PREACHER greenlit for a full season at AMC

The television version of Garth Ennis's Preacher has been greenlit for a full season, following a positive reception to the internal pilot episode. AMC will shoot ten episodes, with the season expected to debut in May 2016.

Garth Ennis's comic series has been optioned several times before by various studios (including HBO) but has stumbled due to its controversial subject matter. The latest attempt was spearheaded by comedian, writer and actor Seth Rogen, who remains on board as executive producer. Evan Goldberg will also produce, with Breaking Bad's Sam Catlin serving as showrunner.

The series stars Dominic Cooper as Reverend Jesse Custer, Ruth Negga as Tulip and Joseph Gilgun as Cassidy, Tom Fiore as Brooke and W. Earl Brown as Sherrif Hugo Root. Recurring actors will include Ian Colletti as Eugene "Arseface" Root, Lucy Griffiths as Emily Woodrow and Elizabeth Perkins as Vyla Quincannon.

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 8

Lester del Rey (1915-93) was a science fiction writer and the editor of the old school. He began his career in the 1930s, during the first golden age of science fiction, writing and editing for several magazines and working alongside such luminaries as John W. Campbell and, later, Damon Knight.

In the 1970s, del Rey went to work for Ballantine Books. His fourth wife, Judy-Lynn, was already working for them and had built up a stellar reputation as an editor, with both Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick (giants of the SF field) singing her praises at length. Judy-Lynn had a canny business sense, and in 1976 had heard of a pulp science fiction movie being shot in England by George Lucas (then still riding high on the success of American Graffiti). Despite doubts from the publishers, she successfully negotiated for Ballantine to release a tie-in novel and drafted in Alan Dean Foster to do the job. The novel, Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, was released in November 1976 - six months before the movie was released - and became an instant bestseller, playing a key role (though now largely forgotten) in building up hype for the film.

The successful work of the del Reys at Ballantine convinced the publishers to give them their own imprint. The imprint started off by reprinting earlier books: a new edition of Arthur C. Clarke's Prelude to Space was the first book published under the imprint in December 1976, followed by the Star Wars paperback in February. That paperback would go on to sell over a million copies over the next year or so, formidably boosting the reputation and negotiating power of Del Rey Books.

Still, these were reprints of other people's work. The del Reys wanted some books of their own to give their new imprint a big boost. Judy-Lynn had been working with an author named Terry Brooks for a couple of years on his debut novel, a large, Tolkien-esque epic fantasy complete with huge battles, elves, dwarves and callow heroes from a rural background searching for a magical talisman of huge power to defeat a dark lord. Brooks had written the novel between 1967 and late 1974, at which point Judy-Lynn had provisionally accepted it for publication. However, the rewriting and editing process took over two years. The unusual amount of work that went into the novel was down to the del Reys' confidence that the novel had enormous commercial potential (despite Lester's preference for science fiction to fantasy) if Brooks could get it just right, in their estimation.

The Sword of Shannara was published at the start of 1977 (with the precise date appearing to be between March and May of that year), preceded by significant advertising and marketing hype. The book immediately hit the New York Times bestseller list (the first work of fantasy to ever do so) and sold tens of thousands of copies in both hardcover and paperback - the novel was, unusually, simultaneously released in both formats. The book also had the phrase "epic fantasy" on the cover, giving the subgenre its defining (if still debatable) name.

The del Reys scored a second major success within a matter of weeks when they released the paperback edition of Lord Foul's Bane, the debut novel by Stephen R. Donaldson. The book had been published at the start of the year in hardcover by Holt, Rinehart & Winston but, as was not uncommon in those days, the paperback reprint rights were put up for sale. Del Rey snapped them up quickly.

The two very different novels, by two very different authors but published by the same company within weeks of each other, pretty much defined the epic fantasy subgenre as we know it and showed that a surprising degree of variation was possible in a genre that would appear, at least initially, to be limited in its scope.

The Sword of Shannara 

Of the two books The Sword of Shannara was the bigger immediate success, despite being critically derided. The novel is very similar to The Lord of the Rings, starting in the pastoral landscape of Shady Vale were a group of callow youths are recruited by the druid Allanon to help fight against the machinations of the Warlock King. An elaborate backstory extending back over thousands of years is revealed, whilst the book features a map depicting the area covered by the story. The book is very similar to The Lord of the Rings, with the exception that the heroes are attempting to find the titular sword rather than already possessing it (as with the One Ring). At a key moment the heroes are separated, with the main character Shea having to proceed into the Northland alone to recover the sword and defeat the enemy. His comrades, meanwhile, lead the defence of the extremely Minas Tirith-esque city of Tyrsis against the invading armies of the Warlock King.

