Worlds Within Worlds – Part Five: Qi and Fantasy
Christopher Mahon
Most people associate magic with strange symbols, chanting, and waving a wand around. Dusty books are usually in the picture, along with ritual circles or sacrifices. The mages themselves are…
Christopher Mahon
Worlds Within Worlds – Part Four: Old Grey Beards
If you ask someone on the street to name the first three wizards that come to mind, you’ll probably hear the names Gandalf, Merlin, and Dumbledore (or Rincewind, if they’re…
Worlds Within Worlds – Part Three: Magic Warfare
Fallout taught fans that war…war never changes. Military historians, however, argue otherwise. Case in point: the stirrup. Before firearms dominated the battlefield, it’s generally agreed that the stirrup was the…
Exploring Vvardenfell: How Morrowind Created an Immersive Secondary World
Back in 2012, I was sitting with a group of fantasy writers at the PNWA conference in Seattle. Everyone had begun rolling off their favorite authors, and soon there were…
Worlds Within Worlds – Part One: Creating Texts for Secondary Worlds
The stories of H. P. Lovecraft are filled with references to all kinds of bizarre, ancient books, some fictional, some real: Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, Trithemius’ Poligraphia, Giambattista…