Locus Online, quoiting SF Scope, is reporting tonight that Realms of Fantasy has been sold to Damnation Books, which will bring out the December issue in print as well as electronic form.  Any editorial policy or staff changes have yet to be announced, but the magazine is open for submissions effective immediately.  Let’s hope they up the sword and sorcery content.  One way to do that is to send them some.

When I began this blog, I intended it to be more than just a collection of reviews of books I’d read and films I’d seen.  It was my intention to practice my essay writing by inflicting it on whoever happened to be reading my words.  Until this post, that really hasn’t happened.  Dayjobbery, family commitments, parttimesecondjobbery, and my own fiction writing have prevented that from happening.  (Not nearly enough of my own fiction writing, and far too much of the other.)  I considered weighing in on the brouhaha surrounding Elizabeth Moon being uninvited as Guest of Honor at Wiscon, but haven’t had the time to craft a well thought out essay.  Which is not to say I won’t sometime soon.  That would be something I would want to spend some time on, and time is in short supply at the moment.

Then Friday I read a couple of postings that I felt I had to respond to, which is not the same as taking issue with, something I would have done regarding Elizabeth Moon’s treatment.  The first posting appeared on Black Gate, and the second on the Cyclopeatron blog.  In order to do that, we need to look at the subject of those posts.

Most people who have more than a passing interest in fantasy as a genre of fiction, especially short fiction, have probably heard by now the tragic news that the magazine Realms of Fantasy has ceased publication for the second and possibly final time.  The magazine was purchased last year by Warren Lapine after the original publisher, Sovereign Media, pulled the plug.  Sovereign, you may remember, was also the publisher of Science Fiction Age from 1994 until about 2002, when they decided to shut it down to publish a professional wrestling magazine.  It wasn’t that SF Age wasn’t making a profit, but that the company felt it could make a better profit if resources were diverted in that direction.  From a business perspective that made sense, but I didn’t (and still don’t) have to like it.  Science Fiction Age was one of the best, if not the best, new magazine devoted exclusively to science fiction in the last couple of decades.

Realms managed to hang on with Sovereign Media until last year, when it got the axe.  Enter Warren Lapine of Tir Na Nog Press, who valiantly tried to continue it.  At the time it started it was the only magazine I’m aware of devoted entirely to fantasy that had a wide circulation with distribution in most of the major chains.  Realms did its best to cover a wide range of fantasy topics, from movies and television to art and folklore.  In this endeavor it should be applauded.  At least to a point.  I felt there were too many covers with photos of Harry Potter and other media stars.  Again, from a business perspective that perhaps makes sense.

But ultimately, the fiction content was why people read it.  The magazine was edited by Shawna McCarthy for its entire run.  Ms. McCarthy started her career editing Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine from 1983-1985 before moving on the a couple of publishing houses.  She eventually ended up running her own literary agency, in addition to editing the magazine.  (Can someone please explain to me how being a literary agent and a fiction editor at a major genre-magazine does not constitute a potential conflict of interest?)

The bloggers essentially took the stand that one of the main reasons RoF died was because there is too much short fiction on the market.  Now we’ve been hearing for years about the death of the short fiction magazines, the large formats as well as the digests.  Amazing Stories has died more than once, only to be resurrected, although the most recent death (2005) seems like it might be permanent at this point.  Circulation of all the print fiction outlets has fallen steadily for years, something anyone who reads the Annual Review issue of Locus or the summations in Gardner Dozois’ annual The Year’s Best Science Fiction is painfully aware of.  The one bright light is that with the advent of Kindle and Nook and other ebook readers offering subscriptions at a lower rate than print subscriptions, circulation may be going up again.  Time will tell.

