Oh, to be a burgher in the Middle Ages!

Some short time ago, I wrote a review of the rather disappointing Medieval Lives. But, since I'm either a glutton for punishment, or an eternal optimist, I tried another similar book called <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060908807/fantasistnet">Life in a Medieval City</a> by Joseph and Francis Gies. I'm pleased to say that it's a much better book.
First of all, the authors set out to simply enlighten the modern reader as to the daily life of a Medieval city-dweller. They had no hidden agenda, just the report of the facts, as best as they could determine from existing documents and sources. Their work represents a fairly accurate representation of what life might have been like for the average city dweller during the Middle Ages.
Second, they focus on one, particular city, namely Troyes. But, what they discuss can be generalized to other cities. Also, they compare Troyes to other cities of similar size and time periods, as examples of how standard, or not, Troyes was.
Thirdly, they use easy to understand language without talking down to the reader. They don't try to make their historical personages talk to the reader, but, instead, let the occasional quote do their talking for them. They speculate only a little bit about what the people <i>might</i> have been thinking, focusing instead on what they actually <i>did</i>.

All in all, a very enjoyable book. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the whys and hows of life in early cities.

Lost and directionless, I plod on.

This morning, I am disheartened. Some months ago, when I had nothing but time and an empty wallet, I put forth the idea of selling catalogs of symbols for <a target="_blank" href="http://www.profantasy.com">Profantasy's Campaign Cartographer</a>. The mere thought of someone making money off this product and the associated user community seemed to really irritate some people on the <a target="_blank" href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cc2-l/">CC2 Yahoo Group</a>, for some reason. In any case, after a bit of feedback, both pro and con, I decided not to pursue the idea. I really felt at the time that not enough people would buy the product to make it worth the effort of setting up the merchant account and website.
This morning, from that same Yahoo Group, I got an e-mail announcing that someone had just setup a website for that very purpose.
To be fair, the proprietor of that webshop, Ralf Schemmann, is not only good enough at making symbols to do work for Profantasy, but he's a nice guy, too. My only regret is not following through on it when I had the chance. Now, while the opportunity still exists, I don't really have the time. Ah, well, I guess that's what I get for listening to the nay-sayers instead of my own inner voice.
Oh, by the way, Ralf's site is called <a target="_blank" href="http://www.mapsandmore.com">Maps and More</a>. Good luck, Ralf!

Well, I've finally done it!

I've been working on this for about a year and I finally got it done. I took a script from <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/">Chris Pound's Name Generation</a> page and made into a CGI script. It took a little bit, but I finally worked out how to use the CGI library in PERL to the point that I could both make proper HTML tags and include the same style sheet that the rest of the site uses. So, now, even if I change the styles, the whole site will change with one file edit. Horay!
Oh, and the script, which can be found <a href="http://www.fantasist.net/wordgen.shtml"&gt; here </a>, is pretty cool, too. Of course, I still need to add a bunch of text files for data, but I've got a pretty good start here already.
Have fun with it!

Happy Birthday, Buck!

Lord, I just really felt like Twiki!!
Today is Buster Crabbe's birthday. For those of you who are too young, or didn't have a father that was into the "classics", Buster Crabbe is the original Buck Rogers. He was in the old, serial shot movies of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. They were old black and white films that had special effects based around sparklers, flashing lights, smoke and wires. And, they're some of the greatest bad acting ever. The stories were the original "cliff-hangers", where Buck was always left in the middle of some scrape that was impossible to escape. But, he always did, in the next installment, of course.
Years later, Gil Gerard played Buck Rogers in a more modern, updated version of the same stories on TV. It was good, but not quite the same as the old stuff. Buster, and some of the other First Generation sci-fi actors, did a cameo on the new show. That was pretty cool. He died shortly after that, actually. But, he'll be immortalized on film as the Original Buck Rogers.

Great book!

