series that features some of the best colors in the business via Fico Ossio and Raciel Avila. I have enjoyed the story and the art, but it really is the colors that have completely drawn me to this book.  That and the fact that there is a promise of an issue-length brawl in the next issue as it turns out there actually is one person left to fight.

Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader's Castle #1 - While I didn't enjoy this spooky tale as much as the others in this series, it felt like a Tales from the Crypt episode featuring Darth Maul as the beast that haunts a labyrinth. On paper that sounds amazing and might have worked better as a multi-issue story, but the one shot made it feel a bit shallow despite the nice twist as to what brought the ship to Lotho Minor, the planet with the labyrinth, in the first place. Despite not enjoying this story as much I plan on picking up the next issue as most of the horror stories in this line have been a lot of fun.

Daredevil #12 - This was a shocking issue that saw both Murdock and Fist get back to their roots. Daredevil is finally starting to gain some of his confidence back and has his first go at taking down a group of bad guys ensuring that nobody gets killed. Meanwhile, Mayor Fist is attempting to rub elbows with some of the elite members of society and has a hard time running away from his criminal past. Electra makes another appearance and the final scene involving Fisk is really going to create some drama moving forward. I am super stoked for issue #13.





POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

This is Not a Review of The Joker

I have often speculated on why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Did you run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man; it's the romantic in me.

-Captain Renaut, Casablanca

This is not a review of The Joker because, frankly, it doesn't need one. It has been reviewed, and the people who reviewed had the advantage of seeing it, which I lack - mostly because I don't feel the need to see it. I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, nor that it shouldn't be judged on its own merits, because art does have a right to exist - but the right to free speech doesn't mean people should talk incessantly.

 To be sure, it looks good. Juaquin Phoenix looks the part every bit as much as Heath Ledger did, even as my keyboard itself revolts against the veracity of that statement. I - like most people, I think - expected Suicide Squad 2.0 from this; a hot mess of flaming garbage foisted upon moviegoers who should know better - yet, somehow, against all odds and whatever DC movies have been this past decade, what we received was an ostensibly compelling narrative of the origin of the one of the most compelling villains of all time.

Which raises two questions, at least for me. Indeed, they are both the same question - why?

In the first place, why do we need to know the origin of the Joker? For all his iterations through film, television and comics, what bearing does who he is and where he came from matter in the slightest? He is a villain for the sake of being a villain, which is a luxury most people writing fiction aren't allowed, despite it being allowed in real life 2019. It works for the Joker precisely because he is The Joker - insane, given to sadistic whimsy, crafting ornate plans while simultaneously not having one at all. He works because he doesn't have an origin. His adversary, Better Elon Musk, is all backstory. Rooted in his childhood trauma, he puts on a mask to keep it all out. Joker is what he is, unapologetically, always in pursuit of his mercurial goals, but doing what it takes to achieve them - Bats will give up his to protect a life, never willing to make the sacrifices truly needed.

In short, Joker works narratively because he is the perfect antagonist for Batman.

So if you tell me there is a compelling Joker story out there, I am all in. But this movie leads to yet another why - why does it need to exist? Why does it need to exist, specifically in 2019, where we have villains aplenty, particularly of the variety that this film is asking us to sympathize with? Now, there is certainly a place for a sympathetic villain -  they are usually the most compelling. But when we live in a world where real, actual human beings are holding up the Joker and his ilk as heroes, not because of their struggles, but because of their violence and lack of sympathy for the world around them, why are we making this movie?

There is a lot of validity to telling stories outside the traditional Heroes Journey, gets-the-girl and saves-the-world narrative. The same is true of flawed heroes, something other than perfect knights-in-shining armor. None of those things are real or particularly relatable. People are evil and selfish for a myriad reasons; we don't need to explore their backstory every time. We certainty don't have to empathize with them, or be asked to agree with them, or give tacit approval in the way we are so often in the real world as long as it doesn't affect me.

So why don't we empathize with a flawed hero, who maybe doesn't get the girl, who maybe doesn't win, but instead takes the hand they have been dealt and does the right thing with it? Richard Blaine, to whom Renault is speaking in the quote up top, is that (and one of the many reasons Casablanca is a perfect movie, but more on that another time). His arc is him going from being a cold isolationist, with no regard for the people or world around him, because he Didn't Get The Girl, to realizing there are things larger than himself and making sacrifices for that - including the girl he's been pining after.

Individuals matter. People matter. Everyone should feel loved and accepted for who hey are. But it is all too common to see subsets of humanity care about themselves, how they are treated or mistreated or how they perceive they are, and lash out because of it (instead of, ya know, taking a shower and getting out of their internet echo chambers and doing something with their lives that would lead to them being loved and accepted, but I digress).

