Addendum

That old sailor is a sea god, but you won't find that out for a few books, or maybe in an interview.

Number One Reason to Include a Map in Your Book

Your characters can flip to it if they get lost. Nobody wants to wait fifty pages while they try to remember what they heard about stars once from an old sailor.

Furor and Nobility

The page sent to investigate the dismal clouds hanging over the route returned with his report too late to save his master the trouble of mounting but comfortably in time to avert disaster. "Your Lordship, please stop! The rain is a very flood, and the storm barons smite the wetted earth with their terrible bolts!"
"What of it, if barons have their trifling sport? We who have higher duties are not dissuaded from touring our lands by that." Saying that, Count Fandeghen rode forward. He dismissed his retinue, but no other concession did he make.
The tempest did not prove the page a liar, nor did it dissuade the count. The missiles of the storm barons struck the ground closer and closer, and never did he honor them with his attention till his steed forced the issue, for it shied when a bolt came too close for its animal courage to bear. The rider wrested his horse back to placidity, but he himself was wroth. He dismounted and declared this.
"The fright you caused my beast will have its consequence, vassal!" He stretched his great bow and loosed a shaft upward to the bolt's originating point. The roar which followed was not thunder. Soon the wounded storm baron appeared and gave notice of challenge by raising his furious mace.
The battle ended this way, that Count Fandeghen was too much for any baron of whatever realm. He pinned his foe to the ground and made of him a prisoner. The ransom the count gained was seven talents of silver, for that baron's bolt forked seven times, and a fulgent lance difficult to withstand on the battlefield. If you go to the current count and ask to see it you will be refused, for the grandson of the man who won it gave it as a gift to a knight who did him great service, and that was well done.
Finis

Combining Literature and Animation

If we only print words on every other page, almost nobody will notice. Every third and we can still get away with it.

Looming Phoneme Disaster

There you are, writing about the mysterious artificially created superstructure Ogg Vorbis your hero has just discovered in space, when you decide to check and find out something's already called it. I estimate we'll run out of things to call the stuff we make up somewhere around 2037. The only solution is a total language reboot.

Setting Aesthetics Particulars

If you have masers, is your science fiction necessarily a retro future? Some kind of maserpunk? Do the computers have to be quite large? Or can you just throw those in anything?

Adapting Shannara

Obviously it should already have been a gacha game years ago. Don't ask silly questions. Genre? Who cares?

Addendum

The secret is that I just wanted to roll out "thaumatocracy."

Against Thaumatocracy

Given that being capable of magic is better than being incapable, what are some reasons mages might not be in charge?

- There aren't enough of them
-- It requires innate talent which few have
-- It takes too long to learn
-- They keep dying
-- Numbers are limited by the need for some external resource. For example a mage has to bathe in dragon's blood or make a contract with a manticore
- There are too many of them. Being a mage isn't a big deal, and hiring some is less of one.
- Magic isn't that good
- The kinds of people who learn magic are bad at maintaining political power
-- They're too busy with magical studies
-- Magic is linked to certain characteristics such as lack of ambition or gullibility
-- Magic alters mages, for example removing the need for food and replacing it with an insatiable urge to visit places of power
-- Magical expenditure requires long periods of isolation or hibernation
- The kinds of people who learn magic don't want to maintain political power
-- Magical talent isn't hereditary. Ensuring your family will be passed over for some genius discovered in a village is distasteful.
- The kinds of people who learn magic can't maintain political power
-- The gods who give them power forbid it
-- The terms of their contracts forbid it
-- The dragons who rule the world forbid it, and they do check regularly
-- Magic circulates through the bonds between people, so that the more subordinates one has, the more his magic is divided among them - The rulers are capable of preventing it
-- They aren't mages, but they have magic
--- Divine sanction
--- The approval of the land itself
--- Contracts with manticores
--- A store of artifacts
--- Hereditary talents
--- They're the source of magic
-- They're above magic
--- Gods rule directly
--- Dragons/manticores/basilisks etc. rule directly
--- Aliens rule directly (they came to research magic)

There are a few reasons. As for how mages might become an oppressed minority, they can't, cut that out, your allegory stinks.

On Conscientious Governance and Adapting in Response to Circumstances

The provincial capital's most eminent, or those who aspired to that position, had lined up outside the governor's residence earlier than some of them awoke on a typical day. They awaited the new governor.
He came. Striding toward his door, he moved as if unaware anyone was there aside from him, but he began speaking before he passed the first well-wishers in rapid words full of good sense. "Gentlemen, the custom for freshly installed officials is to set out their program for their terms, and I cannot imagine violating it. First is this. The most knowledgeable about local conditions and the most studied in the law will consult for the purpose of creating a code of laws to apply to a group of people which I am told is now over eight percent of the population, higher than the thugs who stand in a field and wait to be killed an looted, another problem our energies must go toward solving. What is that you're wearing?"
The governor had finally stopped, square in front of one young man.
"It's a baseball cap."
"I don't know what that is. Are you one of them? How did you get here?"
"I fell into a canyon and died, then I woke up here."
"My condolences. These people are who I mean, gentlemen. Special skills?"
"Magic-suppressing magic."
"Of course, of course. Stay steady and we'll take care of you." The governor resumed his march to the residence. "Second, the administrators of the magic schools here, a strangely large number it seems to me, are to provide an explanation of why they're always wrong about which talents are good. It saps confidence, gentlemen. Third, I want a justification for the policy of distributing bullies among these schools. Fourth, respecting these multiple reports of amnesia . . ."
Finis

Addendum

For the modern audience uninterested in mischief, they should make a show about two detectives solving crimes in Las Vegas but there's magic (not prestidigitation (also prestidigitation)).

