Y THE LAST MAN and BATTLE ANGEL ALITA move into development

Two new screen adaptations of science fiction franchises have been announced in the last couple of days.

First up is an old project. James Cameron optioned the Battle Angel Alita manga a long, long time ago. At one stage he was torn between making a Battle Angle Alita movie or Avatar, eventually plumping for the latter. With Avatar II, III and IV likely to keep him busy for the next decade or so, he's clearly decided not to sit on the other property and has decided to produce it for another director. Robert Rodriguez will instead helm the movie for 20th Century Fox. No release date has been set, but I'd be surprised if we saw this any sooner than 3-4 years from now.

Much more imminent is an FX TV series based on Y: The Last Man. This graphic novel series about the last two surviving male mammals on the planet was a huge hit during its 60-issue run for Vertigo from 2002 to 2008. It launched the career of Brian Vaughn, who has gone on to work in television on Lost and Under the Dome before recently returning to comics with the massively successful Saga. Vaughn himself will produce and write the Y: The Last Man TV show, which he has suggested will both adapt and expand on the comics.

HOMEWORLD: SHIPBREAKERS previewed

Homeworld: Shipbreakers was the surprise focus of a panel at the Unite developers' conference, a recent tech conference revolving around the Unity game engine.

The new game was originally in development as a brand-new game and franchise called Hardware: Shipbreakers. Blackbird Interactive, founded by many of the same team who worked on Homeworld and Homeworld 2 at Relic Entertainment. In 2012 Gearbox acquired the Homeworld IP and began work on HD, remastered versions of the games which launched to critical acclaim earlier this year. Thay also agreed to partner with Blackbird to release Shipbreakers, granting them permission to move the game into the Homeworld universe.

The original theory was that the game would be thoroughly reworked into a prequel to the original Homeworld, set on the desert planet of Kharak and depicting the feuding Kiith (clans) in their run-up to finding the crashed starship that would set them on the course to building the Mothership and seeking their true origins. However, the video from the developers' conference suggests that the game may instead be a prequel to Homeworld 2, taking place between the two games, and depicting a much larger-scaled ground conflict over a different planet. The presence of ruined ships from the first game (which wouldn't make sense in the lore for a true prequel) seems to lend weight to that theory.

The video also suggests that the game may have grown into a larger affair, maybe more akin to Supreme Commander with the ability to zoom all the way into low orbit and fight across truly vast stretches of territory.

The video focuses on how the developers have used the Unity Engine to render cut-scenes, which would seem to confirm that the game will now feature a substantial single-player campaign running alongside the already-confirmed multiplayer mode.

Nothing more about the game, such as a prospective release date, has been revealed so far.

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 18

The Wheel of Time is the biggest-selling epic fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings, if you don't count Harry Potter as such (a debate for another time). It's had a seismic impact on the development of fantasy as a genre, although as a much more recent work its full influence is likely yet to be felt. However, it has introduced some things to the genre that are now staples of the genre.

Robert Jordan's delighted letter to George R.R. Martin's editor on learning that A Song of Ice and Fire is going to be more than three volumes in length.

Length

Epic fantasy has always been big: The Lord of the Rings, at 450,000 words, was insanely huge for its day. The Sword of Shannara, Magician and The Dragonbone Chair, all checking in at around the 300,000 word mark, were all big novels. Even smaller trilogies and series, like The Belgariad, The Black Company and The Dragonlance Chronicles, became epic when assembled in omnibus editions.

The Wheel of Time was different, though. The books were big, many clocking in at north of 300,000 words and a couple (The Shadow Rising and Lord of Chaos) falling just short of 400,000. But they were also numerous. More importantly, the whole thing was one big story. Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Cycle and Terry Brooks's Shannara series both clocked in at 30+ books, but these consisted of stand-alone novels or sub-series with their own self-contained story arcs.

The Wheel of Time, instead, was actually one story and in fact at the 2014 Hugo Awards was allowed to be nominated as one extremely long novel. The story that begins on page 1 of The Eye of the World does not conclude until the closing page of A Memory of Light, just short of 12,000 pages later. This was something that was different, and unusual. The Wheel of Time opened the door for series that were bigger than the standard trilogies, with massive narratives allowed to sprawl unconstrained by traditional page count limitations. Authors from Kate Elliott to George R.R. Martin to Steven Erikson would benefit from this precedent. Without Jordan, the idea of a single story broken into seven or ten or fourteen massive tomes would have taken longer to become popular. Of course, some critics and readers despairing at the never-ending mega-saga in fantasy fiction may bemoan this fact as much as fans celebrate it.

Magic Systems

The idea of a "magic system" was not new in fantasy. In fact, it predates The Lord of the Rings itself. In 1950 Jack Vance's The Dying Earth featured a system of magic based around immutable laws and learnable rituals, with wizards learning spells from books. When they cast the spell, it disappeared from their mind and had to be re-learned. These rules were so popular that Gargy Gygax later "borrowed" them for his Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game.

Such magic systems had gone on to appear in fantasy novels, with the D&D-influenced Magician  employing a system of magic divided into the "Great Path" and "Lesser Path". The Dragonlance Chronicles and R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books, being set in the D&D multiverse, simply used the D&D magic system directly.

However, it was The Wheel of Time that popularised the idea of a magic system. James Oliver Rigney (aka Robert Jordan), quite cleverly, never once uses the word "magic" in all fourteen volumes, instead exclusively using the term "One Power". The Power is divided into male and female halves, with different ways of weaving the power and combinations of male and female channellers having different effects. The rules are complex and the characters' understanding of them constantly change throughout the books, but always remain consistent and coherent. Some fantasy authors, most famously Brandon Sanderson, would go wild developing their own magic systems. Others, like Steven Erikson and Ian Esslemont, would keep their rules carefully hidden away to encourage reader speculation on what they were like. Others still, like George R.R. Martin, would reject the notion of a magic system altogether, preferring magic to be weird, dark and mysterious like it was in Tolkien, or legend.

