Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

Ragnarok Issue 57 (The Magazine of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargaming) landed through my letter box today.  My article for BTRC’s SLAG! appears along with a variety of fantasy and science fiction wargaming goodness.

Fall of the Goblin Empire (FoGE) is my entry for the SFSFW’s fantasy wargaming competition.  A game of goblins and their varigated, varied and highly unreliable flying machines. Here are a couple of the opening paragraphs that set the scene for a game of goblins going up-tiddle-ee-up coming down-tiddle-ee-down-down…

Ask anyone and they will tell you Goblins are mad, bad braggers, they have an anger in their eyes and can’t hold their drink. What most won’t tell you is they’ve good reason. When chroniclers write out the ages of the world somehow the age of
goblins gets misplaced. Yet there was a time (as any drunk goblin will tell you at length) when the little green folk ruled all the world and everyone in it for over a thousand years. Of course no one pays any attention because who believes a drunk goblin?

Yet it did exist for a thousand years. Eventually, as happens to all empires, the great goblin empire lost its grasp on the land.  In its last days the goblins retreated to the floating isles protecting their most valuable asset: the magical metal goblinic
famed for its ability to lift many times its own weight off the ground. They were fortunate that the islands also produced some iron, flax cloth, vast mounds of guano and some natural gasses. There they fell back into ancient tribal feuds and so the
goblin empire fell. Soon after that they turned to the bottle.

Just back from a night out with some friends for a meal and then on to see Solomon Kane at the Odeon in Liverpool 1.  Before I get to the film good to see that the Odeon seems to have improved since the last couple of times I’ve been there.  The cinema was clean and had enough staff.

Solomon Kane’s plot doesn’t stand out from other fantasy films.  Where it does stand out is setting and acting.  First the setting is unusual: early 17^th century England with a mix of witchcraft, sorcery and puritans.  It’s not history but it is a lot of pulp fun.  I know some reviews have been upset by anachronisms.  Again this is pulp fiction not historic re-enactment.  Stop worrying about the flag being wrong – most of the audience don’t know and would have needed an explanation of who the ships belonged to if they’d flown a flag other than the union jack.  That explanation would have been far more grating and story destroying than a flag being flown early.

Solomon Kane’s cinematography and design is of the mud, rain and dirt school previously used for films like Bother Hood of the Wolf and Plunkett & Macleane.  The CGI is competent and doesn’t distract by being overly flashy.

The action is built up of small scale skirmishes but then, that is more in fitting with the setting.   Anyone worrying about the flag ought to be even more worried about explaining away a major uprising during the last years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign rather than a little local difficulty.  Sticking with small skirmishes also allows the action to remain personal, focussed on Kane.

As with the plot the dialogue is clichéd peppered with biblical quotes which could have been disastrous.  The quality acting which delivers the lines straight without slipping into camp manages to turn lines like “Hold you dogs!” into pulp gold.  Kane’s West Country accent was also a joy – forget songs about combine harvesters it added yet more flavour to the film.

Solomon Kane isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste.  Reading some reviewes its pulp sensibilities clearly upset some: it play fast and loose with history in a way that upsets those obsessed with the colour of epaulettes on uniforms; it upsets Robert E Howard purists; it upsets big spectacle fantasy fans by being small and personal.

Personally I thought it was a fun film and I’ll be picking up on DVD  and hoping for a sequel.

The latest issues of Ragnarok (The Magazine of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargaming) arrived by post today. An interesting mix of articles including Daleks, Zombies, SF Armoured warfare, Fantasy Naval and Luna Exploration alongside the regular rules and miniature reviews.

My article, The Panzerfauste Song Book, takes up more pages than I thought it would. If I’d realised how long it is I’d have split it in two!

The SFSFW’s been busy on the WWW today launching the SFSFW blog and SFSFW twitter to go along with the existing SFSFW web site and SFSFW Facebook page.