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I think you can be more specific than "I know it when I see it", you just have to realise that there are two sets of people selling two definitions: Tight Definition A genre of horror fiction; which focuses on "the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of...

Here's another quote from "Supernatural Horror in Literature"; you could spend all day finding them. The last three chapters talk about "recent" developments, when you could talk of a school of horror writers that inspired Lovecraft (Machen, Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James). You ask...

I think the value of the essay is that it (1) shows what Lovecraft drew upon to create weird tales, and (2) gives his opinion on how how the weird tale developed from earlier literature. You're right it's long and tedious, I wouldn't read the whole thing. The statement by him in the introduction...

I think what Kahuna Burger and DocMoriartty have posted is very interesting. I really like ASoIaF because of the way it plays with various genre conventions and that it's so unlike the various "watch the good guys win" stories that I think fantasy is littered with. I find it really interesting...

Very good question. I don't think weird tales are as established a genre as others. It's also been pointed out that to some degree all genres leach into each other, and are just a rough way of grouping together similar sorts of books. I also don't think there is an "official" source which can...

I don't think this is true. I may be wrong, but which royal princess screamed it in his face? If you're thinking of Arya, she's not a royal princess. She said her piece in front of court (where her behaviour would have lead people to believe Joffrey was telling the truth) after Mycah was killed...

As far as the Hound knew the farmboy has attacked a Royal Prince, so what he did was perfectly legitimate. This isn't the case, but that's not the Hound's fault, the blame lies with Sansa, Ned, Joffrey, Cersei etc. You seem very upset about it. I think a lot of people have this response, they...

Leave the Hound alone! He's the best character in the series. He's done nothing that's wrong, though sadly I suspect he will die before the series is out. nikolai.

Magician I probably dislike it about as much as you like it. I thought it read like it was a bad D&D campaign. I thought the characters were cardboard cutouts and the book was littered with a collection of almost every fantasy cliche you could come up with. I also didn't like the overlong...

Any advice on the best supplements for running these? I imagine there's a lot of stuff out there. Also, how do you get around this problem. Liches are at +2 EL, so when they're up against a party they're really only as good at spell casting as the party wizard. To really be able to have the...

Jester47, Raymond E. Feist's Magician is an absolutely awful book. I beg you, remove it from your list of to reads and spare yourself.

Hello all, I thought I'd start a thread where DMs can discuss plot ideas for incorporating into campaigns. This one surrounds ideas for the use of books (and libraries, scriptoria etc.) in a campaign. I'll kick off with one suggestion. Spoiler Warning: Name of the Rose One of it's plot points...

From the OED. Tratyn is spot on that the source that got it into D&D is Clark Ashton Smith (Lovecraft and R. E. Howard being in the same "group" of writers). His stuff is really worth reading. The word lich is used an awful lot. It's almost constantly associated with animated corpses, and the...

I've been thinking about A Song of Ice and Fire. It's made a pretty big impact on the fantasy scene. Does anyone have any idea how this happened? Has it become bigger (more popular) recently? I have to say that I first heard of it on the boards. What were people saying several years ago when...

CCamfield, I'm in England. And those (The Dumas Club, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow) are the titles as they are on the front of the books I have. I think the difference may be because of different translations, rather than publishers dressing the books differently (TDC is originally in Spanish...

My take: http://www.panmacmillan.com/Features/China/debate.htm I think Mieville has hit a couple of nails on the head. What I see him trying to do in the piece is to emphasise the stuff that sits in "between" genre archetypes of Hard Science Fiction and Epic Fantasy. I also think his...

I'm reading The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte. It's a bit hard to classify, a sort of mystery-adventure-thriller which follows a book dealer hired to authenticate a 17th century satanic text. I picked it up yesturday and I'm about a third of the way through, and am totally hooked. It reads...

doublepost

I've just read the prologue of the 5th Sorceress and I was wincing throughout. I don't think I'll be reading any more. Yuck. I can second a Game of Thrones (and the rest of A Song of Ice and Fire) it's about as good as modern fantasy gets. Of Robin Hobb's stuff I've only read the Fool's Errand...

I think the REH Conan did turn down a kingdom. I think it was in Black Colossus, you'll have to excuse me if I get it wrong, I read them all at once and they blur into each other. The reasoning was he wanted to earn it, rather than be given it as a "dowry". The first Conan movie's great. From...