The Sword of Shannara was successful for several reasons. First of all, it was written in a very easy-to-read, comfortable and laidback style, especially when compared to The Lord of the Rings. It is a very approachable story. Secondly, no book quite like this had appeared since The Lord of the Rings (excepting, possibly, A Wizard of Earthsea, and that had very different goals). Fantasy fans wanting more of the same had gone without for over twenty years, so the book, despite its faults, satisfied that hunger. There was also the marketing, with substantial numbers of adverts appearing and the del Reys trading on their reputation in the field to help bring readers on board. The simultaneous paperback publication play a big role as well, encouraging readers to jump on board immediately rather than having to wait a year or more for the paperback.

Also a key fact was that The Sword of Shannara was a stand-alone, rather than the first chunk of a longer story. Sequels (eventually) followed, but The Sword of Shannara was a complete story with a beginning, middle and an end.

That the novel is enormously flawed is of course obvious: the book is far too similar to The Lord of the Rings in structure and in many of the particulars of the plot and characters, with numerous one-to-one correlations possible. The biggest difference also contributes to the novel's problems: the language and dialogue are extremely simplistic, there is limited thematic development and the book really doesn't succeeded in being anything more than a disposable popcorn read. To his credit, the author admitted and acknowledged these flaws, taking the later books in a very different direction to just being Tolkien clones. The later novels also play more with the one really good notion that Brooks inserted in the novel: that the Four Lands are actually a far-future, post-apocalyptic version of the Pacific North-West, with occasional ruins from our age being visible.

What the book did do was that it established that epic fantasy was a commercial genre with legs and tremendous commercial potential.

Lord Foul's Bane

Lord Foul's Bane was a very different book. It centres on the story of Thomas Covenant, a man from our world suffering from leprosy who must undergo a vigorous daily routine of self-checking and medication. His life is appalling. When he wakes up in a fantasy realm called the Land, healed and free from leprosy, he immediately concludes that he has gone mad and is hallucinating. Controversially, he sexually assaults a woman who appears to give him guidance and help; his guilt over this incident comes close to undoing him. As the story continues familiar tropes appear: Covenant and a party of companions must journey across the Land to Mount Thunder to thwart the machinations of Lord Foul the Despiser. Eventually Covenant succeeds, but then finds himself awakening in the real world, once again suffering from leprosy.

Whilst The Sword of Shannara was purely an entertaining romp, Lord Foul's Bane has allusions to literature and is a considerably darker, more controversial work. The book operates on a number of levels, with Covenant serving as an unreliable narrator and the reader unable to be certain that what's happening is real or a fantasy of Covenant's, created to keep him sane. The book keeps asking questions about reality and fantasy, with events in the Land apparently mirroring those in Covenant's "real" life.

The book also foreshadowed the later rise of the so-called "grimdark" movement. The Sword of Shannara had moments of danger and darkness, but generally speaking was a PG affair. Lord Foul's Bane is a colder, more brutal novel. Covenant himself is not a heroic figure and could even be called an antihero at times. His rape of Lena just a few chapters into the novel was hugely shocking and turned off a large number of readers (fewer fantasy novels have been bought in such numbers and then abandoned after a few chapters due to this). The book was also planned as part of a series from the off; although the primary action of the novel is resolved within the book, Lord Foul remains an extant threat at the end, setting the scene for the sequels, The Illearth War and The Power That Preserves (jointly known as The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever).

Of the two books, Lord Foul's Bane is the more challenging and difficult to parse. Despite this, it had much greater staying power than The Sword of Shannara. By 2004 more than 10 million copies of Lord Foul's Bane by itself had been sold, almost certainly a significantly higher number than Sword (Brooks has sold about 50 million copies in total of more than thirty novels, with Sword being a relatively small number of them). It dominated the sales of Donaldson's work, with the later books selling less (although still enough to hit the bestseller lists) and his non-Covenant novels selling negligibly in comparison.

The impact of Lord Foul's Bane was that epic, secondary world fantasy could be darker, grittier, more challenging and more difficult than the likes of Tolkien or Brooks, and used as a vehicle to tell other kinds of stories.

