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www.bbc.co.uk
>Then without taking counsel or waiting for the approach of the men of the City, he spurred headlong back to the front of the great host, and blew a horn, and cried aloud for the onset. Over the field rang his clear voice calling: ‘Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!’ >And with that the host began to move. But the Rohirrim sang no more. Death they cried with one voice loud and terrible, and gathering speed like a great tide their battle swept about their fallen king and passed, roaring away southwards.
Artist's artstation: https://www.artstation.com/yalun
Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LRyQx0
Source: https://twitter.com/patrick_ganas/status/1658837269170606084?t=hXRKZTiInnU8vbZn-8snYg
From the book Language of the Night: > Critics have been hard on Tolkien for his "simplisticness," his division of the inhabitants of Middle Earth into the good people and the evil people. And indeed he does this, and his good people tend to be entirely good, though with endearing frailties, while his Orcs and other villains are altogether nasty. But all this is a judgment by daylight ethics, by conventional standards of virtue and vice. When you look at the story as a psychic journey, you see something quite different, and very strange. You see then a group of bright figures, each one with its black shadow. Against the Elves, the Orcs. Against Aragorn, the Black Rider. Against Gandalf, Saruman. And above all, against Frodo, Gollum. Against him--and with him. > It is truly complex, because both the figures are clearly doubled. Sam is, in part, Frodo's shadow, his "inferior" part. Gollum is two people, too, in a more direct, schizophrenic sense; he's always talking to himself, Slinker talking to Stinker, Sam calls it. Sam understands Gollum very well, though he won't admit it and won't accept Gollum as Frodo does, letting Gollum be their guide, trusting him. Frodo and Gollum are not only both hobbits; they are the same person--and Frodo knows it. Frodo and Sam are the bright side, Smeagol-Gollum the shadow side. In the end Sam and Smeagol, the lesser figures, drop away, and all that is left is Frodo and Gollum, at the end of the long quest. And it is Frodo the good who fails, who at the last moment claims the Ring of Power for himself; and it is Gollum the evil who achieves the quest, destroying the Ring, and himself with it. The Ring, the archetype of the Integrative Function, the creative-destructive, returns to the volcano, the eternal source of creation and destruction, the primal fire. When you look at it that way, can you call it a simple story? I suppose so. Oedipus Rex is a fairly simple story, too. But it is not simplistic. It is the kind of story that can be told only by one who has turned and faced his shadow and looked into the dark.
What's everyone's favorite standalone fantasy novels? No sequels, no trilogies, just a rare gem in the fantasy landscape. To start things off, I would say that one of my favorites is "Talion: Revenant" by Michael Stackpole. Really intriguing world and a good storyline, primarily character driven I would say.
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/14974738 > > Anybody who uses the Internet should read E.M. Forster's _The Machine Stops_. It is a chilling, short story masterpiece about the role of technology in our lives. Written in 1909, it's as relevant today as the day it was published. Forster has several prescient notions including instant messages (email!) and cinematophoes (machines that project visual images). > > > > -Paul Rajlich > > Seen on [this comment](https://lemm.ee/comment/5862551).
Small Gods: A masterful comic satire on Religious Institutions and Fundamentalism Small Gods is a fantasy comic satire on religious institutions, religious fundamentalism, philosophy, and the weaponisation of religious fanaticism for political power set in the Discworld. It explores how religious beliefs and faith shift and change over time, from being centred on the deity to being centred on the religious institution itself. Rereading this was an absolute joy! This is the story of how Brutha becomes the eighth prophet of the god Om. Omnia is a monotheistic theocracy based on the Seven Books of the Prophets of Om, or the Septateuch. Omnia was a place where: "No matter what your skills, there was a place for you in the Citadel. And if your skill lay in asking the wrong kinds of questions or losing the righteous kind of wars, the place might just be the furnaces of purity, or the Quisition’s pits of justice. A place for everyone. And everyone in their place." Vorbis, the exquisitor in charge of the Quisition, enjoyed near complete authority and power over everyone out of fear of the Quisition’s pits. As the story opens, we have Brutha, a novice at the Citadel, working in the gardens when he comes across a tortoise who speaks to him. The tortoise in question is actually the god Om, who inexplicably finds himself in the form of a tortoise and unable to do much more than speak to Brutha in his mind. On Discworld, a particular god’s powers depend on the number of believers the god possesses. As the story progresses, we understand why even though the great god Om was held supreme in Omnia, the actual god Om was at present virtually powerless having Brutha as his only believer. Om starts to understand the reason when he ruminates: "… it can’t be just him who believes in me. Really in me. Not in a pair of golden horns. Not in a great big building. Not in the