Innovation in Television

Now that season three of Wheel of Time is over, Amazon should announce a new season, but it's just season one again, then two, then three. At no point should Amazon acknowledge they're reruns. It's thematically resonant syndication for the mischief-loving modern audience.

Dune's Biggest Flaw

Baron isn't even a high rank. The Harkonnens must be small-time. I can't take them seriously as antagonists.

Total Stagnation

How long have we been on fantasy? When will we move on to fantadee? I project it will require that we transcend this thing called "pages."

Thoughts on SD Gundam G Generation Eternal

By the time you finish reading the title, your AP will be full again. Truly Eternal/10.

Important Scientific Concepts

Psydroponics
I don't know what that means, but that won't stop me from throwing it in a story. That's the true spirit of speculative fiction.

In Cobalt Manor

When someone claimed to have mastered the manifold techniques of Cobalt Manor, people doubted him, for understandable reasons. "There hasn't been a living person there for thirty-six years, and neither does the manor stand," they objected.
"And yet," the man said.
A series of duels convinced the world of his sincerity. Rather than resenting the opposition, he gave advice to anyone who wished to attain what he had done, which was to go to the ruin and be heedful.
A company assembled of adventurous fighters to make the attempt. After a month of resting in the field, half of them left, called by bolder deeds. In the second month, the remaining cleaned the manor's floors and walls. In the third month, those who endured their servitude became disciples and began to learn the outer techniques. In the sixth month, they began the inner techniques, the first disciple returned, and Cobalt Manor was reborn.
Finis

Word Instinct

"Orison" looks to me like it should have some kind of engineering meaning. For instance, the counterweight and the sling together of a trebuchet or such should be the orison. And yet, it is not so.

Addendum

Unfortunately it starts with a Y, and that all but disqualifies it according to Super Robot Wars roster rules.

Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh

If Yu-Gi-Oh got into Super Robot Wars Y, it wouldn't be the biggest stretch in the series.

Defeated by the Pros Again

Here we are trying to think of evocative titles such as Dragon Ambition or Ambition of Chaotic Inheritors, and then they just bust out GQuuuuuux like it's nothing. By "we" of course I mean people coming up with names for Yu-Gi-Oh sets.

Getting on the Wagon

How can books leech off the continuing success of open-world games? The answer is simple: Lengthy tower-climbing segments followed by even longer descriptions of everything in the vicinity. People love that stuff, no matter what was said in your fiction workshop.

Doubts Regarding Space Dragons

If we find space dragons, will scientists be reluctant to call them space dragons, or will they be all for it? Komodo dragons were a long time ago. Long enough to be retro. All right, I've decided, it's all space dragons from here on out. Though the "space" part might be a problem. Star dragons. Void dragons. Vacuum dragons. Stellar dragons.

Founding of the Space Patrol

Volunteers packed the auditorium. Volunteers to become the first of the Space Patrol.
"The importance of your duties cannot be exaggerated," the general told them. "To survey astronomical bodies, to combat space piracy, to swing by the other side of the sun from time to time and check nothing untoward is going on back there. I know you all expect as much, but understand this."
He surveyed the body before him, thousands of men and women distinguished by courage and ability. "Out of everyone who enters the training, a few will die. A third will wash out. And a fourth of those who remain . . . They will have to become space pirates, because there aren't any to combat yet. A fourth for now. We're still unsure of the proper proportion."
"Can't we just wait for people to take that up themselves?" one volunteer asked.
"There's the first washout."
"I'm not saying I won't do it. I think we all just want to fly around in spaceships."
"Glad to have you back in the program, son."
Finis

A Seismic Conundrum

"Earthquake" already sounds like a fantasy term, so do fantasy authors have to come up with a new term for it? That's before getting into fanciful causes for them. Or is it? Perhaps an earthquake caused by a catfish should have a different name from one caused to two smiths competing to create the strongest suit of armor underground. The latter would I suppose be a hoploclasm, and as for the former, "thrashwhisker." Those are bad, and therefore they fit in with "earthquake."

Addendum

I'm not saying wizards aren't real, but if I can pretend to raise a dog, reality is demonstrably no bar.

The Age of Videogames Is Ended

Now that we know what the next generation's prices are going to be, people will finally realize that instead of paying $500 to pretend to race, they should spend $20 to pretend wizards are real. Let's just hope they never find out they can pay $0 to read a history of Cuba written in 1920.

Addendum

You can prove it wasn't a real leak now though.

You Can't Prove This Isn't a Real Leak

I can't believe the Switch 2 is actually an e-reader that can play Snake! What a change in direction! It looks like ebooks win again.

The Future of Theater

Little robot fellas performing plays on your dinner table while you eat. They get the scripts from the cloud, which is a very futuristic place, and they provide their own music and sound effects on separate channels from that which their voices use.