Najtflajere, reaguj!

[Nightflier]

Možda je stvar u tome što čitateljke traže jakog ženskog glavnog lika po svaku cenu - i manje jakog muškog sporednog lika, opet po svaku cenu.

Počeo si da uopštavaš kao Lomljavina.

Priznajem da je ta rečenica bila... nedovoljno promišljena... ali zaista ne umem da objasnim uspeh nekih serijala i neuspeh drugih. Kada sam intervjuisao pisce poput Denijela Ejbrahama, svi su mi rekli da ženski pseudonim - ne nužno ženski pisac - garantuje bolju prođu nego ako je na koricama muško ime, pa stoga sve biraju neke neutralne pseudonime. Pisci koji otvoreno nastupaju kao muškarci prodaju se znatno slabije. Izuzeci, kao Bučer, potvrđeno imaju više muških fanova. Zaista ne znam kakav zaključak da izvučem. Premda, moram reći da je meni prijalo daleko više spisateljica urbane fantastike nego pisaca.

[Melkor]

Tor.com would like to welcome our sister site to the interwebs! Heroes & Heartbreakers is a community for all things romance, and, like Tor.com, it will feature original fiction, book reviews, author interviews, exclusive excerpts, giveaways, and musings on the genre from drop-dead clever bloggers. H&H will bring you the latest on historical and paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and all your favorite good-time getaway reads.



To celebrate their launch, H&H is giving away signed books and other goodies all week, so head on over for a chance to win! It's a piece of sinfully delicious cake: you can log in with your Tor.com username and password to enter the giveaways, access members-only content, or start a discussion. You can also sign up to receive a weekly newsletter of highlights from the site, kind of like the Tor.com newsletter but with fewer Star Wars puns and more hunky creatures of the night.

So go, ahem, check them out!

[Nightflier]

Torov odgovor na Luna Books.

http://www.eharlequin.com/store.html?cid=309

[Melkor]

New Urban Fantasy
Books, Column | Sam Sykes | February 9, 2011 11:09 a

If you've been at all concerned with the state of fantasy in the past few years, you've probably noticed a drastic shift in genres.  The market has split wildly into many segments, including that bastion of pseudo-gothica and girls with tight pants, urban fantasy.

Personally, I'm not the most intense fan of urban fantasy, having once experienced a turbulent relationship with a young lady who tried to stake me in the throes of passion (pro tip: it's not as hot as it sounds).  That experience has, however, rendered me as much an expert in that genre as I am in others, such as grizzly bear fiction and the erotic biography.

It has long been my opinion (and thus, fact) that urban fantasy follows a set pattern: a supernatural creature is generally the topic of most books for a year or so before becoming too popular, at which point it tends to be cannibalized by the next big thing.  We've seen vampires devour werewolves (carnally, in some cases) and zombies devour vampires.

Clearly, the way to become the next big thing in urban fantasy is to predict what supernatural monstrosity will be big next.

Going against the wishes of my publishers and decent society alike, I have decided to give you, the reader, keen insight into what the next five years of urban fantasy will be.

2011 will be the year of Sexy Mummies:  perfectly-preserved bondage fanatics with a distinct pharaonic flair that certain tight-pantsed heroines will find strangely attractive.  The pioneering series, Embalming Fluid and Tonic, will follow the exploits of one Miranda Funt and her lover as they try to solve murder mysteries and find his heart...or at least which jar it was put in.

Shortly thereafter, Sexy Mummies will be passed over in favor of Sexy Ghouls.  Cannibalism and necrophilia will become more hip to the edgier crowds of 2012, disillusioned after the world did not come to as magnificent an end as the internet forums promised.  Raoul the Ghoul, a noted detective and pornographic star, will be the center of this new revolution as he flits about with a forbidden lover who must constantly coat herself in sour apple spray to keep him from eating her alive.

With the supernatural well running dry in 2013, urban fantasists will begin to return to their roots, digging out dusty copies of The Monstrous Manual in an attempt to find something new and exciting.  A vaguely erotic and deeply confusing era will follow in which we begin to see Sexy Wereboars, Sexy Harpies, Sexy Cockatrices and Sexy Illithids (and that is going to be hot.)

Ultimately, Sexy Golems will win out in 2014 with the groundbreaking series Josie and Decapitatus the Annihilator, a lighthearted comical mismatch of a working-class middle-aged female attorney trying to make it in a man's world while also keeping a crimson-eyed machine powered by the blood of the innocent from her boss, the attractive and brooding David McIlhenny.

Finally, urban fantasy will break new ground in 2015 by taking the next step in the evolution of a genre and split itself off again, with true urban fantasists chiding the new upstart genre of suburban fantasy.  Stories about housewives sitting around and making light conversations with the spirits of the violently murdered will thrive, ultimately resulting in several sitcom-like series involving single fathers trying to raise a family of flesh-eating banshees while also holding down a job.

It lasts for six seasons.

Bob Saget plays the father.

And it is going to kick ass.

[Nightflier]

Iz ovoga možemo da zaključimo da Sajks mnogo voli da igra D&D, što ga stavlja u isto kategoriju sa Čajnom Mjevilom, koji ne samo da igra, nego i pravi monstere (a postoji i čitav mini campaign setting smešten u Bas-Lag). Trebalo bi da pročitam Sajksov Tome of Undergates, ali krenuo sam da čitam PLIV po stoti put, tako da će morati da sačeka.

S druge strane, nije da nije u pravu. Jedino je propustio da pomene demone. Stvar je u tome što urbana fantastika više nije pobuna. Od tamo neke 2005. svaka šuša piše UF. To više nije kul podžanr. Urbanu fantastiku zamenio je stimpank, nakon veoma kratke u klimave vladavine alternativne istorije u klot varijanti. Tako da bih rekao da se Sajksovo predviđanje ipak neće ostvariti.

[PTY]

Epic Fantasy: Notes Toward a Definition
Sunday, February 27th, 2011 | Posted by Matthew David Surridge


While one controversy about morality and fantasy was being thrashed out around these parts last week, another, quieter, discussion seemed about to get underway in the fantasy blogosphere. N.K. Jemison began a discussion about "feminization" (her quote marks), sexual explicitness, and the male gaze in epic fantasy, which also involved considering the ways in which female-authored texts were presented to readers. The conversation was continued in a number of places around the web.

This is a potentially massively interesting topic about which I actually don't have that much to say — because, in what looks like an example of a feedback loop at work, I haven't read most of the writers Jemison and others have mentioned. In fact, though I try to maintain a basic familiarity with contemporary fantasy fiction, many of the names they mention are completely unfamiliar to me. So this certainly goes some distance toward increasing my interest in examining the way certain writers are marketed and reviewed, and I'd like to see this discussion developed further.