Star Wars

Of course, both Lord Foul's Bane and The Sword of Shannara were published in the same year that the original Star Wars movie was released. Although apparently science fiction, Star Wars had many of the familiar trappings of the traditional fantasy story: a young farmboy is taken off for a grand adventure by a sorcerer-mentor figure (who teaches him magic and badass swordfighting), linking up with an unlikely band of companions and then defeating the bad guys in a huge battle at the end (although of course key villains survive to ensure a sequel). The fact that the story was set in space with starships and lasers was almost incidental. More important was the central structure, which other films would borrow in a fantasy context. Films like Hawk the Slayer and Krull could almost be Star Wars movies, except for budgetary reasons it was easier to film them in forests and quarries and just have ordinary swords rather than lightsabres.

The direct impact Star Wars had on fantasy literature was more questionable, but certainly the frequent evocations of the same themes didn't hurt the commercial success of later fantasy writers at all. Indeed, George Lucas himself would attempt to remake Star Wars as a traditional epic fantasy with his 1988 movie Willow; when the movie did badly at the box office, scuppering plans for sequels, Lucas collaborated with X-Men comic writer Chris Claremont on a series of novels continuing Willow's story.

1977 established that there was a hunger for epic fantasy, as exemplified by The Sword of Shannara, Lord Foul's Bane and Star Wars. The long-awaited and posthumous publication of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion in the same year also contributed towards this. These books had opened the floodgates, and it was now up for other authors to follow through.

Trailers and airdate for LES REVENANTS Season 2

Canal+ have confirmed that the second season of Les Revenants (The Returned) will debut in France on 28 September and released several new trailers for the series.

Channel 4 in the UK aired the first season to a surprisingly warm critical and commercial reception, making it the highest-rated foreign language drama series to air in the UK for twenty years. Channel 4 said a while ago they'd be showing the second season, but no airdate has been set.

The Sundance Channel in the USA aired the first season, but it is unknown if they will also be showing the second. An inferior remake aired on the A&E channel in the USA last year, but was cancelled after one season.

A third (and apparently concluding) season of Les Revenants is expected to be filmed next year, hopefully to air sooner than the interminable three years between the first two seasons.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong

2056. A youngster from Seattle, raised in tough conditions and left behind when their foster-father, Raymond Black, moved to Hong Kong, is summoned to a meeting with him. Also attending is Duncan Wu, another orphan raised by Black. The meeting turns out to be a trap set by corporate police. Soon both of Black's wards are on the run. Their only hope is a disreputable triad boss, who agrees to help them on the condition they accept a new life as shadowrunners in their employ.

Hong Kong is the third game in the Shadowrun Returns series of games, following on from Dead Man's Switch (2013) and Dragonfall (2014). Like those games, Hong Kong is an isometric roleplaying game where you create and develop your own character, interact with others and carry out missions using tactics of stealth, frontal assault or hacking (or some combination of the three).

If you've played the previous two games things will be familiar, bordering on the identical. The game is bigger than the original game and perhaps matches Dragonfall in size. The story, which is more personal and complex to the player, is actually stronger, as is the writing. The rich background of the pen-and-paper Shadowrun roleplaying game is called upon to provide depth and backstory to the setting, which works pretty well.

Combat is still turn-based, tactical and fun. The other key mechanic, decking or hacking, is much-improved. The original decking mechanic was a bit dull but it's now been replaced by a new version in which you have to stealthily move through the Matrix to find the information you are after. Once you reach your objective you have to use a key-memorisation routine to actually get the info. Failure at any point triggers a response from the automated security systems. It's an entertaining way of handling hacking, certainly a big improvement on the previous two titles, but it also feels a little more cumbersome and time-consuming, especially when most objectives can be achieved through combat or dialogue instead.

The characters are highly memorable this time time around, with your band of adventurers consisting of Duncan Wu, a tough fighter with a chip on his shoulder; a genius dwarf hacker named Is0bel and an orc mage named Gobbet. Optional additions to the party include Racter, a fanatical transhumanist rigger living in the cargo hold of a grounded boat (which serves as your party's HQ). It's the strongest cast assembled so far for a Shadowrun game, with the characters each having fully-fleshed-out backstories and motivations for doing what they do.

The main mission hub is a floating criminal town, which is great. Running across the huge map between your base and the subway does get a little old, however.

For the unimaginative, Hong Kong does pretty much the same stuff as Dragonfall and the original Dead Man's Switch, so if you really liked those games, get this one. It isn't perfect, however.


First up, the game felt a little easier that is predecessors on the equivalent difficulty level. It definitely required less constant updating of equipment or armour than the previous games. I only upgraded my gun to a new one once, and I updated my armour only twice in over 15 hours of gaming. Despite this, enemies remained relatively unchallenging throughout and even the end-of-game boss (who you cheekily have to kill three times to make sure they're actually dead) was a relative pushover. If you want more of a challenge, Hong Kong may not really provide it.

