But what does Fair Trade publishing mean? Well, I drink a lot of coffee. I’ve been impressed with the Fair Trade initiative, given how badly screwed coffee growers tend to be. Growing coffee takes years. So can writing and publishing a book. In practice, this translates to a 50/50 income share with authors. If I can’t make my wages and expenses out of my half of the income, I don’t deserve to be publishing. I’ve been writing for 20 years, and have more than 100 books out there. I’m determined to be the publisher I always longed to find.

But Fair Trade has to extend to readers, too. Traditional publishing is falling apart under the weight of its own greed. Far too many companies have been unfairly avaricious for too long, complacent in their power as Gatekeepers of what gets published. The digital revolution has changed all of that. Readers are sick of being treated like stupid, naughty children. For the reader, Fair Trade means a great book, well written and fairly priced, prepared to full professional standard, free of crippling DRM. Every Ghostwoods book has been painstakingly laid out, proof-read, and then proof-read again.

The Ghostwoods launch novels represent the best in modern fiction. You can see the covers just to the right of this post. Click on one, and you’ll be taken to that book.

‘All Lies and Jest’, by Kate Harrad, is a counter-culture thriller with a delicious vein of dark humour. In it, you’ll meet crazed cultists, psychopaths, lettuce-eating vampires, and a chilling conspiracy to bring about the end of the world.

‘American Monsters’, by Sezin Koehler, is a post-modern feminist horror, and a savage indictment of rave culture. Its heroines are traumatised, quirkily super-powered, and absolutely not putting up with any more shit.

‘Ghost Patrol’, by P.D. Jordan, is a tense science fiction story. When a brilliant young space captain is captured by the enemy, he finds himself thrown into a lethal game of psychological cat and mouse with his would-be reprogrammers.

‘SwitchFlipped’ by Greg Stolze is an exciting urban fantasy about a normal guy who gets drawn into a lunatic reality where people can turn into electricity, where ghosts live suburban lives, and where nothing is impossible, if you’re prepared to pay the price.

The digital revolution is a very exciting time to be a reader. It’s exciting for writers, too. I’m determined to bring the two together, as pleasantly and generously as I possibly can.

There’s some overlap with the speed information, which I’ll crop out for brevity’s sake. So. Michael Moorcock”s Rules of Writing:

1. My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from, Bunyan to Byatt.
2. Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.
3. Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.
4. If possible have something going on while you have your characters delivering exposition or philosophising. This helps retain dramatic tension.
5. Carrot and stick – have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).
6. Ignore all rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say!

As a little bonus something, you might be interested in Jack Kerouac’s list of 30 hints and tips for writers. Some of them are a little, um… Kerouac. You’ll see what I mean…

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Michael Moorcock is a highly influential English writer. His career has mostly specialised in fantasy and sci-fi, and whilst some of his novels have been highly literary, he was a firm exponent of sword-and-sorcery, particularly in the sixties and seventies.

He has often commented on the craft of writing, but one of his most unique and interesting techniques is his plan for writing a book in three days. He was talking about sword-and-sorcery at the time, the fantasy inheritor of pulp fiction, and the books in question were typically 60,000 words, but even so, there’s a lot to be said for his methods. Despite the general medium, the power of his work has been huge, and his best-known character, Elric, is one of fantasy’s great standouts.

Michael Moorcock

Anyway. Here is Mike’s technique for writing a book in three days:

• First of all, it’s vital to have everything prepared. Whilst you will be actually writing the thing in three days, you’ll need a day or two of set-up first. If it’s not all set up, you’ll fail.
• Model the basic plot on the Maltese Falcon (or the Holy Grail — the Quest theme, basically). In the Falcon, a lot of people are after the same thing, the Black Bird. In the Mort D’Arthur, again a lot of people are after the same thing, the Holy Grail. It’s the same formula for westerns, too. Everyone’s after the same thing. The gold of El Dorado. Whatever.
• The formula depends on the sense of a human being up against superhuman force — politics, Big Business, supernatural evil, &c. The hero is fallible, and doesn’t want to be mixed up with the forces. He’s always about to walk out when something grabs him and involves him on a personal level.
• You’ll need to make lists of things you’ll use.
• Prepare an event for every four pages.
• Do a list of coherent images. So you think, right, Stormbringer: swords, shields, horns, and so on.
• Prepare a complete structure. Not a plot, exactly, but a structure where the demands were clear. Know what narrative problems you have to solve at every point. Write solutions at white heat, through inspiration: really, it can just be looking around the room, looking at ordinary objects, and turning them into what you need. A mirror can become a mirror that absorbs the souls of the damned.
• Prepare a list of images that are purely fantastic, deliberate paradoxes say, that fit within the sort of thing you’re writing. The City of Screaming Statues, things like that. You just write a list of them so you’ve got them there when you need them. Again, they have to cohere, have the right resonances, one with the other.
• The imagery comes before the action, because the action’s actually unimportant. An object to be obtained — limited time to obtain it. It’s easily developed, once you work the structure out.
• Time is the important element in any action adventure story. In fact, you get the action and adventure out of the element of time. It’s a classic formula: “We’ve only got six days to save the world!” Immediately you’ve set the reader up with a structure: there are only six days, then five, then four and finally, in the classic formula anyway, there’s only 26 seconds to save the world! Will they make it in time?
• The whole reason you plan everything beforehand is so that when you hit a snag, a desperate moment, you’ve actually got something there on your desk that tells you what to do.
• Once you’ve started, you keep it rolling. You can’t afford to have anything stop it. Unplug the phone and the internet, lock everyone out of the house.
• You start off with a mystery. Every time you reveal a bit of it, you have to do something else to increase it. A good detective story will have the same thing. “My God, so that’s why Lady Carruthers’s butler Jenkins was peering at the keyhole that evening. But where was Mrs. Jenkins?”
• In your lists, in the imagery and so on, there will be mysteries that you haven’t explained to yourself. The point is, you put in the mystery, it doesn’t matter what it is. It may not be the great truth that you’re going to reveal at the end of the book. You just think, I’ll put this in here because I might need it later. You can’t put in loads of boring exposition about something you have no idea of yourself.
• Divide your total 60,000 words into four sections, 15,000 words apiece. Divide each into six chapters. You can scale this up or down as you like, of course, but you’ll need more days — and stamina — for longer books, and keep chapters at 2.5k max. In section one the hero will say, “There’s no way I can save the world in six days unless I start by…” Getting the first object of power, or reaching the mystic place, or finding the right sidekick, or whatever. That gives you an immediate goal, and an immediate time element, as well as an overriding time demand. With each section divided into six chapters, each chapter must then contain something which will move the action forward and contribute to that immediate goal.
• Very often a chapter is something like: attack of the bandits — defeat of the bandits. Nothing particularly complex, but it’s another way you can achieve recognition: by making the structure of a chapter a miniature of the overall structure of the book, so everything feels coherent. The more you’re dealing with incoherence, with chaos — ie with speed — the more you need to underpin everything with simple logic and basic forms that will keep everything tight. Otherwise the thing just starts to spread out into muddle and abstraction.
• So you don’t have any encounter without at least information coming out of it. In the simplest form, Elric has a fight and kills somebody, but as they die they tell him who kidnapped his wife. Again, it’s a question of economy. Everything has to have a narrative function.
• Use the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula.  [[I'll put the formula at the end of Moorcock's tips -- Ghostwoods]] You must never have a revelation of something that wasn’t already established; so, you couldn’t unmask a murderer who wasn’t a character established already. All your main characters have to be in the first part. All you main themes and everything else has to be established in the first part, developed in the second and third, and resolved in the last part.
• There’s always a sidekick to make the responses the hero isn’t allowed to make: to get frightened; to add a lighter note; to offset the hero’s morbid speeches, and so on. The hero has to supply the narrative dynamic, and therefore can’t have any common-sense. Any one of us in those circumstances would say, ‘What? Dragons? Demons? You’ve got to be joking!’ The hero has to be driven, and when people are driven, common sense disappears. You don’t want your reader to make common sense objections, you want them to go with the drive; but you’ve got to have somebody around who’ll act as a sort of chorus.
• When in doubt, descend into a minor character. So when you reach an impasse, and you can’t move the action any further with your major character, switch to a minor character ‘s viewpoint, which will allow you to keep the narrative moving, and give you time to brew something.