What I'd like to contribute here is a bit of possibly-meaningless pedantry about definitions. To ask why certain books, specifically books by women, are not described, categorised, or marketed as epic fantasy means having a solid idea of what epic fantasy is. Jemison noted that she herself was unsure whether some of the books she thought of as 'epic' would actually count for most people as epic fantasy. So what is an epic fantasy?

It's generally true that useful definitions of the term seem hard to come by. Clute and Grant's Encyclopedia of Fantasy says "Any fantasy tale written to a large scale which deals with the founding or definitive and lasting defence of a land may fairly be called an epic fantasy. Unfortunately, the term has been increasingly used by publishers to describe heroic fantasies that extend over several volumes, and has thus lost its usefulness." This seems promising, but also perhaps a bit specific; is "a definitive and lasting defence of a land" really a necessary part of epic? And how large is the scale? Does that refer to the length of the tale, or to the events within it? Could the definition apply to non-epics, such as Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser defending Rime Isle? Is David Gemmell's novel Legend (AKA Against the Horde) long enough to count as an epic?

After discussing these questions with my girlfriend, fantasy writer Grace Seybold, we decided to take a stab at coming up with a definition for epic fantasy ourselves. We decided to first list a number of texts that seemed clearly 'epic fantasies,' and try to work out what they had in common. In the process, we also thought of texts that seemed close but which we felt not to be epics, and texts that really seem to be on the margins of the epic; any genre definition is a fuzzy set, and some things will seem in the genre and some out of it depending on how you look at them. At any rate, while it seemed likely that the defintion we'd arrive at would be somewhat conservative — at best describing what epic fantasy has been so far, not necessarily what it is or could be — it seemed worth doing, just to try to establish what people think of when they talk about epic fantasy. If you have any counter-suggestions, or texts that you'd like to put forward as possible epics, we'd love to hear about it in the comments.
The core texts that we came up with, by a fairly quick process of word-association, were: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara, David Eddings' Belgariad, Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's The Wheel of Time, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Deathgate Cycle, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders Trilogy, Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series, R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series, and Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. In many cases only one of us had read the books in question; in a couple of cases, notably Erikson and Bakker, it has to be said neither of us had read all the books of the series. In some cases neither of us liked the books much, but this was not an evaluative process, simply definitional.

[Nightflier]

Zanimljivo kako među dela epske fantastike nisu uvrstili ni "Zemljomorje", ni "Amber", ni Fajstovu "Midkemiju"... Problem sa amerskim teoretičarima je u tome što oni zapravo slabo ili nikako ne poznaju starije pisce. Oni se zatvaraju u svoje niše i u njima caruju.

[Mme Chauchat]

Pa te niše su čak i po njihovim kriterijumima premale za bilo šta ne ozbiljno, nego iole smisleno. Ni stariji pisci, ni bilo šta van najuže određene žanrovske matrice, britanski autori slabo, a o nekom neengleskom području ni govora, ili nedajbože mejnstrim, ili čak klasici, daleko bilo. Pa to su ljudi koji izrazu fah-idiot daju sasvim nov smisao.

[Nightflier]

Problem je u tome što mi imamo drugačiji uvid u fantastiku, pre svega zahvaljujući ZŽu i Bobanu, a biću tako neskroman da istaknem i svoj kakav-takav doprinos uređivačkim politikama "Lagune" i "Alnarija" kada je o fantastici reč.  Naime, kod nas je objavljivano ono što je bilo najbolje u svetskoj fantastici. Isfilitrirano je kroz uređivačke ukuse ljudi sa ukusom. Učestvujem u radu nekoliko foruma posvećenih FRPovanju, od kojih jedan ima 50k a drugi 100k članova. Ogromna većina rečenih članova nikada nije čula a kamoli čitala Džordža Martina. To je tek mali primer američkog nepoznavanja fantastike. Zelazni je, recimo, takođe nepoznanica. Da ne idem dalje.

[Mme Chauchat]

  Ma ne bi neznanje bilo toliki problem kad bi ljudi bili svesni koliko ne znaju (kao što je npr. uglavnom slučaj sa nepoznavanjem kvantne fizike ili etrurskog). Ovako svako moje naivno surfovanje vezano za teoriju ili istoriju žanra otvara beskrajno polje za nerviranje.

[Nightflier]

Znaš kako, ja od fantastike doslovce živim, pa sam batalio da se informišem o istoriji žanra/žanrova. Ako uzmeš samo fentezi, razlike između tradicija nastalih na podžanrovima mača & magije s jedne strane i epske fantastike sa druge strane dovoljne su da potpuno zbune svakoga ko bi hteo da se bavi nekim teoretisanjem. A tek kada se stigne do mešanja ta dva uticaja - ihaj! Na primer, najveća zvezda epske fantastike posle Tolkina - GRRM - po sopstvenim rečima više se oslanja na tradiciju mača i magije nego na tolkinovske epove.

[Mme Chauchat]

Čekaj, ja sam bila ubeđena da su mač i magija najpoznatiji podskup epske fantastike - al sa druge strane, za mene je epska fantastika čist prevod za termin fentezi pa je moguće da sam tu pogrešila.
A činjenica je da se Martin oslanja najviše na istorijske romane kao takve (Zagorka dvajesprvog veka!), što se tiče zapleta i karakterizacije, pa makar nemamo priču o neobećavajućem klincu koji je u stvari izbavitelj sveta... ah, izvinjavam se, imamo, samo je zamaskirana sa dve tone ostalih priča i podzapleta.

Ako ozbiljno lupam, slobodno zanemari poslednja dva posta. Izgleda da mi mozak ovih dana baš sporo radi.

[PTY]

Najtflajere, ako skroluješ dole do komentara, videćeš da ovo dvoje znaju za Amber, ali ga smatraju... pazi sad - SFom! Heh. Isto tako, izgleda da pokušavaju da izvuku definiciju EF, i to valjda na bazi ovih knjiga koje pominju... nasmejalo me kad sam to videla, majke mi; eto,  Klutova im definicija skroz nejasna, pa eto, tragaju za nekom primenjivijom...  

[Nightflier]

Čekaj, ja sam bila ubeđena da su mač i magija najpoznatiji podskup epske fantastike - al sa druge strane, za mene je epska fantastika čist prevod za termin fentezi pa je moguće da sam tu pogrešila.
A činjenica je da se Martin oslanja najviše na istorijske romane kao takve (Zagorka dvajesprvog veka!), što se tiče zapleta i karakterizacije, pa makar nemamo priču o neobećavajućem klincu koji je u stvari izbavitelj sveta... ah, izvinjavam se, imamo, samo je zamaskirana sa dve tone ostalih priča i podzapleta.

Ako ozbiljno lupam, slobodno zanemari poslednja dva posta. Izgleda da mi mozak ovih dana baš sporo radi.

