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The Dead City
An over-the-top, humorous short story representing the prologue for a "future" book (written as an April Fool's Joke) published on Tor.com. The title of the series and book was created from an amalgamation of the most commonly used words in fantasy and science fiction novels over the previous decade.
11 pages, ebook
First published April 1, 2011
51 people are currently reading
572 people want to read
About the author
John Scalzi
185 books28.4k followersJohn Scalzi, having declared his absolute boredom with biographies, disappeared in a puff of glitter and lilac scent.
(If you want to contact John, using the mail function here is a really bad way to do it. Go to his site and use the contact information you find there.)
(If you want to contact John, using the mail function here is a really bad way to do it. Go to his site and use the contact information you find there.)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 146 reviews
September 3, 2022
“It is said that earthquakes are what happen when two night dragons love each other very much.”
Do you know what the problem with this Hugo-nominated and released on April Fools Day pseudo-prologue to the non-existent trope-filled fantasy trilogy by John Scalzi is?
The problem is that I really really *really* want to read that trilogy now.
And it doesn’t exist.
But maybe if I’m really really good this year, I can ask Santa for a gift?
————
“Night had come to the city of Skalandarharia, the sort of night with such a quality of black to it that it was as if black coal had been wrapped in blackest velvet, bathed in the purple-black ink of the demon squid Drindel and flung down a black well that descended toward the deepest, blackest crevasses of Drindelthengen, the netherworld ruled by Drindel, in which the sinful were punished, the black of which was so legendarily black that when the dreaded Drindelthengenflagen, the ravenous blind black badger trolls of Drindelthengen, would feast upon the uselessly dilated eyes of damned, the abandoned would cry out in joy as the Drindelthengenflagenmorden, the feared Black Spoons of the Drindelthengenflagen, pressed against their optic nerves, giving them one last sensation of light before the most absolute blackness fell upon them, made yet even blacker by the injury sustained from a falling lump of ink-bathed, velvet-wrapped coal.
With the night came a storm, the likes of which the eldest among the Skalandarharians would proclaim they had seen only once before, although none of them could agree which on which one time that was; some said it was like the fabled Scouring of Skalandarharia, in which the needle-sharp ice-rain flayed the skin from the unjust of the city, provided they were outside at the time, while sparing the just who had stayed indoors; others said it was very similar to the unforgettable Pounding of Skalandarharia, in which hailstones the size of melons destroyed the city’s melon harvest; still others compared it to the oft-commented-upon Moistening of Skalandarharia, in which the persistent humidity made everyone unbearably sticky for several weeks; at which point they were informed that this storm was really nothing like that at all, to which they replied perhaps not, but you had to admit that was a pretty damn miserable time.
Which is to say: It was a dark and stormy night.”
————
Read it here: https://www.tor.com/2011/04/01/the-sh...
July 23, 2019
Opening night of Star Trek: The Musical in the Midland City, Ohio Little Theater That Could. The leading man, John Scalzi, in helmet like coiffure and golden uniform shirt confers with his acting coach, Bill Shatner.
John: I just don’t know if I can do it, Bill … I .. just … don’t … know.
Bill: Damn it Man! There are people out there, paying customers! And what about your fellow cast members? What about … them?
John: I know, Bill, you’re right but … there’s a lot of people out there, and I am really more of a writer, don’t even know how I got talked into this. I just don’t know what to do.
Bill [standing up, slapping John and shaking him by the shoulders]: YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN! [in a falsetto, mockingly crying voice] What am I going to? What am I going to do?
John: What the hell? Don’t slap me! OK, OK, you’re right, but I am nervous, weren’t you ever nervous?
Bill: Me? No, never, but that’s me, sure I’ve seen others who are nervous, and I told them, you’ve got to dig deep, find what gives you strength.
John: Ok, well, that helps, but, like what?
Bill: It’s like your short story The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City. Prologue. That was BRILLIANT!! You took all of the best of recent stories and melded them together to make a brilliantly brilliant story .. it was … compelling.
John: [staring at Bill] Bill, you do know that was a satire, right?
Bill: A satire? What the hell does a goat man have to do with this? You’re about to go on STAGE?
John: [holding back a laugh] Bill, no … not a satyr, a satire. The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City. Prologue was an April Fool’s joke, I was having fun with the genre, melding all the most trite elements of recent science fiction and fantasy and just had fun with it.
pause
Bill: EXACTLY! You picked up on exactly what I was getting to you, get out there and have fun with it! Now get out there! The show must … go on.
John: I just don’t know if I can do it, Bill … I .. just … don’t … know.
