Just The Caffeine Talking

Albacon 2017, Featuring ME!

On Friday and Saturday, March 31-April 1 I'll be a guest at Albacon 2017, the long-running convention in New York's capital city. There's a really impressive lineup of people attending: Charles E. Gannon, Stephen Hickman, Lawrence M. Schoen, Ken Altabef, Ken Burnside, Debra Doyle, Jim MacDonald, Chuck Rothman, Ryk E. Spoor, Ian Randall Strock, and many more.

But enough about them. Let's talk about me. I'm going to be doing a bunch of literary-type panels, and running a Call of Cthulhu session. Here's my schedule:

Friday, March 31, 4:00 p.m.: Writing workshop Critiquing Panel. Five pro writers provide suggestions, criticism, and analysis of stories submitted by con participants.

6:00 p.m.: Lost SF Themes. Four SF writers talk about tropes and ideas which were once standard elements of science fiction but now are passé.

8:00 p.m.: Ice Cream Social. Come enjoy some sugary treats and watch respected SF authors spill chocolate sauce on their neckties.

9:00 p.m.: Art Show Reception. A more grown-up meet-and-mingle against a backdrop of works by fan and professional artists.

Saturday, April 1, 12:00 noon: We're Off to See L. Frank Baum. An appreciation of the Oz books and the growing canon of pastiches and adaptations in various media.

1:00 p.m.: Autographing. Bring anything and I'll sign it.

2:00 p.m.: The Drowned City. A Call of Cthulhu adventure for up to 6 players, set in the flooded streets and empty houses of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Characters will be provided.

6:00 p.m.: The Most Influential Games of All Time. Six writers and game designers discuss which games have had the biggest influence on the gaming hobby and pop culture in general.

 

If you can't make it to the convention, the next best thing to meeting me in person is to buy my ebook!

Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 8 (whew!)

Having finished the story several chapters earlier, Mr. Baum piles anticlimax on anticlimax by cutting away from the adventurers in the Nome Kingdom to the magical fairyland of Oz, where Ozma has been watching the whole thing on her Magic Picture.

I have to say Ozma is a little uncomfortably voyeuristic here. It's one thing for her to check in on Dorothy at a pre-arranged time every day — that's by Dorothy's own request and the little Kansas girl does have a habit of wandering into hair-raising adventures even when her friend the Lovely Girl Ruler isn't jerking her around by sorcery. But we have no hint that the Shaggy Man has any such arrangement in place.

Who else does Ozma watch on her Magic Picture? Perhaps a better question would be who doesn't Ozma watch? She could be watching you, right now.

I guess being an immortal and nearly-omnipotent Girl Ruler must get a little dull from time to time, so Ozma has to seek vicarious excitement through the Magic Picture. Since she will never grow old, and apparently will never have a family of her own, Ozma's life is kind of static and frozen. Only the Magic Picture can let her experience true joy and sorrow.

Anyway. Ozma has the Wizard (who has learned real magic and is no longer a humbug) magic the Oogaboolings back to Oogaboo. Then Ozma calls the Shaggy Man by means of a magic wireless telephone invented by the Wizard. That's right: they have cell service in Oz! This is a fantastically useful idea which I believe L. Frank Baum forgot about completely and never used in any of his Oz books again.

Shaggy refuses to come back to Oz because he has promised to stay with Betsy and Hank. Ozma dithers a bit but eventually decides to add Betsy to her collection of captive humans young friends in the palace. Seriously, Ozma is giving me the creeps in this book.

We wind up with an entirely unnecessary scene of the various talking animals bragging about how awesome their respective human pals are — Hank can talk now, and we even learn that Toto has been able to talk ever since his first visit to Oz but prefers not to.

And there Tik-Tok of Oz ends, and I for one am glad to be done with it. Overall, I have to say this is probably the weakest of Baum's Oz books. It's certainly the weakest one I've looked at in this series of blog posts. It has a lot of recycled material, rushes in spots where some exposition would be nice, is stuffed with padding in other spots, has a weird and unsatisfying structure, and — worst of all — the title character barely appears in it at all!