Elric with his evil, sentient, soul-drinking blade Stormbringer.

You’ll also need to know the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula. Lester Dent was a hugely prolific writer of pulp fiction stories, and is particularly remembered for the Doc Savage tales, which he created and wrote the great bulk of. His masterplan is a blueprint for classic pulp fiction stories, and it retains a lot of power, even today.

Lester Dent’s penname is Kenneth Robeson. He is the creator of Doc Savage and author of that successful book-length magazine since its birth. He has been writing five years and often turns out 200,000 words a month. He has not had a rejection in the past three years. This article describes the master plot that Mr. Dent uses.

This is one opinion. It is opinion of one who believes in formula and mechanical construction, for a pulp yarn.

It is opinion of one believing:

1—Majority of pulps are formula.

2—Most editors who say don’t want formula don’t know what they are talking about.

3—Some eds won’t buy anything but formula.

Framed over this typewriter, on a bulkhead of my schooner now anchored off a bay in the Caribbean while we attempt to raise a Spanish treasure, is an object which tends to make the convictions mentioned appear to be facts—or an unexpected hallucination.

The object on the bulkhead is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000-word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

Lester Dent

A year or so ago, a rough form of this master plot was handed to a man who still had a first sale to make. If recollection is correct, he sold his next six yarns written to the master plot.

The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else. The idea is apparently to get materials, get a plan, and go to it.

The rough form of this story plan, this master plot, will follow. But first, it might be a good idea to consider some of the materials.

It seems likely that “character” rates as one of the principal story-making materials. Many a yarn comes back with “Inadequate Characterization” pencilled on a rejection slip, and a scribbler works up a headache trying to figure out what the hell that meant. It might help to glance over some barn door variety characterization gags that most professionals use.

A fair idea is to make out a list of characters before starting a yarn. Then it’s conceivably a better idea to try to get along with half the list.

For a detective yarn, several characters may be handy, to wit: One hero. One villain. Various persons to murder. It may not be a sure-fire thing to murder women, some editors being finicky that way. Somebody for the hero to rescue is often handy, too. Female. Not female, though, if the editor has what he is wont to quaintly call a “no woman interest” mag.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader’s mind. Tag him. A tag may be described as something to recognize somebody by. Haile Selassie’s sheet and drawers might be called an appearance tag. So might Old John Silver’s wooden leg in Treasure Island. And movie comic Joe Brown’s big mouth. The idea is to show the tag to the reader so that he may thereby recognize the actor in the story. Instead of marching the character in only by name, parade the tag.

Mannerism tags may cover absent-minded gestures. Perhaps the villain (villainy at this point unknown) is often noted rubbing his eyes when in private or when thinking himself unobserved. At end of yarn, it turns out the color of his eyes has been disguised by the new style glass opticians’ cap which fits directly on the eyeball, and cap was irritating his eyes.

It’s nice to have tags take a definite bearing on the story. Not all can, however.

Disposition tags should not be overlooked. Is the character a hard guy? Does he love his women and leave ‘em—and later help them over the rough spots? This tagging might go on and on and become more and more subtle.

Characters usually have names. Occasionally an author is a literary Argus who writes a yarn carrying the actors through by their tags alone, then goes back and names them. This procedure is not necessarily to be advised, except a time or two for practice.

It is not a bad idea to use some system in picking names. Two characters in the yarn may not necessarily need names which look alike. Confusing the reader can be left to villains. If the hero’s name is Johnson, “J” and “son” names for the others might be avoided. Too, it may not be the best idea to go in for all very short names exclusively. And a worse idea is to go in for all long ones. Telephone books are full of names, but it’s an idea to twist them around, selecting a first name here, second one there. If nothing better is at hand, a newspaper, possibly the obit page, can help.

Now, about that master plot. It’s a formula, a blueprint for any 6000-word yarn.

