New Worlds: Dystopias
The New Worlds Patreon loops back this week to deliver on the second installment of what I originally thought was going to be a single essay, with the darker vision of dystopias. Comment over there!
The New Worlds Patreon loops back this week to deliver on the second installment of what I originally thought was going to be a single essay, with the darker vision of dystopias. Comment over there!
Well over a decade ago, I first had the idea of reprinting my short fiction in little collections themed around subgenres. When I sat down to sort through my existing stories, I found they fell fairly neatly into six buckets, each at or approaching roughly the cumulative size of a novella: secondary-world fantasy, historical fantasy, contemporary fantasy, stories based on folktales and myths, stories based on folksongs, and stories set in the Nine Lands.
Five of those six collections have been published so far: Maps to Nowhere, Ars Historica, Down a Street That Wasn’t There, A Breviary of Fire, and The Nine Lands. The sixth is coming out in September, but it’s not surprising, given the balance of what I write, that secondary-world fantasy has lapped the rest of the pack — more than once, actually, since The Nine Lands is also of that type (just all in a single world), and also my Driftwood stories hived off to become their own book.
So yes: as the title and the cover design suggest, The Atlas of Anywhere is a follow-on to Maps to Nowhere! Being short fiction collections, they need not be read in publication order; although a few settings repeat (both of them have a Lady Trent story inside, for example), none of the stories are direct sequels that require you to have read what came before. At the moment it’s only out in ebook; that is for the completely shameless reason that replacing the cover for the print edition later on would cost me money, and I have my fingers crossed that in about two months it will say “Hugo Award-winning poem” rather than just “Hugo Award-nominated.” (“A War of Words” is reprinted in here: my first instance of putting poetry into one of these collections!) But you can get it from the publisher, Book View Cafe; from Apple Books; from Barnes & Noble; from Google Play; from Kobo; from Indigo; or, if you must, from Amazon in the UK or in the US (that last is an affiliate link, but I value sending readers to other retailers more than I do the tiny commission I get).
Now, to write more stories, so I can put out another collection later!
Every so often, a topic for the New Worlds Patreon grows beyond the scope of a single essay. So it is with what was supposed to be a post on utopias and dystopias — but let’s start on the nicer end! Comment over there . . .
Second time’s the charm? I thought a while ago that the New Worlds Patreon was done with legal topics, but then I thought up a couple more, of which this is the last. We’re looking at the different types of courts and what they’re for — comment over there!
Do we really need lawyers? Yes, yes we do — but also, it’s not hard to see why they’ve wound up with such a negative reputation. Yep, the New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at the legal profession . . . comment over there!
At Chez New Worlds Patreon, five Fridays in one month means an additional essay focused on some aspect of craft or theory. This time around, it’s the notion of worldbuilding that is “easy” for the reader vs. “hard” — comment over there!
The topic for this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay is just as vital to today’s society as it was to those thousands of years ago: how to get water to where we need it, and keep it out of where we don’t want it. Comment over there!
From nomadic peoples burning the terrain for better hunting to empires digging out transport canals for global trade, the reshaping of the landscape is the topic of this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay. Comment over there!
I do love me a good forest in fiction. That’s what the New Worlds Patreon is looking at this week — comment over there!
A new month means a new theme for the New Worlds Patreon! This time around it’s some topics covering our relationship with the natural environment, and we’re starting in a very primal place: underground. Cavemen, religious sites, and Hollow Earths, oh my! Comment over there . . .
I swear, the timing is coincidental: I planned for the final New Worlds Patreon essay of this month to be about rhetoric well before I wound up reading the books that sparked this post, nor did I read them because they would be research for this essay. It’s all a happy accident! But yes, this week we are talking about rhetoric and oratory, and you can comment over there!
The New Worlds Patreon promises peace between us and favorable terms of trade if you go read this week’s essay, on treaties. Comment over there!
Why do governments have ministers, and what kind of work do they do? That’s the question the New Worlds Patreon takes on this week — comment over there!
No, not the popular genre of romances. The New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at the practice that era was named for, having a formally recognized mismatch between the person on the throne and the person actually running the country. Comment over there!
The theme for the New Worlds Patreon this month has been the performing arts, so to close it out, we’re taking a look at something very challenging: how you can write down performances to be read by other people later. Comment over there!
The New Worlds Patreon is ready to strut its stuff upon the stage! Or at least to talk about the people who do so, and the types of stages they use. Comment over there!
The New Worlds Patreon will be talking about theatre very shortly, but first, a detour into a specific subcategory thereof: puppets! Comment over there.
To launch the New Worlds Patreon into its next year, my loyal patrons have voted for a topic I’m very fond of: dance! Comment over there . . .
It’s the end of the eighth year of the New Worlds Patreon! To close that out, we’re gonna be super classy — nah, just kidding. We’re going to talk about lying, boasting, and insulting people for fun. Comment over there!
Since this month’s New Worlds Patreon theme is (this is genuinely how I listed it in the poll) “A Verbal Miscellany,” we’re segueing from mottoes and proverbs to the serious business of oaths and vows. Comment over there . . .