Fiction Friday: THE LAST WISH: Introducing the Witcher

If you follow video gaming at all, you've likely heard of The Witcher series of open-world RPG video games. They feature the monster-hunting Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, wandering the world and killing that which goes bump in the night. The world of the Witcher is based around Slavic folklore, a flavor of Western monster mythology that is a little removed from what most of us are used to unless you are really into the subject of bestiary folklore.

But fewer people realize that the Witcher and his world started out as a series of short stories and novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. Most of the stories were written in the 1990s, but it wasn't until the mid-oughts and later that they were given English translations. Coming at the end of this year, Netflix is releasing a television series based around the stories, and of course both fans of the books and the video games are howling over how the details shown in the trailer don't do the series justice.

Curious about both such a popular video game character and what might drive Netflix to pick up the IP, I grabbed the first (chronologically) anthology of short stories, THE LAST WISH. I was immediately hooked. For a book translated from a different language, the prose is evocative and pulls you right into the world, a very dark, late medieval-era feeling fantasy realm, very similar to the Ravenloft setting of Dungeons & Dragons. If you aren't familiar with Slavic folklore, some of the creatures might seem unusual to you, but that slightly alien nature just adds to the creepiness of the setting - this isn't some adventurer going after your usual orcs and goblins, this is a true monster hunter, for whom a blend of swords, sorcery, and dark knowledge is needed to take on the evils lurking in the deep forests and crumbling towers.

So if you like dark fairy-tale fantasy with an Eastern European bent to it, do yourself a favor and check out Sapkowski's fiction. I'll definitely find time this fall to work my way through more of Geralt's adventures.

Wargaming Wednesday: Not Just Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons was the first pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing game I ever encountered. I started playing in the summer of '93, when two of my friends had the "Big Black Box" edition of the DnD Basic Rules set. For those of you who know what the BBB version is...well I don't need to tell you anything. For all you newbies out there, this was a really big intro boxed set that had a ton of "rules cards", a big map adventure, tiny cardboard monsters and PCs...basically everything you'd need to play the first few levels of your characters - which is not unusual for the D&D boxed sets - but in a larger format, with full-color maps and cardboard counters.

Up until this point, I really hadn't been into "Fantasy", but I had read the first three Dragonlance books (that's a post for another day), and so I had some idea of what I was getting into. Needless to say, I was immediately hooked - in fact, far more than the two other people I was gaming with. I quickly bought the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, and the over the next few years, I bought EVERYTHING that TSR produced - settings, Class handbooks, DM's guides...the works. The biggest problem, unfortunately, was lack of players, since I was living in a fairly rural small town in Maine, and my high school peers, for the most part, weren't interested in gaming.

When I moved off to college in 1995, I brought most of my gaming materials with me, certain that I'd be able to find a DnD group at a large urban university. But of course, as soon as I found some nerdy brethren and asked who played D&D, I received mocking laughter. "We don't play that game, you dork. We play White Wolf games. Those are real role-playing games".

I got sucked into a Werewolf: the Apocalypse game, and really enjoyed it, and I played a little Vampire and a little Mage as well. My RPG tastes began to grow, and I started buying other games, surprised that there were dozens of games put out by a wide variety of publishers in any genre you could think of. And of course, this was the late '90s, when the Internet gave us the ability to communicate around the world and share documents online with each other, enabling the explosion of what is commonly known as the "indie gaming" revolution. New voices emerged in the industry, edgy people with games that strayed far from the staid boundaries of D&D, GURPS, Rifts, World of Darkness, and other, more established platforms.

Fast-forward twenty years, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dungeons and Dragons is now well into its fifth - and most popular - edition, and most of the old guard are still around in one form or another. But smaller, indie presses and self-published games continue to arrive on the scene almost daily. In addition, the disdain most D&D folks had for the 4th edition rules, coupled with the death of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax back in 2008 sparked the "Old School Renaissance", where many gamers went back to the old editions of the game, breathing life back into them and using the bones of their rules sets to create a huge variety of different games.