A rough outline can be laid out with the typewriter, although some mental wizards may do it all in their heads. About a page of outline to every ten pages of finished yarn might serve.

Doc Savage, Man of Bronze.

Here’s how it starts:

Devise one or more of the following:

1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE
2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING
3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE
4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO

One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.

A different murder method could be–different. Thinking of shooting, knifing, hydrocyanic, garroting, poison needles, scorpions, a few others, and writing them on paper gets them where they may suggest something. Scorpions and their poison bite? Maybe mosquitos or flies treated with deadly germs?

If the victims are killed by ordinary methods, but found under strange and identical circumstances each time, it might serve, the reader of course not knowing until the end, that the method of murder is ordinary. Scribes who have their villain’s victims found with butterflies, spiders or bats stamped on them could conceivably be flirting with this gag.

Probably it won’t do a lot of good to be too odd, fanciful or grotesque with murder methods.

The different thing for the villain to be after might be something other than jewels, the stolen bank loot, the pearls, or some other old ones. Here, again one might get too bizarre.

Unique locale? Easy. Selecting one that fits in with the murder method and the treasure–thing that villain wants–makes it simpler, and it’s also nice to use a familiar one, a place where you’ve lived or worked. So many pulpeteers don’t. It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool him.

Here’s a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt, say, author finds a book titled “Conversational Egyptian Easily Learned,” or something like that. He wants a character to ask in Egyptian, “What’s the matter?” He looks in the book and finds, “El khabar, eyh?” To keep the reader from getting dizzy, it’s perhaps wise to make it clear in some fashion, just what that means. Occasionally the text will tell this, or someone can repeat it in English. But it’s a doubtful move to stop and tell the reader in so many words the English translation.

The writer learns they have palm trees in Egypt. He looks in the book, finds the Egyptian for palm trees, and uses that. This kids editors and readers into thinking he knows something about Egypt.

So. The Master Plot itself.

Divide the 6000 word yarn into four 1500 word parts. In each 1500 word part, put the following:

• FIRST 1500 WORDS

1. First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved–something the hero has to cope with.
2. The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)
3. Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.
4. Hero’s endevours land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.
5. Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in
   the plot development.

SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE?
Is there a MENACE to the hero?
Does everything happen logically?

At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has learned the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise, who can explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events. The hero corners villains, they fight, and villains get away. Not so hot. Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero counts the rings on Eloise’s tail, if nothing better comes to mind. They’re not real. The rings are painted there. Why?

• SECOND 1500 WORDS

1. Shovel more grief onto the hero.
2. Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:
3. Another physical conflict.
4. A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE?
Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud?
Is the hero getting it in the neck?
Is the second part logical?

DON’T TELL ABOUT IT. Show how the thing looked. This is one of the secrets of writing; never tell the reader–show him. (He trembles, roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader’s mind. TAG HIM.

BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.

• THIRD 1500 WORDS

1. Shovel the grief onto the hero.
2. Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:
3. A physical conflict.
4. A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

DOES: It still have SUSPENSE?
Is the MENACE getting blacker?
The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix?
It all happens logically?

If so, fine. These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there is no pulp story. These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until next the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may, naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it more than once.

When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed page. It is reasonable to to expect these minor surprises to sort of inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound efforts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him begins slowly to open. He does not see it. He conducts his examination blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until–surprise! The glass pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then what the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.

The idea is to avoid monotony.

Suspense must be the sugar which draws the flies. And possibly it’s coupled up with the MENACE, a slightly intangible thing at first glance. Menace shouldn’t be hard to recognize in a story. It’s that feel of terrible things to happen to the hero and every other decent person. It might be built up by repeated references, a word dropped now and then, and by making the villain particularly bad.

Villians don’t necessarily have to be inhuman, though.

ACTION: Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and feel the action.

ATMOSPHERE: Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.

DESCRIPTION: Trees, wind, scenery and water.

THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.

• FOURTH 1500 WORDS

1. Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.
2. Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)
3. The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.
4. The mysteries remaining–one big one held over to this point will help grip interest–are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes the situation in hand.
5. Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the “Treasure” be a dud, etc.)
6. The snapper, the punch line to end it.

