Review

[sleigh]

Ed Park of the LA TIMES has just reviewed the anthology "GAMER FANTASTIC", edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes. Happily, he also spends a fair amount of time on my story in the anthology, "The Gods of Every Other Wednesday Night" and seems to like it:

S.L. Farrell's "The Gods of Every Other Wednesday Night" proposes that the actions described in an RPG campaign might be an evening's entertainment for the players -- but wreak utter chaos for the inhabitants of the fantasy world in which the actions transpire. Orcs and dwarfs, who rub along OK in that world, are suddenly flung against each other in senseless, murderous combat once the gods -- the unseen gamers -- start rolling their dice.

Farrell's first-person voice is highly inflected with the second person, the way a DM (dungeon master, the one responsible for running the game) typically describes a situation to a player: "Oh, God, you think. More 'character development.' Get on with it already. You skip ahead a page." Farrell freely critiques his story as it unfurls, and somehow by downplaying it, he makes the scenario fresh and surprising.

Cool! Short fiction so rarely gets reviewed, and it's nice to get an occasional shout-out.

Comments

[piratejenny.livejournal.com]

Go you! It was one of my fave stories in the anthology.