Over the decades, I've collected a lot of role-playing games. Far more than I ever have, or ever could, play. I don't know what the current number is, but it is probably creeping up towards a hundred different RPGs and/or editions. And yet, that barely scratches the surface of what's out there, even from larger game companies, never mind "indie" developers. It's interesting that Dungeons and Dragons is more popular and more mainstream than it has ever been, and yet, most people have no idea of the immense variety of games out there - settings, play styles, rules types - whatever your interests might be, there is likely a game for you. And, just to give a minuscule taste, here's a YouTube video I watched last night, which dips a toe into the fathomless pool of games out there:

Yes, the video is a bit long, but if you have any curiosity about role-playing games, it is definitely worth your time to watch, and certainly better than me trying to pitch a bunch of different games. Oh, and it is worth noting that of the ten games they mention, I only own one of these - Call of Cthulhu - and it's an old edition. So if I own nearly a hundred RPGs, and only 1 of them is on this list, that gives you some idea of the variety out there.

Wargaming Wednesday: The Pure Insanity of Warhammer 40,000

Continuing with my push to deliver more blogging content, I'm dedicating Wednesdays to wargaming and role-playing games. Although in recent years I haven't been able to get in much (or really any) of either tabletop wargaming or pen-and-paper RPG playing, I still count both among my hobbies and interests.

Today I just wanted to highlight the wargame I am most invested in on an emotional level - Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. For those who don't know what it is - I'll do this REAL QUICK - a bunch of British tabletop miniatures folks had a set of wargaming rules called Warhammer. It had armies of Elves and Dwarfs and guys with swords and pikes, and orcs and goblins, even skeletons and ghouls and "chaos" warriors and monsters. Basically every fantasy trope you can think of circa 1985 or so, thrown into a blender. Warhammer became super popular, and as it grew, they decided to do a version of the game as a sci-fi skirmish game, which they decided to call "Warhammer 40,000".

Just Another Day in the 41st Millennium

The universe of Warhammer 40,000 has changed somewhat in the 30+ years since its inception, but, well, I'll just cut and paste in the quote that appears at the beginning of most of their products:

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Yeah, it's like that. This is the kind of science fiction wargame you dream up when you're a young British nerd who subsists on a diet of heavy metal, Michael Moorcock, Tolkien, the punk aesthetic, European political chaos, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, the Alien franchise, Hammer horror films, and a thick, heady dose of Generation X nihilism.  The "good guys" in the Warhammer 40K universe are the Imperium of Man, but you quickly realize that in 40K, "good" just means not quite as demonically horrifying as the "bad guys", but still pretty goddamn awful. The Space Marines, genetically modified super-humans in a suit of nigh-invulnerable power armor, might be call "the Emperor's finest", but they're also know as "The Angels of Death", and they'd stomp your skull into paste as soon as look at you if they thought you were a threat.

'Ello Guv'ner!

Even the Imperial Guard, the "good little guys" who were just your normal humans in basic body armor and carrying basic guns - somewhat analogous to regular army guys of today, just with sci-fi trappings - are often portrayed as psychotically violent and xenophobic, or just plain insane. Many of them come from "death worlds" where everything there tries to kill you, and it's basically Rambo with a plasma rifle and a chainsaw sword.

Some of my favorite parts of 40K are when things get delightfully subversive. There are nuns in 40K, but they are sociopathic religious zealots running around in black powered armor with all-white hair (white head covering, black outfit, like a nun's habit), blazing away with guns and flamethrowers, slaying heretics and the "impure". The Space Marine chaplain isn't a kindly older man giving you spiritual guidance...well okay he is, but he's also an eight foot-tall crazed murder machine in coal-black armor with a skull-shaped helmet, smashing people to pieces in the name of the Emperor and driving on the troops with his "inspiring presence". Yeah, it's like that. Even the Librarian is a force to be reckoned with, as "Librarians" are actually Space Marines with psychic powers, who can blow your body apart with their minds, set tanks on fire, and cause all sorts of supernatural havoc.

Yes, this is one of the Good Guys.

If anything, my biggest criticism of 40K in recent years is that they seem to be toning down the darker, more punk-rock elements of 40K in favor of something a little more family-friendly. There are still demons and mutants and heretics, but the Good Guys are a little more Good and the Bad Guys are a little more Bad. While 40K has always bee appealing to teenagers, I think Games Workshop knows that they need to aim for a younger audience, in order to get brand loyalty at an earlier age *and* tap into the "toy money" of the parents, rather than 30- or 40-somethings who have discretionary income, but who can also say "$35 for a single model an inch and a half tall? Ehhh...".


And that's my other big complaint - the cost. New model kits and new pricing structures mean that a playable, "competitive" army can set you back $400 or more if you buy everything at store prices. Sure, hobbies can be expensive, but the nature of wargaming is such that you feel the need to buy the newest, coolest stuff, as the rules and the "meta" changes to give different armies an advantage.