Only some of those flaws can be attributed to Mr. Baum's monomania about stage adaptations. That may account for some of the paucity of descriptions and the lack of any "big budget" magical wonders. But there's no excuse for throwing in a literal deus ex machina ending two-thirds of the way through the book, and then running out the clock, so to speak, with a lot of padding and fanservice.

There are some nice bits: Queen Ann's small-time kingdom and grandiose plan of world domination are a hoot, and it's a shame such a fun character gets tossed into a pit and ignored for most of the book. The mysterious land at the other end of the Hollow Tube (if Oz is in the Pacific between California and Australia — not far from Ponape — then the Grand Jinjin Tititi-Hoochoo's realm lies somewhere in the Sahara, which is certainly a good place to hide a magical fairyland) has some nice touches. I liked the Swiftian notion of a kingdom ruled by its only private citizen, although working that same joke just a few chapters after introducing the officer-heavy Army of Oogaboo does undercut the satire quite a bit.

Frankly (heh), I think Mr. Baum was just writing this one to meet a deadline. It feels tired. Other than the Roses at the beginning, there are no randomly hostile freaks or wacky wayside tribes. The only clever bits of fairy magic are recycled from other books. I hope the next book has more of the old magic. This one gets a gentleman's C.

 

For a pair of stories deserving a much higher grade, buy my new ebook!

Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 7

When last we left Our Heroes, the villainous Nome King had just transformed the Shaggy Man into a dove, transformed the Rose Princess Ozga into a fiddle (not that anyone really cares), chained up Quox the dragon, and was preparing to force Polychrome to marry him and stay in the underground kingdom forever! How will they escape this dreadful peril?

Pretty quickly, actually. Mr. Baum throws away all possible suspense and tension by just resolving all the problems by magic. Quox reveals that his gaudy rap-singer amulet was enchanted by Tititi-Hoochoo and has neutralized Ruggedo's magic powers. He pops it open and a half a dozen animated eggs emerge. Nomes dread eggs above all else, and the animated eggs drive all of Ruggedo's henchmen out of the throne room before chasing the sinister monarch out of the kingdom altogether. The dragon's amulet also reverses the enchantments wrought by Ruggedo, so that the Shaggy Man is no longer a dove and the Rose Princess Ozga is no longer a fiddle (not that it makes much difference).

Kaliko fetches Betsy and Hank from their hiding place, and then the dragon appoints him to be the new Nome King in place of Ruggedo. The villain is defeated, all is well, so the book must be over, right?

Nope. This odd mid-book climax is sort of a call-back to the original Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Most people don't remember (because they're thinking of the movie) but in that novel the Wicked Witch is defeated and the Wizard flies away about two-thirds of the way through the book, and then there's a lot of tedious filler before Dorothy actually gets back to Kansas.

It's hard to figure out why Mr. Baum does that in this story, since it's apparently recycled from the very neatly-plotted Ozma of Oz. One would think that a stage play would put an even greater premium on building to a suspenseful and satisfying climax in the last act.

Anyway, having defeated the villain, Our Heroes go searching for the Shaggy Man's brother and the Army of Oogaboo. Quox, his mission accomplished, slides off back to the other side of the world via the Hollow Tube.

Ex-King Ruggedo inadvertently leads them to the Shaggy Man's brother, because he sneaks back to fill his pockets with jewels in the Metal Forest, a vast underground treasury where SMB is also imprisoned. Polychrome spots him entering via a secret door (Difficulty Class 20, according to my D&D books, but Nomes probably have the same +2 racial bonus to find secret doors that Dwarves have).

Within the Metal Forest, Polychrome, Shaggy, Betsy et al come across the Officer Corps of Oogaboo in the process of roughing up ex-King Ruggedo. Queen Ann and the other Oogabooicans are all tattered because of their long crawl over sharp rocks in the tunnel, and are desperate to find a way out of the Metal Forest, even though it is full of the kind of plunder they went out into the world to acquire by conquest.