E vidiš - u tom grmu leži zec. I ja sam bio pobornik stava da se fantasy prevodi kao epska fantastika. I tako je dugo i bilo. A onda su se ameri dosetili da fantasy podele na podžanrove, pa smo tako dobili epic fantasy - čiji je GRRM tipičan predstavnik. Valjda su osetili potrebu da razgraniče to od urbane fantastike. A onda su sve oblike fantastike - naučnu, epsku, horor, nju vird, sve živo - podveli pod krovni termin "fantastika". Upravo se tako i piše- Čuli su slovensku reč, pa im se dopala.

A Martin je da li u Warriors, da li u onoj drugoj antologiji u predgovoru napisao da mnogo duguje podžanru mača i magije.

[Nightflier]

Najtflajere, ako skroluješ dole do komentara, videćeš da ovo dvoje znaju za Amber, ali ga smatraju... pazi sad - SFom! Heh. Isto tako, izgleda da pokušavaju da izvuku definiciju EF, i to valjda na bazi ovih knjiga koje pominju... nasmejalo me kad sam to videla, majke mi; eto,  Klutova im definicija skroz nejasna, pa eto, tragaju za nekom primenjivijom... 

I Boban stalno ističe Amber kao SF. Moram priznati da ga ja nikada nisam tako doživljavao. Nego sam sa prethodnim postovima hteo da kažem kako mi imamo pogrešnu predstavu o Amerikancima i njihovom načitanošću fantastike, a bogami i o tiražima i još koječemu.

[Melkor]

Ma da, ali i je i besmisleno raspravljati o razmisljanjima dva nebitna lika sa interneta. Kada bi sada krenuli da kopamo po blogovima uspeli da nadjemo tekstove koji bi potvrdili bilo koju tezu. Te i ovo sto kazes za "amerikance" vazi samo u odgovarajucem uzorku i isto to vazi za bilo koju naciju na planeti.

Inace, "fantastika" je takodje Klutov termin, i retko se gde primio.

[Melkor]

Uostalom:

Huh. Saw this interesting post over at Black Gate's blog. I agree with some of it; that whole thing about a defined evil, for example, and the world-transforming scope. But I don't agree with... well, the rest.

Basically I think Surridge's definition is too wedded to superficialities and not enough to content. The danger of defining an art form by superficialities is that it leaves no room for experimentation or growth. The boundaries become set by What Has Gone Before, rather than something more intrinsic. That's the kind of thinking that allows some readers to believe that only men can write epic fantasy, for example, or that it can only be set in a European medievalish setting. That's also what encourages some publishers to focus on a "winning formula" rather than a good story: books X pages long times Y volumes containing D Dark Lords faced by Band of Adventurers Ba(x-1) = PROFIT!! (The "minus one" is for the inevitable secondary character who dies/gets tortured/gets kidnapped to motivate the hero.)

I mean, really: Earthsea gets excluded because the books are too short? And I'm guessing C. S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy won't fit because its characters are descended from space colonists and know about Science, and because its stalwart hero teams up with its defined-but-shifting-evil Dark Lord in order to face a more existentially evil badguy.

I also think it's hard to have a discussion about something like this without considering the definitions that already exist...

nkjemisin

Procitati i komentare, kakva divna, strpljiva zena

[Nightflier]

S tim da prva Džejmisonkina knjiga na mene nije ostavila ama baš nikakav utisak. Drugu sam krenuo da čitam i čini mi se znatno boljom, moram priznati.

Inače, Fridmankina Coldfire trilogija spada u prava remek-dela fantazijske književnosti. Zaista je više sajens-fentezi nego ma šta drugo.

[PTY]

Volim ja sajens-fentezy (tu bi spadao i Vulfov Urth, jelda? a verovatno i Amber), samo ne volim kad su u pitanju trakavice od zilion nastavaka... tu bude toliko praznog hoda i ponavljanja da izgledaju kao da su pisane za ... 

Ali ovo mi bilo simpatično, ko i svako otkrivanje rupe u saksiji. Ni oni koji EF čitaju ne umeju da ti tačno kažu šta je EF... to mi pomalo liči na ono Gulovo "kako ćeš znati da je film horor-film? – po bekgraund muzici..." 

[Nightflier]

Vulfov Urt je objavljen u ediciji Fantasy Masterworks , mada i ja mislim da je sajens-fentezi. Taj podžanr nikada nisam pokušao da definišem, već sam uvek išao prema osećaju. Doduše, tu sada imamo i svetove u kojima napredna tehnologija postoji parelelno sa magijom, kao u duologiji o Tinker sjajne Ven Spenser ili "Umirućoj Zemlji" Džeka Vensa (s tim da neki smatraju da dela o "umirućim Zemljama" spadaju u zaseban podžanr) i svetove u kojima napredna tehnologija služi da objasni magiju, na primer romani o Pernu, koje je pisala pokojna En Makafri, ili Modesitove Corean Chronicles.

Bilo kako bilo, sve do relativno skoro trudio sam se da sve to klasifikujem u podžanrove i žanrove i podvrste itd. A onda sam shvatio da to baš i nije preterano smisleno. Svi se razumemo kada kažemo da čitamo epsku fantastiku, ili tvrdi sf, kiberpank, sajens-fentezi, paranormalnu romantiku itd. Kada na koricama neke knjige pročitamo neku od tih etiketa, znamo šta nam pisac i izdavač nude. To što baš ne umemo da damo strogu definiciju tog pojma najmanje je bitno.

[Nightflier]

Budući da sam zamoljen da se udaljim sa foruma Znak Sagite, obaveštavam sve koje iole zanima ono što pišem i čime se bavim da se pokorno udaljavam. Nažalost, više neću biti u prilici da prenosim vesti iz izdavačkih kuća za koje radim, niti da odgovaram na eventualna pitanja u vezi sa novim izdanjima i mojim prevodima. Hvala na dosadašnjem praćenju.

[Mme Chauchat]

  Hm... naravno, tvoja stvar, ali da li je baš neophodno da ideš? Koliko je meni poznato, zamolila te je samo jedna osoba od nekoliko desetina aktivnih učesnika foruma; to teško da je dobar pokazatelj tvoje generalne (ne)poželjnosti. Naravno, ako ti se forum kao takav smučio, to je nešto sasvim drugo.

[Albedo 0]

koja osoba, nije valjda ona koja ima 4 puta više ignora od mene a tri puta više od zoska, a to je stvarno teško postići

[Josephine]

Najtflajeru, zamolila sam te da se ne mešaš u raspravu. Odakle ti ideja da bi mi ikad palo na pamet da imam pravo (prvo) da ikoga zamolim da se udalji sa foruma??

Retko si kultivisano biće, nemoj da praviš drame tamo gde drami nema, molim te.

Osim ako ovaj tvoj potez nema drugu nameru. U tom slučaju - bolje je da odem ja nego ti. Svakako ćeš mi ovom pogrešnom interpretacijom naneti štetu...

