Illustration by Kieran Yanner. Widescreen version here.
Planets in Peril!
Thursday, September 8, 2011
The latest release from Planet Stories, Robert Silverberg's The Planet Killer's: Three Novels of the Spaceways, is now blasting off from the Paizo warehouse. Kieran Yanner, who has illustrated all three of our Silverberg omnibuses with an eye-catching, nostalgic look, is in top retro-SF form once again in this new Planet Stories wallpaper!
As many of you know, having followed this internship period with great fervor (I have been assaulted by paparazzi no less than seven times), I will soon be vanishing from this land.
There are some benefits to my departure. Once more I will be addressed by other people as "Matt" and not "starving intern," which is less of a title really and more of the beginnings to a declarative statement (read: "Starving interns, bookmark this PDF!").
Some of my best memories were those times when I could ride someone's coattails into the building, having been given no keys of my own. This I savored in lieu of the alternative: braving the main entrance thorough the customer service lair, wherein waits Cosmo, destroyer of worlds. Though I was threatened only once by way of nerf gun, I was also accosted in the name of a ham sandwich, which I have yet to procure. It would be incorrect for me to suggest that I tremble at every sound I hear, but at times I do flinch and shrink away from what I fear may be the inevitability of Cosmo's ham-sandwichless wrath.
I remember relearning a lot of gaming. It's a well-kept secret (among staff here, even) that I landed this internship without much gaming experience at all. So little, in fact, that I had only three d20 Modern sessions under my belt and one 3.5 session. By that token, I'm completely thrilled to have been given this opportunity, as well as to have played in Crystal's campaign (mentioned by Tyler here).
I remember the sparse but consistently entertaining vignettes of the life experiences of Sean K Reynolds. I remember data entry, copy edits, development meetings, manuscript styling, playtests, teaching myself Photoshop on a whim, arranging battles between weresabretooth tigers and the lava dragon on my desk, drinking lots of tea, bookmarking PDFs, and repairing Planet Stories manuscripts. I remember teaching Wes the intern's point of view on free food: "Do not question free food, for it is both free, and food." I remember my first editorial pass on Pathfinder Society Scenario #36: Voice in the Void. I remember how its writer soon came to work for us. I remember the occasional free meal, sometimes paid for by you, the wonderful fans.
In fact, I remember everything fondly with the exception of Highway 520, that notoriously temperamental highway and bridge that separates the Paizo offices from "mainland" Seattle. To the hour of traffic I sat in each night after departing, I bid you adieu.
To all my fellow Pathfinder fans, I'll likely see you on the messageboards, and to the rest of the staff... I'll see you at PaizoCon '10. Wish me luck in my senior year of college, and more than that, luck in finding a job afterwards!
The dash toward the 2009 ENnie Awards has begun with Paizo accepting nominations in six categories, including a fan nomination for Best Publisher! These acknowledgments start off the process of honoring the best products and ideas in the last year of tabletop gaming, but in the end it all relies on you! Be sure to check back in with the ENnies this Friday when voting begins, giving you the chance to cast your ballot for your favorite games and accessories.
Here's this year's rundown of Paizo Products up for honors:
Check out all the publishers at the ENnies Awards homepage, and be sure to check back this Friday for your chance to cast your vote! Thanks to ENWorld and all of you for this year's nominations and the endless support!
We've been tweeting! As of yesterday afternoon Paizo has its very own Twitter account. Come join the more than 200 Twitter users already getting nearly 24-hour-a-day updates on all sorts of Pathfinder info, Pathfinder RPG details, and other Paizo ephemera! Follow along on the Paizo Twitter page right here.
There's also a new Twitter page for Planet Stories, where you can get endless updates on all your favorite pulp science fiction and fantasy stories and authors as well as other exciting news on all our upcoming adventures!
I'm going to talk a little bit about writing style today—not only because it's something that all of us should think about when reading in general, but in particular since it's something I think we should mull over when reading classics from the Planet Stories library. Writing styles change over time, some of them seemingly eternal, others appearing one moment only to flitter into oblivion in the next as the winds of fashion shift. A thousand cultural variables account for such changes, and its my view that no single stylistic element is by itself better or worse than another. It all depends on how that element adds to the story being told.
I have a graduate background in writing fiction, but I was lucky enough to be in one of the few programs out there that didn't turn up its nose at genre. And while I was in school, we talked a lot about what it took to make a classic. Why was one book considered a classic, and another not? The best answer I heard was Time. Because Dickens and Twain certainly weren't thinking of writing literary masterpieces, at least no more than any author takes pride in the crafting of words. No, they wrote for a popular audience, their works by-and-large considered entertainment fiction by their contemporaries.