Anyway, there are a number of culprits who are routinely blamed for short fiction markets dying:  the internet, media tie-in novels, falling literacy rates, competition from video games, etc.  The argument that we lost a major magazine devotedly solely to fantasy because there is too much fantasy takes a little getting used to.  The authors of the above posts have good, well-reasoned arguments, which go as follows.  There’s too much competition in the form of new and especially used books: anthologies, single author collections, and novels.  And furthermore, when a reader picks up a collection of stories by Robert E. Howard (and you should), or Fritz Leiber (what are you waiting for?) or Poul Anderson (you mean you haven’t read him yet?) or whomever, the reader has a pretty good idea what she or he is in for.  Whereas with a magazine, it’s a crap shoot.  Their argument basically goes that, with a few exceptions in the case of an established author, you don’t know what type of story to expect from most writers in a magazine because the author has yet to establish a strong track record, and furthermore isn’t likely to be as good as the established names.

On the other hand, many of the comments posted in response to the two blogs above took the position that, rather than too much fantasy, there isn’t enough.  At least of the right kind.  The right kind being action-adventure oriented.  Several people went so far to say that RoF failed because it printed stuff people weren’t willing to read.  Directly or indirectly, some of the respondents blamed the editorial decisions behind the content.

I’m not sure that either of these arguments doesn’t oversimplify things (and the bloggers did acknowledge other factors may have played a role), but if I had to choose a position, I’m inclined to lean towards the latter.  I quit reading Asimov’s back in the 80s for a couple of years primarily because of the type of story Shawna McCarthy was publishing and didn’t resume reading the magazine until Gardner Dozois took over.  I was not really impressed with much of what I read in RoF either, at least as far as the fiction went.  I can’t recall the details of a single story I read over the years.  The art feature was by far the best thing of its kind I’d seen, as was the Folkroots column.  I almost dropped RoF in the early 00s after McCarthy published a few editorials essentially bitching about why she and the magazine hadn’t gotten any nominations for one of the major awards, the Hugo if memory serves, that she felt were deserved.  I found the editorials to be in poor taste.  However, out of a sense of loyalty to the field, and because at the time I was enjoying at least some of the stories, I kept buying and reading it as I could find the time.  (I tend to buy from the newsstand rather than subscribe; I’ve found the savings from a subscription aren’t enough to compensate for the number of copies that arrive tattered and ripped through the mail.)

In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit I haven’t read much of the fiction in recent years.  The last couple of years of my life have been interesting, in a Chinese curse sort of way, and two major job searches (one currently going) haven’t left me with a lot of time to read.  In spite of that I continued to pick up the magazine.  I have to say I wasn’t impressed with what I saw, in terms of fiction as well as the other content. I remember reading some of the stories, but have no memory of them.  Most of the ads in the last few years seemed to be from small presses that specialize in erotic fantasy, if not outright porn, with full color one and two page spreads.  This was not the sort of thing I wanted either my wife or more importantly my son to walk in and see, the former because I didn’t want to have to explain I wasn’t reading porn and those were just ads, and the latter because I don’t want my son exposed to that sort of material at his age.  Since I wasn’t reading the magazine much, I decided to stop buying it just before its first death.  I picked it up again after Lapine took over, but sadly not much had changed except for the price, which went up by three bucks, a 75% increase, with no increase in page count.

Now please don’t misunderstand me.  I take no joy in the loss of RoF.  None whatsoever.  The loss of a major outlet is a major loss to the field regardless of whether that outlet aligned with my tastes.  It affects all of us, and in a negative way.  But the discussions, which have continued since the original postings at both Black Gate and Cyclopeatron, bring up some interesting points that merit further consideration, beyond just the fate of RoF.

Is there too much fantasy available today?  I’m inclined to think not, although I certainly understand and can agree with the arguments made, at least to a point.  There’s certainly more than any single person can read in a short period of time without limiting said reading to certain subgenres.  But if you as a reader prefer one of the subgenres that’s not a current hot area, then the fantasy and/or science fiction landscape tends to resemble a wasteland.