Ruggedo is sent off to exile again — this time with his pockets full of jewels, so at least his retirement will be well-financed — and our heroes push onward. They find the Shaggy Man's brother after exactly zero searching and difficulty, but now a new problem arises: the ex-Nome King Ruggedo enchanted him to make him horribly ugly, and thanks to Tititi-Hoochoo's punishment there is no way for that enchantment to be reversed! The poor Ugly One (as the Nomes dubbed him) has to wear a mask to hide his face.

We also get some more recycled material: remember the lunch-box and dinner-pail trees in Ozma of Oz? L. Frank Baum did. One corner of the Metal Forest is a grove of trees bearing Three-Course Nuts, which come in three sections. One part is soup, one part is the entree, and last is the dessert. It was a neat idea the first time, and it's still a neat idea. Baum's description of the trees in Ozma is much more detailed and interesting. That's a problem I keep noticing in this book: Baum is, frankly, phoning it in. Things are told rather than shown, problems are resolved with disappointing quickness, as if he's in a hurry to just get the thing over with.

They stumble across Ruggedo again and he reveals the secret of reversing the uglification enchantment: the kiss of a Mortal Maid who had once been a Fairy, or maybe one who still is a Fairy, or still a Mortal; he can't remember now that he has lost his powers. Fortunately, the team includes Betsy (Mortal Maid), Ozga (Mortal Maid and ex-Fairy), and Polychrome (full-time Fairy with salary and benefits). The third time is the charm, so to speak, so the Ugly One can resume his true identify as The Shaggy Man's Brother.

Good-hearted Kaliko agrees to let Ruggedo stay on as a common Nome, the Rainbow descends nearby and Polychrome rejoins her sisters (no doubt with a reprise of the Daughters of the Rainbow dance number from the first act).

Poor Betsy, Hank, Shaggy, His Brother, Tik-Tok, Ozga, ex-Pfc. Files, Queen Ann, and the Oogaboolitans bemoan the fact that they are stuck in the Nome Kingdom so far from home. Ann in particular is ready to give up conquering the world and wants to return to her little kingdom.

I'm not sure why this is the case. Her campaign has been almost uniformly victorious. Aside from having to crawl through a rocky tunnel and tear up her spiffy uniform, she hasn't really endured any hardship, and the raid on the Nome Kingdom brought her to the Metal Forest, where jewels and precious metals literally grow on trees. Compared to Ann, her predecessor Cecil Rhodes was a failure at imperialism.

Next Time: Wizardry Ex Machina!

 

If you like stories with stuff Mr. Baum never thought of, buy my new ebook!

Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 6

Queen Ann Soforth's invasion of the Nome Kingdom gets off to a rocky start. (Get it? Rocky? It's funny because the Nome King rules a kingdom of minerals. That's kind of like rocks, see? Laugh, damn you!)

The Nome King tries to capture the Army of Oogaboo in a pit trap (Challenge Rating 1, according to my D&D books); Tik-Tok avoids it but his superior officers and Queen Ann herself fail their dice rolls and fall in. Tik-Tok marches straight on into the Nome King's throne room and informs Ruggedo that he has been conquered. Ruggedo declines, and there's a bit of a stand-off at gunpoint, but the Tarantino moment ends quickly when Betsy and Hank wander in.

The Nome King threatens Betsy, and she almost approaches Dorothy-esque levels of insouciance. The Nome King's steward Kaliko disables Tik-Tok, but a swift kick from Hank the Mule prevents General Guph from capturing Betsy. In the confusion, Kaliko, who is a decent enough chap even though he works for a megalomaniacal tyrant, leads Betsy to a small cavern refuge and supplies her with mushrooms and mineral bread with "petroleum butter."