Now the classic science fiction and fantasy adventures we gleefully resurrect at Planet Stories aren't written in today's styles. But there's a life in them, a sheer exuberance of derring-do, that I often find missing in contemporary fiction. Not that there isn't amazing stuff being written today—there will be as many classics written this year as there were in 1939. But I think as we go through these turbulent times of ours, we can benefit from the experience of another time of troubles, a time when rocket ships roared out of spaceports of the imagination, or when a rapier, quick wit, and a smile might win freedom for an entire planet. So try out some Brackett, some Kline, or some Moore and join us on our adventure. After all, adventure is part of the human spirit—it never goes out of style.
The paths to our most cherished obsessions take on many varied forms. For me, one such passion is reading science fiction and fantasy from an older, often more spirit-soaring, freewheeling era. My Yellow Brick Road to the type of pulps we publish at Planet Stories began at an early age with an uncle bequeathing to me a longstanding love of Edgar Rice Burroughs's works. Probably the foundation for my fascination with the pulps was laid much earlier, reading H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, although at the time I didn't really realize their novels were serialized in magazines like Burroughs's. And even after I'd read a healthy dose of Burroughs, it wasn't until I found Irwin Porges's mammoth biography, Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan, that I first saw reproductions of those splendid All-Story Weekly, Blue Book, Argosy, Amazing Stories, and Fantastic Adventures covers and made the connection between ERB and the pulps.
Then, of course, there was Philip José Farmer. Farmer was for me, as for thousands of SF/F readers growing up in the 1970s and '80s, the mega-gateway to the pulps. And like many, I stumbled across his writings through Burroughs, picking up Farmer's post-modern metafictional masterpiece Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke, and later his "biography" of the 1930s scientific genius and crime-fighter Doc Savage. In these books Farmer proposed his intricate Wold Newton faux genealogy, linking together into one giant family an array of pulp era heroes and villains ranging from Allan Quatermain to Solomon Kane, Captain Nemo to Fu Manchu, and everything in between—and in many cases beyond. A virtual reading list of the "hero pulps," for which I will forever be grateful to Farmer for having amalgamated. If I would have been told back then that one day I would meet the man and edit three collections of his fiction, I would have lit up with such joy that my glowing manifestations would probably have been visible on far-off Poloda (for the as-yet ERB-uninitiated, I refer to a planet in the strangely shaped solar system from Burroughs's Beyond the Farthest Star).
I radiate a similar joy working with Erik and Pierce and James bringing back into print fantastic lost classics of the pulp era for Planet Stories. I think I speak for all of us when I say the task is more than a job, more even than a privilege, although it is unquestionably the latter. Planet Stories is about tradition, about carrying on the flame of the spirit of adventure and excitement and wonder of the type of science fiction that first soared free in the pulps.
But enough said about my road to the pulps. I encourage you to stop by the Planet Stories messageboards and let us know of your own unique journeys to the world of science fiction and fantasy literature. Like the out-of-this-world genre they lead to, they are always tales of wonder.
In our latest effort to reach out across the vast distances of the intergalactic community and spread the word about Planet Stories' heart-pounding tales of interplanetary adventure and romance, we've set up both a Planet Stories Facebook fan page and Planet Stories MySpace. While we already have an active Planet Stories Messageboard (where we invite you to come on over and give us your feedback about the stories we're printing and what you'd like to see from us in the future), these are just two more ways to stay on top of what we're doing. It's tough out there, navigating the measureless abyss of space (uh... publishing), and as we continue to look for new ways to get the word out about Planet Stories, one thing has become certain—our most powerful ally is YOU, loyal reader! So if you're on Facebook or MySpace and the sound of "swordfights and exploding robots"—as Erik is fond of describing the Planet Stories line—gets your pulse racing, please add us as a fan or friend, or drop us a comment to let us know what you think or just to say, "Greetings, fellow adventurer!"
Science fiction and fantasy. To much of the literate world, they're the same thing—they even get shelved in the same section at all but the most enlightened bookstores. Yet among those who enjoy these genres the most, the lines between the two are sharp and expansive (even if no two people agree on where that line is drawn). Many of the friends whose book recommendations I take to heart scoff at the idea of getting science fiction chocolate in their fantasy peanut butter—they'll read one but not the other. It's a sort of literary apartheid.
For me, though, there's never been that divide. Science fiction and fantasy are two great tastes that taste great together, and I don't mind rocking some boats to keep the ampersand in SF&F.