dread of hot iron and knives. Not in paying your temple dues because everyone else does. Just in the fact that the Great God Om really exists." After all, "Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure….. “Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.”’" Religion starts out centred on the god and then ends up centred on the Institution with people going through the motions because it’s what everyone does, or out of fear of the Institution. This had the unfortunate effect of turning the great god Om into a "small god". Similar to the other gods on Discworld, Om doesn't really care or think much of humans beyond realising the need to have believers. As the story progresses, due to his association with Brutha, Om starts to get a better understanding of humankind and also to care for them. Brutha starts out as a novice who simply took everything taught by the religious institution on faith to someone who realises what's wrong with the system and tries to change it. Similar to a lot of other Discworld books, an underlying sense of anger and frustration permeates this book, with this book probably being Pratchett’s angriest. This is particularly evident when he speaks of the actions of the Quisition, generally involving torture and murder on a regular basis: "And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do. Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people." (A very astute judge of humankind, I must say). And, in relation to the the actual Quisitors: "But there were things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven. The mugs, for example. They had legends on them like A Present From the Holy Grotto of Ossory, or To The World’s Greatest Daddy". Even though the subject matter is serious, there are numerous hilarious jokes, puns and comic twists strewn throughout the book to make a reader laugh out loud. Some of my favourite jokes were: "Nhumrod looked around the garden. It seemed to be full of melons and pumpkins and cucumbers. He shuddered. ‘Lots of cold water, that’s the thing,’ he said. ‘Lots and lots.’" Another one which speaks of the somewhat random rules of religions: "‘I nearly committed a terrible sin,’ said Brutha. ‘I nearly ate fruit on a fruitless day.’ ‘That’s a terrible thing, a terrible thing,’ said Om. ‘Now cut the melon.’ ‘But it is forbidden!’ said Brutha. ‘No it’s not,’ said Om. ‘Cut the melon.’ ‘But it was the eating of fruit that caused passion to invade the world,’ said Brutha. ‘All it caused was flatulence,’ said Om. ‘Cut the melon!’" I don’t consider this book to be either against religion nor particularly for religion. The case of faith vs doubt is not a theme in this book and is not much of a thing on Discworld considering that the Gods on Discworld are very “present”. Even then, atheists like Simony do exist. In fact a running joke in the book is that people try to put some distance between themselves and atheists because atheists tend to be struck down by lightning (by Io the god of thunder). However, this book definitely speaks out against the use of unspeakable violence and subjugation in the name of god by people like Vorbis, without being in the least bit heavy handed about it. Now there is another thing about this book and Discworld books in general that I have loved, besides the social/religious commentary and humour, is that these books make me feel a little hopeful for humanity in general. In the midst of terrible events we have instances of people sometimes putting aside differences to do the right thing: "He looked around in time to see a wave lift a ship out of the water and smash it against the dunes. A distant scream coloured the wind. The soldiers stared. ‘There were people under there,’ said Argavisti. Simony dropped the flask. ‘Come on,’ he said. And no one, as they hauled on timbers in the teeth of the gale, as Urn applied everything he knew about levers, as they used their helmets as shovels to dig under the wreckage, asked who it was they were digging for, or what kind of uniform they’d been wearing." And, "The black-on-black eyes stared imploringly at Brutha, who reached out automatically, without thinking … and then hesitated. HE WAS A MURDERER, said Death. AND A CREATOR OF MURDERERS. A TORTURER. WITHOUT PASSION. CRUEL. CALLOUS. COMPASSIONLESS. ‘Yes. I know. He’s Vorbis,’ said Brutha. Vorbis changed people. Sometimes he changed them into dead people. But he always changed them. That was his triumph. He sighed. ‘But I’m me,’ he said. Vorbis stood up, uncertainly, and followed Brutha across the desert. Death watched them walk away." This is another reason I have loved this book. I will end this with a couple of thought provoking metaphors I loved from the book: "‘About life being like a sparrow flying through a room? Nothing but darkness outside? And it flies through the room and there’s just a moment of warmth and light?’ ‘There are windows open?’ said Brutha. ‘Can’t you imagine what it’s like to be that sparrow, and know about the darkness? To know that afterwards there’ll be nothing to remember, ever, except that one moment of the light?’" And another one which speaks of the wonders of the world: ‘Life in this world,’ he said, ‘is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, “Go on, do Deformed Rabbit … it’s my favourite.”’ (This one is also a little funny!)
www.bigissue.com
cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/3210298 > > When Terry Pratchett died in 2015, we thought we’d never again get another story from the Discworld creator. But there were secrets to be unearthed.
