Stephen Hunt, webmaster of SF Crowsnest.com and author of The Court of the Air and The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, recently announced the premiere of Hivemind, a social networking website dedicated to fans of science fiction and fantasy.  Think Facebook, but with better "Interests."

The Bard is a proud member.  So friend us already.  Or is it "hive us"?

Already much-cited around the SFF blogosphere, Suvudu reported from Comic-Con in San Diego last week that a panel was held on the long-rumored television series based on Terry Goodkind's fantasy series The Sword of Truth.  Renamed 'Legend of the Seeker,' the main roles have already been cast.  Here's Suvudu's initial report on the panel:

Terry Goodkind, the author of the bestselling The Sword of Truth series, visited Comic-Con today with director Sam Raimi and those who produced the television shows Xena and Hercules. Together as a panel, they laid out their plans for adapting Wizard's First Rule into a 22-episode season to air on ABC via Disney.

I will be posting a lot more news on this in the forthcoming days, but I wanted to share with Goodkind fans that the name of the ABC series is Legend of the Seeker and it will begin November 1, 2008. Richard Cypher and Kahlen have been cast, but today Sam Raimi announced the casting of Zedd. The actor playing the wizard Zedd is Bruce Spence, who had minor roles in LOTR: Return of the King and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith but who has decades of acting experience.

More to come in the next few days!

Bruce Spence played the Mouth of Sauron in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and the Utapau representive (the weird alien Obi-Wan talks to after arriving on the planet in search of General Grievous) in Episode III.  He also played the Trainman in The Matrix Revolutions, in case you were wondering.  The other two main leads are relatively unknown, at least to me.

The fact that Sam Raimi is directing seems promising, but the Disney/ABC thing still bothers me.  I'm not a Terry Goodkind fan, but I don't like to see fantasy done badly, and it still seems unlikely that as massive and graphic a novel as Wizard's First Rule could be done well on network television, even in 22 episodes.  The rumor that the title was changed to "Legend of the Seeker" from "Wizard's First Rule" to avoid offending religious viewers who have a problem with "sorcery," if true, confirms my fear that the writers and the network are all too willing to compromise story for the sake of avoiding potential brouhaha.  The Sword of Truth, as a series, is potentially offensive from start to finish: even putting the overt Objectivist theme of the books aside, the storyline regularly includes graphic violence, often at the same time as sexual content.  Wizard's First Rule alone, if I remember correctly, involves a scene featuring Darken Rahl, the primary antagonist, participating in a dark ritual too disgusting to mention this soon after lunch.

Take away every part of these books that is likely to offend someone seriously and you're left with a derivative fantasy story unlikely to be improved upon by being adapted for network television.

But I'm willing to be proven wrong, and of course I'll be watching.  I'm going to make CJ sit down and watch it with me, whether she wants to or not.  We'll keep you updated on this, as we have in the past, complete with scathing commentary.

Update: Cinemablend.com has a fuller report of what took place on the Legend of the Seeker panel at San Diego Comic-Con, including Terry Goodkind's comments and Sam Raimi's intentions for the show's format and style.

Update: My friend Bill pointed out that I'm more familiar with the casting than I thought.  The official website states that Craig Parker, who you might know as Haldir from The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, has been cast as Darken Rahl, the main villain.  The guy who played Captain Typho, Queen Amidala's bodyguard in Star Wars Episodes II and III, has also been cast to play Chase.

Aidan Moher recently commented that he was getting a bit "over-saturated" on fantasy, a feeling I can definitely understand.  Even putting aside personal fatigue, the genre as a whole is in transition right now.  Publishing houses are emphasizing urban fantasy to the extent that epic and high fantasy have been sidelined and newly classified as "traditional" and "old-fashioned."  Authors producing epic fantasy of the type that dominated the marketplace even a few years ago are scrambling just to get published in the current climate. 

Just ask Shawn Speakman, who spent much of this decade conceiving, writing, rewriting, and trying to sell the first novel in a planned trilogy.  His blog is honest and detailed in a very addictive way, and recently I found myself devouring the majority of his archives over the course of a few successive lunch hours.  The post in which he finally announces his intention to stop actively seeking a publisher for his book, Song of the Fell Hammer, would be a sad, disappointing end to a hopeful story without Mr. Speakman's admirable determination to persevere.  Rather than give up, he almost immediately began writing an entirely new, more market-friendly urban fantasy trilogy.  Such perseverance is a prerequisite for a writing life, of course, but genre fiction presents its own unique problem: what do you do when what you want to write most in the world just isn't selling?  Fantasy authors, especially first-timers, face a difficult choice: adapt to the market, or remain unpublished.

Readers face a similar dilemma.  The market for epic fantasy is cornered by a few giants of the genre, the George Martins, Robert Jordans, and Terry Brookses of the world, most of whose work consists of unfinished series.  So many readers looking for good epics are stuck in a holding pattern, digging behind stacks of Laurell K. Hamilton's pornographic rubbish in search of undiscovered high adventure while they await Book 7 (or 5 or 12 or 10) of their favorite doorstop series.