[Perin]

Budući da sam zamoljen da se udaljim sa foruma Znak Sagite, obaveštavam sve koje iole zanima ono što pišem i čime se bavim da se pokorno udaljavam. Nažalost, više neću biti u prilici da prenosim vesti iz izdavačkih kuća za koje radim, niti da odgovaram na eventualna pitanja u vezi sa novim izdanjima i mojim prevodima. Hvala na dosadašnjem praćenju.

Daj Ivane, opusti se....Jebote, odem 2-3 sata na pivo, odmah nekakvi bedaci. Vratiiiii seeee!

Kakvi bre ljudi, čova! Niko te nije zamolio da se udaljiš odavde...Vrati se, bolan, koji ti je? Kontam da D. zna biti takva kakva jeste, ali šta ti imaš sa tim, šta bilo ko ima sa tim? Štio pre skontaš da ne treba da te bude briga šta bilo ko priča i treba samo da furaš svoj kont, biće bolje. Stoga, vrati se, piši o fenteziju, piši novosti. Nemoj sad i ti da mi dramiš, k'o Boga te molim.  

[Berserker]

neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee idiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

[Stipan]

Ne mogu da poverujem da se ovo dešava. Vrati se Najtflajere.

[Perin]

Jebiga D, uspela si da oteraš čoveka koji ti ništa nije zgrešio u životu...Bezze, stvarno.

[Josephine]

Za one kojima, očigledno, nije jasno:

Najtflajeru, zamolila sam te da se ne mešaš u raspravu. Odakle ti ideja da bi mi ikad palo na pamet da imam pravo (prvo) da ikoga zamolim da se udalji sa foruma??

Retko si kultivisano biće, nemoj da praviš drame tamo gde drami nema, molim te.

Osim ako ovaj tvoj potez nema drugu nameru. U tom slučaju - bolje je da odem ja nego ti. Svakako ćeš mi ovom pogrešnom interpretacijom naneti štetu...

Aluzije da sam ja nekoga "oterala" nisu fer ni korektne.

[Perin]

....
......
........
Čovek je član foruma deset godina; pojmiš li taj period? Pojmiš li da je bio u najgore vreme, kad je Ghoul harao forumom? Pojmiš li da je čovek kojem nije teško udeliti informacije, unutrašnjeg tipa, oko izdavačkog plana raznih kuća? Pojmiš li, da je vodeći jalovu raspravu sa tobom shvatio da nema vajde da se raspravlja i da je bolje da ode sa foruma? Ne možeš oprati ruke i kazati "Nije zbog mene." Svaka posledica ima nekakav uzrok. 

[Josephine]

ponavljam, on se meni prvi obratio. bila sam kulturna prema njemu i zamolila sam ga da se ne meša u moju raspravu. tačka.

i prestani da me kriviš za tuđe postupke.

[Perin]

      

[Nightflier]

D i ja smo preko privatnih poruka izgladili svoje nesuglasice. Voleo bih da se sve nesuglasice na ovom forumu izglade na taj način - ali znam da se to desiti neće.

Moram da objasnim zašto sam reagovao tako kako jesam: Ovaj prostor je jedan od retkih posvećenih fantastici. Ovo je nežan i krhak habitat, preosetljiv na kataklizme u stvarnom i virtuelnom životu. Ukoliko ga ne čuvamo, nećemo ga imati. Ovo upućujem svima koji su učestvovali u raspravi sa D: na milion mesta možete da ratujete u vezi sa ženskim pravima, gej paradama, belim robljem - ali gotovo nigde ne može da se priča o fantastici na način na koji se priča ovde. Molim vas, setite se toga sledeći put kada se upustite u rat koji zablokira čitav forum. Svi smo odgovorni za svoje postupke i retko je ko od nas zaista nedokazan. Nije teško da jedni drugima pružimo ruku i ponekad oćutimo i ono što nam se baš ne sviđa. Naravno, ta batina ima dva kraja. Za svađu je potrebno dvoje, ali i za prijateljstvo. Mi koji se okupljamo na ovom forumu dovoljni smo čudaci da nam nije potrebno da i od nama sličnih stvaramo strance.

Hvala svima vama koji ste primetili ovaj potez i odgovorili na njega.

[Melkor]

Mislio sam da smo ovo pominjali, ali se search ne slaze



Vampires: The Recent Undead
Edited by Paula Guran
ISBN: 9781607012542
Prime Books
432 pages | trade paperback | $14.95

The undead are more alive today than ever. Immortal? Indeed.

Nothing has sunk its teeth into twenty-first century popular culture as pervasively as the vampire. The fangsters have the freedom to fly across all genres and all mediums–there are even apps for vamps. Whether roaming into romance, haunting horror, sneaking into science fiction, capering into humor, sucking on the sociopolitical, titillating teens, meandering through mystery, heating up supernatural sex, or charming children–no icon is more versatile than the vampire.

Slake your insatiable thirst and drink deeply of twenty-five of the best sanguinary stories of the new millennium: terrifying or tender, deadly or delicious, badass or beneficent, romantic or rude, funny or frightening, wily or weary, classic or cutting edge...

Contents

* Introduction * Paula Guran
* The Coldest Girl in Coldtown * Holly Black
* This Is Now * Michael Marshall Smith
* Sisters * Charles de Lint
* The Screaming * J.A. Konrath
* Zen and the Art of Vampirism * Kelley Armstrong
* La Vampiresse * Tanith Lee
* Dead Man Stalking * Rachel Caine
* The Ghost of Leadville * Jeanne C. Stein
* Waste Land * Stephen Dedman
* Gentleman of the Old School * Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
* No Matter Where You Go * Tanya Huff
* Outfangthief * Conrad Williams
* Dancing with the Star * Susan Sizemore
* A Trick of the Dark * Tina Rath
* When Gretchen was Human * Mary Turzillo
* Conquistador de la Noche * Carrie Vaughn
* Endless Night * Barbara Roden
* Dahlia Underground * Charlaine Harris
* The Belated Burial * Caitlin R. Kiernan
* Twilight States * Albert Cowdrey
* To the Moment * Nisi Shawl
* Castle in the Desert: Anno Dracula 1977 * Kim Newman
* Vampires in the Lemon Grove * Karen Russell.
* Vampires Anonymous * Nancy Kilpatrick
* The Wide, Carnivorous Sky * John Langan
* Selected Vampire Anthologies: 2000-2010
* Publication History

[Nightflier]

Uuuu, Majkl Maršal Smit... Mi lajki...

[PTY]

Najtflajere, ova kontroverza je na tvom terenu & domenu, pa kao... 