> A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin currently has the rating of 4.44 on Goodreads. The following books are standalones or first books in a series, as it would be unfair to compare it to the last book in a series, for example the fantastic ending to The Faithful and the Fallen series, Wrath, by John Gwynne, which has a Goodreads rating of 4.51. > Unsurprisingly, Brandon Sanderson features three times on this list! I can’t say I agree with any of these titles being “better”, but the all-knowing Goodreads reviewers might just have some interesting recommendations for A Song of Ice and Fire fans.
Some context from Bruce Sterling on the post. These are the original ten commandments: > 1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow. > > 2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course. > > 3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable. > > 4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end. > > 5. No Chinaman must figure in the story. > > 6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right. > > 7. The detective himself must not commit the crime. > > 8. The detective is bound to declare any clues upon which he may happen to light. > > 9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader. > > 10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
[!fiction@literature.cafe](https://literature.cafe/c/fiction) Basically, the title. Feel free to have a look and join!
www.humblebundle.com
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4813494 > Great deal for a highly rated DRM-free collection of fantasy books
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4711771 > At least some of the signs were desgined by Anders Sandberg: > > - [Warning Signs for Tomorrow](https://lifeboat.com/ex/warning.signs.for.tomorrow) > > I found the image on [Bruce Sterling's Tumblr](https://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/726064836059004928). > > The source is from u\/FuckMyHeart's (reddit user) comment, which has a bit more info: > > - [FuckMyHeart comments on Fringe Science Warning Signs](https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/k922eh/fringe_science_warning_signs/gllu4ez/) > > From the same comment and user: > > - [zip file containing each symbol as its own indexed png with transparency](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pNvanL9xT7DzkuuT-J4u1tj7SOrGYKlK/view?usp=sharing)
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/3764849 > > First published in Nature magazine, November 1999. > > > > AD 2380: After a painstaking ten-year search, from the Tibetan highlands to the Brazilian rainforests, it’s official — there are no more human beings. > > > > (...) > > RSS Feed https://medium.com/feed/@bruces > > Via [Ran Prieur - August 9](http://ranprieur.com/)
What have you been reading?
theconversation.com
Interestingly, the author of this piece completely fails to mention [The Amazing Maurice](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_amazing_maurice). Possibly because this article is completely based on [another article](https://screenrant.com/terry-pratchett-tv-show-adaptations-ranked-worst-best/) from 2021, which is before Maurice came out.
www.humblebundle.com
Video description: > **An edited, illustrated and narrated playthrough of the game Dwarf Fortress** > > Sharpen your spears and oil your beards because today, my dwarves, we head into the northern swamps in search of monsters! > > Watch as a small band of hunters delve the deepest tunnels in search of quarry! Will they prevail? Or will the nearby shrine's guardian put a swift end to their ambitions? If you didn't know Kruggsmash and like their videos, it's your lucky day. [Take a look at the playlists](https://www.youtube.com/@kruggsmash/playlists), there are awesome series there.
www.cultureslate.com
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51340378-the-mask-of-mirrors?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=pfFhlyMaDY&rank=1 Links: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-mask-of-mirrors https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-mask-of-mirrors https://www.amazon.ca/Mask-Mirrors-Rook-Rose-Book-ebook/dp/B085C741PZ https://www.amazon.com/Mask-Mirrors-Rook-Rose-Book-ebook/dp/B085C741PZ
fantasy-hive.co.uk
www.robjhayes.co.uk
file770.com
Hello, I was thinking about posting a small comic strip about fantasy, is that allowed? I didn't find anything against it in the rules, but I preferred to check beforehand. I noticed that this kind of content usually gets a lot of upvotes, and can bring more visibility to the community.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2699123 > I don't really have anything to add, I just love this book. I searched for "The NeverEnding Story" in this community, saw that there was no post about it and wanted to fix that :). > > Image found on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/102310314933278/photos/a.102310338266609/402096134954693/). I think [the source of that specific printing is the Spanish version of the book](https://de.todocoleccion.net/gebrauchte-bucher/la-historia-interminable-michael-ende-salvat-alfaguara~x377334289), but it's very similar to [some German version covers](https://libreriacajondesastre.com/narrativa/la-historia-interminable-10625).
I'm on book 5 of Mage Errant by John Beirce. Came across it on Kindle Unlimited and it's been pretty fun. Short reads, progression fantasy mildly YA, but I'm enjoying them. What are y'all reading?