Bill: Damn it Man! There are people out there, paying customers! And what about your fellow cast members? What about … them?
John: I know, Bill, you’re right but … there’s a lot of people out there, and I am really more of a writer, don’t even know how I got talked into this. I just don’t know what to do.
Bill [standing up, slapping John and shaking him by the shoulders]: YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN! [in a falsetto, mockingly crying voice] What am I going to? What am I going to do?
John: What the hell? Don’t slap me! OK, OK, you’re right, but I am nervous, weren’t you ever nervous?
Bill: Me? No, never, but that’s me, sure I’ve seen others who are nervous, and I told them, you’ve got to dig deep, find what gives you strength.
John: Ok, well, that helps, but, like what?
Bill: It’s like your short story The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City. Prologue. That was BRILLIANT!! You took all of the best of recent stories and melded them together to make a brilliantly brilliant story .. it was … compelling.
John: [staring at Bill] Bill, you do know that was a satire, right?
Bill: A satire? What the hell does a goat man have to do with this? You’re about to go on STAGE?
John: [holding back a laugh] Bill, no … not a satyr, a satire. The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City. Prologue was an April Fool’s joke, I was having fun with the genre, melding all the most trite elements of recent science fiction and fantasy and just had fun with it.
pause
Bill: EXACTLY! You picked up on exactly what I was getting to you, get out there and have fun with it! Now get out there! The show must … go on.
January 16, 2021
Some years before a forward-thinking alchemist named Yehd Aisohn had come to Imo Morde, the newly-advanced Imperial Wizard, with an audacious plan to light Smaelkaven through the use of refined lodestones, wrapped in the finest copper wire, spun inside a metal cage, attached by other wires to a cunning sphere of glass with a gossamer filament inside, which would glow, bathing a room in soft, warm, golden light.
Morde had the wires attached to the alchemist to see if he would glow as well.
He did not.
this silly little fantasy-parody was exactly the tor short i needed today. in order to meet my quota of reading one-tor-shortie-a-week, i've been trying to squeeze them into the wee hours before my saturday workday begins, and i've been finding that SOMETIMES, 6 am in a dark apartment isn't the ideal time/place for some of their heavier themes like bleak ecology or social injustices. this hugo-nominated "excerpt," written years ago as an april fool's day goof, made for a much gentler on-ramp into my day. even though i knew, going into it, that it was a satire of popular genre tropes, i still winced at its turgid opening paragraph, fearing it was all going to be "that" kind of humor, but after scalzi makes his intentions clear about what kind of a ride you're in for, he backs off the bludgeoning and delivers a pretty fun story while keeping the giddy genre-jabs coming. it was a welcome change from the "this is our future, and it is terrible" mood some of the shorts have been leaving me to deal with for the rest of my day.
as a result, today should be GRAND!
read it for yourself here:
https://www.tor.com/2011/04/01/the-sh...
come to my blog!
October 4, 2019
4.5 stars. Utterly hilarious fantasy parody. Very short and well worth the time!
November 15, 2016
3.5 stars. Ridiculousness! A silly little parody of epic fantasy, with overblown descriptions, silly names and dire plotting. And a humourous analysis of fantasy creatures, in particular, dragons.
September 27, 2025
Audiobook (21 minutes) narrated by James MacKenizie
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
The narration and audio is flawless.
This is an over the top intro/idea written as an April Fools joke meant to be turned into a book at some point.
I generally do enjoy Scalzi's humor, but perhaps the brevity of it didn't give me a chance to get into it? It was pretty meh.
If you do enjoy the author, however, it's a short, short story, so why not?
Happy reading!
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
The narration and audio is flawless.
This is an over the top intro/idea written as an April Fools joke meant to be turned into a book at some point.
I generally do enjoy Scalzi's humor, but perhaps the brevity of it didn't give me a chance to get into it? It was pretty meh.
If you do enjoy the author, however, it's a short, short story, so why not?
Happy reading!
May 14, 2017
hehehehehe maybe I should give my students as a tongue twister "Drindelthengenflagen, the ravenous blind black badger trolls of Drindelthengen" - Drindelthengenflagen has to be the most fun word to say... ever. And what is that beast that Douglas Adams talks about in The Hitchihiker's Guide that this reminds me of? Ah! The Ravenous Bug Blatter Beast of Trall (sp?)!
on Tor's website here: http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/04/th...
and this video is a great interpretation: http://youtu.be/72ZFIDcbNZ8
Though it's unclear if he ever realized it was an April Fools joke, he got the general spoof thing by the end.
on Tor's website here: http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/04/th...
and this video is a great interpretation: http://youtu.be/72ZFIDcbNZ8
Though it's unclear if he ever realized it was an April Fools joke, he got the general spoof thing by the end.