Kim Harrison:



Excuse me, your romance is in my urban fantasy

One of the best things about being a writer in the age of the Internet is the easy accessibility between authors and readers. Some might argue that it's one of the worst, but over the last decade, I've found that it's the readers who often ask the hard questions, not about the storylines, but wider concerns of genre trends and what they're seeing on the shelves, and when a longtime poster lamented to me that he was seeing the shine fading from the urban fantasy genre, that the kick-ass protagonists were melting into damsels more worried about getting their man than the big-bad-ugly, I listened.

I heard what he was saying. I am seeing it myself. The industry is seeing it. The industry had a hand in causing it to a certain extent as many houses grabbed anything they could find with a vampire and sexy protagonist, thinking that was all urban fantasy was. Manuscripts that would otherwise be passed over were picked up and promoted. Books that would be stellar romances on their own were lessened by well-meaning editors trying to make them something they were not by asking their author to "stick a vampire in it! They're hot right now!" Please don't think that by saying that that I'm dissing romance, because I have a great respect for romance writers and readers. Romance has enriched many urban fantasy story lines including mine, right along with the genres of mystery, thriller, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Unlike many genres, urban fantasy thrives on the mix, the unifying factor seeming to be the characters themselves, rather than a writing style or convention. But the most successful urban fantasies are still those written by people who have always loved vampires, witches, and little beasties that bite--not by those who write it because it's hot.

I'm all for trying to write for the market. It stretches our creativity and we often find techniques or voices that we otherwise wouldn't, but if the writer doesn't understand the paranormal, hasn't grown up loving it for its strengths and weakness, been exposed to the greats before them who have loved it as much as they do . . . well . . . maybe what I'm saying is that I love finding magic within the everyday, that I defend its believability with a fierce determination, strive to keep it from falling into the inane and stupid where the suspension of disbelief breaks. I know where that line is. The greats before me drew it very clearly in the sand. Just as much as romance should not be written by those who don't believe in the happy ending to the depths of their soul, urban fantasy should be written by those who respect the genre to the bottom of theirs.

Has urban fantasy reached its peak? I doubt that it's going to go away anytime soon. Urban fantasy has been around forever. For the time it was written in, Dracula could be classified as an urban fantasy. Hollywood is eating it up and throwing it on the screen in blockbuster movies. However, the very aspects that give it strength-the mixing of many genres-may now be threatening to eat away at it. It's up to the authors and publishing houses to understand that having a vampire in the storyline does not make it urban fantasy. Vampire can be another word for the abused and their abusers. Witches are the innovative scientists, both good and bad. Werewolves are the baser shadows that live in all of us. Paranormal characters are at their best, reflections of human nature, and they deserve the respectful treatment that comes with t

[Nightflier]

Hm... To što se zove urbana fantastika bilo je poprilično razgraničeno od paranormalne romantike, i to pre nego što su ta dva podžanra postala ovako definisana i popularna. Na primer, ono što je pisala Lorel Hamilton bilo je veoma drugačije od romana Suzan Sajzmor. U jednom trenutku, Lorel Hamilton kao egzemplar urbane fantastike, zglajznula je u priče o seksu i nezajažljivosti njene protagonistikinje i to je nekako doživljeno kao svojevrsna dozvola da se fantastikom zamaskira meka pornografija. Ponekad i ne tako meka. Urbana fantastika je (pod)žanr kojim dominiraju žene i da se pretpostaviti da znaju šta njihovu publiku, takođe mahom žensku, zanima. Kod ogromne većine spisateljica apsolutno sve je podređeno čak ne ni emotivnom, već seksualnom razvoju njihove protagonistkinje. Ono malo muškaraca koji uspešno pišu u tom podržanru uspeva da održi stari duh urbane fantastike, ali oni su već postali vanžanrovska priča za sebe i imaju svoju publiku i bazu čitalaca, koja se čak ni ne poklapa sa tipičnom publikom urbane fantastike. Primer za to je Džim Bučer, koji je našao put do klasično muške gikovske populacije i koga čitaju ljubitelji fentezija, pa čak i tvrđeg sfa.

Naravno, urbana fantastika je oduvek sadržala taj element seksa, nasilja i sladunjavosti - Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic - ali dominantan je bio element krimića. Seks se svodio na fem fatal, ili visokog crnokosog stranca. Danas je UF zapravo poprište fantazijske seksualne revolucije, o čemu D. verovatno ima da kaže više od mene.

Što se mene tiče, UF je u književnosti ispričana priča. Svoj najveći uspon imala je sredinom minule decenije i tada je tu imalo da se čita svežih i originalnih stvari. Danas je to žanr koji grca pod sopstvenim teretom. Veoma je teško ispričati priču na novi način, sem ako nije reč o piscu koji dolazi iz glavnotokovske književnosti, pa nije opterećen prethodnim saznanjima i predrasudama o žanru.

Danas je stimpank nova UF - ili je to barem bio prošle godine. Trenutno vlada zatišje, ali čekaju nas novi Gilman, Vuding, Bruksova i još neki pisci sa više nego solidnim izletima u stimpank, svako sa svojim viđenjem tog podžanra, koja se međusobno razlikuju više nego dovoljno da bi svi bili zanimljivi.

[PTY]

Tjah, meni je stimpank slab i u svojim najboljim i najsvežijim varijantama, sve kad i nije YA, tako da... not maj kap of ti, rekla bih.  

[Nightflier]

Zavisi šta si čitala. Preporučujem ti tri naslova, međusobno potpuno različita:

Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding
The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook
Whitechapel Gods by S. M. Peters

Recimo samo da bih sva tri naslova objavio, da imam svoju izdavačku kuću - ili da bih ih prevodio za simboličan honorar kada bi neko hteo da ih objavi, ili šta već. Sva tri romana su mi više nego prijala, uključujući i drugi po redu, koji je čak kao neki ljubić, ali su ti ljubavni delovi više nego svarljivi i ima ih u zanemarljivoj meri.

[Gaff]

Da li si čitao The Dream of Perpetual Motion od Dexter Palmer?

Ja bi da bacim pogled na ovo, samo ne znam vredi li.

[Nightflier]

Nisam, pravo da ti kažem. Ne postizavam da čitam fantastike koliko bih voleo. Eno na mom blogu šta sam pročitao u ovoj godini, skupa sa ocenama kvaliteta. Trenutno čitam Leviatan Wakes - i za sada je pristojnikav SF.

[Gaff]

Pa kruži po netu da i nije tako loše, pa sam pomislio da bacim pogled. Ostaje negde na sredini liste.
U svakom slučaju, hvala na odgovoru.

[Nightflier]

Pogledaću i ja. Otkad čitam preko kindla, u svakom trenutku imam toliko knjiga sa sobom, da mi to pomalo ubija glad za čitanjem.

[Gaff]

Baci pogled na unutrašnjost ovoga: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1592536913/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

Ima nekih umetničkih dela koja su izuzetno interesantna.

[Nightflier]

Stimpank nakita ima i kod nas, samo što je veoma skup. Preskup, dapače.

Hvala za link.