Sometimes, of course, the purists are right. Every time Wes and Jacobs comb through one of my manuscripts to make sure I'm not slipping hidden particle accelerators or robots into Pathfinder, I'm forced to admit that they're correct to do so—it's important to keep a world internally consistent, and getting too hung up on science in a magical setting can break the feel (or the author). Never mind how cool it might have been to make Varisia's towering Spindlehorn a space elevator for ancient thaumateurgic astronauts... it just doesn't fit.
Which is why I was so happy to get a chance to write the "Into the Black" support article for Pathfinder #14, a gazetteer of Golarion's solar system and the diverse cultures which inhabit it. These days, I spend a lot of my time buried in Planet Stories manuscripts, visiting worlds like Leigh Brackett's exotic and dying Skaith in the Eric John Stark books, or Robert E. Howard's Almuric, not to mention swashbuckling Burroughsian pulp like the Mars novels from Michael Moorcock and Otis Adelbert Kline. With this article, I (with significant influence from publisher Erik Mona) got the chance to finally bring hardcore Planet Stories SF into the Pathfinder Chronicles setting.
While I included many more modern SF tropes, from the terminator-line society of Verces to the irradiated liches of Eox the dead or the Jovian floaters of Liavara and Bretheda, Golarion's closest neighbors are straight out of the sword and planet genre epitomized by the Planet Stories books. The green planet of Castrovel, with its steamy jungles and beautiful telepathic matriarchs, meshes completely with the 1930s image of Venus, and any fan of Burroughs or Brackett will quickly recognize their Mars in Akiton's four-armed warriors and desert strongholds.
If you're like me and already enjoy mixing and matching your genres, I hope Pathfinder #14 hits the spot. And if you're a Pathfinder or Planet Stories purist, well, this might be a good point to give the other camp a shot and see what you've been missing. After all, despite what Dr. Egon Spengler might say, sometimes it's good to cross the streams...
The galley proofs for Gary Gygax's novel, The Samarkand Solution, are sitting on my desk right now, ready for the final check-off before we send the book to the printer. Sitting above my desk, packed into little cardboard sleeves, are dozens of copies of Dragon, the original RPG magazine for which Gygax served as publisher in its earliest days. Until recently, I served as publisher of that magazine, and it always made me proud to know I was following in Gary Gygax's august footsteps.
Gary died this morning in his sleep, bringing to an end a decades-spanning career that created an industry and brought joy to millions of people. The game he created with Dave Arneson&Dungeons & Dragons&has had a more profound influence upon my life than any other factor save my family, and his passing has affected me deeply.
When I was a kid growing up with D&D, Gygax's name was on the cover of just about every official product. He wrote the best adventure modules, he set the template for all future campaign settings with the World of Greyhawk, and perhaps most importantly he introduced a generation of kids to a game that was more than a game. I've met many of my closest friends in the span of my entire life because of Gary Gygax.
Last year, I launched Planet Stories, a line of fantasy and science-fiction trade paperbacks aimed at reprinting some of the classic works of sword & sorcery that inspired Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy gaming in general. In the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, a fascinating work that surely serves as Gygax's masterpiece, Gary thoughtfully included Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading, a list that included such luminaries as Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lin Carter, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Jack Vance, and more.
So in addition to my friends and my career, I also owe Gary Gygax an unpayable debt of gratitude for introducing me to the greatest fantasists who ever lived and a lifetime of excellent reading. Planet Stories is, in some small sense, my attempt to repay that debt by bringing many of these fine authors back into print to be enjoyed again. Like Paizo Publishing itself, Planet Stories exists because of Gary Gygax. I chose to honor Gary by including several of his own exciting fantasy novels in the Planet Stories line, including the imprint's very first release, The Anubis Murders.
It was the release of The Anubis Murders at last year's Gen Con Indy that brought me and Gary together for the last time. As the show's Guest of Honor, Gygax had more than a full schedule, but he was able to carve out a couple of hours a day to sit at the Paizo booth and sign autographs of his book while sharing thoughts and memories with his fans. And the stories those fans told were just incredible. For a full hour I listened as gamer after gamer approached Gary and told a variation of the exact same story: "Thank you for a game that has brought me so much joy. Thank you for a game that has brought me so many friends. Thank you for making such a positive impact on my life."
Sitting next to Gary at last year's Gen Con made me realize what a huge cultural impact Gary Gygax had made on all of us. Never before have I seen such honest appreciation. Never before had I been so moved and so proud to be working with a man who had made such an impact on my life. On all of our lives.
When a friend passes away, it is easy to be sad, to think about what might have been had he lived another year, another ten years. But my friends, I am here to tell you that Gary Gygax knew what a difference he had made in all of our lives, and he was proud to have made it.