HAS: The SUSPENSE held out to the last line?
The MENACE held out to the last?
Everything been explained?
It all happen logically?
Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?
Did God kill the villain? Make SURE it was the hero.

There it is. Take it, do what you can with it, while I go on deck, put on the diving hood, and have another try at that galleon, with the wife up the mast to keep an eye on the reefs for sharks and barracuda.

Note:

Most published articles have interesting histories behind them. This one might interest some of you. Lester Dent sent us a modest little six-page article just about the time this magazine was going to press. The last line of the article mentioned his master plot formula; the famed master plot that has fed every Lester Dent story for the past several years.

We wondered if Mr. Dent would share that formula with the fraternity. We phoned his hotel in New York. “Sorry, Mr. Dent has gone to La Plata, Mo.” We phoned the village postmaster at La Plata. “Sorry, Mr. Dent is on his yacht, the Albatross.” “Where?” “Off Miami someplace; my goodness, why?” The long distance operator in Miami, a student of human nature if there ever was one, asked us a question: “How long has Mr. Dent been on his yacht?”

“Why?” we were glad to ask this for a change.

“Well, you see if he’s just bought a yacht he’s on deck running up flags, and then running them down again.”

“Oh.”

“But if he’s had it for a while, he’s below listening to his radio. If you want, I’ll have the police put out a call for him on short wave.”

We demurred.

The operator coughed, letting us know she knew we were a plain sissy.

To invade the privacy of an author anchored God only knows where by belching into his radio: “L-e-s-t-e-r D-e-n-t, Lester Dent call Miami police station. Yachts at sea off Miami, flag the Albatross. Owner wanted by police.”

What a rummy we’ve turned out to be, we thought, as we gave the operator, who was by now politely sneering at us with her conversational coughs, the go ahead.

About two hours later a startled voice called us from Florida and asked what the hell we were up to. It seemed that every yacht off Miami caught the call and began signaling the Albatross while the rest of that busy little city came down to the wharf to see L-e-s-t-e-r D-e-n-t, a man obviously wanted by the police.

We explained demurely. And of such stuff are authors made that Mr. Dent agreed to send along his famed formula, although he added, with a touch of homespun: “I hadn’t ought to.”

It’s a pretty fine thing for an author to share such a hard-won secret with his competing professionals, so if you like this piece, we have a mild suggestion to make. Buy a copy of Doc Savage on the newsstands and if you like the lead story, tell the publishers so in a letter.

If you liked this post, you should definitely go and have a look at author P. D. Jordan’s novel Ghost Patrol. It took a damn sight more than three days to write, but it’s a great piece of sci-fi. I think you’ll like it. 

Right from the start, World War Z treats its subject absolutely seriously. It takes the form of a series of stories recounted by survivors of the zombie apocalypse, which takes place in what is presumably the near future. The stories have been assembled by a scientist compiling statistical information on the war for the United Nations; when his bosses insist that he removes individual data from his official report, he decides to preserve the tales independently for historical reasons. As you’d expect from a premise like this, the material covers all sorts of different viewpoints, from primary movers and shakers through to ordinary people who scraped through.

It’s a difficult approach to take when writing a book. The wide range of characters can be disjointed and difficult to identify with, and there’s always a danger of slipping into mawkish melodrama or gung-ho action. Brooks does a fantastic job, however. It’s very easy to forget you’re reading a work of fiction — apart from the zombies, of course. The characters are sympathetic, varied and totally believable. Some of their stories are touching; others are positively harrowing. As events unfold, you really get the feeling of what it would have been like to live through the experience, and to witness the scars that it left. It calls to mind similar real-world eyewitness accounts from previous conflicts, particularly Studs Terkel’s famous book of stories from WWII, The Good War. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a healthy dose of social commentary in there as well.

World War Z gave a huge boost of new energy and potential to the Zombie genre, and I strongly recommend it to anyone with any fondness for our moany dead friends. It is currently under development as a movie with a script by J. Michael Straczinsky.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here; the Malazan Book of the Fallen is some of the best high fantasy ever written.