Glorious Old-School '90s Boxed Set Artwork!

But despite these problems, I really like the universe of Warhammer 40,000. It's cruel and violent and cynical and bloody as hell - in fact, it reminds me of that other British dystopian setting, JUDGE DREDD, in a lot of ways - but back in its earlier times, 40K didn't take itself as seriously as it does now, and I think the new, more serious 40K has lost a little something because of that.

Now, pardon me while I go burn some heretics - I mean, search on eBay for an out of production miniature...

Movie Review: The Monster Squad (1987)

During the 80's, a funny thing happened to action movies. First, we started to think of them as "action movies", rather than "violent films". Is Dirty Harry an action movie? I wouldn't call it one. What about Peckinpah's The Getaway? No, I wouldn't call that an action movie, either. Once we hit the 80's, films became big business, "Blockbuster" business, and studios began casting a wider and wider net for their audiences. I lay a lot of this at the feet of the Star Wars films, but even as they were hitting the scene, Indiana Jones and Conan and Beastmaster were arriving, films that were clearly s breed apart from films made a decade previously.

Along with the "action movie" phenomenon, a sub-phenomenon began to occur - the rise of action-adventure movies where children were the heroes. Goonies is probably the most famous example, but you also had films like E.T., Cloak and Dagger, The Lost Boys, Flight of the Navigator, and today's gem, The Monster Squad. All of these films, and a number of others, feature children - often not even teenagers - as the protagonists, often either directly opposed, or at least hindered, by the actions of adults. The great thing about these movies is that it portrayed children as being smart, able to solve problems with creative solutions, and capable of great bravery and courage when necessary. I wrote about this at some length when I reviewed Super 8 back in 2011.

The plot of the movie is pure cheesy fun. Dracula comes to town and brings with him the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein's Monster, and he even wakes up a Mummy. He also creates a few Brides to cause further mayhem. Dracula is looking for a powerful gem, a physical concentration of pure good, that can be corrupted and used to cause terrible things in the hands of monsters. The Monster Squad, a club of young kids who obsess about monsters, get their hands on an old book that turns out to be the diary of Van Helsing, and inside the diary they read about the gem (with the help of an old German neighbor who "knows all about monsters", being a concentration camp survivor). They discover that the gem is hidden in town, and begin a race against time to find it and save it from the clutches of Dracula and his monstrous allies.

Overall, this is a great Halloween movie. I wound up watching it twice over the last couple of weeks, and it's got action, comedy, horror, and even some real emotion. The kids are all great, the special effects are surprisingly good (Stan Winston Studios), and Duncan Regher's portrayal of Dracula is particularly creepy and effective. There might be a little bit of hamming it up here and there, but he's certainly better than a number of Draculas in cinema over the years.

Here's a great version of the film's trailer on YouTube. The movie is on On Demand with my cable provider right now, but you can pick it up at a reasonable price. If you haven't seen it, or if it's been a good 25 years since you did, the movie is worth a repeat viewing.

And just remember, Wolfman's got nards!

Book Review: A Fine Likeness by Sean McLachlan

Click the Cover to View on Amazon

Normally, I'm not really that interested in the American Civil War. I understand the basics of the war - the lead-up, the battles, the conclusion and the aftermath - but for one reason or another I've never felt the need to do a deep dive into this time period. Because of this, I've never had a strong interest in reading any fiction relating to the ACW, such as The Killer Angels or Bernard Cornwell's Nathaniel Starbuck chronicles.

Even with an only lukewarm interest in the conflict, I was intrigued by Sean McLachlan's A Fine Likeness when I first heard about the book. A "Civil War Horror" novel written by a seasoned archaeologist, travel writer, and historical reference author sounded peculiar enough to warrant a second glance, and although it took me a while to circle around to reading it, I'm now kicking myself for waiting so long, because it's one hell of a good yarn.

The book starts off near Columbia, Missouri with a skirmish between Captain Addison's militia company and Rawlins' Rangers, a six-man band of "bushwhackers". The term refers to small bands of guerrilla fighters who operated in many states during the war, launching ambushes and raids and falling back into the wilderness, where the men lived off the land and the generosity of sympathizing civilians. Like the guerrilla fighters of the Napoleonic wars and WW2, these "combatants" occupied a weird middle ground between organized military units and simple armed civilians taking action against their enemies. Missouri was a state absolutely infested with bushwhackers, and due to the fieldcraft of these guerrillas, and their habit of carrying upwards of four six-shot revolvers apiece (opposed by men carrying single-shot long arms), these small bands were often able to cause a degree of havoc and mayhem disproportionate to their numbers.