Gender Roles

Obviously, The Wheel of Time did not create the idea of strong female characters in fantasy fiction: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Mists of Avalon, The Empire Trilogy and many more featured important female characters and crucial protagonists long before The Eye of the World was published. And the growing frequence of major female protagonists in modern fantasy is down more to the growing number of excellent female writers in the field as well as male writers being a bit more egalitarian than some of their forebears.

But The Wheel of Time was definitely a showcase for such changing attitudes in the 1990s. Although the main character of Rand al'Thor is male, many of the other critical characters in the series are female. The series is often represented as the story of three core male characters (Rand, Mat and Perrin), but this is actually erroneous: after Rand himself, the most important character is Egwene, and The Wheel of Time gains a new perspective if viewed as the parallel stories of Rand and Egwene and the differing paths they take to achieve their goals. Approximately two-thirds of the characters in Wheel of Time are female, many of the nations are matriarchies and for most of the length of the series, only women can use magic safely. The series is also noticeably lacking in some of the more questionable "gritty" or "realistic" misogynistic acts found in other fantasy series. The series also features fairly positive representations of lesbian and bisexual characters (although, many have wryly noted, almost no male gay characters at all until almost the very end, and then very fleetingly).

Despite all of this, the success of The Wheel of Time as a feminist - or at least feminist-nodding - work of fantasy is much more debatable (and has been debated online, at extraordinary length). Robert Jordan could use fairly broad characterisations and tended to deploy physical tics (such as tugging braids or "folding arms under breasts") fairly repetitively. Also, whilst the battle of the sexes theme is played up throughout the series, it remains at a fairly juvenile level for most of its length. It's arguably only right at the very end that the male and female characters seem to grow up and learn to respect and live alongside one another in mutual understanding. Still, the fact that the biggest fantasy series in the world adopted a very pro-women stance at a time when many other series were doubling down on lazy stereotyping or just outright sexism was in itself notable.

Expansion

The Wheel of Time was supposed to be a trilogy, was contracted for six books and ended up as fourteen volumes. Unexpected expansion of the story - or, less charitably, "bloat" - is a common problem in the epic fantasy genre, with many series expanded beyond the ability of the narrative to sustain them, sometimes for creative reasons, sometimes financial.

In the case of The Wheel of Time, the author had a rough story arc mapped out in his head and the final scene written down quite early in the process, but the actual process of getting from A to B was only discovered in the writing process itself. This is the so-called "gardener" approach, also employed by the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin and Stephen King. Like those authors, Robert Jordan encountered problems of staying on course and keeping the narrative focused. But each of these authors dealt with the problem in a different manner.

Tolkien, of course, simply completed his entire story long before publishing any of it. This allowed him to rewrite and re-edit the whole thing. This permitted him to simply chop off large sections of The Lord of the Rings which detracted from the focus of the novel. An episode in which Gandalf explains to Frodo why exactly he recruited Bilbo to take part in the events of The Hobbit was deemed unnecessary and removed to become a short story ("The Quest of Erebor", later published in Unfinished Tales). A lot of extraneous history lessons from Faramir about the history of Gondor was moved into the appendix. A lot of Aragorn and Arwen's love story likewise was relegated into the notes. All of this was done before publication, allowing the story to be refined prior to release.

Jordan, of course, couldn't do this for The Wheel of Time and this left him in a problematic state when he got to the third quarter of the series. By this point he had characters like Rand ready to pretty much head into the Last Battle, but most of the other characters were way behind. One solution, to "bench" characters who had nothing to do at the moment, proved unpopular with readers, so Jordan had to invent more material (arguably "filler") for them whilst he was bringing other characters up to speed. This led to controversial episodes like Perrin's wife being kidnapped by a minor enemy in Book 8 and not being rescued until Book 11, with Perrin's entire story arc inbetween consisting of angst. Eventually he got the series back on track and heading for a satisfactory conclusion, but even the most ardent Wheel of Time fans will generally admit to finding Books 8-10 of the series a relative struggle when compared to the rest.

George R.R. Martin's solution - to rewrite each volume multiple times during the writing process - combines the two approaches but leads to the detrimental effect of each volume taking five or more years to come out.

Newer fantasy authors seem to be aware of the bloat problem ahead of time and in some cases have taken steps to avoid it. Steven Erikson's ten-volume Malazan series avoided the issue by having a self-contained primary story in each novel and relegating the serialised elements to subplots. Brandon Sanderson has divided his 36+ novel masterplan into lots of smaller, self-contained storylines and trilogies, only obliquely referring to the serialised elements linking the whole thing together and not planning to bring these elements to greater prominence until much later.

Some fantasy authors - like a certain J.K. Rowling - also found a novel way around the problem: by coming up with a target number of books, sticking to it and executing it.

As the 1990s got underway, dominated by Robert Jordan's epic fantasy behemoth, other writers started coming to prominence and writing their own series. This was a new generation of writers emerging on both sides of the Atlantic, and further afield in Europe as well. As some of the old school also continued to produce new work, this was a time for the field to become more diverse and more interesting.

SHANNARA CHRONICLES gets airdate and trailer

The Shannara Chronicles has gotten its airdate: the ten-episode first season will debut on MTV in the USA on 5 January 2016.

There's also a new trailer (see above) expanding more on the characters and world.