Well, I just finished Lawrence Watt-Evans' latest, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765300125/fantasistnet">Ithanal… Restoration</a>, and it lives up to my high expectations of his work. I may give you some spoilers here, so be warned. I do try to keep them to a minimum, but still, if you are afraid I'll let something significant go, you'd best move on.
First off, this story takes place in Ethshar. Specifically, Ethshar of the Rocks, which is one of the three cities named Ethshar in the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars. In the time line of Ethshar, it takes place at the same time as <A target="_blank" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587153602/fantasistnet">The Spell of the Black Dagger</A>.
The story is really about Ithanalin's apprentice, Kilisha. The Ithanalin of the title is the victim of an animation spell gone wrong. Early in the story, Kilisha's master botches a spell and is petrified, while parts of his "essence" are scattered into various animated objects. Kilisha is left to track down the objects and use them, along with her skill in magic, to restore Ithanalin to normal. No small task for even a wizard's apprentice. Still, she manages to grow as a person and a wizard through the course of the story and, eventually, .... Well, I'll let you read the book!
This is a great, relaxing read, though not quite as good or interesting as <A target="_blank" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812577949/fantasistnet">The Night of Madness</A>. It is an interesting story that gives us a good look at the life of an apprentice as well as more of the mechanics of wizardly magic. Thoroughly enjoyable!
If you'd like a preview of Ithanalin's Restoration, click <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ethshar.com/ithanalinsrestoration.html#pro">here</a&gt;.

Today is William S. Burroughs's Birthday!

If you're not familiar with William S. Burroughs, then you're not a literature nut or a pop-culture fan. This guy did it all. Mainly through a syringe, but sometimes through a typewriter. His work is surreal, to say the least, and ground breaking. It's really mind-bending work. He wrote a majority of his most well known work while stoned out of his mind on heroin, or some other substance. Few subjects were taboo for him and his work is both frightening and intense. It worries at the edges of your reality like a determined dog trying to escape confinement. Even the attempt to read his work will expand your horizons.
Happy Birthday, Bill, where ever you ended up.
You can find a biography of William S. Burroughs <a target="_blank" href="http://www.levity.com/corduroy/burroughs.htm">here</a&gt;.
And you can find his work that is in print, <A target="_blank" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?tag=fantasistnet&keyw…;.

A new Legend of Ethshar!

For any readers that aren't familiar with my blog, or preferences in reading material, Lawrence Watt-Evans is my favorite fantasy author. In particular, I love his <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ethshar.com">Ethshar</a&gt; series of books. In fact, I like it so much, I made a digital version of his <a href="http://www.fantasist.net/cartography.shtml">map of Ethshar</a>. I've read all of the Ethshar books that have been published, so far, and <A target="_blank" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765300125/fantasistnet"&gt;
Ithanalin's Restoration</A> is the latest. I'm about a third of the way into it and, so far, it lives up to my high expectations of <A target="_blank" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?tag=fantasistnet&keyw… Watt-Evans' work</A>. Again, so far, this is yet another piece of literature that I would not have a problem giving to my 11-year old daughter to read. It's relatively clean, certainly more so than the 10:00pm news. More importantly, it's creative, inventive and interesting. The story revolves around a spell that's gone wrong and an apprentance's attempts to make it right. I don't want to throw in any spoilers until I've finished the book, but it's been great so far.

Everything is grist for the mill.

My wife and I went to <a target="_blank" href="http://houston.citysearch.com/profile/9840416/">Half-Price Books</a> this weekend and I found several books on type and typography. One of them was a book of type samples. Then, we went to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.texasart.com">Texas Art Supply</a> and I found even more books on type and samples of typography. One of them was a book of foreign type samples that included sanskrit, Japanese and arabic. So, it's time to fire up the old font foundry and stamp out some fonts.
Sure, I'll have to alter the scanned fonts some, but at least it's a place to start. Especially with the foreign language fonts. And, of course, I'll want to take my scans and alter them significantly enough to make "unreal" languages. I think that gamers and conworld builders and conlangers would love to have some original, but alien, fonts for their use. I know that I would like it. In fact, that was what started me on my quest to figure out how to create fonts in the first place.
So, soon, I hope, I'll have some updates and some downloads.

Medieval Lives was a complete dissapointment.

In the words of the author, "I cannot recreate you, medieval people, because I could not define how your personalitiesand desires linked with concrete times and places. You were stick figures, totems on a landscape, lines upon the horizon, temporally and spatially floating away."
I couldn't say it better myself. The author could not, in fact, recreate anything like the lives of the people featured in the book. He drew, at best, very modern people who spouted codified, modernized rhetoric based, very loosely, on philosophy that took its root in the Middle Ages. Virtually no attempt was made to make any of these people sound like people from the Middle Ages. Most of the time, it seemed as though the characters were simply talking heads that served no purpose other than espoousing the author's personal agenda. They spoke in a kind of sociological dissertation language that would not have been found in any setting outside of modern universities.
Save your money!

New Version of MovableType!

Hey, we've upgraded to the latest version of MovableType, version 2.51. And, thanks to the upgrade, we've added a search engine to the blog. I'm still reworking the stylesheets, but otherwise, it went quite well. Enjoy the new features!