Secondly, the developers went back to Kickstarter to ask for more money to make a bigger and deeper game. They definitely made a bigger game, with some truly huge environments and more NPCs in each area. However, there isn't a lot more actual content. The game takes roughly the same amount of time to complete as Dragonfall, there aren't much more quests and the number of talkable-to NPCs and interactive elements in each location remains fairly low. A struggle of the series has been that it's fairly sparse in terms of things to actually do in the game apart from to follow the main story. There isn't a lot going on in terms of optional missions or little moments of side-flavour. What is there is excellent, well-written and atmospheric, but it's having to support quite a lot of time when you're doing nothing more than running across the huge hub area for the fiftieth time.

If Hong Kong (****) is pushing the limits of the game engine and design to breaking point, at least it remains mostly entertaining when doing so. It's a well-designed, well-written and fun game which is certainly well worth playing and doesn't outstay its welcome. However, I hope it is the last game in the series on this engine and future Shadowrun games will be a little more ambitious and rich in content. It struck me while playing Satellite Reign (which came out a week after Hong Kong) that if the designers of the two games could join forces and combine the gorgeous Satellite Reign engine with the combat and writing of the Shadowrun team, they could produce something really impressive. Hong Kong is available now on PC from Steam.

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 7

For many writers of epic fantasy, the primary reference point is J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. However, in the 1970s another way of enjoying fantastic fiction arose. This was in the form of roleplaying, pen-and-paper games that allowed players to create characters and take part in narrative adventures of their own.

Roleplaying can be defined as a meeting of spontaneous improvisation - where people have to play a character and react to rapidly changing situations as their character would, not themselves - and board games. Americans Gary Gygax (b. 1939) and David Arneson (b. 1947) were avid players of board games and wargames, elaborate recreations of historical battles using miniature figures. The two gamers met in 1969 at the second Gen Con gaming convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Their shared love of naval combat games led to them creating their own naval wargame, Don't Give Up the Ship!

The two gamers were still working with miniatures but were slowly moving towards what would become the more familiar form of roleplaying. Arneson had created a board game without a (permanent) board called Blackmoor, in which the players created characters who used medieval technology in a fictional realm, initially highly fantastical but then drawing on science fiction ideas. In 1971 Gygax had created a miniature game called Chainmail which recreated medieval combat and featured rules for armour and weapons. He also produced a fantasy supplement, which added monsters, elves and a small number of magical spells.

In 1972 the two designers met again and compared notes. Gygax saw the appeal of welding miniatures-style combat rules to Arenson's free-flowing Blackmoor idea and experimented with this himself, beginning a series of nascent roleplaying adventures in a land called Greyhawk. Seeing the potential, they collaborated on a rule set. This became the very first edition of Dungeons and Dragons, released in January 1974.

In D&D, players create characters who belong to one of several races (humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings are the standard races; optional rules allow players to control everything from fairies to dragons) and who also play one of several classes or occupations (warrior, barbarian, monk, paladin, wizard, priest, druid and bard are among the most typical classes). The players then have to roleplay their characters, explaining how and why they have joined forces to form a party of adventurers. Another player, the Dungeon Master, then runs the adventure, describing the scenery and adversaries the party has to face and playing all of the other parts in the game. In return for achieving successes, the players gain experience points and can "level up", gaining additional abilities and bonuses to attack and defence. There is no board, with the players and DM instead describing what is happening orally and the game being dependent on communication. Early D&D focused on exploring underground dungeons and ruined castles in search of treasure. However, the game rapidly expanded to include adventures in cities, on the high seas and everywhere players could conceive of.

The generic fantasy backdrop to D&D is often said to have been ripped off from Tolkien. However, Gygax always denied this. Although he'd been a fan of The Hobbit and had included halflings in the game as tip of the hat to it, he disliked Lord of the Rings. Instead, he drew on other sources such as Fritz Leiber (whose Lankhmar setting Gygax later licensed as a D&D setting; he paid Leiber so much money for it that Leiber was able to live off the deal for several years) and, most notably, Jack Vance. D&D's magic system is in fact pretty much identical to that in the Dying Earth series of novels, even down to some of the spell names. Other writers such as Robert E. Howard were cited as inspirations.

Gygax as depicted in Futurama.

A modest success at first, D&D exploded into a wider form of popularity with the release of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in 1977, which dispensed with the previous box set design and emphasised play using just the rulebooks and dice, with no miniatures necessary (although optional rules for their use remained). The game was rebooted with new editions in 1989, 2000, 2008 and 2014. As of last year, Hasbro (the current owners of the game) had estimated that a conservative minimum of 20 million people had played D&D and the game had sold more than $1 billion worth of materials.