Not bad for a life's work.
I'll miss you, Gary Gygax. We all will. Goodbye, my friend.
Pathfinder #14 Second Darkness Chapter 2: "Children of the Void"—A star has fallen from the sky, destroying the island known as the Devil's Elbow. Tasked by a group of elven bounty hunters to investigate a dark elf assassin tied to the catastrophe, the heroes travel to the blasted island only to find it crawling with prospectors, merchants, and mercenaries eager to salvage the legendary "skymetal" sure to have fallen from space.
Pathfinder #15 Second Darkness Chapter 3: "The Armageddon Echo"—Evidence recovered from the devastated island known as the Devil's Elbow indicates that vile dark elves have infiltrated the ruined elven city of Celwynvian. The heroes join forces with the valorous elves of Crying Leaf in an attempt to reclaim the city from darkness.
Pathfinder #16 Second Darkness Chapter 4: "Endless Night"—Disguised as evil dark elves, the heroes penetrate a hidden city in the subterranean Darklands in an effort to discover the drow plan for the coming apocalypse. The possibility of a traitor among the goodly elves of the surface world and the discovery of the heroes' ruse leads to a race through treacherous caverns in a desperate effort to warn allies of impending doom.
Pathfinder #17 Second Darkness Chapter 5: "A Memory of Darkness"—Armed with the knowledge that an elven traitor supplied the drow with the magical means to call down the stars and devastate Golarion, the PCs arrive at the elven nation of Kyonin to find their claims falling on deaf ears.
Pathfinder Chronicles
Pathfinder Chronicles: Gods & Magic—This comprehensive 64-page guidebook provides an overview of the 20 "core" Pathfinder Chronicles gods and their religions, with an emphasis on rules and information players can use at the game table, whether they're playing a zealous cleric, brave paladin, or simply a faithful member of any character class.
Pathfinder Chronicles: Into the Darklands—Delve the deep secrets of the Darklands, a subterranean realm frequented by dark elves, shadow dragons, and worse! This comprehensive sourcebook provides an overview of the cavernous realms below the surface of the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting.
Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to Absalom—The largest and most important metropolis in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting comes alive in this comprehensive guide to the City at the Center of the World!
GameMastery Maps
GameMastery Flip-Mat: Darklands—features a maze of interconnected underworld tunnels. The Flip side features a huge, cavernous chamber.
GameMastery Flip-Mat: Desert—features a majestic desert filled with blowing sands and massive dunes. The Flip side features a desert oasis centered on a small pond and teeming with life.
GameMastery Map Pack: Elven City—Locations include: Treehouse Dwelling, Mystic Arch, Statuary Garden Temple of the Four Winds, and Council of Chambers.
The Dark World, by Henry Kuttner—Henry Kuttner's Sword and Sorcery classic returns to print at last! World War II veteran Edward Bond's recuperation from a disastrous fighter plane crash takes a distinct turn for the weird when he encounters a giant wolf, a red witch, and the undeniable power of the need-fire, a portal to a world of magic and swordplay at once terribly new and hauntingly familiar.
Death in Delhi, by Gary Gygax—A giant ruby and a plea to rescue the purloined crown jewels of Delhi arrives at the villa of Magister Setne Inhetep, philosopher-wizard of the Pharaoh of Aegypt!
I don't have a lot of time to read these days. It seems like every time I turn around, there's more work to be done, or a social engagement... you all know the drill. So when it comes to buying novels, I tend to be pretty conservative. There are so many books to sift through out there that buying at random, or based on a 30-second perusal, just isn't viable—who can afford to start reading a random novel, only to realize halfway through that it sucks? It's inefficient, and as a result, I rarely pick up a book that hasn't already been recommended by someone I trust.
Which is why the new Planet Stories subscription option is so amazing. This isn't some big churn-and-burn corporate fiction imprint—it's a shortlist of book recommendations straight from Erik Mona himself (with a little vetting from science fiction and fantasy scholar Pierce Watters, plus yours truly). Every one of these books bears his stamp of approval, and if you're perusing this site, odds are you share some of Erik's tastes. In fact, as he explains in his editorial, simply being a gamer is enough of a reason to pick up some of these novels—after all, you didn't think the genre just sprang full-formed from nowhere, did you? Gygax and his roleplaying contemporaries drew heavily on ideas from many of the authors we're featuring, and you might be surprised how inspiring and relevant some of those texts remain. More than just fun reading, these books are practically a correspondence course in the history of sci-fi and fantasy—our genre's Great Books series.