Cinemax options George R.R. Martin's THE SKIN TRADE

Cinemax, the sister-company to HBO, has exercised its option on the TV rights to George R.R. Martin's short story, The Skin Trade.

The story, originally published in 1989, revolves around werewolves and a private investigator named Randi Wade. It's long been a favourite of Martin's, and he had been thinking about additional stories in that setting until A Song of Ice and Fire (which he began writing just two years later) intervened. The story won the World Fantasy Award.

Kalinda Vasquez, a writer on Prison Break and Once Upon a Time, will be writing the pilot script. If Cinemax like the script, they may order a pilot or even a full season.

STAR CITIZEN adds lots of star voice power

In-development space sim Star Citizen has added a lot of top-tier voice actors to its roster. Most of these actors will appear in the single-player and narrative-focused companion game, Squadron 42, but it's possible that some will also spill over into Star Citizen itself.

The announced voiced actors so far include Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill, Mark Strong, John Rhys-Davies, Andy Serkis, Jack Huston, Ben Mendelsohn, Liam Cunningham, Rhona Mitra, Sophie Wu, Gemma Whelan and Craig Fairbrass. Some of these are familiar voices from Chris Roberts's previous space games: Mark Hamill starred in Wing Commander III and IV alongside John Rhys-Davies, who also appeared in Freelancer.

Star Citizen is a large-scaled space simulator. The core of the game is trading and combat in a vast, online universe. Players will be able to buy different ships, have multi-crewed ships and, in a notable difference to other games like Elite: Dangerous, will be able to get up, walk around the ship and even exit the vessel to take part in ground combat and exploration. The game is the single most successful crowdfunding project in history, having raised over $91,584,000 (yes, that's $91 million) in donations. The game is widely expected to pass $100 million in the next few months.

Squadron 42 is described as a spiritual successor to the Wing Commander games and StarLancer. The game will focus on the United Empire of Earth's battle against the alien Vanduul, with the player (presumably) joining Squadron 42. Although single-player in focus, Squadron 42 will have a co-operative mode and some achievements in the game will be carried over into Star Citizen itself.

Development of Star Citizen began in 2011 and was opened to crowdfunding in late 2012. The game has had an open development process, with regular updates issued on progress and what the developers are doing. However, the game has come in for some criticism due to missing a large number of release deadlines and questions being raised about lack of oversight and a lack of recent game development experience for Chris Roberts and senior managers. These criticisms led to a renewed development timeline being issued, with Squadron 42 expected to now launch in 2016. Star Citizen will hopefully follow by the end of that year.

Stone of Farewell by Tad Williams

Elias rules as the High King of Osten Ard, but his policies have triggered war between the provinces and civil war within some of them. The continent is slipping into chaos and the only hope may be the mad king's younger brother, Josua Lackhand. Escaping a devastating siege, Josua travels eastwards to find a new stronghold, gathering allies as he goes. Meanwhile, it is said that only three great swords of legend can defeat the machinations of Elias's puppet-master, Ineluki the Storm King. Simon Snowlock has recovered Thorn from a remote mountain, but two of his friends have been sentenced to death by the Qanuc, his own erstwhile allies.

Stone of Farewell continues the story begun in The Dragonbone Chair, and is less the sequel than the simple continuation of that story. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is really one titanic, 1.2 million-word novel split into three (or four, depending on edition) for ease of publication.

Williams expands and deepens the story in this book, with a more thorough exploration of the various cultures of Osten Ard. In particular, the Qanuc, Sithi and Norns all get more screentime and we learn more about the meadow-people of the Thrithings, the political and religious intrigue in Nabban and how the Hernystiri are surviving in exile.

These elements are fascinating, but also come at the expense of critical plot development and incident. The Dragonbone Chair was itself a relaxed novel, but Stone of Farewell is even more chilled out. Simon spends a long time kicking back amongst first the Qanuc and later the Sithi, Josua's apparently desperate flight to safety has more of the feel of a holiday outing and Miriamele spends altogether too much time hanging out on a boat. It's more the stories inbetween that resonate, with Isgrimnur's increasingly fed-up journey into the south being enjoyable for its brevity and our glimpses into life in the Hayholt (effectively under occupation by Elias's troops) via characters like Rachel and the redoubtable Guthwulf.

There are moments of real horror when the story kicks into a higher gear, such as Pyrates's confrontation with the Lector or the Red Hand's assault on Jao e-Tinukai'i, but these are relatively few and far between. Instead, the novel expands itself on helping the characters (particularly Simon and Miriamele) grow into more interesting people.

Stone of Farewell (****) is well-written, richly characterised and features moments of real tension and horror. It arguably takes its hands off the throttle at the wrong moment, however, allowing momentum to dissipate a little rather than ramping up for the grand finale. But if you can forgive the slower pace, a fascinating, enjoyable and deeper fantasy novel than most awaits. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 17

In 1984 James Oliver Rigney, Jr. started writing what he believed was going to be the first volume of a trilogy. His publisher, Tom Doherty, took one look at the outline and suggested that they sign a contract for a six-volume series instead. Twenty-nine years later, six years after the author's death, the fourteenth and final volume in that saga was published. In the meantime the series knotched up almost 90 million sales, seven #1 New York Times bestsellers and was the first fantasy series to really capitalise on the advent of the internet and discussion boards. This is a series that changed fantasy irrevocably. This is the story of The Wheel of Time.

The Wheel of Time totals fourteen novels (plus a prequel novel, plus two companion guidebooks), 11,916 pages in paperback and 4,410,036 words. The audio book version of the series is 461 hours and 25 minutes long. 22 years, 11 months and 24 days elapsed between the first and last volumes of the series being published. The series has sold over 56 million copies in North America alone, with a conservatively estimated 90 million sales worldwide.