The first thing that hits you is the sheer scope. The books are set in a vast world, layered throughout with history, texture and gritty realism. Erikson trained as an anthropologist and archaeologist, and it shows — he knows how cultures work, and clearly wasn’t afraid to put in the huge time investment required to ensure that every part of his world made sense long before he began writing about it. The setting began as the backdrop for a role-playing campaign in fact, back in the ’80s, and Gardens of the Moon was initially conceived as a movie script.

This leads me to another outstanding element of the sequence: its freshness. Erikson takes great pleasure throughout his work in overturning cliches and avoiding tired fantasy tropes. There are no cookie-cutter kingdoms, no wise wolves, no thinly-disguised elves or dwarves or orcs, no mystical objects of overwhelming dark power. Instead, Erikson offers a stunning array of  unique creations. Wherever there’s an easy, familiar path, Erikson turns away from it. Nothing is hard and fast, nothing is black or white. There are no moral absolutes to be found — just wonders, mysteries and evocative questions.

The characters are just as varied, innovative and flexible. You’ll find a psychopath who can turn into a horde of rats, a renegade priest with hands of pure chaos, a noble barbarian on a quest to destroy all of creation, and a dazzling array of lunatics, charmers, soldiers, schemers and godlings — and that’s just amongst the secondary cast. They’re complex, flawed, and vibrantly real. All of them. And that’s a hell of a lot of different people. Forget any notions you might have of one primary hero, one group of heroes, or even one set of heroes working on the same side. Over the series, Erikson creates a tapestry of different characters, situations and interests, each of them following their own logic and beliefs. They range from the lowliest grunts and paupers up to the very primal powers of creation itself. No one is totally virtuous or totally wicked. They co-operate and clash, ebb and flow, and the story dances with them.

But although it may all sound chaotic, impossible to follow, Erikson’s real genius lies in welding all of his boundless inventiveness into a compelling whole. He’s a masterful builder of tension. The story may move between a range of people, but they’re each faced with different aspects of the same rising tide. Each has a part to play, and as events move toward their inevitable, shattering climax, the different pieces slot into position. The end result is breath-taking in its power.

The single greatest flaw with the series lies in its first seventy pages or so. It’s just not easy to get into, initially. Something is off — the characters just don’t gel with the reader to start with — and quite a few people find themselves giving up in the first fifty pages. I was one of them; I tried Gardens of the Moon shortly after it appeared, gave up on it quickly, and only returned in 2008. Persevere, I beg of you, and commit to reading the first hundred pages. By that point, you’ll be hooked almost without noticing, and the rewards are greater than you would imagine.

But there is a hint of method to my madness.

Deep in the bowels of the Internet, something is stirring. It’s the red-headed bastard child of Punk, thanks to a wild and filthy night orgying with MTV, William Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson and Lewis Caroll. As culture has expanded and exploded in the computer age, we’ve become more and more comfortable and familiar with concepts and ideas that used to be niche. Spell-flinging wizards. Vampires. Cthulhu. Giant stompy robots. Aliens cutting ventilation ports in cows. What used to be hardcore geek niche is mainstream now, and the younger you are, the more natural all this stuff is.

At the same time, entertainment has become, well, burstier. MTV blips are the usual example, but in every area, stuff is being served up in smaller and smaller chunks, with brighter lights and louder bells and whistles.

The result is a new wave of absurdity. I’m not going to get all Lit Critic and start talking about Dadism or post-modern playfulness; they’re old boxes, and they’re unhelpful. The movement — and it _is_ a movement, one which is gathering steam — has decided to call itself Bizarro. The only real aim or rule of Bizarro is to be entertaining. It is almost always weird and absurd, frequently straddling lines between fantasy, horror and sci-fi. Their worlds are not predictable, and the narrative structures often lack form.

John Dies at the End, by David Wong.

The Bizarro movement is centred on fiction, but its tendrils are extending out to art, animation, sculpture and music. Despite the lack of previously established norms, Bizarro work is usually easy to follow. It’s a sign of the quality of the pioneers involved that it is still good, because most of the old structures are there because they’re easy tools for creators to use.