Now, at last, you can sign up to have them delivered to your door each month as they come out... and at 20% off the cover price! What's more, if you sign up before the new year, you have the option of purchasing any or all of the books that have already come out at the same 20% discount.
These are not some random novels. This is Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan. This is Michael Moorcock, the mind behind Elric of Melniboné. This is Leigh Brackett, who wrote The Empire Strikes Back, and C. L. Moore, one of the first female SF authors, who created both Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry (the original female sword-and-sorcery protagonist). This is Gary Gygax, without whose creation of Dungeons and Dragons our industry would not exist.
As C. J. Cherryh writes in her introduction to Northwest of Earth, "This is an important book. Read it. Make sure your kids and grandkids read it. It's timeless, and it's that good." As much could be said for all the books in our line.
So please, this holiday season, check out the new Planet Stories subscriptions, then sit back and let Uncle Erik make a few recommendations....
Many of you may be familiar with Black Gate, one of the biggest fantasy magazines around. Recently their managing editor, Howard Andrew Jones, sat down to do an exclusive in-depth interview for their website with Paizo Publisher Erik Mona about Planet Stories. In what's his most extensive and candid interview on the subject to date, Erik pours forth his reasons for starting the line, his hopes for the future, and the reasons everyone who loves gaming should check out some of these novels. Click here to read the full interview.
The second day of any four-day convention is typically referred to as the "slow day." Retailers and manufacturers complain that nearly every year their business is down, the crowds are down, and Friday is generally a light day. Eager four-day attendees are typically seen swarming the Dealer Hall on Thursday to get the awesome Gen Con exclusives (such as Paizo's alternate Pathfinder #1 cover) and those folks are more inclined to game and rest on Friday. Then the two-day crowd hits with the four-day crowd on Saturday and the show floor turns into a zoo.
Today was slow for us, but we're only able to say so because yesterday was such a huge hit. Pathfinder and GameMastery Modules continue to do very well and I'm pleased to report that our first three Planet Stories novels (The Anubis Murders, City of the Beast, and Black God's Kiss) are selling very well and their positive reception has been exciting to see.
Speaking of The Anubis Murders, Gary Gygax was on hand this afternoon for 90 minutes signing copies of his book and generally anything people asked him to sign. "Keep on the Borderlands" got several Gygax-o-graphs as did the original hardcover Monster Manual, current editions of the core system, badges, convention on-site books—you name it. Someone jokingly asked Gary to sign their baby and he would've done so, graciously, had they not told him it was a joke. He was a nice guy and it was a real honor to meet him. One quick story about his session in the booth today: a guy walked up, looked at his book and said, "Hmm, Anubis Murders, I'm not familiar with your work. I'll have to go look it up." Gary gave him a stern, reproachful look and said, "Try Dungeons & Dragons." Needless to say, the guy looked very sheepish as he fled the scene.
We also had the pleasure of Wayne Reynolds' presence in our booth today, signing copies of the poster included with Dragon #359. He modeled Pathfinder #1 for us, as you'll see below.
The number one question on everyone's mind, of course, was "What does Paizo think of 4th Edition?" We heard this often and our response was the same each time: we're excited to see it, but we know just as much about it as you do. I can report that WotC intends to have an OGL with 4th Edition and that Paizo's eager to learn more, but that does not put us closer to a decision—it only puts us in need of more research and discussion. Rest assured, the moment we make a decision we'll scream it to the four corners of the multiverse.
And now, pictures!
A beholder watches over the crowd as they prepare to hear WotC's 4E announcement.
Jungle James!
Eric Boyd says farewell to the final print version of Dragon magazine.
F. Wesley Schneider and Michael Kortes talk about Paizo's products.
Erik Mona, Gary Gygax, and Greg Vaughan.
Amber Scott (Medesha on the messageboards) holding up her very own copy of Paizo's Gen Con exclusive Pathfinder #1.
The following is a picture-by-picture example of the many forms of the martial arts employed by the mighty and unstoppable Nicolas Logue as he GMs the Seven Swords of Sin Dungeon Delve.
Rhinoceros Style.
Chicken Claw!
Bear Growl.
Dyn-o-mite. (I recorded five minutes of Nick running the delve. It'll be on YouTube and this blog very soon.)
Tim Hitchcock, Nicolas Logue, and Michael Kortes talking about GameMastery and Pathfinder.
The incredibly talented Wayne Reynolds modeling the covers he sketched and painted.
Jason Bulmahn demos "Stonehenge Roulette," the game he wrote for the Stonehenge Library.
Tomorrow: Larry Elmore stops by to sign the final Dragon cover!
New Blog Entries