Historical Digression: Petroleum butter was a reference Baum's audience would have recognized. Back in 1848 the inventor and entrepreneur Samuel Kier began marketing two patent medicines: Kier's Rock Oil, and Kier's Petroleum Butter. Patients were supposed to drink the Rock Oil, but the Butter was applied topically. Now since the main ingredient of Kier's Rock Oil was actual petroleum refined from a salt water well Kier owned in Pennsylvania, its medical benefits were limited to violent purging from both ends. Unsurprisingly, Kier's medical products were money-losers, so he switched to refining kerosene from his oil well and selling it as lamp fuel. With the price of whale oil surging at the time, Kier's kerosene was a hit, and the American oil business was born. Petroleum butter apparently lingered on as a skin protectant and treatment for burns, and we know it now as petroleum jelly. 

Anyway. Betsy stays hidden in her cosy cavern, but Queen Ann is more resourceful. She and her officers can't climb out of the pit, but she finds a side-passage and boldly leads her command structure into it. It's a literal Dungeon Crawl!

The Shaggy Man, waiting outside with Polychrome, Ex-Pfc. Files, and Ozga the Rose Princess, happens to mention that he intends to use the Love Magnet to overcome Ruggedo if Tik-Tok fails to conquer him. But the Shaggy Man has not reckoned with the Surveillance State — in the person of Ruggedo's henchman the Long-Eared Hearer. The Hearer hears about the Magnet and informs Ruggedo, who prepares a trap.

Shaggy gets tired of waiting, goes inside — and walks right into the Nome King's trap. He gets snared in ropes so that he can't reach the Love Magnet and wave it around to make Ruggedo love him. (This is a slight change from Baum's earlier depictions of the Shaggy Man's magic item: in past volumes just having it on him made people love him. Now he has to show it.) For some reason Files and Ozga follow him and also get captured by Nomes.

Polychrome, smart Cloud Fairy girl that she is, tries to wake the dragon, but Quox is too sleepy, and his hide is too invulnerable. So she goes to have a look at Ruggedo's throne room herself. The lovely Rainbow's Daughter doesn't need a magic magnet to make Ruggedo fall in love with her. He offers to let her captive friends go if she'll agree to stay and be his queen.

Ruggedo the Nome King is in good company here: another well-known underground monarch, Hades, also fell in love with a divine maiden of the upper world and used all his magic powers to capture her. In the case of Hades it was Persephone, and he was only able to keep her in his underground realm by trickery for half the year. (Presumably during her six months of absence the gloomy king of the shades of the dead played a lot of videogames and ordered takeout a lot.)

For a good-hearted fairy maiden, Polychrome is actually kind of hard-nosed: she won't stay in the underground kingdom even to save her friends — and her fairy powers make it quite impossible for Ruggedo's Nomes to capture her. So he decides to up the ante, and proposes to torture his other captives if Polychrome refuses to stay. But Ann et al have gotten out of the pit and cannot be found, and Betsy and Hank are safely hidden from the Nome King's Gestapo.

He does manage to transform the Shaggy Man into a dove, and with Ex-Pfc. Files and Ozga at his mercy, Polychrome flees again to fetch the dragon. This time she manages to wake him, and Quox storms into the Nome King's cavern. But once again Ruggedo, like all good supervillains, has a trap prepared, and the dragon is wrapped in heavy chains held by a thousand Nomes.

Evil has triumphed! Poor Ozga has been turned into a fiddle and Files into a bow! Can nothing stop the Nome King's reign of terror? Don't miss our next thrilling episode!

For two short stories involving captured creatures and daring escapes, buy my new ebook!

Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 5

Betsy Bobbin et al appear before Tititi-Hoochoo the next morning to hear his decision. Fortunately for them, the Jinjin is a Reasonable Authority Figure and thus is willing to overlook their involuntary passage through the forbidden Hollow Tube. (Why an all-powerful Jinjin never thought of simply closing the Tube, or piling up some logs and old mattresses to block the passage, is never explained.)

Tititi-Hoochoo declares that Ruggedo the Nome King is ultimately responsible and therefore must be punished. The punishment is pretty severe: Tititi-Hoochoo is going to send the unwilling visitors back through the Tube, accompanied by an Instrument of Vengeance, who will take away the Nome King's magic powers and drive him out of his underground kingdom to wander the surface of the earth, homeless and powerless.

