Some interesting articles today. Ranging in topics from sex slaves to bumbling wizards. Quite a bit linked down the Chum this week, so be sure to check it out too. In the coming weeks, if you find something interesting you think everyone should read, drop me a line via the contact form and let me know, or just post it below. Let’s get started:
1) Pictures from the set of The Hobbit: Aidan Moher has dug up a couple of stills from the new movie set. Looks awesome.
2) Google Books settlement rejected: Depending on which side you are on this is either the best or worst news to hit you all week.
3) Discworld TV show?: Looks to be true. Terry Jones is the only person on the planet qualified to do it too.
4) Interview with John Norman creator of Gor: Kat‘s favorite author (Ha!) and the object of many a debate about gender in fantasy. The interview contains gems like this, “Women are wonderful, and precious. It is a delight to own one.” Mr. Norman is the real deal folks… wow.
5) Dune is dead: Paramount pulls the plug on a new Dune movie.
Author Chum
In this section I’ll post bits and pieces of news from various fantasy authors:
- Kevin J. Anderson: A look inside the release of a major science fiction novel
- Patricia Briggs: The guilt-free fantasy of Patricia Briggs
- Elizabeth Bear: Interview over at Suvudu
- John Scalzi: Where Are the Female Directors and Writers in Science-Fiction Film?
As a political philosopher, I must say that I find that Norman interview bizarre and unsettling. The objectification of women in his worldview is morally repugnant.
As a reader, I find him squicky and will not read any of his books.
Is Dune too big to make a great film of? News about the Hobbit is in short supply. Wish they would leak a little more.
That Norman interview is really bizzare.
My parents got Nomads of Gor for me for Christmas one year. I was about thirteen. It was a stocking stuffer. Before you leap to any conclusions, my parents were not child abusers or deviants.
Of course I read it. Back in the 1970s, books like this and romance novels did not have chapters and chapters of sex so most of them had a plot. Nomads was no exception. Later I left the book in the living room and my dad picked it up. He read a bit. That night after I went to bed he and my mom had one of those quiet-voiced conversations where I could hear their voices but not make out the words, and I knew it was about me.
A couple of days later my mom asked me, just so casually, what I had thought of the book. I said I had thought the plot was too obvious, and the magic thing the hero was looking for had been in plain sight the whole time. Then I said, “Why’d you get it for me?” She rotated her coffee cup, looked down at the table and said, “It was in the Fantasy section, and we liked the giant eagle on the cover.”
LOL!!! That’s a funny story, Marion.
I read and collected all the Tarzan books when I was in Junior High and the editions I was buying had awesome cover illustrations by Boris and Neal Adams, and everyone knows how sexy Boris paintings are. Needless to say they would often make my mom cringe. I got the last book, Tarzan and the Castaways, for Christmas. Its cover featured a back view of a topless savage woman in a thong. But my mom had taken a marker to it, so on my copy, the woman was wearing a much less revealing two-piece. (Fortunately, the marker didn’t take to the glossy cover, so I easily wiped it clean.) ;)
Greg;
I love it!