Authors like Joe Abercrombie still manage to write new epic fantasy, albeit it with a snarky, often metafictional twist, but in a noticeably pulpier format.  Abercrombie's trilogy lacks the material trappings of traditional high fantasy; published by Pyr, an imprint of Gollancz, The First Law comes in trade paperback, not hardcover, and the cover art, while eye-catching, is graphic design, not the custom artwork traditionally associated with modern fantasy.  Maps, glossaries, and appendices of any kind are conspicuously absent.  The effort comes off as refreshingly minimalist, but the underlying motive is undeniably minimizing costs. 

These days, having a marketing angle, knowing how to sell your book, seems to be at least as important as the quality of the work itself -- often overtly more so.  But most writers did not study marketing, and as artists their first concern (ideally) should not be mainstream appeal.  The genre fiction marketplace is forcing writers of epic fantasy in particular, unless they have an original idea of Phillip Pullman proportions, to prioritize marketability and to produce work that conforms to current standards of saleability.  I can't help but wonder: is this squeeze on traditional fantasy effectively filtering out what was unworthy anyway, or is it killing the subgenre?  And where is this trend heading?  Will it peak and begin its decline soon, or are we seeing a more long-term shift taking place?

I hope that the good of the new outweighs the bad, that the China Mievilles and Neil Gaimans outpace the writers of penny dreadfuls.  Perhaps it is time for a new sign to go up in the Bard: nymphomaniac vampire detectives to be staked on sight.

I hated this book.  For terrible writing, complete lack of plot and about as much character development as the average installment of Penthouse Forum, I give Laurell K. Hamilton's latest novel Blood Noir an "F."  I'd give it a lower grade if I could.  I'm operating off of more, here, than residual feelings of betrayal.  For a long time, Laurell K. Hamilton was one of my favorite authors.  She gave us a strong female protagonist who had interesting adventures.  Although vulnerable, she was never a slave to her emotions.  Part fantasy, part thriller, part murder mystery, these books were something different.  It discouraged me, when Hamilton started writing soft-core porn.  For awhile, she at least maintained some degree of integrity; her characters had adventures in between bouts of kinky sex.  Eventually, though, those adventures grew less and less frequent, until they finally disappeared.  I thought her last installment, The Harlequin, was bad--Hamilton wasted about 400 pages to describe Anita Blake and her boyfriends going to a Cirque du Soleil type of event.  Well, heck, in comparison, that was the best book ever.

Most readers of this of this blog probably haven't read too much Patricia Cornwell, but her earlier Kay Scarpetta novels are wonderful.  What separates them from the herd is the rare combination of good writing and meaningful plot.  While it may be "all about the characters," characters, by themselves, do not a novel make.  Likewise, all the plot in the world doesn't help much if the characters are nothing more than cardboard cutouts, the literary answer to "Buddy Jesus."  In case you're not sure what I mean, I refer to you to Terry Goodkind's entire body of work.  Unfortunately, even good writers tend to go bad after awhile; Patricia Cornwell's most recent books are complete drivel.  Now, many people have this--these days somewhat sacrilegious--complaint about the last few novels in the Wheel of Time Series, but trust me, in comparison to Predator, they're all action packed.

Which brings me to Simon R. Green.  He's an ambitious writer; his offerings span the gamut, from crime novels to satires to Laurell K. Hamilton rip-offs.  I know, because I've read most of his books, even though, well, to be honest, they aren't very good.  He's like that good for nothing boyfriend most of us remember from college: he's incapable of having a real conversation, you'd die of embarrassment if your family ever met him, but somehow you can't quite bring yourself to break up with him.  Green's books fill a similar void: I go back to them when I'm between series, because they're dependable.  I sort of care about the characters, I'm mildly interested in what happens to them, and I have no guilt about abandoning them if something better comes along.  Until recently, I'd meandered through about half his catalogue, and I was pretty confident I knew what he was about.  So, imagine my surprise when I picked up the first book in the Deathstalker series, read a few chapters...and discovered that it was actually good!

Douglas C. Kane, a civil rights attorney and Tolkien scholar better known to readers of TheOneRing.net as Voronwë_the_Faithful, posted an excellent primer and explanation of the real facts and allegations of the ongoing lawsuit between the Tolkien family and New Line. 

The article summarizes the nature of the parties, allegations, and desired results of the lawsuit, explaining legal terms for the lay reader as it goes.  Mr. Kane also makes his own educated predictions as the the likely outcome of the suit.  The verdict?  The case will probably be resolved in mediation and the assorted plaintiffs probably don't have a shot in hell of actually getting the upcoming Hobbit movies shut down.  Read the full text of the article here.

So there it is, fanboys and -girls.  We can all stop our precious hearts a-fluttering, now.