Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #4

by Cat Rambo

  There is no secret handshake.

  The path to getting published is to write a story that makes that particular editor punch the air when they've finished reading it. Which stories will make the editor punch the air will vary quite a bit from editor to editor, and market to market. SF/F is not monolithic: the universe is a vast and diverse place, and the stories that we tell each other should reflect that.

  Dear Lynne, thank you very much for answering these questions and for taking the time to share your thoughts. We wish you good luck with your new magazine and all other projects. At FSM we believe that a normal progression after fire spinning is walking on hot coals. I'm just saying...

  Artist Spotlight: Kuldar Leement

  Kuldar Leement is a concept artist, illustrator, and graphic designer from Tartu, Estonia. He has won several awards and honors for his works, and his art has been recently featured as the cover of Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue #98. For our issue #4 we went with a piece by Kuldar called "Resistence." Today we are talking to Kuldar, getting to know a bit more about him and his art.

  Iulian: Tell us a little bit about yourself: where did you grow up and how did your early life influence your future as an artist?

  Kuldar: I am actually a country boy, but after art school I stayed in Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia. A lot of people told me that I should go study in art school, but I decided to learn construction first, and after that I went into the army. After army I finally decided to see what art school can offer me. There isn't much to tell-I have always loved to make futuristic works and art school gave me the extra push. It's here where I've discovered digital art. I went on to study graphic design for the next 4 years.

  What are your favorite design tools and how did you get to learn them?

  I use a graphic tablet (Wacom Intuos5 M) and Photoshop. I also use Illustrator, Mandebulb, and other great programs. I like to use different tools because they help me give a more unique look to my works. I was introduced to the Adobe software in art school, and I learned it there. Later I really became a master in it and I even taught it in the same school. I learned all the other programs through self-study—there are a lot of tutorials out there and it's really easy to learn when you know what your main goal is.

  Are there any other artists out there that you admire and whose work has helped shape your work?

  Indeed! I like lot of artists and their works. To showcase the sources of my inspiration, I've created a Tumblr page where you can see all of that: http://a-million-little-fibers.tumblr.com.

  Where do you find inspiration?

  Movies and games are great inspiration resources for me and I just love science fiction.

  How would you break down your workflow in steps?

  Basically-bigger shapes first and details later. Light is very important for me so I'm constantly working with it throughout the entire process. Sometimes I just make some start sketch to see if the idea is good or not. Mostly doodles :)

  Your work is very fantasy-driven. What drives you to that subject?

  I don't really know-life can be quite boring if I can say so-dark winters and bad weather makes you really want to see something else and it's really nice to watch new works come to life. Also I like to be a source of inspiration to others-many works of art have driven scientists and engineers further-so it's cool to be a part of that.

  If there was one piece of advice you could give other beginning artists, what would that be?

  Do a lot of work with yourself and respect copyrights! Best way to start is art school, but there are many tutorials out there as well. If you want to succeed, you simply need to practice a lot.

  We've selected one of your pieces for the cover of our magazine. Tell us a few words about how that piece came to be.

  This is my first work for Cosmosys' art collective exhibit "Resistance". I used some of my Terragen renders for rocks and tried to make a cave-looking environment where people are trying to stay alive because the planet is in its final days.

  Where can we find you on the web?

  Homepage: http://kuldarleement.eu

  DeviantArt: http://kuldarleement.deviantart.com

  DrawCrowd: http://drawcrowd.com/kuldarle

  Kuldar, thank you very much for being a part of our magazine. Good luck to you and we hope to see more of your works on our covers!

  Book Review: Half a King (Joe Abercrombie)

  Jeremy Szal

  Half a King

  by Joe Abercrombie

  Del Rey (July 15, 2014)

  When we first heard that Mr. Abercrombie was penning a young-adult novel, the kingdom grinded to a halt. The commonfolk were in an uproar. "Off to the torture chamber with him!" they cried, "Do whatever it takes to make him write a proper fantasy novel!"

  An overreaction? Perhaps. Despite its success, young-adult fiction is a term that raises some crooked eyebrows among the hardcore fantasy and science-fiction readers, automatically likening the term to the avalanche of soppy vampire novels and raunchy love-triangle stories that plague the shelves. Sadly, it's true that fantastic works such as Michael Grant's Gone (2008) and Sarah J. Mass' Throne of Glass (2012) are lost under the rubble. But this is Joe Abercrombie we're talking about here, and no amount of genre branding is going to stop him doing what he does best; writing blood-soaked, morally ambiguous fantasy in a dark world full of revenge, adventure and a never-ending onslaught of danger.

  And Half A King is just that.

  Prince Yarvi has suddenly become King Yarvi, once he learns of the deaths of both his brother and father. Thrown into a world of mockery, betrayal and people as cold as the land they live on, a cruel twist of fate finds him betrayed and sold into slavery, doomed to live and die on his knees. But we all know that an Abercrombie character isn't going to buckle so easily. And so begins his quest to escape and make his way back home to reclaim his rightful throne, the throne he never actually desired.