Bizarro is not comfortable. Much of it is deliberately provocative, even offensive. It’s certainly unhinged, too. But if the chaotic juxtapositions and genuinely free creativity it can offer are to your tastes, then there’s a very rich vein of material waiting for you.

Bizarro Central is probably your best port of call if you want to know more.

Personally? I think I’m in love…

Some book titles manage to perfectly encapsulate the spirit of the novel they grace. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a great example of a high-concept title carrying the rest of the book along with it. Odd as it may seem, Shatnerquake is another.

It’s the near future, and William Shatner is reluctantly attending the world’s largest Shatner fan convention, ShatnerCon. Unfortunately for Bill, a cult of crazed Campbellian assassins has infiltrated the convention, determined to use surreal technology to wipe him out of all TV history. The device goes off, but rather than deleting Shatner’s TV personas as it is supposed to, it forces them all into reality. Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane and more all find themselves catapulted out of their shows and into everyday life. Driven instantly mad by the horrifying awareness that they are nothing more than fragmentary shadows, they are all filled with the same wild urge — to usurp the real Bill Shatner’s place in reality. The hunt begins, and it will take all of Shatner’s hard-won Drunken Kung Fu skills if he’s to stand any chance of surviving the Con…

Yes, Shatnerquake is utterly insane. It’s also faced-paced, viciously bloody, barbed, dark, and very entertaining.

It’s free to download today — Nov 17th — so what the hell have you got to lose? Go grab Shatnerquake. I guarantee you will never read anything else like it.

I’m always amazed that Powers isn’t more famous than he actually is. It seems extremely unjust, given that he’s quietly out there writing some of the best fiction on the market. Powers specialises in true Urban Fantasy — thrilling yet haunting stories where reality and true historical events are overlaid with magic, and the two become blended together in strange and unpredictable ways. No vampires, fairies or P.I. wizards here; instead, in Powers’ books, Albert Einstein’s time machine, poets who never were, and Russian double-agents chasing the secret of eternal life.

Last Call by Tim Powers

Last Call is set in the American west. The hero is a poker player, a man who spent his childhood being steeped in the curious superstitions of professional card-players, riding high by following the rules. Twenty years on, he’s still paying for having broken them when things long-dormant start to wake up and he finds himself the subject of some very unwelcome attention. It’s the end of a cycle, and his old debt is being called in.

The resulting journey weaves Fisher King legends, the Tarot, poker, and the glittering dream of Vegas into a dazzling mystic swirl, as dark and seedy as it is beautiful and engaging. It’s a very modern haunting of the American dream-scape, exciting, absorbing and wildly imaginative. Urban fantasy really doesn’t get much better.

The premise behind “Night Watch” is that our world is inhabited by Others, supernaturally gifted people and other beings, mostly living amongst us as human. Every other belongs either to the Light or the Dark, a choice that cannot be revoked once made. The two sides have fought for millennia, but have come to a historic accord – rather than utterly destroy each other, they maintain an uneasy peace, each letting the other side indulge in a certain amount of activity unopposed.

Series protagonist Anton is a mage and a member of the Night Watch, working on the side of the pro-human Light to monitor and regulate the forces of the Dark. Anton sits uneasily in the Light, but it’s an either-or choice, and the Dark are predatory, callous and prone to breaking the rules. A new, untrained Grand Sorceress is just starting to discover her talent, and the magical repercussions threaten all of Moscow. Meanwhile, a significant intrigue is starting to unfold around a young boy whose fate, uniquely, is entirely in his own hands – he may have the power to tip the balance one way or the other. An interesting premise and fast-paced action are blended well with a starkly realistic look at modern Moscow, and there’s a strong streak of darkly fatalistic humour. There’s also a hell of a lot of moral ambiguity — despite the set-up, there’s no nice, easy heroes and villains in this world.

The ‘Night Watch’ book was also turned into a pair of movies, Night Watch and Day Watch. They’re fun, and capture Moscow beautifully, but they’re not as engaging as the book. Lukyanenko has also done a number of sequels to his original book — Day Watch (yes, I know, but it’s not my fault), Twilight Watch and The Last Watch. They retain the trifurcated but thematically linked structure of the first book, although The Last Watch is closer to being a regular novel. They’re well worth getting hold of.

