Browsing Category : Changing the Map

Changing the Map: Ladyland Ahoy!


Are you ready for a summer vacation? I sure as hell am, but since we’re all confined to our yards, let’s take a trip to paradise, to a female utopia that is plague free, where the men are timid (and excellent cooks), and Calcutta is a garden paradise governed by sensible women. Let’s get the heck outta Dodge and visit……

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Changing the Map: Journey to Joiry with Jirel


Today we shall gird our swords and prepare our spells as we journey through vengeful and vindictively verdant forests effused with purple passions under the tutelage of the most seductive, skilled, and practically perfect leader of the land of Joiry, none other than Jirel herself. Jirel, arrogant, beautiful, and skilled, has a wide background in defeating demons while looking impeccable,…

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Changing the Map: Tanith Lee’s Weird Gothic Towers of the Second Wave


Examining the weird/gothic landscape through eyes firmly embedded with set of rainbow lenses, Tanith Lee erected severely Weird Gothic Towers and Spires throughout the map, starting with her debut novel, The Dragon Hoard in 1971.  Her edifices are constructed using the building blocks of fairy tales, myths, standard fantasy, vampires, and just plain strangeness, and are adorned in proper Gothic…

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Changing the Map: Cordelia Naismith, Planned Parenthood, and Barrayar


Smack dab in the middle of the speculative fiction universe, lies a parochial planetary empire, somewhere to the right of the Cyteen System in firm Space Opera territories, lies Barrayar. Ruled by an emperor, Barrayar is primitive, patriarchal, and flat out backwards in the viewpoint of one of its most famous ladies — Countess Vorkosigan — Captain Cordelia Naismith of…

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