Other roleplaying games followed, such as Marc Miller's  Traveller (1977), Steve Perrin's RuneQuest (1978) and Superworld (1983), Steve Jackson's GURPS (1986), Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk (1988), and a series of highly influential RPGs from Jordan Weisman: MechWarrior (1986), Shadowrun (1989) and Earthdawn (1992). There was also the Star Wars title from West End Games (1987) which was important in establishing the now-defunct Expanded Universe and pinning down names and terminology for a lot of the worlds, races and technology in the setting. However, Dungeons and Dragons remained by far the biggest of them all.


The impact of D&D on fantasy was notable. Studying at San Diego University in the late 1970s, Raymond E. Feist was introduced to the game by his friends. Unimpressed with the existing rules and settings, they began changing things around and developing their own setting. Steve Abrams did a lot of work in the creation of this world, which was dubbed Midkemia. In 1977 Feist asked if he could try writing a novel set in that world, to which his colleagues agreed. This became the seminal novel Magician, eventually published in 1982.


In 1981 two young Canadians named Steve Lundin and Ian Esslemont started playing a game of D&D with a group of friends and began developing their own fantasy world. However, they found the rules limiting and became more interested in narrative roleplay, focusing on tragedy rather than heroism. The release of GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) in 1986, which encouraged a more freeform style of play, saw them add a lot of weight and colour to their world. Shortly afterwards Esslemont wrote very early versions of novels he called Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard (published, after many delays, in 2004 and 2008 respectively). Around the same time Lundin wrote a film script he called Gardens of the Moon. Unable to interest anyone in it, he re-tooled the script as a novel in 1991; eventually (under the pen-name Steven Erikson) it was released in 1999 as the first volume of The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Even more established writers got in on the act. In the late 1970s a writer named James Oliver Rigney started running games of D&D for his stepson Will. Shortly afterwards he was contracted to write a series of new Conan novels under the pen-name Robert Jordan. He was also just beginning to come up with an idea about a fantasy world where only women could use magic and where magic had a precise set of guiding rules, much like the D&D magic system. The influnce of D&D on The Wheel of Time is debatable (Jordan never cited it as a major inspiration), but it is interesting that the biggest epic fantasy author after Tolkien (so far) at least dabbled with the game.

Around this time George R.R. Martin, recently moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, discovered roleplaying. He enjoyed it as a pastime, but it didn't really grab his attention until he was given a copy of Superworld in 1983, which allowed the players to become superheroes. Martin soon began running an epic adventure for his players and collaborators. After a couple of years of focusing on the game rather than his novel-writing career (which had stalled with the failure of The Armageddon Rag), Martin hit on the idea of using the game as a source for fiction. The result was the Wild Cards anthology series, which began in 1987 and is still running today.

Dungeons and Dragons itself did not initially inspire much in the way of fiction directly based on it, despite the release of several different campaign worlds or settings for the game. The first proper D&D novel was Quag Keep (1979), written by none other than the highly-regarded Andre Norton, but fiction deriving directly from the game was not particularly successful until 1984. In that year Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman released Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first novel in The Dragonlance Chronicles, which went on to become one of the biggest-selling epic fantasy series of all time. In 1988 R.A. Salvatore released the Forgotten Realms novel The Crystal Shard, the first novel featuring his dark elf hero Drizzt Do'Urden, a series which went on to be even bigger and more successful.

Dungeons and Dragons had a big impact on the field of fantasy. It consolidated a lot of ideas (some previously originating with Tolkien and other authors) that would become important in the subgenre as it developed, such as worldbuilding, magic, the various races and the idea of a "party" of disparate individuals coming together for a common cause, as well as both inspiring epic fantasy authors and, through its spin-off novels, directly starting the careers of numerous others.

But the modern fantasy genre hadn't quite come into being yet. The groundwork for that was laid at the very end of 1976 when a successful science fiction author and editor named Lester del Rey established a new imprint for Ballantine Books and started looking for authors to kick the line off memorably.

Daniel Radcliffe stars in BBC drama about GRAND THEFT AUTO

Yes, that headline exists and I am not making it up.

In The Gamechangers Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe is playing Sam Houser of Rockstar Games, one of the guys who took the struggling Grand Theft Auto franchise (after one classic, hit game in 1997 and a so-so sequel in 1999) and, with 2001's GTA3, created the biggest franchise in gaming history (until Call of Duty, anyway).