What starts off as a small battle between Union militia and Confederate guerrillas grows into something a lot more deadly and dangerous when Jimmy Rawlins, the "Captain" of Rawlins' Rangers, gets his band involved with Bloody Bill Anderson, one of the most violent and dangerous guerrilla fighters of the Civil War. I don't want to give away any of the book's twists and turns, but suffice to say the small conflict between militia and bushwhacker is only the facade of a much larger, far more diabolical battle taking place, one that stretches beyond the boundaries of our physical world. Some of the characters are hinted to be far, far more than they appear, and there is a greater "mythos" for lack of a better term, lurking just below the surface of the story.

This is a whole other aspect of A Fine Likeness that should be discussed. At first I thought this was going to be an ACW "ghost story". Because of the war's incredibly brutal nature, and the way it coincided with the rise of spiritualism, mentalism, and the more pseudo-scientific theories regarding ghosts and the spiritual world, there were many people during and after the war who tried contacting dead friends and relatives, and a great deal of fraud was committed by charlatans who preyed upon those who sought them out.  Hand-in-hand with this, a lot of post ACW horror fiction, especially Southern horror, revolved around ghosts and hauntings. So, I figured the author was throwing his hat into the ring, so to speak, and writing a ghost story tied to the Civil War.

While the story does have elements dealing with ghosts and spirits, that's just the tip of the supernatural iceberg, and as I said above, the story makes it clear that there are forces - both sinister and benevolent - at play in a much larger and more active cosmology. This was a pleasant surprise for me, and I feel it shifts the book from being a "Civil War ghost story" to something a lot more like a Weird West tale, similar to the Weird fiction of the 30's written by authors like Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft, tales that blend history and the supernatural in a way that could be considered "Pulp Horror", although I don't feel that this book really falls into the category of "Pulp". Indeed, I think the only weakness of A Fine Likeness, if there is one, is that I'd be hard-pressed to pin this book down in any sense of a traditional genre. I don't really consider it traditional horror, but the supernatural elements definitely take it out of the realm of historical fiction. I think the author was actually very smart in independently publishing this book, because I can't imagine a traditional publishing house attempting to market this book.

Which reminds me to set any potential reader's fears to rest and point out that this novel is very well-written. The author has a long career writing non-fiction works for established publishers such as Osprey, and that professionalism carries over into this book. I didn't notice any spelling or formatting errors, and the prose overall is very deft - descriptive without being exhaustive, colorful without being overwrought. The author handles both action and dialogue quite well, and every character has their own well-considered "voice".

In conclusion, if you like historical fiction with action and a touch of the supernatural, you cannot go wrong with A Fine Likeness. It's a great novel, and I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel.

Movie Review: The 13th Warrior (1999)

Recently, I popped this movie in the DVD player and gave it a viewing for the first time in a year or two (I've probably watched it over a dozen times, however). My objectivity surrounding The 13th Warrior, I'll admit, is somewhat shaky. Okay...it's pretty much non-existent. A few of you out there who know me were there, that fateful summer day in August of '99, when we went to see this at the Cheri theater downtown as a matinee. At the time, the main hall of the Cheri was probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, screen in Boston proper, and so this movie was definitely given a real "cinematic" presentation. I'll always maintain that certain movies need to be seen on the big screen, in the theater, and even today's mega-televisions and home theater sound systems don't compare to what a real movie theater can provide. Perfect evidence of this was when I saw Conan the Barbarian in the theater for the first time about six years ago, and my already favorite fantasy movie suddenly became one of my greatest cinematic experiences, period.

But I digress. The 13th Warrior is adapted from the Michael Crichton novel, Eaters of the Dead, which was in turn his attempt at writing a "historical" interpretation of Beowulf, using some fake "found documentation". Written in 1976, it was one of his earlier novels, written way before Jurassic Park, when he was just another writer turning out cool books in various genres. The premise, in a sentence or two, is that the story follows an Arab diplomat as he gets caught up with a band of Viking badasses as they venture far into the hinterlands of Scandinavia to do battle with a horde of, to put it simply, cannibalistic Neanderthals. Crichton uses the cave-dwelling, fire-toting savages as the stand-in for Grendel, the Dragon, and Grendel's Mother.