That's a pretty severe punishment for dropping some trespassers into a tube.

Queen Ann Soforth is a little unhappy about being sent home without getting the chance to conquer Tititi-Hoochoo's kingdom, but is prudent enough not to force the issue.

The Instrument of Vengeance Tititi-Hoochoo has chosen is Quox, a young dragon who has gotten in trouble for being disrespectful to his ancestor, the Original Dragon who is venerated by everyone in the land beyond the Tube. Despite being a young dragon, Quox is already impressively large — large enough to carry all the travellers back through the tube in seats strapped to his back. He also, amusingly, carries an electric light on the end of his tail.

I suspect Mr. Baum imagined that Quox would be played by a piece of stage furniture — some kind of big rolling platform with a puppet head at the front. As we shall see, the Instrument of Vengeance spends a lot of time off-stage and leaves most of the avenging to his passengers.

Geek Note: according to my indispensable Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, a Young dragon could be a Large-sized creature, about 16 feet long from nose to the base of his tail. That's kind of small for a 24-seater. If, on the other hand, we assume Quox is a Young Adult dragon (and he is 3,056 years old) then he could be a comfortable 32 feet long, giving the travelers at least as much leg room as Southwest Airlines. (The only problem with the Young Adult dragon hypothesis is that Tik-Tok of Oz is not a Young Adult Novel. We know this because there's no pointless dystopian elements or angsty teen sex.)

With everyone aboard, Quox slides back through the Tube. But the Nome King once again has advance notice, courtesy of his servant The Long-Eared Hearer, whose abilities seem pretty obvious to the reader. Ruggedo also has a Magic Spyglass, which allows his chamberlain Kaliko to see that a Young Adult dragon is coming.

But since they can neither see nor hear any eggs, the Nome King is not afraid. All Nomes are apparently fireproof, so as long as they can chain up Quox he'll be harmless. He orders General Guph (who sadly doesn't get any spotlight time in this book) to surround the Tube entrance and wait in ambush for the dragon.

Along the way the Shaggy Man explains to Betsy how they can pass through the center of the Earth, and his explanation is entirely accurate. I really do think Mr. Baum must have consulted with a physicist about the Tube because of what the Shaggy Man says next:

"All the magic isn't in fairyland," he said gravely. "There's lots of magic in all Nature, and you may see it as well in the United States, where you and I once lived, as you can here."

We need to talk about the Shaggy Man. He first appears in The Road to Oz, stealing apples from the tree in Dorothy's front yard and trying to avoid the town of Butterfield, Kansas, and now he confirms that he is indeed a U.S. citizen. So why doesn't he have a name? Most people in the U.S. have names. None of us are known simply by adjectives. I'm James L. Cambias, not The Somewhat Above Average Height Balding Man. It would be hell to get all that onto my checks.

He has a brother, whose legal name is apparently The Shaggy Man's Brother, which is pretty hard, and shows some real lack of imagination (or too much) on the part of their parents.

There is one possibility I'd like to raise: that perhaps The Shaggy Man and His Brother actually have the surname Rogers. I suggest this because "Norville Rogers" is the given name of another famous Shaggy Man — well, Shaggy Teen, anyway — who is equally given to wandering about with strange companions and talking animals, and running afoul of magical enemies.

Back to our story. The Nome ambush fails because Quox shoots out of the Tube with such speed that he lands on a mountainside high above them. The Nomes launch a volley of spears which have no effect on the Dragon's impenetrable scales (evidently the Nomes don't have a helpful thrush to point out vulnerable spots). When that fails, Queen Ann sends her Army — or at least Tik-Tok, the only actual combatant — after them and the Nomes retreat underground.

Emboldened by this, Ann decides to invade the Nome Kingdom without Quox's help, and tells him he can go back to Tititi-Hoochoo right away, for the Nomes are as good as conquered already. Quox settles down for a nap instead, just in case he's needed after all.

Next time: pitfalls!

 

For two stories with large reptilian creatures in them, buy my new ebook!