  The book doesn't feel like an Abercrombie story. The cynical humor that once dominated the pages is hard pressed to find. Half A King seems to go for the less subtle approach, using phrases that are almost lyrical in structure. Oddly enough, as someone whose books deliberately subvert fantasy tropes, Half A King plays out a lot more like a traditional novel. Idioms such as "the cold has killed many a man" and "I have kneeled long enough" are frequently seen on the page. This is a dangerous ledge Abercrombie walks on, for a lesser writer would topple into cringe-worthy clichés and wooden dialogue. But not Abercrombie. Much like his blood-brother George R. R. Martin, these phrases never feel out of place; nor do they seem poorly fitted by the character who speaks them. This high-risk, high-reward prose works brilliantly, and is used only when it needs to be. There are still traces of dark humor, but it's far less frequent.

  Unlike his previous books, Abercrombie has snatched away all the bloodstained shoes that we could don, gaining the ability to see through the eyes of multiple characters. All the fat is trimmed, leaving our crippled hero Yarvi as the one and only point of view character. Abercrombie is more than capable of juggling half a dozen characters, but it's nice to see him tighten his focus to a single protagonist. Doing so comes at a hefty cost, leaving Half A King at a bite-sized morsel of 80,000 words. This is a YA book after all. For the fantasy readers who are accustomed to their novels exceeding a quarter of a million words, this may sound unacceptable. But if you do feel that way, I'm happy to say that it felt exactly the right length, finishing exactly where it needed to finish. I definitely wanted more, but quality over quantity is a rare commodity in fantasy these days, and I was glad for the opportunity to read meat that wasn't lavishly drowned in gravy.

  But not a word of the 80,000 that Abercrombie has packed in is gone to waste. Bloodshed, witty dialogue, betrayal and hair-raising adventure is stuffed into every single page. In his other novels, there are always a moment or two for a respite. Not here. There's never a single moment to stop and catch your breath. Danger is around every corner and behind every hill
. Abercrombie is a master of maintaining a sense of urgency throughout the novel; a sense of dread that holds you in an iron-like grip and doesn't let go.

  To all those wringing your blood-spattered hands, worrying that Half A King is low on grim, gritty violence; worry no longer! Although it is definitely toned down a notch from The First Law, there is plenty of ultra violence to go around. Fingers are severed, throats are slit and bones are crushed. This isn't particularly new to the genre, but it's definitely a cut above the average YA novel. So while the violence is lesser than that of, say Last Arguments of Kings (2008), the horrors of war and a city under siege is never glazed over, but nor is it ever glorified.

  As per usual, all this comes with a dose of moral ambiguity. Characters are difficult to categorize as good or bad, especially when later events cast them in a new light. And while we all know who we're rooting for, Yarvi gets his fair share of blood and grime on his hands too, and no deed ever goes unpunished. This quote sums it up rather nicely: "If life has taught me one thing, it's that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best."

  While The First Law primary took place in a very Renaissance-esque Kingdom, the Shattered Seas has a far more Viking aesthetic to it. If anything, the Shattered Seas has a far harsher landscape, packed with frozen glaciers, snow-capped mountain, icy seas and the bitter wind. It feels like the polar opposite of his previous novels in almost every regard. From the heavy emphasis on gods and religion to the political climate and the land's unique history, no traces of his other work has managed to trickle into this new world. It's been conjured up completely from scratch. It's a blank canvas that Abercrombie has started working with, and it's definitely for the best. How often have recurring author-favorite tropes been spotted popping up out of nowhere across their body of work? Far too many. But you won't find them here.

  Half A King may not be Abercrombie's best (that crown goes to The Blade Itself (2006)), but it's his most significant one. As mentioned at the outset, the YA genre has become a groan-inducing term, inspiring nightmarish visions of rows and rows of cookie-cutter books, stuffed with sickly sweet teenage vampires in all their milk-and-watery prose. Readers don't imagine it to be a wealth of fantastic literature, one that appeals to younger readers, but is not exclusively devoted to them. With Half A King, Abercrombie has done a damn fine job of eroding the barrier between adult and young-adult fantasy, something that more authors would do well to attempt. It's been a gamble, but it's one that's worked out magnificently for all parties. I can't remember the last time I've had this much fun with a YA novel, and I'm anxiously waiting for the next installment in the Shattered Seas trilogy.

  With the likes of Abercrombie on the throne, it's a fine few next years, my friends.

  © by Jeremy Szal

  Movie Review: Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)

  Mark Leeper

  CAPSULE: With the depth and complexity of a science fiction novel, Christopher Nolan brings Interstellar to the screen, based on an original screenplay he wrote with his brother Jonathan. As the last-ditch effort of our dying civilization, a mission is sent through a wormhole to another galaxy in an effort to find an Earth-like planet to be a new home for humanity. No previous science fiction film has ever had the scope and span that this film has. It is surprising it all fits into a very tight 167 minutes. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10

  Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is quite possibly the most complex science fiction film with the most ideas of any SF film ever. It starts with a family suffering in what at first appears to be the great 1930s Dust Bowl and spans its way to planets in other galaxies with references to higher dimensions and other universes, not to mention examinations of not one but two father-daughter relationships with in each case father and daughter literally, as well as figuratively, light-years apart.