The game focuses on the clash between Houser and Jack Thompson (played by Bill Paxton of Aliens and Agents of SHIELD fame), an American lawyer who tried to get the games banned for being violent and inspiring real-life crime. Thompson's unsubstantiated claims and general lack of professionalism later (SPOILERS!) led to him being disbarred.

I don't know if it's going to be any good or not - the trailer is bizarre - but the sheer randomness of this project may make it worth checking out. Radcliffe's disturbing facial fungus does make me long for an alternate universe in which he plays a young Trevor from GTA5.

Meanwhile, the project gives Rock Paper Shotgun the excuse to check out Harry Potter/Grand Theft Auto crossover fanfic, which also exists.

The Gamechangers will air on BBC2 on 15 September.

MONKEY ISLAND and COMMAND & CONQUER celebrate their birthdays

Two of the most influential names in gaming celebrated anniversaries this week.

It's been ten o'clock on Melee Island for twenty-five years now...

The Secret of Monkey Island went gold on 2 September 1990 and hit shops a couple of weeks later. It was the latest in a series of graphical adventure games released by LucasArts using the SCUMM Engine. The previous games using the engine - Maniac Mansion, Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Loom - had all been successful, but The Secret of Monkey Island was bigger still. It may still be the funniest video game ever made, as well as one of the cleverest, with some exceptionally fiendish puzzle design and the excellent idea of insult sword fighting still resonating today.

The same team made the superior sequel, Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge, but then began leaving the company. The Curse of Monkey Island (1997) and Escape from Monkey Island (2002) were made by different teams and are not counted as wholly canon (although Curse has numerous fans). Ron Gilbert, the main creative force on the first game, talks about the original game's release here and how he would handle a third canon Monkey Island game here. Gilbert is currently working on a SCUMM-esque retro adventure game called Thimbleweed Park, which he hopes to release next year.

You can play The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island II today, using special editions which allow you to either play in "classic" mode or with revamped, modern graphics.

Westwood couldn't afford a lot of actors for C&C's cut scenes, so drafted in their staff to help. Joe Kucan, the director of the cut scenes, became the game's bad guy, Kane, inadvertently creating (arguably) the most iconic non-pixellated bad guy in video games.

Meanwhile, it is also the twentieth anniversary of the release of Command and Conquer. Developed by Westwood games and released on 31 August 1995, Command and Conquer had a huge impact in the way it popularised the real-time strategy genre. The same developers, Westwood, had effectively created the genre with Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis in 1992, but that game had problems with the player only being able to select one unit at a time. C&C allowed for entire armies of mixed units to be assembled and used to attack the enemy en masse. The game was also influential with its elaborate cut scenes and the focus on a narrative, the battle between the Global Defence Initiative (GDI) and the terrorist Brotherhood of Nod for control of tiberium, a potent energy source brought to Earth by meteorites.

The game was followed by three direct sequels: Tiberian Sun (1999), Tiberium Wars (2007) and Tiberian Twilight (2010). However, the game also spawned two spin-off universes. The more famous of these was the Red Alert series, which used time travel to create a series of conflicts between the Western Allies and Soviet Union (and later the Japanese Empire). The Red Alert series is considerably sillier and camper than the core series, but is also arguably superior, with better units. This sub-series consists of Red Alert (1996), Red Alert 2 (2000) and Red Alert 3 (2008). The second spin-off was Command and Conquer: Generals (2002); a sequel/reboot was in development before being canned a couple of years ago.

The influence of the C&C games can be seen and felt in all the RTS games that followed, from StarCraft to Homeworld to this week's Act of Aggression (a self-aware homage to the original series), even if EA has seemingly abandoned the franchise.

You can get most of the C&C games on Origin.

The Ink Dribbleth Out

And so it has come to pass. Fantasy blog A Dribble of Ink has dribbled its last. Aidan Moher has called time on the blog to concentrate on his writing career.

A Dribble of Ink started in 2007 and has been providing top-notch coverage of the SFF scene ever since. Erudite reviews, memorable guest posts (which have won awards) and a keen enthusiasm for the genre made the Dribble one of the best genre blogs on the Internet.

Aidan will still be involved in the fandom through his new website and Twitter, but will now be focusing more on his fiction, which I'm looking forwards to reading.

* salutes a fellow blogger and fires a twenty-one Death Star salute *

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 6

The publication of The Lord of the Rings, and in particular the explosion of its popularity after 1965, did not result in an overnight transformation in the way fantasy was perceived and written. Indeed, the dominant form of fantasy throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s remained sword and sorcery of the kind pioneered by Robert E. Howard.