[PTY]

Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, and interviewer. Her latest novel, The Heir of Night, the first of The Wall of Night quartet, is published in the USA (Harper Voyager), UK and Australia/NZ (Orbit), and The Netherlands (Luitingh.) It recently won the Sir Julius Vogel Award 2011 for Best Novel, as well as a Single Titles' Reviewers' Choice Award in 2010. Helen's first novel, Thornspell, also won a Sir Julius Vogel Award (for Best Novel, Young Adult) and is published by Knopf. She posts every day on her Helen Lowe on Anything, Really blog and on the 1st of every month on the Supernatural Underground.











Looking at the Stars: Why Epic Fantasy Keeps "Speaking" To UsI live in New Zealand, which although recently re-cast as Middle Earth by Sir Peter Jackson, is still very much 'the far side of the world.' Arguably the only places further away from world hubs such as New York and London, Paris and Beijing, Berlin and Tokyo, would be Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica-which leaves New Zealanders with two fundamental choices: to turn inward, or look outward to the larger world.

It strikes me that part of the enduring appeal of epic fantasy may be because it offers a similar choice. We all get caught up in the round of our everyday lives: the ups and downs of the job, bills to pay, kids to cart from school to sport, and family stuff. No question, there's plenty of drama there-a point underlined every time we turn on TV-but focusing on it can feel like looking inward all the time. And sometimes we want to look beyond ourselves, outward to a wider world, and to events and issues that take us beyond the everyday.
I believe part of the enduring appeal of epic fantasy is that it offers us that opportunity. As a genre, it has its roots in the mythic sagas where the protagonists' struggle between the socio-political forces in their societies, and the codes they hold to be true and right, give power, drama, and tragedy to the narrative-but almost always at the "heroic" rather than the "domestic" level. (It is no accident, I believe, that "heroic fantasy" and "high fantasy" are alternate terms for the epic subgenre.)
The elements of classic epic fantasy also point to a focus on the wider world: the physical journey that sweeps heroes such as Frodo and Rand Al-Thor, and heroines like Arya Stark and Yeine Darr, away from quiet backwaters into a much larger political arena-usually involving major conflict or outright war-where they will play an important, if not pivotal, role. Often the conflict has its roots in a long ago past reawakening into the world, but almost always speaks to the grander sweep of history.
In this way, epic fantasy allows us to step outside of the everyday and into larger issues and their implications, whether good or bad, noble or profane. This occurs both from the point of view of the central protagonist (or protagonists in works such as The Lord of the Rings andA Song of Ice and Fire series) but also those they must draw around them as allies and friends.
Escapism? Perhaps. But I would also argue that epic fantasy, like the mythic stories that form its roots, is a way of enabling us to engage with worlds and issues that are bigger than ourselves. And sometimes we need to feel part of those things, not just keep our nose to the grindstone of the everyday.
Epic fantasy allows us to have fun with that-to see events and affairs worked out through elves and dragons, trolls and demons, as well as more human characters, and to enjoy portals as well as wormholes, magic swords instead of smart guns. As well as being fun, these elements of epic fantasy also provide a little bit of wonder-all part, I believe, of why epic stories keep "speaking" to us in every generation. It's human nature, after all. However much we may be lying in the gutter, we keep looking at the stars¹.


________________________________________________________


¹ "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" ~ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892

[Melkor]

Epic Fantasy is Everything You Need, Plus Dragons: Sanderson, Brett, Ballantine & More Speak Out tor.com / frontpage_full by Shoshana Kessock on 18/10/2011 22:00

Winter is coming, as someone somewhere once said (you know who I'm talking about). But epic fantasy is instead seeing its spring as across the world, fans have embraced the genre in record numbers and paved the way for authors new and old to produce bold new visions for everyone to enjoy. San Diego Comic Con saw a record number of people turn out for a signing by Patrick Rothfuss. An equally amazing number of fans came out at New York Comic Con for Brandon Sanderson at the Tor booth as he signed copies of his Mistborn series on Saturday afternoon.

Later, he joined fellow authors Peter Brett and Phillipa Ballantine, as well as new authors Rae Carson, Nils Johnson-Shelton and David Chandler in discussing why fantasy has been seeing such a heyday in a panel called "Winter is Here: Epic Fantasy Takes The Throne."

[Read more]

The first question that the authors tackled was why write fantasy fiction as opposed to anything else. While authors Peter Brett and Nils Johnson-Shelton referenced influences like Dungeons and Dragons from their childhood and Rae Carson revealed her childhood love affair with all things Star Wars and Luke Skywalker, author Brandon Sanderson said it best. "So my response to that is why not? Fantasy is awesome because you can do everything. Now granted, I am willing to bet that anyone who writes in genre is going to say that their genre is awesome, and that's great. But for me, I've read fantasy books with as much literary style as any literary novel out there. I've read fantasy books with as much romance as any romantic fiction out there, as good mysteries as any mystery fiction. So fantasy can do all this... plus have dragons! So why not?"

That kind of wide-open thinking seems to be at the heart of the evolution of fantasy literature from what is considered 'just' genre writing to one of the best selling forces in the literary world today. With the popularity of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series rocketing up the charts as a bestseller and massacring television audiences on HBO, fantasy is seeing a heyday like never before. This is giving the authors within the genre a chance to reach audiences they might never have and provide stunning work that plays with tropes more familiar to fantasy fans.

A great example is David Chandler's main character in The Ancient Blades Trilogy. Chandler plays with changing up the charming thief character that is familiar to fantasy fans and gives it a new touch. "I started with an absolute cliche. The oldest trick in the book is the low-born kid who has to make a living on the tough street, only to find out he's got this secret destiny. And I said, 'Well, how can I mess with that? How can I screw with that?' I figured out that this guy's destiny is in fact to destroy the fantasy milieu and drag his world screaming into the Rennaissance." That kind of innovation has been breathing new vigor into fantasy writing and giving writers a chance to play with tropes long since overly familiar. Add to that incorporation of elements of other genres, such as epic romance tales like in Sanderson's Mistborn series and horror like that in Peter Brett's work, and you have a little bit of everything that a reader would need.

It also allows writers to expand outside of the normal worlds that readers might be used to seeing. In Rae Carson's series The Girl of Fire and Thorn she took the usual fantasy settings of castles and forests and tossed in some Moroccan-style desert adventure instead, drawing on colonial Spanish influences to flavor her world. Nils Johnson-Shelton, instead, drew back on Arthurian legend and mixed in modern day teen fiction for his book, The Invisible Tower. Changing up tropes also keeps things fresh in a genre that can't keep seeing the same things over and over to keep readers interested. An example is Peter Brett's books, where although swords are a fantasy staple, he instead focused a lot of the action in his books on spear fighting, all in the name of keeping things interesting.