James Oliver Rigney, Jr. was born on 17 October 1948 in Charleston, South Carolina. At the age of 20 he was drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam as a soldier and helicopter gunner. He served two terms of duty and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses. His colleagues nicknamed him "Iceman" for his cool and collected demeanour under fire, and his ability to attend to vital tasks (such as eating and sleeping) even with dead bodies around. Returning home to the USA, Rigney had to deal with the stress of re-adapting to civilian life, which he later said he accomplished by metaphorically "killing" the soldier he'd had to become on the battlefield.

He studied at the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, and got a degree in physics, graduating in 1974. He worked for the United States Navy as a nuclear engineer, serving at the Charleston naval shipyard. During a routine assignment, he suffered a serious fall and developed a life-threatening blood clot. Although he survived and recovered, he had to use a cane to walk. Deciding that life was too short to not pursue his dream of being an author, he switched careers to writing and began penning articles for local newspapers and magazines.

James Oliver Rigney, Jr. whilst serving with the 68th Assault Helicopter Company in Vietnam, 1969-70.

In 1977 he tried to sell his first book, a stand-alone fantasy novel called Warriors of the Altaii. Renowned genre editor Jim Baen considered the novel but left it unpublished when he switched publishing houses. Rigney vented his frustrations to a local bookshop owner, who relayed the story to Harriet McDougal, a former editor who'd worked with Jim Baen and Tom Doherty and set up her own imprint, Popham Press. McDougal and Rigney met and she read Warriors of the Altaii. She rejected it, but asked him for something else. He submitted a historical bodice-ripper, called The Fallon Blood. This was published in 1980.

During the process of writing, editing and publicising the book, Rigney and Dougal began a relationship, marrying in March 1981. When it came time to put his name on the novel, Rigney hesitated. His experiences in Vietnam had left him with the idea of one day writing a definitive novel about the war. He decided he only wanted to put his real name on that book, and would use pen names for everything else. The first pen name he used was Reagan O'Neal, which was used on the cover of The Fallon Blood and two sequels, The Fallon Pride (1981) and The Fallon Legacy (1982). He also used another pen name, Jackson O'Reilly, for a stand-alone Western called Cheyenne Raiders (1982).

Whilst this was taking place, Tor Books had acquired the rights to publish new material about Robert E. Howard's famous hero, Conan the Barbarian. Wanting to capitalise on the imminent release of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie for his new Tor Books imprint, Tom Doherty needed someone who could bash out a Conan novel very quickly. He turned to McDougal, who put him in contact in turn with Rigney. Rigney was faster even than Doherty expected, turning in Conan the Invincible and Conan the Defender in time for both to be published in 1982. Five further short novels in the series followed, eventually collected in two omnibuses. Working in a different genre, fantasy, Rigney decided he needed a new pen name. After playing around with new combinations of his initials (and taking no inspiration from Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, despite reports to the contrary), he came up with the name "Robert Jordan".

The Conan books had been quite successful for Tor, although the relative failure of the second film, Conan the Destroyer, in 1984 meant that they decided to wrap up the series whilst they were ahead. Impressed by Rigney's work rate, Tom Doherty asked what else he was working on.

Rigney had been a big fan of fantasy, including Howard and Tolkien, and had begun considering his own epic series in the late 1970s. He had gotten involved in roleplaying, serving as the Dungeon Master for his stepson Will's Dungeons and Dragons games. Through his wife Harriet he also saw how the rest of the field was developing, with Harriet editing both Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Glen Cook's The Black Company, both published to significant acclaim in 1984/85.

Rigney gave an outline of his proposed fantasy story to Tom Doherty. This outline was set in a world both in the distant future and distant past. It was the story a "chosen one", Rhys al'Thor, who has to defeat Sa'kahn, a being from another universe who had previously waged war on Earth through a transdimensional portal. Sa'kahn was abetted in his mission by the Forsaken, half-human, half-demon hybrids. The outline was fairly plot-dense, so when Doherty asked how many volumes the story would cover he was surprised when Jordan said three. Doherty, having a feeling this might go longer than initially thought, proposed they make a contract for six books instead.

Rigney began writing The Eye of the World in 1984. It took over four years to complete the novel. During this time he radically reconceptualised his original plan for the series. His primary hero, the Dragon Reborn, had originally been an older man, a war veteran and soldier when he was tapped on the shoulder by fate. This was changed so the Dragon Reborn was the veteran's son, and the former hero instead became Tam al'Thor. The main character's name was changed from Rhys to Rand. Realising he'd piled too much material on Rand's shoulders, Rigney split his story responsibilities between three other characters: Mat, Perrin and Dannil. Later still, he realised he'd then split the story too thinly and removed Dannil as one of the major characters, instead sending him off to be a minor character in the Two Rivers (hence Dannil became The Wheel of Time's Fatty Bolger, or Pete Best). The primary villain went from being a powerful (but not omnipotent) alien being to the primal force of evil in the universe. The main force of magic in the setting, simply called "Power", became the "One Power", divided into its male and female halves.

In a fresh outline that Rigney provided Doherty closer to finishing the first novel, many of these changes had now been made and a storyline closer to that of the finished books emerged.

The cover art (by Darrell K. Sweet) for the "preview booklet" of The Eye of the World, released in August 1989.

Oliver Rigney, writing as Robert Jordan, completed The Eye of the World in 1988. He sent the manuscript to Tom Doherty at Tor. Doherty got very excited, believing he had in his hands a fantasy novel that was a gamechanger. He ordered a print run of 40,000 copies - colossal for a debut novel - and sent an advance reading copy of the book to every single listed bookstore in the United States. He took out major advertisements, sought blurbs from top authors (Orson Scott Card, Piers Anthony and Anne McCaffrey, among others, obliged) and even had a pre-released booklet published, consisting of the first few chapters of the book. This was released in August 1989, followed by the novel itself in January 1990.

