David Gemmell Awards – 2014 Longlist Revealed & Voting Open
Overlord
The Longlists for the David Gemmell Awards has been revealed and voting has opened!!! For those unfamiliar with how The David Gemmell Awards work, the first stage (that has resulted…
Articles
I Don’t Need No Women In My Fantasy
Stephen Deas
My Twitter stream regularly expresses a variety of opinion on the treatment of women, or of people of colour or unconventional sexuality, in genre fiction. This is, I presume to…
Bookshops’ SFF Prejudice Problem?
There has been a recent highlighting of the fact by three well-known female authors that UK Booksellers are selling them and their contemporaries short. My aim today is to take…
Love in SFF – From True Love to BFFs
Leo Elijah Cristea
Romance in SFF is one of those things that people either love, hate, or are frankly indifferent about. I’m not one of those; I will eagerly admit that I love…
Low Fantasy Subgenres
Marsha A. Moore
In my last article, I compared and contrasted two very popular low fantasy subgenres, urban fantasy and paranormal romance. In this article, I’ll continue with an overview of other major…
Brian Jacques: An Appreciation
Chloe Smith
Brian Jacques died on February 5, 2011. He was 71, and he leaves behind him the legacy of a full and successful career: 39 published books, including 21 in his…
Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: Hippoi Monokerata
Faith M. Boughan
Welcome to the final instalment of our series on lesser-known creatures and monsters in Classical mythology! Over the past year, we’ve looked at everything from ancient dragon-like creatures to ancient…
Last Minute Emergency Valentine’s Day Card!
It’s Valentine’s Day… What? You forgot!? Well, don’t worry… as per usual, we have your back. Just for you, Fantasy-Faction has created a Game of Thrones themed Valentine’s Day Card…
Overlord on SFSignal’s MIND MELD: What’s “Wrong” with Epic Fantasy?
A couple of days ago, SFSignal e-mailed me to ask whether I’d be willing to lend my voice and thoughts to the opinion that ‘something is wrong with epic fantasy‘.…
Worldbuilding: It’s More Than a Pretty Map
Kameron Hurley
I know authors (and readers!) who hate fantasy worldbuilding. They hate it with a fiery passion. They even go so far as to hand wave whole settings, writing books that…
European Dragons: From the North and East
Our final destination on our worldwide dragon journey is Europe. I know, I know—not very exciting, is it? But wait! Having looked specifically at Chinese dragons last time, it’s only…
The Fantasy Language Problem – Part Two
Django Wexler
This is part two of Django Wexler’s guest post on fantasy languages. You can read part one here. (Click or mouseover links for humorous footnotes.) The preceding section is not…