history inspires the best fantasies
There’s an idea floating around that roads, aqueducts, and other large-scale civil engineering projects required Roman-era engineering. This is a false narrative. A fantasy world doesn’t need iron-age technology to...
Henry Olsen wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post about removing monuments in which he claimed: Knocking down or defacing statues of national founders or heroes not only displays ignorance...
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the role of ancient priests and how temples helped early civilizations thrive. As a culture, we do a pretty poor job of looking beyond the...
We in the West seem to spend a lot of time tracing our cultures back to the maritime empires — thalassocracies — like the Greeks and the Vikings, but we spend very little time talking about the civilization that inspired Greece to consolidate its military power.
When I attended Balticon 50 over Memorial Day Weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing an amazing panel that looked at created religions in science fiction and fantasy. I arrived...
It was the Black Company series by Glen Cook that made me realize how often history becomes myth, exaggerated beyond meaningful belief. The Books of Glittering Stone detail a religion...
As I research background for my novel, I’ve noticed that many of the stories from which we’ve gained our understanding of ancient cultures have fundamental similarities. It’s common to find...
I believe that the history of a fictional world should be compelling in its own right. Our history is frequently made into stories, be they wildly exaggerated ancient epics like...