The lengthy gestation period for the book helped Rigney build up a head of steam on the following books. He already had some of the second volume in the series, The Great Hunt, finished when he delivered The Eye of the World, and finished the second book and was into the writing of the third volume, The Dragon Reborn, before The Eye of the World even came out. This allowed Tor to adopt an aggressive one-book-a-year release schedule. In fact, they did better than that and got six volumes out in less than five years.

It became apparent early on that six books was not going to be enough. The story had expanded in unforeseen circumstances, with the introduction of invaders from beyond the western ocean, and many more characters than first envisaged becoming important to the plot. Rigney had also become concerned about issues of style, consistency and background. He had numerous maps to keep track of the action and was keeping copious notes about his world, invented languages and cultures. With some reluctance, he hired an assistant (and later another one) to help with research and note-keeping. As this need for consistency grew, the writing speed began to drop off. Some health concerns raised by the stress of completing the seventh volume in less than eighteen months caused a rethink of the author's working practices. After the seventh volume, the series fell back to a book every two to two and a half years, which was more sustainable.

The more familiar (and iconic) cover art for The Eye of the World itself, released in January 1990.

The critical and popular reaction to the series was (mostly) highly positive. Sales started out strong and soon went through the roof, reaching the tens of millions within half a decade. Every book in the series from the eighth onwards hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Rigney found himself swamped at book signings across the United States and around the world. Fan mail grew and Rigney found himself particularly praised for his unusual worldbuilding and magic system, which allowed only women to use magic safely and as a result created a (somewhat) gender-reversed world where women mostly had more power and prestige than men. During one book signing Rigney was confronted by several fans convinced that he was a front for the real author, who was clearly a woman (he seemed to take this as a compliment).

Fans also took advantage of emerging technology. They gathered on early CompuServe and GEnie networks to talk about the books, changing to more familiar, modern forums as technology improved and the Internet came of age. Some of the biggest early forum for discussing science fiction and fantasy were based around The Wheel of Time, including Dragonmount and Wotmania. Fans met, talked about the books and characters, became friends and in some cases married and had children. Technology also allowed the fans to talk directly to the author: after some initial reluctance, Rigney began hosting a regular question-of-the-week feature for Tor Books and later established his own blog where he would post news and also chat to the fans about the books, music or life in general.

Success also brought with it the inevitable backlashes. The series enjoyed (generally) positive reviews up until around the seventh novel, but both fans and critics began to ponder how long the series was going to run on for. Rigney replied that he could now see the series running for ten books, but when the tenth novel, Crossroads of Twilight, was published in 2002 it was roundly criticised for featuring minimal character or plot development compared to the previous volumes in the series (and the eighth and ninth novels had not featured a lot of events either). Rigney's decision to expand an old short story into a full prequel novel, New Spring, slightly delaying the eleventh book in the series also attracted opprobrium from some commentators. The advent of fresher fantasy series like A Song of Ice and Fire (of which Rigney was a huge fan, giving A Game of Thrones a generous blurb in 1996 that George R.R. Martin has credited with boosting its sales) and The Malazan Book of the Fallen, with grittier characters and more focused storytelling, also started to make The Wheel of Time look like it was yesterday's news.

Robert Jordan in 2005.

Rigney responded with surprising style. Published in late 2005, the eleventh book in the series, Knife of Dreams, scythed down a huge number of subplots, redundant characters and secondary locations. The latter half of the novel was packed with incident, featuring dramatic rescues, reversals of fortune and huge battles. The life that had seemingly started draining out of the series returned and things seemed to be set for a dramatic and satisfying finale, which Rigney promised would follow in the twelfth and final novel in the series, which would be the last even if it was 2,000 pages long in hardcover and fans had to cart it out of the shops with wheelbarrows.

Just a few months later, Rigney announced that he was suffering from cardiac amyloidosis, a vanishingly rare blood condition that causes a thickening of the artery walls around the heart. His fans sprang into action, donating generously to the research hospital where he was being treated. Rigney confirmed that he would finish the final book no matter what, but as his condition worsened he had to acknowledge that this was less likely. He instead began writing notes, dictating tape after tape of outlines and information on how to bring the series to a conclusion. The treatment for his disease was devastating and debilitating, but whenever he had the strength to blog, send a message to fans or work on the outline for the final novel, he would do so. In his final messages, he castigated a rights-holding company, Red Eagle Entertainment, for failing to achieve anything with the Wheel of Time TV and film rights he had sold to them years earlier. But he also thanked his fans for their support.

James Oliver Rigney, Jr., known to the world as Robert Jordan, passed away on 16 September 2007. It was expected that there would be a lengthy period of grieving and mourning before any decisions were made about the future of The Wheel of Time, but that wasn't what the author had wanted. Before the year was out, Harriet McDougal had convinced up-and-coming fantasy author Brandon Sanderson to take on the Herculean task of finishing the series. Sanderson, a fan of the series since its beginning, was daunted but knew it was a task that he could do. Assessing the notes left behind, he realised that finishing the series in one more volume was not possible, so split the planned final volume into initially two and later three: The Gathering Storm (2009), Towers of Midnight (2010) and A Memory of Light (2013). The three books consisted of passages written by Jordan, along with material written by Sanderson but based on Jordan's notes.

Cover art by Michael Whelan, after Darrell K. Sweet sadly passed away before painting the final book in the series.