Art is simultaneously a reflection of who we are, and an image of what we can be. Let's make art that asks us to be better than we are.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories (which should be on YOUR summer reading list). 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. 

LET'S FRIGHTEN CHILDREN! Books Under Bedsheets

Much of the genesis for this series came to me when my daughter asked if I would take her to see the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie. Those three original Alvin Schwartz books (with their oozing, teeth-filled illustrations by Stephen Gammell) were a staple of my childhood, and while Christopher Pike, R.L. Stine, and a couple other authors were working in the middle-grade horror space (although I'm not sure if Goosebumps itself was a thing yet), I wound up giving those a miss and leaping straight to Stephen King at a pretty young age.

I think the first Stephen King book I read was Christine, because I dug old cars. But relatively quickly, I found myself immersed in what was at the time the Dark Tower trilogy. There are things I read when I was 12 that still stick with me. "Go then, there are other worlds than these," is a line and moment that has never been far from me since. The Eyes of the Dragon was another pivotal King novel for me, because it was my introduction to fantasy. By the time I read it, I had friends that were big into Lord of the Rings, but that series and world had never interested me before. After reading Eyes of the Dragon, however, I quickly scooped up a copy of The Hobbit in the next convenient book sale.

I've spent most of my time in this series talking about movies because that's really my area of relative expertise, but reading scary stories was a huge part of my own, youthful indoctrination. So I reached out to the rest of the NoaF flock to see what their experiences with horror were as young readers, and if there were any noteworthy titles we could pass along.

Gateway Books

Like they were for me, the series of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books and the novels of Stephen King were the gateway to horror for many of our writers who got into the genre at a young age.

Dean made the interesting recommendation of Roald Dahl, who I wouldn't have thought of, but it's a very astute suggestion. I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my kids many times, as well as The Fantastic Mr. Fox (big fans of the movie in my house), but it wasn't until I was reading them The Witches, when I caught myself thinking, "Wait...this is waaaay dark." Dean also recommended A Series of Unfortunate Events, which skews more creepy and sinister than outright horrific, but is certainly in the same neighborhood that we're discussing.

Adri writes, "Maybe the single biggest horror influence in my young life was Robin Jarvis, especially the Deptford Mice trilogy, which was about a group of anthropomorphic mice struggling against the influence of an all-powerful evil cat god. Horror highlights included the trip to the countryside with a series of murders descending into scenes of creepy ritual in the middle book, and one character whose final fate is to get banished outside of the main timestream so he experiences the world an instant behind all other living things. The worldbuilding was dense and bizarre, the story was totally cool with killing off characters (the first book literally opens with the father of the main family getting eaten by the god-cat), and I sincerely hope they still hold up today because in my memory they were amazing."

In addition to another vote for Scary Stories..., Chloe offers this: "As the former child who at age 4 watched Aliens so much she wrecked the VHS and whose 8-year-old sick day reading was The Stand, my suggestions for what children can handle is, um, skewed. But — Goosebumps, Coraline, a lot of Robert Westall's stories (more for 10+ ages), and Something Wicked This Way Comes." I was very pleased to see this one show up on her list. Something Wicked... is probably my favorite Bradbury novel, for what it's worth.





Rites of Passage

There is, to be sure, a certain solitary pleasure in horror. A musician friend of mine, who is one of the most amazing drummers I know of, she recently shared the unattributed quote, "Sometimes the fear won't go away, so you'll just have to do it afraid." And that stuck with me.

As much fun as it was to read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark with friends and enact the jump-scares built into those books, most of our true fears are quiet, and private. And while there is magic in watching a scary movie among friends (here I recall my 15th birthday, spent as a sleepover with an all-night marathon of movies like Silence of the Lambs and Mario Bava's Black Sabbath) or even among strangers in a theater, so too is there a sense of growing up, of the passing of rites, in huddling under bedclothes with a flashlight and a scary book, and walking through the fire by oneself. The flames may resemble ghosts, or goblins, or dead friends or uncanny versions of relatives, rabid dogs or haunted cars, terrifying lands full of magic or mystery, or a carnival come to town. However they shake, and whatever shadows they cast, eventually we must each face the flames on our own.

This is, to me, the great gift of horror, and why I have thought so much about passing it on to my kids. No matter what movies I watch with them, there will be scarier ones out there. Just like no matter what challenges in life I attempt to prepare them for, there will yet be greater ones ahead, entirely unlooked-for. No matter how I try to cushion the blow that ultimately lets them know there is profound, inexplicable evil in this world, I know that blow will always fall. The best I can do is lay the groundwork for the next, more frightening movie, or the next, more frightening revelation, and hope that, however feebly, I have helped them to cultivate the tools necessary to confront it.

Now, then. Let’s frighten children.

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather since 2012. Late-night, white-knuckled page-turner since...approximately...the man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.