  But that is getting ahead of myself. As the film opens we think we are seeing a documentary about the great 1930s Dust Bowl. We quickly find out that in this near future world, the dust storms have returned to the Great Plains. Blights and haboobs have killed off nearly all major crops. Only corn still survives and its time seems to be limited. Most people are worried, but still make a priority drinking alcohol made from—what else?—corn. The world is counting down to its demise. Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey) is a corn farmer who was once a very good test pilot for NASA. He is contacted by NASA who wants him back for a mission that might save humanity. One end of a wormhole has appears to have formed near Saturn. There are twelve explorers who were sent out a decade earlier to study earthlike planets near the other end of the wormhole. But the information they found never made it back to Earth.

  Now a mission is being mounted to travel through the wormhole and at the far end to collect what information they can to decide if any of the planets can be a haven for humankind. On the mission will be Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), the daughter of a former colleague of Cooper's. Her father is planning the expedition, called the Lazarus Mission. In the course of the film we go from cornfields to wormholes, to black holes, to the surfaces of two alien planets along with spacecraft and robots, all of which are important to the plot. It is a complex scenario and one that will tax viewers to just follow what is happening. And all of this nearly takes back seat to a story that is mostly about strained family relations. The viewer should expect that with everything else going on there is a good deal of tearful apologies. It is an unimaginable feat of story telling to juggle so many elements and keep them all in the air at once.

  In a film with this many ideas packed together, some have got to be a little on the funky side. It takes our astronauts two years just to get to Saturn and the wormhole, yet at the other end of the wormhole there are no less then twelve superficially habitable-seeming planets all within striking distance, like Starbucks near a subway stop. TARS, their robot (voiced by actor Bill Irwin), is a very new and a very original-looking design for a robot. TARS steals every scene he/she/it is in by being so interesting. Back in the 1940s film robots looked boxy, but not nearly as boxy as TARS. On the corny side is that suggestion that love has some special trans-dimensional implications. And speaking of corn, it is a crop very susceptible to droughts. It is unlikely that corn could grow in a region suffering from dust bowl conditions.

  Besides Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway the film features Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Ellen Burstyn, Casey Affleck, John Lithgow, and more.

  Not everything is so wonderful about this film. My major complaint with the film is that the sound editing is a mess. With the complexity and techi-ness of the talk it is important to hear every word. The sound is, however, muddy and indistinct, and at times the music and sound effects tracks overpower the dialogue track. Also, occasionally the actors just don't project their voices. I look forward to getting the film on disk so I can turn on subtitling. After 2001: A Space Odyssey set the standard for scenes of hyper-light travel and Contact had its own sequence, the wormhole travel depiction us just a bit uninspired, though the depiction of the black hole is fairly accurate.

  INTERSTELLAR is more than just a science fiction story for the screen, it is a novel aimed at adults with a novel's complexity. This is probably the most audacious science fiction film anyone has ever made or even tried to make. I rate it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10.

  © 2014 by Mark Leeper

  Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/combined

  What others are saying: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/interstellar_2014/

  Originally appeared on: http://leepers.us/interste.htm

  Game: "The" Edge by Awaken Realms

  Awaken Realms is a professional painting studio, focused on creating and painting miniature sculptures. The company is based in Poland, and in 2015 they are planning to launch a new game called The Edge, using their unique, high-detail miniatures and a newly developed gameplay. Today we are talking with Marcin, one of the founders of Awaken Realms and the mind behind The Edge.

  Dear Marcin, let's talk a l
ittle bit about Awaken Realms, the gaming industry in general, and The Edge in particular.

  Awaken Realms

  Who are the people behind Awaken Realms? Give us a short bio and a little detail on how you got where you are today.

  Hi! My name is Marcin Świerkot, one of the founders of Awaken Realms and creator of The Edge. Awaken Realms was founded by me and Adrian (also known as Medows). We had been friends for quite a long time, and one day we decided we'd like to follow our passion and attempt to bring our vision to life. We both have degrees in business and I have spent 4 years of working in a corporate environment. So, when we started our company, we aimed at being a fully professional studio and bring some of the high standards you can normally see in large companies.

  How did Awaken Realms came to be? How did the founders get together, and is this something you'd like to do for the rest of your life?

  Well, it was kind of a leap of faith for both of us. I had a pretty nice corporate career, and Adrian was painting on his own, already getting vast recognition. But yeah, you know that feeling when you wake up in the morning, look in the mirror for a few days in a row and you feel that what you're doing at work just does not feel like what you should be doing? I think that's exactly what happened to me during my time at my previous job. I've always wanted to create something of my own, and Adrian shares the same values. I think of myself as very lucky from that perspective, as I strongly believe that one of the best things in life is being able to do what you love and create things out of passion. This is pretty much what we are doing right now. Is this something we will do for the rest of our lives? It's really hard to say, but for now we are definitely feeling like we are in the right place at the right time.