I can buy the idea that the contents of any single issue of any magazine probably isn’t as good as the stuff already available.  That’s always been the case, at least as long as reprints have been available cheaply and readily.  Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series in the early 70s, Del Rey’s, as well as Pocket’s, Best of… series in the mid to late 70s, DAW’s Asimov Presents the Great SF of the early and middle 80s. All of these and others did change the landscape permanently by preserving a number of great stories in affordable editions.  At least they were then.  If you can find any of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy volumes today, be prepared to fork over the moola.  And I can’t remember the last time I saw a Best of or Asimov Presents in a second hand bookstore.  (And I’m of the opinion that when cetrain titles or types of books can no longer be found second hand with little difficulty at reasonable prices, there’s a potential market going untapped.) Other publishers, many of them small presses, have continued the practice of classic reprints, though, so most of these stories and books are still available in some form.

But my argument here is that except for Astounding from the late 30s to early 40s, the brief run of Unknown, and Galaxy in the early 50s, plus some of the Weird Tales from the late 20s to mid 30s, most magazines don’t publish consistently at the level of quality that’s available in reprints.  There’s a reason those books and stories are in reprints.  They have not only stood the test of time, but they were groundbreaking tales in the field, and important to the history of the genre.  Look at any single issue from any magazine over the 20th century to the present, and most likely much of the contents will be forgettable and the contributors unfamiliar to most readers.  Sturgeon’s Law has never been repealed.  Ninety percent of everything is crud, always has been, always will be.  Even magazines that consistently print stories nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards also print stories you won’t remember next month.  The editors have to fill the magazines with content, even if that content isn’t always of the highest possible quality.  So while I agree that there is more competition for a fantasy or science fiction reader’s time and money, I don’t agree that this is the only, or even the main, reason why RoF folded.

I don’t think there’s enough fantasy published at short lengths.  At least not the kind many people want to read.  Particularly heroic fantasy/sword and sorcery/call it what you will.  If there were, would there be as many smaller outlets of the stuff starting up.  Now I’ve heard it said that the average fantasy reader wants a thick book they can get lost in for hours, if not days, at a time.  They just aren’t interested in short fiction.  I can see how this might be the case for a portion of the fantasy buying public.  But I also think that the people who responded to the blog posts bring up an interesting point.  And that’s that there is not enough pulp in today’s fantasy. 

I would extend that to say the same about science fiction as well.  The reason I say this is that there are people within the field, editors, writers, and pundits, who almost act like they’re ashamed of traditional fantasy and science fiction and want to distance themselves (and by extension through whatever influence they have, everyone else) from the lifeblood of the genre.  They give the impression sometimes that they’re trying to apologize for the field, like the rest of us are the inbred cousin locked in the basement.  They seem to think that the field needs the respect of the literary establishment or something.  (I won’t name names because I don’t know who they all are, and it’s not my purpose at this point to attack any particular individual, particularly someone I don’t know.  And that includes Shawna McCarthy, to whom I extend my sympathies for the cancellation of RoF along with my best wishes for her future endeavors.Just because our tastes differ doesn’t mean I wish her ill.)  The attitude is that if a certain piece of fiction doesn’t have certain qualities, or if it does have certain other qualities, it isn’t worthy of serious consideration.  And heroic fantasy seems to be a favorite target of these people.

Like any genre that undergoes a boom and bust cycle, sword and sorcery has had a lot of dreck published over the years that has been more than subpar.  And much of what Hollywood puts out doesn’t help the gente’s standing in the eyes of the general public.  I do want to see the genres of fantasy and science fiction have high literary standards.  I think those standards are not negotiable, and neither are well rounded characters and original plots and settings.  But the main reason I read, and I think probably most other people as well, is that I want to read a good, entertaining story.  I don’t read fiction for the pretty words or dense sentence structure.  Nor do I read to be enlightened about The Human Condition, converted to or from a particular political position or philosophy, or have my consciousness raised about an author’s pet social issue.  If I want that, I’ll read nonfiction.  (And I do.) 