November 18, 2012
Dammit! Now I want to read the rest - curse you Scalzi!
January 1, 2024
Although I own a few novels by this author, I have not yet read anything by him. This apparently was written as an April Fool's Joke by the king of SFF satire, and bonus, was a finalist for the 2012 Hugo award for best short story.
And it was enjoyable! Satire is a bit of hit or miss for me, but there was definitely some fun poking at the various high fantasy tropes that abound that I enjoyed. I was a little nervous after reading the first paragraph (which was almost unreadable) but it quickly turned the tables and became a fun little romp in a fantastical world. I rounded up for the ending which left a mysterious aftertaste and left me wanting more. It was fun and it was short.
Read it for FREE here:
https://www.tor.com/2011/04/01/the-sh...
And it was enjoyable! Satire is a bit of hit or miss for me, but there was definitely some fun poking at the various high fantasy tropes that abound that I enjoyed. I was a little nervous after reading the first paragraph (which was almost unreadable) but it quickly turned the tables and became a fun little romp in a fantastical world. I rounded up for the ending which left a mysterious aftertaste and left me wanting more. It was fun and it was short.
Read it for FREE here:
https://www.tor.com/2011/04/01/the-sh...
December 14, 2025
A sweeping epic. A triumph of the genre. The appropriate number of nonsense names composed almost entirely of consonant pairs not found in the English language.
May 28, 2012
A funny comic story that made me desire for a full lenght novel. This book is a Satire of fantasy genre. The author really knows how to write and this short story just prooves that. You can read it online. Just search for the title in google.
For what I see in the reviews many a people would like to see a trilogy.
For what I see in the reviews many a people would like to see a trilogy.
September 2, 2015
This is hilarious. My favorite quote:
"I may be a guard and a soldier, but I am not an uneducated man. I once spent three entire months in school."
I may be the only one, but I would buy this trilogy.
"I may be a guard and a soldier, but I am not an uneducated man. I once spent three entire months in school."
I may be the only one, but I would buy this trilogy.
Read
June 22, 2012Seriously, April Fool's joke aside, I would TOTALLY read this if he expanded it into an actual book/series. Sometimes I think fantasy novels take themselves too seriously, and this is just the thing to fix that.
June 12, 2014
I wish this was a full book. The humor was fantastic, especially since I listened to it in between books of the Game of Thrones series, which I also like, but have VERY little humor in them.
August 25, 2021
Chương mở đầu của "The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City" (hay "Cuộc chiến bóng tối của Rồng Đêm, Tập một: Thành phố chết") được ra mắt trước vào 1/4. Tác phẩm đầy đủ sẽ chính thức phát hành vào 30/2.
Một truyện ngắn được viết ra với mục đích thuần túy là chọc cười độc giả. Bắt đầu từ cái bìa phèn ói mà sau khi đọc xong truyện, mình đã trở ngược lên để ngắm kĩ lại và phì cười, cho đến những nhân vật mà mình không rõ là khôn hay là ngốc, hay là cả hai cùng một lúc. Khuyến khích mọi người thả lỏng người, thư thái ngồi đọc và cười sằng sặc (Lưu ý là bạn đừng cất não đi vội, đây không phải kiểu truyện cười mất não đâu :))
"Đây là vài truyền thuyết về lũ rồng đêm mà bạn chưa hề nghe qua:
Rằng nếu bạn tắm máu rồng đêm, bạn sẽ bất khả chiến bại trong trò tung thùng gỗ.
Rằng động đất xảy ra khi hai con rồng đêm yêu nhau kịch liệt.
Rằng cách duy nhất để giết được một con rồng đêm là làm nó chán đến chết."
Một truyện ngắn được viết ra với mục đích thuần túy là chọc cười độc giả. Bắt đầu từ cái bìa phèn ói mà sau khi đọc xong truyện, mình đã trở ngược lên để ngắm kĩ lại và phì cười, cho đến những nhân vật mà mình không rõ là khôn hay là ngốc, hay là cả hai cùng một lúc. Khuyến khích mọi người thả lỏng người, thư thái ngồi đọc và cười sằng sặc (Lưu ý là bạn đừng cất não đi vội, đây không phải kiểu truyện cười mất não đâu :))
"Đây là vài truyền thuyết về lũ rồng đêm mà bạn chưa hề nghe qua:
Rằng nếu bạn tắm máu rồng đêm, bạn sẽ bất khả chiến bại trong trò tung thùng gỗ.
