• I’m just finishing up The Hunger Games trilogy now (talk about a series of diminishing returns!), but it sounds like the movie version of the first book is really gearing up, with Chloe Moretz (Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass) as Katniss (brilliant!). If it ends up being Kristen Stewart, as some people want, I’m not only leaving the country, I’m quitting entertainment journalism.

• The Scream Awards, a “fake” award conjured up Spike TV for publicity purposes, are now open for voting. Here’s the full list of nominees.

• A podcast interview with Guy Gavriel Kay.

• Stephen Hawking says that God is not necessary to explain the universe. The thing is, I never saw God as a very satisfying explanation anyway: if God created the universe, who created God? (Just saying, “He’s always existed!” doesn’t cut it, and is basically just pushing the question off into the realm of the supernatural, like saying, “It was magic!”)

• The speculation begins: will Universal Studios be expanding the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? A tour guide supposedly says yes.

• SyFy is planning a four-hour Peter Pan prequel. I agree with Popwatch: all prequels suck.

• Case in point about all prequels sucking: Ridley Scott says that in his new Alien prequels, we learn that the Aliens were genetically engineered 30 years before the arrival of Ripley. Nooooooooo! I’ve waited my whole life to go to the “planet of the Aliens,” and I’ll go to any movie that gives me a taste of this — but this strikes me as an extremely stupid explanation for the existence of that supremely cool species.
  

• Emma Watson talks of Hermione’s upcoming kiss with Ron: “It’s not Twilight, you know,” Watson said. “We’re not selling sex. So, whenever there is any hint of that, everybody gets terribly excited.” Hilarious — and spot-on.

• How should authors respond to reviews? Some words of wisdom here, the most important being, “Authors should never ever respond to a bad review. Ever.”

• How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe seems like a clever concept for a Douglas Adams-type novel. But I confess, I found this (positive) review of the book to be so confusing that I’m still not sure what the book is about.

• The financing for Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has collapsed again. What the hell did this man do in a previous life? Was he a Nazi?

• The winners of the 2010 Hugo Awards have been announced!

When it comes to entertainment, we’re all looking for the Next Great Thing. But sometimes while sorting through all the great new fantasy books, we forget that we just might have missed the Last Great Thing, either because it was published before we were born, or it somehow just slipped through the cracks.

The upside to looking backward for our next fantasy reading material isn’t just that we might discover some great new book series; since they’re all long published, we also don’t have to wait three years for the next installment to come out!

Here are some of my favorites:

The Fionavar Tapestry (The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, and The Darkest Road) by Guy Gavriel Kay

Published between 1984 and 1987, I hadn’t read these books until one weekend in 2006. How did I ever miss them? It’s the first on this list, because it inspired the list.

If you’re a Narnia fan, The Fionavar Tapestry is the series you want to hunt down first. In it, five college students are transported to another realm, Fionavar, the place where myths and legends are born. Each character has his or her own “destiny,” and Kay’s ability to handle multiple viewpoints is impressive, especially at such an early point in his career.

The trials and tribulations they go through will more than hold your interest. And those who survive, will, by the end of the series, stand beside not just the heroes of Fionavar, but also the mythical archetypes of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot. It’s high fantasy at its best and if you’re a fan of Kay’s later work, it goes without saying you should check it out.

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (The Dragonbone Chair, The Stone of Farewell, and To Green Angel Tower) by Tad Williams

Before Tad Wiliams gave science fiction fans the Otherland series, he gave fantasy fans Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Published between 1988 and 1993, the series has all the things we crave: Young lad with a destiny greater than his humble beginnings? Check. Magic Swords? Check. Trolls? Williams calls them “Qunacs,” but check. Elves. They are called “Silva,” but check. A beautiful, headstrong and brave princess on the run, and an ancient evil that threatens the land? Check and check — although none of this is exactly what you expect it to be.

This is a trilogy that will remind you why you fell in love with fantasy in the first place — with one of the best, most involving climaxes I’ve ever read.

The Hammer and the Cross (The Hammer and the Cross, One King’s Way, and King and Emperor) by Harry Harrison

With this alternate history fantasy trilogy, science fiction legend Harry Harrison and co-author and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey (who writes under the pen name John Holm) ask some thought-provoking questions:

What if gods drew their power from humanity’s faith in them? What if the brutal Vikings had established a culture of learning under a just king? What if their priests established a less bloody church that encouraged debate and reason? What if they mastered the high tech weapons of their day, like ballistas and catapults, and formed an alliance with the southern half of Britain and ruled the northern half as brothers? What if the Roman Catholic Church established an elite order of knights and tried to crush them all?

I have a question of my own: What if you go your entire life and never read this terrific series?

The Farseer Trilogy (Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin’s Quest) by Robin Hobb

If you’ve read her recent Soldier’s Son trilogy, you know Robin Hobb is an author who deliberately defies fantasy conventions. Published between 1995 and 1997, The Farseer Trilogy is the first-hand account of Fitz-Chivalry Farseer, the bastard son of a disgraced, once-crown prince. Snatched from his mother’s arms as a child and given to his father’s stable master, he never knows his mother.