Good fiction can accomplish all of those things, of course, and should attempt to.  But not at the expense of entertainment and telling a riveting story.  As an example, look at the parables of Jesus.  He taught truth in the form of a short story that his audience could relate to, about people they could care about because those people in the parables could be the listener’s mother, or son, or self.  The Sermon on the Mount is one of history’s greatest discourses, but it’s the exception to Jesus’ teaching approach.  Jesus interested his audience with stories because He knew how much people value a good story.  Aesop did the same thing with his fables.  Scheherazade, if the legend is true, saved her own life by being able to tell a riveting tale.  Too many writers today have failed to learn this lesson:  story comes first.

People like stories with character and plot and excitement, suspense and mystery and romance.  They want action, adventure, and escape from day to day drudgery.  Tastes differ, but the bottom line is, when reading fiction for pleasure, people don’t give a rip about the literary establishment’s opinion.  They just want to be entertained.  And when a magazine fails to do that, that magazine is doomed to fail.  (I’m speaking in general terms here now, not specifically about RoF.)  No matter how high the ideals an editor or publisher has about the literary quality of the magazine, the political correctness of the contents, or the diversity of the contributors, if story is not the top priority, the magazine will not be worth the time and money.

Call it literary survival of the fittest, if you will.  The reading public knows what it wants.  It wants good a good story.  What it considers a good story, not what someone with an agenda thinks it should be reading.  How many of you read can remember the name of the novel that was the talk of the literary establishment 10 years ago?  How about 5 years ago?  Last year?  My point is that much, if not most, of what endures as literature starts out as popular fiction.  Consider these names:  Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, H. P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick.  What do they all have in common, besides being genre writers who started out in the pulps or digests?  They’re all in the Library of America, one of the premier publishers of literature today, along with Mark Twain, Flannery O’Connor, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, H. L. Mencken, the list goes on.  While not all of these writers are to every one’s taste, anyone who has read these four authors knows they could tell a gripping tale and provide exciting reading for a large portion of the readers in their genres.

The reasons for the second failure of Realms of Fantasy are almost certainly more complicated than too many markets for short fiction.  The economy, the changing state of publishing, and competition for the reader’s time and money all probably contributed to a greater or lesser degree.  It’s not my purpose here to answer the question of why RoF went under.  What I do hope to have accomplished is to have made the point that there is a market for short adventure fiction, especially sword and sorcery, sword and planet, sword and sandal, that hasn’t been tapped.  Space opera underwent a resurgence a few years ago that seems to still be going.  There are some indications that sword and sorcery might be in the early stages of its resurgence, along with straight histroical fiction.  I certainly hope so.  In the weeks to come, I’ll take a closer look at some of the publishers we do have and the role they’re playing in the resurgence.

In the meantime, maybe someone will resurrect Realms of Fantasy and try again with a different slant.  Lapine has said, although I’m not sure how serious he is, that he will sell the magazine for a dollar.  Any takers?

Announced this afternoon were the winners of the 2010 World Fantasy Awards:

Novel: 
     The City and the City by China Mie’ville

Novella:
     “Sea Hearts” by Margo Lanagan

Short Story
     “The Pelican Brief” by Karen Joy Fowler

Anthology:
     American Fantastic Tales:  Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps/From the 1940’s to Now,
          Peter Straub, ed.

Collection (tie):
     There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla
          Petrushevskaya
     The Very Best of Gene Wolf/eThe Best of Gene Wolfe by Gene Wolfe

Artist
     Charles Vess

Special Award – Professional
     Jonathan Strahan for editing anthologies

Special Award – Non -Professional
     Susan Marie Groppi for Strange Horizons

Life Achievement (previously announced)
     Brian Lumley
     Terry Prachett
     Peter Straub

Adventures Fantastic would like to congratulate all the winners.  I’ve read “The Pelican Brief” but not any of the others.  Seems like I’ve got some catching up to do.  Again, congratulations to all the nominees, and especially to the winners.

