Narrator, audiobook producer, podcaster, writer, editor/producer for the JimFear138 YouTube Account, editor/co-producer for Laughably Dapper, and Project lead for Dramatically Dapper, co-founder of Dimension Bucket Magazine, and host of the Dimension Bucket Magazine Podcast. This site is meant to be a collection of my work so everything is nice and accessible.
Disclaimer: Opinions here do not represent the opinions of Laughably Dapper or Dimension Bucket Magazine. They are purely my own.
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the podcast! We're back to the normal format this time, and in this one I wanted to talk about problems I think the Pulp Revolution is going to run into based on my experience in other fandoms/activist groups/advocacy groups in my time on the internet. I don't claim to have any revealed knowledge, but I could very well see these potholes coming up in the road ahead, and I think it's gonna get nasty in the near future. Challenging power always does.
Also, we've been having an issue with iTunes lately, and some people have requested mp3 download links so they can listen to the podcast at their leisure on their phone or other device. In the interest of helping those people out, I'll be including mp3 download links in every episode's show notes.
Hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode of the show! This time I'm joined by the pilot of the good ship Appendix N himself, Jeffro Johnson! In this massive 4-hour-and-some-change podcast we go over sci-fi and fantasy fiction, tabletop rpg's, religion, his history with the Appendix and the events leading up to the publication of his book, which you should all go buy immediately.
Hey guys, Rawle Nyanzi, a buddy of mine in the pulp revolution scene, is making his novelette Sword & Flower, free from Sunday the 12th to Thursday the 17th! It features time warp, magical girls, and Puritans, so you know you're getting...well, not your money's worth, since it's free. But your time investment definitely won't be wasted! Get it while it's hot! You can click the picture above or find the link here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MZFGUNP
Welcome to a very special episode of the podcast! This time we're talking with a guy who has been very brave in coming out and making it known that he is being discriminated against in his local convention scene. He's been a twitter pen-pal of mine for several months now, and I wanted to give him a place to tell his side of the story straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. So if you guys could do me and him a favor and go buy his novel, follow him on twitter and gab, and check out his website to show some support, we'd both be very grateful!
Unfortunately I was not able to come up with any videos of the Dragoncon Dragon Sex panel. Apologies, but apparently people aren't documenting those like they should.
Thune's Vision is a short story collection by Mr. Hernstrom, featuring a novella at the end called The Saga of Adalwolf. Mr. Hernstrom's work has also been featured in Cirsova Magazine, which was my first experience with his writing. Immensely enjoying his contribution to this neo-pulp SFF mag, I bought his book, and I can say that the stories are of the same caliber. Which is to say, fucking awesome. And I mean 'awesome' in the classic sense of 'inspiring awe.'
Anyone who's been following my podcast for any real length of time knows that one of my problems with modern SFF; and even modern horror; is that the writing is very preachy. They are trying to advance some agenda, get across some kind of message, make a commentary on a political issue, or something of that like, and the medium they've chosen to do that is through fiction. Now as a radical free speech advocate who think that anyone should be able to write, think, say, etc., whatever they want, I don't object to this in theory. In practice, however, this kind of writing has come to dominate modern SFFH literature, and a quick survey of the various podcasts whose job it is to bring contemporary writing in these genres to the awaiting ears of their listeners will illustrate exactly what I'm talking about. The reasons for this are manifold and beyond the scope of this review, but suffice to say that the glut of SFFH literature on the market currently has a message, and that message is usually delivered in as ham-fisted and condescending a manner as possible.
It seems like a trial to find modern SFFH literature that doesn't abide by this paradigm that has been so pervasive as to shut out authors who deviate and simply write stories to have fun and for the enjoyment of their readers. Given this stifling environment nowadays it is very refreshing to run across a writer who doesn't give one single fuck what anyone thinks about their work, and very clearly wrote their stories because they enjoyed them and published them because they wanted to share them with other people who might enjoy them as well. Schuyler Hernstrom is exactly that type of writer.