David and Matt are well aware of the pitfalls of tackling such a taboo and sensitive subject:

In writing this book we have come to learn that death is arbitrary – impersonal, uncaring, totally indifferent to any force you care to invoke for protection against it. Death can strike anyone at anytime. The most frightening thing is that while many of the deaths we have chronicled here occurred because of ridiculous stupidity, an equal number of them happened due to ridiculously bad luck.

[...]

All death is a tragedy for someone, and even the most ridiculous death leaves the deceased’s family and friends in pain. Our thoughts and sympathies are with all those who have been left behind. However, it seems to us that instead of obeying the cultural influences that see death as taboo subject – or turn it in a complex dance of fetishes and mythology – laughing at its most outrageous manifestations is a healthier way to go. [...] Both of us have already faced moments when we could have exited the stage of life in manner ridiculous enough to gain an entry in this book. From falling into a bear pit to choking on a bit of carrot or getting death threats from the Albanian Mafiya, we have seen first hand that death can always lie just around the corner. The only sane response to this knowledge is to laugh, love and live as much as possible.

So, with that said, here’s an entirely random selection of some of the book’s entries. If you enjoy them, well, you have the title and author to go find a copy!

DEAD AS A DILDO

When we were both fresh-faced journalists, we worked with an older and wiser deputy editor called Phil Higgins who always used to say: “It is always the priests and ministers you need to watch.” How right he was, as the tale of Baptist minister Gary Aldridge from Montgomery Alabama illustrates.

In June 2007, Aldridge’s body was discovered in his home. He was found on the floor, hogtied, wearing two full wetsuits and a diving face mask. If that was not surprising enough, the full autopsy report revealed that underneath the wetsuit the minister had “a dildo in the anus, covered with a condom.”

The report concluded that Aldridge had died of “accidental mechanical asphyxia” – what the average person usually thinks of as autoeroticism gone wrong. Very wrong. Ironically, the minister was renowned for being a vicious opponent of sex outside of marriage and of homosexuality, and had been a strong supporter of a law that banned the sale of sex aids in the state of Alabama.

IMMORTAL IDIOT

There are idiots and then there are grand spanking idiots who help redefine the whole concept of idiocy. Dmitry Butakov from Lipetsk in Russia was one of those grand spanking idiots. Having survived an accident in 1994 when he came into contact with 10,000 volts of electricity, Butakov became convinced he was immortal. While most of us would have been happy to survive such a close brush with death and taken more care, the Russian decided that nothing could kill him. In 2004, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his first accident, he called a press conference where he proceeded to drink a half-litre of antifreeze. Halfway through attempting to drink a second half-litre, Butakov collapsed, fell into a coma and died in hospital the next day. Butakov’s only immortality was carving his name into the history books of stupidity.

PAYING THE PRICE FOR PIPER

In 2001, 28-year-old New Zealander Peter John Robinson slipped as he went to feed his cat Piper. He knocked himself unconscious and managed to fall face down into Piper’s water bowl, where he drowned in less than 5cms of water.

PROPHETS’ LOSS

The end of the 20th century saw a lot of pre-millennial madness. Crazy cults proliferated more quickly than bacteria grow on a fast-food burger, and led to some spectacularly ridiculous deaths. Bucking the trend of the believers of frankly insane things topping themselves was one tale of pre-millennial triple death from the east of Java.

Three cult leaders in the village of Sukmajaya were chased by an angry mob of fellow cultists after the world did not end at 9am on 9/9/1999 as they had prophesised. Their followers had sold or given away all their worldly goods in and spent the last nine days locked in their homes in expectation of the imminent global destruction. When 9/9/99 came and went without the four horsemen of the apocalypse putting in an appearance, feelings among the cultists were running high.

According to Saadi Arsam, village chief of Sukmajaya: “The members were really mad. When they caught the false prophets they lost control of their tempers. Nothing could make them see sense, and they beat them to their deaths.” Shame the self-styled seers had not seen that coming.