Right there is the first problem - when you explain the plot of the film, it sounds a lot dumber than it is. there's a great deal of superstition and mystery surrounding the "Wendol" as they are known, and the Vikings all believe them to be actual supernatural creatures, a race of legendary were-bear creatures that are half man, half beast, lurking in the deep forests and appearing in the night with the mist, to raid and kill and make off with the heads of dead men, and most disturbingly, "...it is said...they eat the dead...". Thus, the name of the book.

The movie also had a very difficult birth. John McTiernan started directing it, and then there were severe creative differences between him and Creighton, to the point where McTiernan left and Crichton finished directing the film (at this point Crichton had already directed a successful film, so this wasn't necessarily a dumb decision on the part of the studio). The movie does exhibit a kind of mixed personality disorder; it doesn't know if it should be horrifying and scary, or more straight action-adventure. The Vikings are also very..."Mythical" is how I like to put it. All the badasses wear armor and clothing that come from a wide range of cultures and time frames, many of them anachronistic. There were a LOT of people who tore the movie apart on this factor alone. I look at it as simply representing the Vikings as widely traveled adventurers, who've been to a lot of different, exotic locales.

In addition, there is the infamous "I listened!" language montage. If you're actually paying attention, it is pretty clear that Antonio Bandaras' character is spending weeks traveling with the Vikings, and as an educated man who probably speaks a couple of languages already, he over time picks up bits and pieces of the Viking's language, until he surprises them by being able to speak their tongue pretty well. Many folks thought this process took a couple of days, perhaps as short as a single night, which isn't really supported by the montage unless you're not really paying attention. Ultimately, it is a gimmick to get around a language barrier that would've killed the story before it even began (not that some critics would be upset by that). Ultimately, I think it is fine; if the Stargate television series can get away with EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE speaking perfectly understandable English, then I think we're okay here.

Beyond these and some other criticisms of varying merit, I think this movie is flat out one of the best historical action-adventure movies of the last twenty years. The Viking Band is so perfectly cast, so well-populated with these tough, gritty, steely-eyed asskickers. The dialogue might be a little hammy, but it is so well-suited to the badassitude of the movie that it just plain works. A few quotes snagged from IMDB:

Herger the Joyous: When they come, we form a circle in the center of the room, backs to one another.
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: I am not a warrior.
Herger the Joyous: Very soon, you will be. 

Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Have we anything resembling a plan?
Herger the Joyous: Mm-hm. Ride till we find them... and kill them all. 

Buliwyf: I have only these hands. I will die a pauper.
King Hrothgar: You will be buried as a king.
Buliwyf: A man might be thought wealthy if someone were to draw the story of his deeds, that they may be remembered.
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Such a man might be thought wealthy indeed.

I also want to emphasize that, although this movie at some points isn't sure if it wants notes of horror or pure adventure, in many ways, it is still a good blend. The Wendol, until you get what they are later on, are a creepy, evil, almost goblin-esque race that hide in the shadows and "come in the mist". It isn't until about halfway through the movie that the characters can confirm that their opponents are simply men who dress and think of themselves as bears. The dark, misty, foreboding nature of the landscape, as well as the more disturbing scenes inside the caverns of the Wendol also contribute to the eerie quality of the movie, as does Jerry Goldsmith's incredible score. In fact, for years I used the soundtrack as tabletop role-playing game "mood music" because it just carried such a sense of adventure, mystery, suspense, and horror, all mixed together. Like another one of my favorites, The Brotherhood of the Wolf, the "supernatural" elements lend a horror to the story that complements the action in my mind, rather than subtracting from it.

All in all, it is a shame this movie is considered such a disaster. It was extremely expensive to make, re-shoot, and market, and made back only a fraction of its costs ($60m in revenue vs. $160m in expenses). The financial failure of this film, I think, colors for many people the overall quality of the film, as many probably were introduced to it over the years already knowing it was a flop. On the other hand, there is a small, but quite strong, following for this film out there, mostly folks who understand it for what it is - an epic, mythic adventure story. Novelist and movie critic Stephen Hunter reviewed the film when it came out, and his review from the Washington Post can still be found here. Hint: he opens with, "Think of "The 13th Warrior" as Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai" jacked on amphetamines."