I know that it's a bit cliche to bring up the bugbear of 'political correctness,' but that type of mentality is exactly what is strangling modern SFFH literature, and is exactly what Mr. Hernstrom dashes in this book. I won't say the stories aren't complex, because they are. They simply deal with a different kind of complexity than most modern tripe. Rather than trying to comment on some issue, these stories create sprawling, mythic worlds that we only see in miniature, through the view of one story written in them. The heroes, if Mr. Hernstrom's creations can truly be called that, are sometimes deep, and sometimes shallow. Regardless of what depths they plunge to, they all share a lust for battle, and every story features some good old fashioned blood and guts. Whether it is a tragic champion who is undermined by his own success as shown in The Challenger's Garland, or a mighty warrior whose hubris is his downfall as in The Saga of Adalwolf, battle features heavily in all but one of these stories.
But the curious and endearing thing about Hernstrom's writing is that his stories read more like oral histories than a modern fantasy tale. The way things are described makes the reader feel as if they are listening to an orator of old regaling them with these tales beside the fire, rather than reading them in a book at the laundromat. The prose sweeps along, not giving a single fuck if you're able to keep up with it, and some of these stories roll at an almost frenzied pace, seeming desperate to reach their conclusion before they run out of breath.
This is one of the most refreshing things about Hernstrom's writing. He does not waste time, and he does not mince words. All of the stories in this collection could very well have been expanded upon and turned into epic novellas to rival The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath in length, but they didn't need to be and Hernstrom understood that. So he put these tales down in quickly galloping prose that ties a rope around the reader's throat and drags them along behind it. So not only is the book fairly short in its own right, but it accomplishes the feat of keeping you glued to the pages, wanting to find out what happens next.
Hernstrom's heroes are another point of praise for the book. Well, protagonists would probably be a better word. Few of the main characters of the stories in Thune's Vision are what we would call 'heroic.' Far from a Drizzt Do'Urden, who is a scion of good in a world full of evil, and not even reaching the bar of Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser, who are devious rogues with hearts of gold, the protagonists of Thune's Vision range from vengeance-seeking warriors to warlords whose explicit goal is to bring down peaceful civilizations that existed for thousands of years. The main character of The Champion's Garland is a Dread Knight in service to the King of Death, for fuck's sake. Their motives vary, but mostly they fall under 'self-aggrandizement,' rather than some noble ideal or quest to save the world.
Hernstrom also shows us that epic fantasy doesn't have to be so high-stakes as most modern fantasy. It seems that quite a bit of fantasy has forgotten what stories like the short stories in The Witcher series, the tales in Cirsova, and collections like Thune's Vision remind us is possible. Not everything has to be of earth-shattering, world-saving importance. Sometimes your story can be about an evil wizard trying to find his way into the world of faeries. It can be no greater in scope than a fight between a defending knight and a challenger. Now this is not to say that the implications of these stories for the worlds in which they take place are not vast. They are. But the story itself goes no further, and leaves what happens next up to the readers imagination. Even the novella-length Saga of Adalwolf reveals precious little about the world it takes place in. You get just enough clues to come to your own conclusions, but unless Hernstrom has spoken speculation into law, one person's interpretation is as good as any others.
Ultimately, Thune's Vision is a quite refreshing return to fantasy roots. Going through the Appendix N novels; which are a good survey of those roots; starting with the Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser stories, I can't think of a single contemporary fantasy novel or collection that I've read in recent memory that gets back to basics so well and makes it so fun as this book does. This is a definite buy, and you will not regret the money you spend. The kindle version is .99 cents, the paperback is $5, and for that price you'll get more adventure, honorable combat, blood and guts, and legendary heroes and villains than you can shake a stick at. Unfortunately this collection doesn't have an audio adaptation yet, so reading is all you're left with. If Mr. Hernstrom happens to read this, I'm an audiobook producer myself, and I'd absolutely love to bring these stories to life. But until such a time as he hires a producer, you should absolutely buy and read either the paperback or ebook versions.
Hello everyone and welcome back for another episode! This week I'm joined by my good friend CloudCuckooCountry! We go over politics, journalism, Trump, veganism, religion, literature, and a whole bunch of other shit! You can find him at these accounts:
