Tag: PulpRev
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The Golden Mile Part 2
Wizard of the Net The Golden Mile was the most secure arcology in Babylon. X-ray machines and armed guards protected the main entrances. Just out of sight, lurking in the security command center on the fifth floor, a quick reaction force of twenty VC operatives, armed to the teeth and empowered by the Treaty of…
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Designing for Games vs Designing for Stories
A week ago, PulpRev author Jon Mollison wrote a Twitter thread about the role of clerics in Dungeons and Dragons. Among the key insights was this: Wrong. Clerics are a great #dnd class because they fill a proper function within the game – secondary brick with defensive tac support. Designing the class to reflect a literary archetype puts the…
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Book Unreview: 9th of August
One of the signatures of PulpRev is our cheerful disdain of conventional genre boundaries. Where traditional publishers see a dividing line between fantasy, science fiction, romance and other genres, we draw on the older traditions that blended various aesthetics to create exciting tales. We do not box ourselves in by arbitrary genre distinctions; we embrace…
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The Way of the Pulps
A few days ago, I had the privilege of reading the synopsis of a trilogy being written by a fellow Singaporean. It was an honest-to-goodness Sword and Planet story, like Star Wars crossed with Final Fantasy. Holy warrior maidens, mind-altering magics, political intrigue, interstellar travel and warfare, it was like reading a revival of an…
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A Thirst for Beauty
For a published writer, I realize I don’t read a lot of fiction. Between my work and my other responsibilities, I don’t have a lot of spare time. A not-insignificant fraction of that time is usually spent chasing down avenues of research related to my current story. What little reading time I do have left…
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Mechanical Versus Mythical Magic
Corey McCleery, Alexander Hellene, Xavier Lastra, Rawle Nyanzi and Misha Barnett recently opined on the de-mythologicisation of magic in contemporary fantasy. All five pieces are worth a read, but the thesis running through the heart of the conversation is that de-mythologicisation robs the mystery from magic in contemporary fantasy, making it feel empty. Comparing the works of the pulp-era grandmasters and…