Make no mistake, though — that doesn't mean that your typical fantasy writing is gone. Each of the authors represented made sure to point back to the high fantasy elements in their work, mixed into the contemporary and the new elements. A trend pointed out is that much fantasy these days is trending towards worlds that are not considered 'high fantasy' which Brandon Sanderson pointed out just hasn't been doing as well with audiences.

"There have been plenty of fantasy movies recently that didn't do very well that were high fantasy," he said. "And it's just the fact that the thing that has done very well lately has been George R.R. Martin and his series on film. When the Tolkien films came out it did wonderfully well... Hollywood being Hollywood said 'well, fantasy is hot right now' and put out a bunch of films that weren't very good films. And then they didn't do very well, so they said 'fantasy isn't hot anymore'."

David Chandler posited his own theory. "I think we're seeing a turn towards a gritty realism in almost every genre... I had a professor in college a long time ago who pointed out that horror movies before 1975 were mostly guys in rubber suits, and after 1975 we started to see buckets of blood and guts and viscera all over the place. And he said it was the Vietnam War, and that people had seen all this on television and they didn't believe the guy in the rubber suit. And I think that certainly in the last ten years of history has shown us all kinds of horrible things in a bloody, realistic fashion. So that's what we're demanding now from our myths and legends."

"As it [fantasy] hits mainstream," added Rae Carson, "people want that realism. You see a lot of anti-heroes now, the psychology has changed. But I'm curious to see if we're on the cusp of another change because I think we see a lot of hopeful fantasy in times of economic hardship. And boy are we ever in a time of economic hardship, so it'll be interesting to see if this continues or if we go into a different cycle."

This trend towards grittier, more genre-bending and defying fantasy seems to be exactly what audiences are embracing, including those titles in mainstream fiction that don't seem to consider themselves as part of the fantasy genre. Rae Carson tossed in examples like Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Margaret Atwood's work as pieces that don't consider themselves part of genre fiction that are still bringing the fantasy tropes and themes to the masses. The end result is still a burgeoning wave of fantasy fans that might never have read what was considered genre fiction that is giving the fantasy world a shot in the arm.

The panel was a refreshing discussion of what fantasy literature is doing today and where it can go, among the crazy madness of the world of Comic Con. What will the future hold for fantasy, though? That remains to be seen. As Carson said, "Maybe we should get back together in five years and see." Here's to Comic Con 2016!

For more on this topic, check out Tor.com's Genre in the Mainstream series.

Shoshana Kessock is a comics fan, photographer, game developer, LARPer and all around geek girl. She's the creator of Phoenix Outlaw Productions and ReImaginedReality.com

[Melkor]