Sword and sorcery and epic fantasy are distinct subgenres, although sharing some similarities (and both can be jointly referred to as secondary world fantasy). Sword and sorcery is seen as primarily action-driven, with violence and magic being dominant forces. Sword and sorcery books are generally shorter, and although often arranged in series there are perhaps less links between each book, with the focus more on stand-alone adventures. In the middle of the century sword and sorcery could also be quite weird, taking on board influences from science fiction as well as the fantastic.

Sword and sorcery had become the dominant form of fantastic fiction thanks to the likes of Howard and Leiber, and the work of other authors like L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter in popularising and expanding the genre. However, and perhaps surprisingly, it was this seemingly masculine subset of fantasy that brought in the first major female writers to the genre.

Starting in the 1930s, C.L. Moore wrote a number of short stories in both the science fiction and fantasy settings. Her works appeared in magazines such as Weird Tales and Astounding. Moore is notable for introducing one of fantasy's first heroines in the Jirel of Joiry series. In the following decade Leigh Brackett began writing numerous sword and sorcery-like stories, but set these on other planets like Mars and Venus, hence having them categorised as planetary romances (the same fate also befell male authors, most notably Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars-set Barsoom series which arguably has more in common with swords and sorcery then science fiction).

In 1963 Andre Norton published Witch World, in which a man from our world is transported to a fantasy realm of warring factions. It is later revealed that people from other worlds and universes have been brought to this planet and the fantasy-like backdrop is melded with science fiction ideas. Norton wrote or co-wrote more than two dozen novels, novellas and short stories in this setting, and allowed other writers to use it as well. Witch World introduces the idea of having a fantasy world where only women can use magic, an idea later utilised by Robert Jordan in The Wheel of Time (unlike that series, men can also use magic safely and later learn to do so).

Male writers also continued to expand the remit of sword and sorcery and take it in unusual directions. In 1961, Michael Moorcock published The Dreaming City, which introduced readers to the character Elric of Melnibone. An albino riven by angst and introspection, Elric was deliberately designed as the antithesis of traditional heroes like Conan. The early Elric stories ended with the annihilation of Elric and his world; later books and novellas would fill in his backstory. Moorcock, who swiftly gained a reputation as the enfant terrible of science fiction for his introduction of the New Wave of the genre, enjoyed skewering holes in the perception of fantasy as well. In the 1970s he published controversial criticism of Tolkien (for his conservatism) and H.P. Lovecraft (for his racist viewpoints that spilled over into some of his fiction).

Rewinding a little to the same year that The Lord of the Rings was published, 1954, Poul Anderson released his seminal fantasy The Broken Sword, a gritty story of war, death and magic based on Viking mythology. Although relatively obscure today, writers from Moorcock to Richard Morgan have sung its praises as a demonstration of a darker, less comfortable form of fantasy to that written by Tolkien. Indeed, some have cited The Broken Sword as the forerunner of the so-called "grimdark" movement of fantasy that would eventually continue through Stephen Donaldson to more contemporary authors like Scott Bakker and Mark Lawrence.

In 1968 another author took a step into the ring to write a work that was neither Tolkienesque, nor sword and sorcery. Ursula K. LeGuin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea was set in a (mapped) fictional archipelago with a predominantly black cast of characters, a fact lost on the writers of the poor SyFy mini-series based on the books. The book inverted the fantasy stereotype of wizards being wise old men by asking where they came from and how they learned to do magic. This began the "magical academy" trope of fantasy fiction, which later found its ultimate form of popularity in the Harry Potter series (and echoes may also be detected in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequels are probably the closest we have to a "traditional" epic fantasy series between Tolkien and 1977, the year in which the modern genre really came into being.

In the same year, Anne McCaffrey published Dragonflight, the first novel in the Dragonriders of Pern series. Dragonflight is many respects an epic fantasy, but also a "rationalised fantasy", where the fantastic elements are explained by a science fictional background. The Pern series, despite its nominal SF background, would go on to influence many future fantasy novels, particularly with its depiction of dragons as allies and mounts rather than simple monsters.

Other authors continued to write tales of the fantastic without following up on Tolkien's lead. In 1970 Roger Zelazny published Nine Princes in Amber, about a man who discovers he was really destined to rule Amber, the one true world of which all others are reflections. This was the first of The Chronicles of Amber, which eventually extended to ten novels and enormous critical acclaim. Patricia A. McKillip achieved a significant breakthrough with her third novel, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld in 1974, but then surpassed it in 1976 with The Riddle-Master of Hed, the first novel of The Riddle-Master Trilogy. Children's fantasy also became more popular around this time, with notable works of juvenile fantasy including the Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper (1965-77), Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (1977) and Elidor by Alan Garner (1965).