His childhood is rough, but eventually he’s noticed by both his grandfather, who teaches him the workings of the court during the day, and Chade the royal assassin, who teaches him his darker arts at night. Meanwhile, a war with an old enemy looms, and it goes without saying that Fitz factors into it prominently.

I’ll not spoil anymore of it, but I promise you there are no predictable plot lines or stock archetypes here. (Note: There are two other series set in this world, The Liveship Traders and The Tawny Man. All are interconnected yet also stand alone.)

The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny

Once sold as single titles in bookstores, these ten books were repackaged into collections — first as two five-volume narratives published in the 1970s and 80s, but now published as one. These ten books together are shorter than some trilogies, but say twice as much.

At one end of reality lies The Courts of Chaos, an ever-shifting realm where primal forces are unbound and malleable; at the other lies Amber, the first city, the shining light of order that spawned all other cities. Our world and all of the possible others in between are just shadows cast by the ever-changing disposition of these two most primal forces of creation.

Confusing? It is at first even to our narrator, who awakes with no memory, held in a private hospital in upstate New York. Once he’s escaped, he soon regains his memory, taking his place among his family, the immortal royal family of Amber, who for centuries thought him dead. Demigods have begun angling for the throne in their sire’s absence, but soon find themselves under a threat that could destroy all of creation and return it to the rule of chaos.

If you’re not familiar with the late Roger Zelazny’s work, you should be, and this is as good a place to start as any.

So there you are. Go pick up one of these great fantasy series and have yourself an all-weekend marathon read!

Interested in buying any of these books (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by buying them through this link.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

Q: Is it true there’s a sequel in the works to The Dark Crystal? — Wade, Portland OR

A: The Oracle can reveal that yes, there is such a movie in the works, but it’s still early in the process. Called The Power of the Dark Crystal, the project is based on the notes of the creators of the original 1982 film, including Jim Henson, who had wanted to do a sequel at the time, but found that the modest success of the first movie didn’t allow it. Now that The Dark Crystal’s reputation has grown, and the DVD release was a big hit, the sequel has been put into active development.

The movie, which reportedly tells the story of an evil girl made of fire and her efforts to steal a shard of the crystal in hopes of reigniting the dying sun, will be made using a combination of puppetry and computer animation.

Stay tuned! The Oracle is working on a full-length article on the would-be film.

Q: I heard a couple of years ago that a movie version of Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay was in the works. Kay is an amazing author and Lions is his best work, so I was very excited by this news. Is a movie still in the works or has it fallen into development hell like so many other movies? — Angela

A: The Oracle has good news and bad news. The good news is the film is slated to be directed by Legends of the Fall’s Edward Zwick. The bad news is it’s still far from a done deal.

“As with so many expensive film projects in Hollywood, especially today, it is taking time,” Guy Gavriel Kay tells the Oracle. “The good news is that Cathy Schulman of Mandalay Productions, who won the Oscar for Crash, and Ed Zwick and his partners at [his production company] Bedford Falls remain committed to the project and are still developing it.”

Interestingly, film versions of two other Kay projects are also in the works: The Last Light of the Sun, for which Kay himself is writing the screenplay, and Ysabell, his latest novel, which was just optioned last month.

“The Ysabell project is in the earliest development stages, preparation of a ‘treatment’ and sorting through of possible international co-production,” Kay says.

Q: I loved, Loved, LOVED Sierra’s Gabriel Knight computer fantasy games. Are there other more recent games out there this beautiful, complex, novelistic, and rich? And, more specifically, will Sierra ever make Gabriel Knight IV? — Tamilyn, Saint Paul, MN

A: The Oracle hates to be the bearer of more bad news, but it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever see more installments of the classic (and groundbreaking) 1990s adventure game series. For one thing, Sierra no longer exists (having been absorbed by Activism Blizzard), and the designer of the games, Jane Jensen, is no longer associated with the company and has no control over the rights. A year and a half ago, Jensen admitted in an interview that a sequel was eventually “possible,” if very unlikely, but that she wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

Recent games this rich and complex? Assassin’s Creed is pretty clever, even if the story is somewhat lacking, and Bioshock is as intelligent as anything you’ll play. Meanwhile, Jensen’s latest game, Gray Matter, is supposed to be released sometime this year (but the Oracle isn’t hold his breath).

Q: I was told by some people that Xena was making a comeback in a new movie or that Lucy Lawless was coming back to TV. Which is it? — Jeanie

A: As TheTorchOnline.com reported two weeks ago, a Xena movie is not going to happen. But Lucy Lawless is definitely coming back to television — or at least the pay cable Starz network — in Spartacus, a graphic Xena-esque show set in ancient Rome, due January 2010.