#nyrsf

Tuesday, August 1 at 7 PM - 9 PM 

The Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11217

On the Day of the Dead, join me for a reading at Brooklyn Commons

The NY Review of SF Readings presents our first Margot Adler Memorial Reading with Terence Taylor (guest curator) Sabrina Vourvoulias

WHEN: Tuesday, Nov. 1st Doors open at 6:30 — event begins at 7

WHERE: The Brooklyn Commons Cafe 388 Atlantic Avenue (between Hoyt & Bond St.)

November 1st is All Soul’s Day, and an appropriate date to conjure up the first of a pop-up sub-series within the NYRSF…

Ellen Kushner’s Tremontaine and Delia Sherman’s The Evil Wizard Smallbone were featured at the annual winter holiday event of the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings series. Delia Sherman read from her new middle-grade novel The Evil Wizard Smallbone, which will be published in the fall of 2016 (from the short excerpt she read, it sounds like it is going to be really fun and compelling). She and Ellen Kushner are both fantastic readers. So that is always a pleasure. EK read excerpts from the first episode of Tremontaine (a serial novel and prequel to her Swordspoint and set in the world of Riverside with familiar and new characters).

Tremontaine is currently being released in weekly episodes, in addition to Ellen Kushner, episode have been written by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner (yes, that wonderful Joel Derfner of Gay Haiku and other terrific books), Racheline Maltese, and Patty Bryant. You can subscribe through SerialBox.com or buy it weekly through the other usual suspects, like Amazon. I fell behind a little due to work and family pressures, but am catching up today. I love it. (I do intend to write a proper review soon.

Ellen’s dress above is made of a print called Tremontaine: Skyline (see Redbubble for other products and clothing with the Tremontaine design -- http://www.redbubble.com/people/tanaudel/works/16890039-tremontaine-skyline).

I got a photo of Tremontaine writers Patty Bryant and Racheline Maltese—next to the cover of Tremontaine Episode 7 which they co-authored.

EK lit Hanukkah candles—Yay! We’ve been particularly lame about this at our house this year. Using a brass menorah from the Dollar Store on the corner. (Long story about what happened to the nice one. Never mind for now.)

New (to me at least) venue --Brooklyn Commons Cafe at 388 Atlantic Avenue; food and drinks on-site.

With the exception of dragons, one of the most recognizable monsters of genre fantasy is the humble orc. Orcs, commonly found in hordes (which I believe is the ™ term), are the readily identifiable, disposable foot soldiers of every evil wizard’s or Dark Lord’s army, and they are the ever-useful opponents for would-be heroes in training. But given the trend of modern genre fantasy to move away from moral polarities to more complicated relativistic positions, can we still treat and react to orcs in the same way? Is it time to reevaluate orcs and as a result the texts in which they appear? Can we now view orcs as the victims of the self-proclaimed heroes?