The three books were all well-received (despite some tricky timeline issues and hoops caused by the chronologically tricky split between the twelfth and thirteenth volumes) and Sanderson congratulated for achieving the impossible: finishing a work of immense popularity and success started by another author, and doing so well. The history of fantasy and science fiction is littered with "sequels by other hands", almost all of them unremittingly awful. Sanderson instead brought The Wheel of Time to a conclusion, not flawlessly, but with respect and skill.

It wasn't quite the end. In November 2015 The Wheel of Time Companion will be released, consisting of vast reams of Robert Jordan's notes that didn't make it into the series itself. And there are signs that a long-running legal dispute over the Wheel of Time TV and film rights is close to being resolved. With companies such as NBC, Universal and Sony having previously expressed an interest in the series and The Wheel of Time being easily the highest-profile and most successful fantasy book series not under some kind of development deal, it looks likely that the series will soon be heading to the screen as well.

So that was how The Wheel of Time was written, but what did it do? How did it change epic fantasy, and was it for the better or the worse?

Wertzone Classics: The Wire - Season 3 (HD)

On 20 October 2008 I reviewed the third season of The Wire. I recently completed rewatching the season thanks to the recent HD re-release, courtesy of HBO, and here's the original review with some updated thoughts.

With its third year, The Wire heads back to the streets and unfinished business. As with the second year, the third season opens up another dimension of the city, this time City Hall and the civil and police administration, but the focus is squarely back on the Barksdale organisation and Lt. Daniels' unit trying to bring them down and finish the job begun back in Season 1.

Season 3 opens with Avon Barksdale still in jail, but his parole hearing is coming up. His friend and collaborator Stringer Bell has guided the crew through some lean times and formed a 'co-op' with several other gangs which has led to them making some serious money but at the cost of sharing each other's turf. However, a new player, Marlo Stanfield, is on the way up and is not interested in sharing his territory with anyone else. The stage is set for a series of bloody showdowns and bodies dropping on the streets, to the growing discontent of the police. Lt. Daniels and his unit are forced to drop their investigation into Bell (begun at the end of the second season) to concentrate on the war, unaware that the two are connected. This war is complicated by the re-emergence of Omar Little, who has sworn to bring down Bell for manipulating him into shooting an innocent man (in the second season) and for the murder of Omar's lover back in the first season.

At the same time, an ambitious white city councilman, Tommy Carcetti, is planning to run for mayor, although his prospects in a city with a majority black population seem poor. Connecting these two storylines is a highly controversial initiative launched by police Major Colvin to move the drug dealers off the street corners into three abandoned city blocks where the police will turn a blind eye to their activities so they can concentrate more on murders and crime prevention elsewhere. The 'Hamsterdam' storyline, apparently inspired by the 'legalise drugs' movement, is a stunning and surprisingly even-handed piece of social commentary. There is also an ongoing subplot following the attempts of former Barksdale enforcer Dennis 'Cutty' Wise to go straight after spending fourteen years in prison.

Season 3 is tighter than the second season, as it is able to link the storylines together more effectively. The trials of the Barksdale gang were largely removed and separate from events on the docks, creating a disjointed second year that only started coming together towards the end. The new characters, both on the streets and in the city hall, are also more directly tied to the storylines that have gone before and are stronger as a result.

Thematically, the idea behind Season 3 appears to be that of failed reform. The failure of the city's drug prevention strategies encourage some radical, out-of-the-box thinking from Major Colvin. Whilst his policy is initially successful, it leads to a whole host of knock-on effects which are beyond his powers to address, and give a rather depressing impression that, indeed, no one man can make a difference to the system. The breathtaking cynicism and corruption of the political wing of the city is depicted, with Carcetti determined to reform the system from the inside, again with apparently little hope of success. Stringer Bell's attempts to reform himself and his friend Avon on his release from prison into respectable businessmen provides the season with its main narrative spine, but again does not have a happy ending. That said, there are moments of hope, with Cutty's attempts to go straight finally garnering some success and McNulty's attempts to straighten out his personal life ending on a positive note.

The ending of the season seems to be a little more definitive than the prior two, but the writers take care to leave enough loose ends untied to be pursued into the fourth year, with the candidates for mayor squaring up, several of the gang leaders still very much at large and the police unit once again finding themselves heading off in separate directions.

The Wire: Season 3 (*****) follows up on the first two by being just as dramatically intense with some superb characterisation, brilliant acting and some finely-judged moments of comedy to balance the darkness elsewhere. It is available on DVD in the UK and USA, and as part of the complete series box set (UK, USA).

Updated Thoughts

Rewatching the third season of The Wire, it's impossible to see its message as being anything other than "Be careful what you wish for..."

The season is dominated by McNulty's dogged pursuit of Stringer Bell, his determination to finish the work begun back in Season 1 when Avon was arrested. Avon's unexpected early release halfway through this season only reinforces McNulty's mission. On an initial viewing - especially knowing that David Simon thought there was a good chance this was the final season of the show and wanted to bring at least some resolution to things - this worked well. On a reviewing, knowing what happens next, it's downright brilliant.

Stringer and Avon's downfall paves the way for the rise to power of Marlo Stanfield, a scarily focused and utterly relentless psychopath lacking even the facade of honour and civility that Avon had and the business common sense possessed by Stringer. This makes you want either the detail to fail in their mission to defeat the Barksdale crew, or for them to hold off just long enough for Avon's people to win the street war. Of course, it doesn't happen. More tellingly, it's interesting to see Avon's growing respect for Marlo and his tactics over the course of the season, seeing something of himself (perhaps incorrectly) in the young Stanfield. This explains Avon's decision to help Marlo from behind bars in later episodes, which on a first viewing came a bit more out of left field.