Guest Post: Five Things You Should Never Do in Epic Fantasy October 21, 2011  By Shaun Farrell 7 Comments  >Five Things You Should Never Do in Epic Fantasy
K.V. Johansen
When Shaun asked me to write this blog post, the immediate reaction of the Spouse was, "Oh no, I see a baleful article coming out of this." The Spouse accuses me of being obsessed with baled hay. I'm not, really. It's just the most obvious example and symbol of quite a widespread and glaring error that at once ruins literary belief in the world for me. And that is point one, of my Five Things You Should Never Do In Epic Fantasy, from the perspective of someone who has spent a lot of time studying history and languages. 1) Do not put baled hay into a world that has not had its Industrial Revolution. I wrote an article/lecture/rant on avoiding anachronisms in fantasy and historical fiction once, entitled, "Belief is in the Details: Don't Take the Present for Granted", and yes, my file-name for it was simply "Bales". Baled hay is such a lovely symbol of anachronisms caused by failure to consider the forces that drive industrial change. It's amazing how many medieval fantasies have barns filled with baled hay, even ones written by people who aren't third-generation urbanites. We do take the present for granted. After all, we live here. And people, particularly urbanites, tend to regard farming as something old-fashioned and unchanging. (We'll pause for the farmers to stop laughing.) So, what the whole baled-hay problem represents is the greater issue of the Industrial Revolution. If your world is based on a primary-world classical, medieval, or renaissance culture and its technology, you need to be aware of what that means. Human technological development and invention is driven by need and by science, and if the scientific foundation for a particular development isn't there yet, and there's no need for the machine because you've got twenty slaves or serfs or tenants owing service, or sons and daughters and cousins, to head out to the field with scythes and forks, you're not going to bale your hay. You're not going to be drilling oil wells and refining crude oil to get diesel to run your tractor to power your baler to bale your hay. You're not going to have big iron foundries to make sheet metal to mass-produce your balers to bale your hay. (And don't forget the internal combustion engine for your tractor.) The modern pick-up baler, by the way, was an invention due to the social changes around the time of the Second World War, when people were leaving the land in droves. Social and technological changes feed off one another. The Victorians had stationary hay-presses to bale hay, not for use on the farm, usually — as they carted it to the barn or farmyard before baling it — but for export by train to the cities. Victorian cities, unlike medieval ones, were full of horses who had to be fed. The ancient Greeks had steam engines, of a sort. They just didn't need them to do work, so there was no impetus for them ever to be developed beyond an experiment, a toy. Look, it spins — cool. Tell the slave to go draw another jar of water from the well.
Sure, even without the internal combustion engine or a massive steam tractor some lone inventing engineer could build, piece by piece, a hay-baling machine — people do adapt them for horsepower now — but why would he need to? In the pre-Industrial-Revolution world, and for a couple of centuries after, there are all these people around who aren't employed as managers or call-centre harassers; they can do the haying. And that's why it's good to pause and think about the Industrial Revolution, especially when you're writing about some aspect of everyday life you tend to take for granted.
While you're at it, do a bit of research, read up on the technological and cultural era you're writing about, and don't err in the opposite direction by omitting things that don't seem "primitive" enough to you. Bear in mind that guns were a medieval, not a modern, invention. Even the early Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, were not "primitive", whatever the Victorians and Monty Python may lead you to believe. The era of the barbarian invasions in Europe, the post-Roman world, was a technologically, culturally, socially, and philosophically complex era, and so was classical Rome, and so was the Bronze Age.
2) Don't throw in obvious gibberish and pretend it's a language. No, I'm not saying everyone must be Tolkien and invent entire languages, with vocabulary, grammar, and a system of sound-shift laws to give it a progression through time. That requires a particular genius, and very, very few can claim to have it. But don't say, "Urg" means "The place where the wind generally blows from the west around about teatime on Wednesdays," because you've got more concepts than syllables, and that just doesn't seem plausible. If you're making up names and place-names, try to have them sound as if they go together, if they're meant to go together. Pay attention to the sound of the words and names you're making up. Don't have a place-name that sounds Chinese-ish and one that sounds Romance-language-ish and one that sounds Mi'kmaq-ish as neighbouring villages, unless you've got a history that accounts for it by having had various waves of migration, conquest, and so on.
3) Don't use extremely modern slang and glaringly modern words. Your hero should probably not talk like a valley girl, or whatever the equivalent is these days, but there are more subtle diction dissonances that are almost just as painful. "Pants" is a good one not to use. It's a very recent shortening of pantaloons, and pantaloons themselves are recent. Er, well, relatively recent. Sort of. From some perspectives. The word "pants" is so recent that it's a bit jarring. And besides, if someone's pants are wet, in North America, they've been walking in the rain. In Britain, well . . . maybe it was raining really, really hard. Or their dog pulled them over into the river. Or a really, really scary demon popped out from behind a tree and said "Boo!" not long after the embarrassed person now wearing the wet pants had had a very large mug of tea. Do you want your British readers (and anyone over fifty) picturing your hero in his Stanfields or Fruit of the Loom briefs? (Wet or otherwise.) This is not advice to adopt what used to be called "Wardour Street prose" (Gadzooks and forsooth, yon demon hath made me wet my smallclothes!) — far from it. Just, think a little about how datable the language is, and if it screams post-war, try for something more temporally neutral. (And if you are going to use the second person singular and the verb-endings of the sixteenth and seventeenth century for some purpose — ritual formality, showing that someone speaks in an old-fashioned way — steep yourself in the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible and Shakespeare until you can get it right.)
4) Don't use primary-world proper nouns that have become adjectives or metaphoric nouns. Words with an historical connection, derived from a person or place, have no place in a world that does not have those historical persons or places in it, even if the word has largely lost its proper-noun capitalization. In a secondary world, you should not have, by its primary-world name, an Archimedean screw, marcelled hair (quite modern anyway — a late-nineteenth-century process invented by a chap named Marcel), sherry (Jerez), port (Portugal), champagne, bourbon, Burgandy, cheddar, Edam, raglan sleeves, a Jersey cow, or a Lombardy poplar, nor should it refer to Catherine wheels, dalmatians, or Samaritans good, bad, or indifferent. Vandalism ... well, debatable. Is there another word for vandalism that works so well? I can't think of one, offhand, so ....
Turkeys are a serious conundrum you will have to deal with, if you're including New World flora and fauna in your natural history. Perhaps, like small "v" vandals, we're stuck with them.
Words to be faced almost as cautiously are the months and the days of the week. Tolkien's epic grew out of a children's book with a contemporary narrator explaining things like "dwarves have never taken to matches" and so on; in The Lord of the Rings he added a detailed pseudo-historical apparatus in order to explain the use of Wednesday and March, which he knew didn't belong but which had gotten in through the gateway of The Hobbit. It's simpler even now, in a children's secondary world fantasy, especially a lighthearted one, to go with our names of the months and assume an interpretor to our world, but in an epic fantasy for adults, unless you want to have a framework around it explaining the "translation" to primary world terms and unless, as in LR, doing so is consistent with your world and your story, perhaps better not. January, Thursday, etc. all have meanings, and most of them are derived from the names of primary world gods. The Spouse proposes the word anacosmonyms for such usage — words taken out of their proper world.
Words, words, words. If you want to know about a word's history, the very best resource is the OED. The Oxford. Not your little desktop Oxford, the Pocket or Concise, though that's nonetheless important for every writer in English, but The Dictionary. The Oxford Universal is good. It only weighs a few kilograms and you can fit it on a table. It gives dates of use and etymologies. The two volume Shorter Oxford is also nice. However, the Queen of Dictionaries in its full glory is thirteen volumes long on paper — now usually accessed electronically by most who use it, through a library's subscription — and it has not only dates of first use and etymologies, but examples, masses of examples, tracing the word through history from its first recorded appearance in English.
5) Don't fail to consider the economic complexities of your world. This does not mean writing a treatise on economics (unless you're the author of Wolf and Spice). It does mean you shouldn't create an urban setting and blithely announce that the kingdom has been devastated by war or dragons or ravaging hordes of unspeakable terrors while at the same time showing the entire populace hanging out in the cities eating well. Don't forget that even now we are all dependent on the people growing food and that it takes a lot of hard physical labour and a lot of hands to grow that food, whether it happens in the fields of your hero's village before she sets out to conquer the world, or outside the city walls, or in Egypt, which once supplied Rome with much of its grain, or in China, which now seems to be cornering the world garlic market. It takes many, many woman-hours to spin enough thread to weave a bolt of cloth, and many more hours to weave that cloth. And before that someone has to shear the sheep or hackle the flax. And so on. People don't just pop downtown and buy a new dress because they feel like going shopping. A chair takes a lot of work to make. These are not worlds of very many disposable things, because things, most made things, are relatively expensive — expensive in time for the people making them, thus expensive for anyone buying them in a cash economy. Cheap manufactured goods — that's the Industrial Revolution again.
There were factories, of a sort, i.e. people producing the same object over and over, for some objects; the Romans made amphorae on a scale, which were shipped all over the empire full of various liquids, and lamps. They were really more workshops than factories. And such clay objects were cheap, relatively, which is why archaeologists can dig them up all over the place. They were emptied or broke and you threw them away. (And of course, cheap or expensive, they can't be stuck back together again and they don't rot. Watch very much Time Team and you'll conclude you can't sink a spade in the earth anywhere in Europe without hitting pottery shards, making you realize that however unattractive the habit is, hurling coffee cups and pop cans all over the landscape is an inherent element of our humanity.) However, there were not large-scale foundries or spinning-mills or weaving machines, and it's that kind of mass-production that lets us have both leisure, and cheap stuff, on the scale we now do in the industrialized world.
So, for every man (or woman, since we're talking fantasy, not historical fiction) who can afford a sword — an extremely expensive item with a lot of man-hours from ore to weapon, or a mail shirt (probably even more labour-intensive), there is a huge foundation of people doing other things so that he or she can eat and not run around naked, as well as getting on with the heroing. It's good to remember that, when you're travelling through your world. It's also good to remember that archaeology shows that even apparently-remote neolithic and Bronze Age villages were part of a surprisingly far-reaching network of trade, with goods, and presumably ideas and stories, moving about, even if most people never got more than a day's walk from where they were born. By mediaeval times, complex trade routes bound the known world together, and very, very complex webs of duties and services, rents and taxes, produce and commerce, held society together, from ploughman to lord, merchant to crown, country to country.
Just for the record, and very vaguely related to this point, peasant and serf are not synonyms. And feudalism and manorialism are not synonyms. And vassal and serf are really, really, really not synonyms. See 4) and why the OED is such a useful thing.
And those, she said, reflecting gloomily that she has probably done all of the above (except for the baled hay and getting her sixteenth-century verb endings wrong), are five things you should try not to do when writing epic fantasy.

[Nightflier]

Veoma mi je žao što nisi bio na tribini. Mislim da bi baš doprineo razgovoru.

[Melkor]

I meni. Mozda faktografski, sve vise gubim zivce za raznorazne podele i podelice.