Rằng động đất xảy ra khi hai con rồng đêm yêu nhau kịch liệt.
Rằng cách duy nhất để giết được một con rồng đêm là làm nó chán đến chết."
April 10, 2022
3.5 stars
August 4, 2012
Hands down the funniest fantasy spoof I have ever read. It's beautifully done and I wasn't sure until halfway through a truely epic first sentence that this was a spoof at all. The spoons pretty much settled that, though.
I desperately wanted this to be a real series but alas, it was only an April Fool's joke. It's up for a Hugo and it deserves it as much as any story there. It's clearly the work of someone who loves the genre but sees it's shortcomings and it has a lot to say on that topic.
It's short. Go read it. Or go watch this and THEN go read it. http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/06/11...
I desperately wanted this to be a real series but alas, it was only an April Fool's joke. It's up for a Hugo and it deserves it as much as any story there. It's clearly the work of someone who loves the genre but sees it's shortcomings and it has a lot to say on that topic.
It's short. Go read it. Or go watch this and THEN go read it. http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/06/11...
January 29, 2015
this is amazing
the best april's fool joke ever
somebody must stop mr. scalzi before it's too late
(also, i'd like to call it "what not to do when writing fantasy")
the best april's fool joke ever
somebody must stop mr. scalzi before it's too late
(also, i'd like to call it "what not to do when writing fantasy")
April 24, 2015
Hilarious! I hope he continues the story and extends it into a full length book.
January 25, 2018
Very entertaining. My only regret is that there is no Book Two.
July 3, 2020
Yes, it was written as an April Fool's joke way back when by John Scalzi and it is hilarious.
October 30, 2022
A wonderful spoof of high drama fantasy novels.
Apparently written as an April Fools' joke by John Scalzi as a prologue to a "new novel", this gem of a short story bounds into a fantasy landscape head first and then begins to question the rules of the new world, comparing and contrasting them with that of the real world.
Apparently written as an April Fools' joke by John Scalzi as a prologue to a "new novel", this gem of a short story bounds into a fantasy landscape head first and then begins to question the rules of the new world, comparing and contrasting them with that of the real world.
March 29, 2021
A good-natured Monty Pythonish story poking fun at the absurdities of the fantasy genre. Recommended if you want some comedy and can stand some teasing. Just go in expecting more of a skit than a story.
February 20, 2024
Dumb funny
April 26, 2024
I get that this was written as an April Fool’s joke and purely meant as satire of the fantasy genre but…this was hilarious and I seriously wish there was a follow up.
June 25, 2024
This was kind of unhinged. I’m curious why he didn’t write more.
July 28, 2021
You know, I really do wish that this could have been the start of a series. It's perfect and I would love to see how far John could pull the farce behind him while threading the actual storyline.
July 22, 2014
I got sucked into this book by reading the opening Kindle excerpt - a lengthy description of how incredibly dark and black and un-see-throughable the night was the dark evening the Night Dragons attacked. An entire paragraph lampooning the over-the-top style of the Dungeons and Dragons books, overly serious, and ridiculous as a result, and I was hooked.
This isn't really much more than a long blog post, so my review will be brief. There are incredible shades of Terry Pratchett hidden in this short entry, and I feel as though John Scalzi could easily pour himself into a humorous fantasy novel based on the introduction we've seen here. He definitely has the comedy chops - see contained within the Emperor's magician experimenting on the correlation between blood loss and battle-effectiveness using leeches and a game of chess.
It's straight out of Discworld, really, although a little bit more mean spirited, which turns out to be a good thing. I doubt he'll continue as this was an April Fool's joke, but I'd read more from this Shadow War of the Night Dragons series. Without a doubt.
If you like Discworld and want something that reads fast and plays funny, this is right up your alley.
A small aside: the hook at the end was actually good enough to make me want to read more. That's good writing.
This isn't really much more than a long blog post, so my review will be brief. There are incredible shades of Terry Pratchett hidden in this short entry, and I feel as though John Scalzi could easily pour himself into a humorous fantasy novel based on the introduction we've seen here. He definitely has the comedy chops - see contained within the Emperor's magician experimenting on the correlation between blood loss and battle-effectiveness using leeches and a game of chess.
It's straight out of Discworld, really, although a little bit more mean spirited, which turns out to be a good thing. I doubt he'll continue as this was an April Fool's joke, but I'd read more from this Shadow War of the Night Dragons series. Without a doubt.
If you like Discworld and want something that reads fast and plays funny, this is right up your alley.
A small aside: the hook at the end was actually good enough to make me want to read more. That's good writing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 146 reviews