Foreknowledge of later seasons also makes other story points resonate much more strongly: Cutty's personal odyssey from criminal enforcer to boxing mentor, Colvin's desire to give something back to the community (and not just for the sake of his pension, as he protests) and, most prominently, Prez's ill-advised mistake in the final episodes which completes his police story arc begun in the first season and sets him on the road to the schools, and the tragically powerful fourth season.

Season 3 of The Wire, already one of its strongest years, improves immeasurably on a reviewing and is also enhanced by its presentation in HD. If you thought Hamsterdam at its worst was hard enough viewing before, it's got nothing on when every nook and cranny is shown up in widescreen.

The Wire complete series blu-ray set is available now in the UK and USA.

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 16

Despite being part of the genre of the fantastical and the weird, epic fantasy is often rooted in the real. It riffs off real history, real events and real people, sometimes to the point of being set in Europe with just a few names changed, a dragon dropping by and magic being used to blow up Versailles. Other fantasies employ mythologies from real-life sources as their main influences and inspirations
 

Lyonesse

Back in 1950 Jack Vance published The Dying Earth, creating the entire Dying Earth subgenre of fiction (which later gave us The Book of the New Sun and Mark Charan Newton's recent Legends of the Red Sun, amongst others) and the Dungeons and Dragons magic system in one fell swoop. For an encore he wrote many of the greatest science fiction and fantasy novels of all time, such as the Demon Princes series and Big Planet.

Despite both a prolific and greatly accomplished career, Vance had avoided the epic fantasy subgenre. He wasn't one for writing huge battle scenes, or massive doorstop novels, and his sometimes whimsical humour and astonishingly accomplished dialogue seemed better deployed in science fiction. But then he got a good idea for a fantasy series, and ran with it.

The Lyonesse Trilogy was published in three volumes: Suldrun's Garden (1982), The Green Pearl (1985) and Madouc (1990). They are among Vance's longer novels, but still short by modern standards and the entire trilogy is available in omnibus. The trilogy may represent, as a completed work, one of the most accomplished works of fantasy since The Lord of the Rings.

The trilogy is set in the Elder Isles, an archipelago located in what is now the Bay of Biscay, off the west coast of France, the north coast of Spain and the south coast of Ireland. Much of the action takes place on Hybras, the largest of the islands (about the size of Ireland itself), which is falling into war due to the hostile actions of Casmir, King of Lyonesse, who desires to rule the entire island. Casmir's imprisonment of Aillas, one of the heirs to the throne of Troicinet, sets in motion a sequence of events as the young, canny Aillas seeks revenge both for his own part and also to bring justice to the isles.

So far, so standard. But Vance layers in some interesting elements to the story. He disdains violence and instead prefers depicting his characters engaging in formidable battles of wits. He also mirrors the struggle between Casmir and Aillas with the battle between their respective wizardly allies, Tamurello and Shimrod, arbitrated by Murgen, who seeks to preserve the magical balance of power over the isles. The multiple kingdoms of the Elder Isles are depicted well, and in the Ska, violent raiders from the northern isles who consider themselves a breed apart, George R.R. Martin (a huge fan of Vance) may have found the inspiration for his ironborn.

The most notable thing about the series is its clash between the weird and whimsical (fairies, magic, erudite magicians battling with wits and cunning) and the mundane and ordinary (court politics, assassinations), a clash that epic fantasy is uniquely positioned to explore but rarely does so, and certainly not as entertainingly and intelligently as in this trilogy, one of fantasy's masterworks.

Daggerspell

Katharine Kerr began writing Daggerspell, which she envisaged as a short story, in 1982. She completed that same story in 2009 with the publication of the fifteenth novel in the series. The complete saga, The Deverry Cycle, tells the story of a group of people who are reincarnated again and again several times across centuries in the fictional kingdom of Deverry.

Whilst Deverry and its neighbours are fictional, Kerr deeply rooted the story in Celtic history and mythology: Deverry was in fact founded by refugees from our world trying to escape the Roman invasion of Gaul and were transported to the fantasy world by a sorcerer. Whilst the series proceeds in a different direction afterwards, the Celtic roots of the story remain prominent and explored in greater depth by Kerr, who was frustrated with any Western European-leaning fantasy being labelled "Celtic" even when it had nothing to do with that period of history or group of people.

The history of Deverry unfolded over four distinct sub-series: The Deverry Saga (1984-90), The Westlands Saga (1991-94), The Dragon Mage Trilogy (1997-2000) and The Silver Wyrm (2006-09). These moved backwards and forwards in time through the history of Deverry and its neighbours, but Kerr used the conceit of characters who are born and reborn in different bodies and times to explore events of historical interest, as well as the destinies of characters who interact with each other again and again as different people. Combined with some interesting uses of linguistics, these factors make the Deverry Cycle arguably the most significant work of modern epic fantasy to employ Celtic tropes and motifs.

The Lions of Al-Rassan

Guy Gavriel Kay's fantasy career got off to a pretty amazing start: in 1974 he was asked by Christopher Tolkien to assist in the editing of The Silmarillion for publication. In fact, Kay's writing skills were called upon to finesse a couple of chapters that J.R.R. Tolkien had not touched in decades, making him the only person other a Tolkien to work on an officially-published Middle-earth book in a writing capacity (if only of a very minor nature).

After that heady start, Kay worked on his first fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, which was published in 1984-86. This concerned a group of students from the University of Toronto who are drawn into Fionavar, the First of All Worlds, which is under threat from dark forces. The experiences they have there are profound and shape who they are, with ripples which extend into the quasi-sequel Ysabel (2007). Although rooted in mythology, the trilogy is more overtly an original fantasy creation.