However, the biggest and most successful juvenile fantasy of this time was Watership Down by Richard Adams, published in 1972. At first glance this book about rabbits has little to do with epic fantasy, but some of the tropes of the genre can be found within its pages. There is the lengthy, dangerous quest through unknown and hostile territory. There is a complex mythology including creation myths and spirits representing death. There is even magic, in the form of seers and visions. Foreshadowing the YA novels of modern times, the book is also fairly grim for a children's story, with major characters dying. Unusually, the novel's darker and more violent aspects survived into the excellent 1978 animated film adaptation.

By the latter part of the 1970s fantasy was a thriving form of fiction, but no-one had stepped forwards to really follow up The Lord of the Rings, or do something different with that form of fantasy. There was one last piece of the puzzle to slot into place before that would start to happen, and it came from two Americans who were not authors of fiction. Instead they were nascent game designers by the name of Gary Gygax and David Arneson, and the impact their creation would have on modern fantasy would be second only to Tolkien.

Fringe: Season 5

2036. Earth is under the control of the Observers, time-travelling, genetically-engineered and cybernetically-enhanced humans from a distant future in which the planet has become uninhabitable. During their previous observations of the Fringe team and their investigations, they have confirmed that it is possible to rewrite the timeline and create a new reality, so now they plan to create a new world for their benefit...but not for that of the humans who are already there.

Frozen in amber for twenty-one years, the Fringe team awaken with one goal: to stop the Observers from fulfilling their mission. But with a vastly superior foe tracking them remorselessly, the team need every ally and every resource they can call upon in order to succeed.

For its final season, Fringe changes things up a lot. What had once been a procedural, investigative drama about the paranormal and pseudoscience has become a full-on nightmare dystopia, throwing in some elements of post-apocalyptic drama for good measure. These thirteen episodes form a tightly serialised drama (the writers deciding the sops to the casual viewer are no longer necessary) taking in questions about what it means to be human and how far you will be prepared to go to save your existence.

There are a few problems with the situation. First off, a fair bit of important stuff happens off-screen: four years pass between the end of Season 4 and the moment the Observers actually invade, including some important character development and also further developments involving William Bell. Bell's character arc simply disappears and we don't find out the fate of his character or what happened since the last time we saw him to explain his changed relationship with Walter and the rest of the team. Some hasty exposition from other characters doesn't really help. It's a problem that can be ignored for the most part, but the lack of resolution for this key character at a moment when pretty much everyone else gets wrapped up nicely feels a bit of an oversight.

More of an issue is that the compressed storytelling and the near-omnipotence of the Observers results in what feels like plot holes. The ability of the Observers to foretell the future and how far they can do their teleporting trick shifts episode from episode based on the requirements of the plot. It's not quite as bad as the tricks some shows go to in order to nerf overpowered villains (the Borg, anyone?) but it again feels a little too inconsistent even given Fringe's elastic standards of plausibility.

Fortunately, most of that can be ignored. The final season of Fringe is a bold, experimental one that throws out the standard format, changes dynamics all over the place and tries to be the biggest, most epic season on a reduced budget. Thanks to some excellent CGI (the paved-over Central Park is an impressive achievement), some very strong writing and some brilliant performances from the regulars and newcomers alike, the season is pretty gripping. By now it's gotten redundant to say that John Noble is fantastic in every scene he does (although a scene at the end of the first episode involving early 1980s electronica is particularly outstanding), but it's good to see Joshua Jackson stepping up to the mark. Jackson has pinballed between Plot Device and Exposition Giver for most of the previous four seasons (although always played gamely), but in Season 5 he gets a bit more material to play with and handles it well. Blair Brown also gets a terrific story arc as Nina this season, possibly by way of apology from the writers for giving her some pretty bad material in the Season 4 finale to work with. Georgina Haig also does some great work, stepping into the established cast as Henrietta.

The biggest success of the season, though, is giving a definite sense of closure to the series. Coming from some of the same creators as Lost and being heavily influenced by The X-Files, the fear was that Fringe would, like those shows, have a muddled and unsatisfactory resolution to a long-running and confusing story arc. It doesn't. Instead Fringe nails the landing more than satisfactorily, giving a good sense of closure as well as explaining most (but not all) of the show's long-running mysteries.

The final season of Fringe (****½) concludes the series with style, giving a satisfying resolution to the show, its mysteries and, most importantly, to the characters. Fringe, tragically, is one of the more obscure SFF shows of recent years which is a shame, as it is also one of the best. The final season is available now in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).