The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams

Prester John is the unchallenged High King of Osten Ard, the ruler of all the lands from the Nornfells to the southern deserts. He has ruled wisely and well - but not without bloodshed - for seven decades. Now his health is failing and his son Elias prepares to inherit the throne. Elias is strong and a canny general, but is also mistrusted for his close relationship with the sinister priest Pyrates. There is also a growing rift between Elias and his younger brother Josua Lackhand that threatens the peace.

Simon, a simple kitchen boy in the High King's castle, the Hayholt, is drawn into events beyond his understanding. A cold winter is coming, things are stirring in the far north that have not been seen for centuries and the fate of the world will turn on three lost swords: Memory, Sorrow and Thorn.


The Dragonbone Chair is the opening novel of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, a massive trilogy written by American author Tad Williams. First published in 1988, the novel was an important milestone in the development of epic fantasy. Previous fantasy novels had been split between easy reading versions of Tolkien (Brooks, Eddings) or insanely dark reactions to it (Donaldson, Cook), but Williams's novel was arguably the first to really engage with Tolkien on the same kind of playing field. It's a huge book (over 900 pages in most paperback editions, and only the first part of the story) filled with a complex backstory, numerous ethnic cultures and different races, lots of made-up names and maps. Lots of maps. And an appendix, just to show you that this author means business.

Of course, epic fantasy is a very different field in 2015 to what it was like in 1988, so does the novel hold up?

The answer is a qualified yes. This is a big, epic story which Williams tells well, with some colourful prose, some solid characterisation and development and a bit more depth to the story than it just being another Tolkien clone. The (relatively few) action sequences are well-handled and there are some evocative descriptions, particularly of the vast Hayholt and its Green Angel Tower, as well as the forbidding Aldheorte forest. The characters are a fairly diverse and interesting bunch, although Simon himself, at this early stage, is a bit too much of a wet blanket with a tendency to pass out (either from injury or magically-induced visions) every time something important happens. His companions, particularly the "troll" Binabik, are altogether more compelling in this first novel.

The book also constantly develops and restructures the stakes and the scope of the story as it goes on, bringing in more history, factions and people as it develops. This works in both the Tolkien-esque sense of starting small and branching out later on, and also in forcing a constant reappraisal of the world and the situation. It's telling to see how Prester John is viewed by his own people as a mostly just and benevolent ruler but people from other lands remember him as a conqueror.

There are some structural issues. The book can switch POVs several times in a conversation, which is a bit bewildering for those readers used to the modern convention of staying with one POV for a whole chapter, or for POV switches to be marked by at least a paragraph break. This is also not exactly the fastest-paced novel in the world. Compared to Lord of the Rings, The Eye of the World or A Game of Thrones, The Dragonbone Chair (which is only marginally shorter than the latter two) drags its feet a little. Williams is a good enough writer to make lengthy travelogues or conversations between two minor characters hold the attention, but you do realise from time to time that not actually a lot has happened in the previous hundred pages. Finally, the POV structure can be a bit jarring: much of the first half of the book is shown from Simon's POV, but the latter half introduces a ton of other ones, including some who have an important role to play but we only get a few pages with them because so much time is being spent elsewhere.

But these are both standard (for the genre) and forgivable problems, especially given that this was only the author's second novel. The Dragonbone Chair (****) may be slow to get off the mark and occasionally low-key given the scale of the events, but it's a well-written novel that is rather smarter than it first appears (this becomes more apparent in the sequels). It's well worth checking out ahead of the publication of the sequel series, The Last King of Osten Ard, due to start in 2017. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

New BATTLEFLEET GOTHIC gameplay trailer

Focus Home Interactive have released a new trailer for their upcoming Warhammer 40,000 space strategy game, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. This trailer shows what the game actually looks like when you are playing it.

It's looking good, with some solid implementation of strategy and making sure that movement and facing is important. However, the lack of actual 3D movement is a big minus for the game that it's going to have to work hard to overcome.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada will be released on PC in 2016.

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 *