With his next novel, Tigana (1990), Kay established what would be his more familiar writing style of taking a real location and place in history and writing a novel (not a long series) about how it is changed and influenced by the addition of fantastical elements. Tigana is heavily influenced by Italian history but the fantastical conceit is that the name, history and indeed soul of the country have been magically removed from the mind of its inhabitants. Only a band of rebels led by those who remember the country before its occupation by an enemy power can remember the Tigana that was, and therefore are fighting for the very existence of their nation in a more literal fashion than is normal in fantasy. Kay interlaces themes of love, redemption and tragedy into his story, disdaining (as he usually does) war and violence as the primary means of solving dilemmas.

These themes continued into A Song for Arbonne (1993), a novel which does a similar thing for Renaissance Provence. But it was his 1995 novel, The Lions of Al-Rassan, which solidified things. Kay's works now took place on a world pretty much identical to our own, with each novel mirroring real events more explicitly than previously. The Lions of Al-Rassan, perhaps Kay's greatest masterpiece, expertly combines the stories of El Cid, ibn Ammar and the Reconquista of medieval Spain. Two great warriors, their love for the same woman, their loyalties and their passion for the land of Al-Rassan (also called Esperana) vividly play out across a beautifully-described backdrop.

Kay would continue to explore similar themes in later works: the Sarantine Mosaic duology (1998-2000) is based on Byzantium under Justinian I; The Last Light of the Sun (2004) is centred on England at the time of King Alfred the Great; Under Heaven (2010) is based on the Tang Dynasty of China and its end in the bloody An Shi Rebellion; and River of Stars (2013) is based on Song Dynasty of several centuries later and its transformation in the Jin-Song Wars. His next novel, Children of Earth and Sky, will be published in 2016.

Kay is, arguably, the greatest fantasy writer at taking a real time and place, repurposing it for the purposes of fantasy and doing so whilst still saying something of importance.

The Roof of Voyaging

Published in 1996, The Roof of Voyaging is an unusual fantasy novel. It's the first volume of a trilogy, The Navigator Kings, but Garry Kilworth throws a lot of the normal epic fantasy rules out of the window and moves the action to the other side of the planet (culturally and literally). The action takes place in the Pacific Ocean, deeply rooted in Polynesian mythology and history. This is an epic fantasy which riffs off the legends and past of the myriad peoples of Polynesia, in many ways completely alien to European sensibilities, with scores of gods and a richly-described culture threatened by the invasion of Celts from the south: in a bizarre twist, New Zealand has been swapped out for Britain.

The result is an often barmy and irreverent fantasy trilogy which has huge amounts of fun in doing things completely different to the conventional and tells a hugely entertaining story whilst doing so.

Ash: A Secret History

Published in 2000, Ash: A Secret History is a colossal novel that is part historical novel, part fantasy, part science fiction, part modern thriller and completely bizarre. It's set in France in 1476 and starts off chronicling the misadventures of the Lion Azure, a mercenary company led by Ash. Ash is mired in a political attempt to remove her from command of the mercenaries (a female warrior captain setting uncomfortable precedents) but this is soon superseded when the armies of Carthage invade Europe en mass from the south. In another storyline set in the present, bemused historians are trying to decipher the text of Ash and are constantly bewildered about references to things that never happened.

The result is a novel deeply mired in the traditions of historical and epic fantasy - battles, sieges, political skullduggery - but which brings on board influences from science fiction, alternate history and weird fantasy in an unusual but highly compelling blend.

Kushiel's Dart

Published in 2001, Kushiel's Dart was the debut novel by Jacqueline Carey. It's an interesting blend of genres, mixing some epic fantasy tropes with different cultural groups and religions battling over a continent, with alternate history: the continent is Europe, although the country names and history are different. The books also employ a lot of eroticism, with politics and warfare often assisted (or negated) by seduction or desire on the part of the players involved.

There are nine books in the series (collectively called Kushiel's Legacy), divided into three trilogies (the Phedre, Imriel and Moirin series), spanning over a hundred years in the history of Terre D'Ange (a fantasised version of France) and its neighbours.

The Cardinal's Blades/His Majesty's Dragon

More recently, fantasy has played around with much more straightforward and dramatic variations to real-world history to create something interesting. Two prominent recent fantasy series used much more recent historical periods as their base setting, but with some dragons thrown in to spice things up.

French author Pierre Pevel's Les Lames du Cardinal (Cardinal's Blades) trilogy (2007-10) is set in 1633 Paris and sees an irregular group of soldiers and investigators re-constituted as an elite, deniable group working directly for the formidable Cardinal Richelieu of France. Historical events such as the Thirty Years' War play a role, but the series deviates from history due to the presence and existence of dragons, formidably dangerous (if rare) creatures. The books mix fantasy tropes deriving from the existence of the dragons with swashbuckling derring-do, sword fights in the back alleys of Paris and political intrigue between Richelieu and his enemies.

Far better known is Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, which spans nine novels (2006-16), starting with His Majesty's Dragon. The series has a fairly straightforward premise - it's the Napoleonic Wars "BUT WITH DRAGONS" - which the author initially seems to treat simplistically, but then engages with in more depth as the series continues. The books feature both Britain and France deploying dragon mounts as weapons of war and means of transportation during the war, but their mutual use of dragons creates a stalemate with the war more or less proceeding as it did in real life. Variations from established history occur when African dragons are used to end the slave trade (with devastating effects) and it is discovered that the Chinese employ dragons as equals and even superiors. The use of dragons in this setting is initially absorbed into the historical status quo but is later used to spin history off in different directions.

The use of real history and mythology in fantasy would continue, and one author would take those inspirations to create the longest and most successful, outright epic fantasy since J.R.R. Tolkien.