Nobody’s Angel
Jack Clark
Hardcase Crime
paperback, June 2010, 220 pg

At first glance a crime novel about a cab driver, while possibly adventurous, may not sound all that fantastic.  But keep in mind, one person’s mundane is another person’s fantastic. 

When cab drivers are presented in fiction, whether in film or in literature, they often serve merely as chauffeurs or as comic foils.  When they’re the central characters, too many times they’re romanticized.  (I have never seen the show Taxi, so the applicability of any comments I make in this post to that show is purely coincidental.)  At least that’s been my observation, although I’ve not done any scientific study.  The only cab driver stories I know of in which the cabbie was played straight, and not for laughs, was in the Steve Midnight tales by John K. Butler.  These ran mostly in Dime Detective.  Adventure House has reprinted them in At the Stroke of Midnight, which I read a few years back and quite enjoyed.  Other than this volume, Butler is pretty much out of print except for a story in the odd anthology, a mistake that someone will hopefully correct.  And soon.

Anyway, Nobody’s Angel tells the story of Eddie Miles, a Chicago cabbie who happens to become involved in two different series of killings while working the night shift.  In one, someone is mutilating and murdering prostitutes.  Eddie stumbles on one of the killings, causing the killer to drive away before completing his task, and the result is the intended victim ends up being the only survivor.  In the other, someone is knocking off cab drivers.  Eddie is a friend of the latest victim as well as the last person to see him alive.  You can imagine how this makes the police take an interest in him, although they don’t take the expected approach and hassle Eddie or even suspect him.  Instead they ask him to keep his eyes and ears open.

Clark does an excellent job of showing us the world of the night shift through Eddie’s eyes.  It’s a world most of us probably wouldn’t want to see on a daily basis.  While there is certainly room for humor and camaraderie, especially among the cabbies, it’s a world that is often sordid and profane.  And at times out right deadly.

Clark opens each chapter with one of the ordinances governing cab drivers in the city of Chicago.  This technique gives insight into the lives of the cabbies.  All good fantasy and science fiction, at least at novel length, will take the reader and transport him or her into the life of someone in another world, hopefully one that is different enough to be exotic while at the same time having enough touchstones of the familiar to allow the reader to relate.  Clark proves that sometimes some of the most exotic settings can literally be right around the corner.  While reading the book, he made the world of the Chicago cab driver real to me, even though I’d never been to that city or was even very familiar with its geography.  This is something the urban detective tale does when the author is working at the top of the form:  give the detective’s city an identity so that the city transcends place and setting and becomes a character in its own right.  It’s a hard trick to pull off, but Clark does it.  When I learned on his website that Jack Clark drives a cab himself, I wasn’t surprised.  If I were a betting man, I would bet that some of the fares Eddie picks up are based on those of Jack himself.  One or two are so out there, they had to be true.

There is action and violence in the book, but that’s not what the plot revolves around.  Instead it’s the threat of violence, coming when unexpected, and the sense of danger permeating the city.  Lennie, Eddie’s friend who is murdered, is an old and experienced cabbie, with plenty of street smarts.  The fact that someone is able to get past his guard rattles the drivers.  The second killer carving up streetwalkers only adds to the tension, as do Eddie’s attempts to locate the killer’s van again.  We learn how Eddie thinks, the mistakes he’s made, the regrets he has.  Yet deep inside, he’s a hero.  He does the right thing, more than once, when there’s a very real possibility the right thing could get him hurt, robbed, killed, or any combination of the above.  More than that, he’s ready when he has to fight.  While his weapon of choice may not be a sword or a blaster, he wields it with skill, and he’s not afraid to risk his life in a tight situation.

Nobody’s Angel is more than just a study in character and place.  There is a mystery in the book.  The clues are there.  I’m annoyed I missed them, because when I got to the end, it was obvious what I’d overlooked.  And the more I think about it, the more obvious it is.

Overall, this was one of the better noir crime novels I’ve read in a while, and I tend to read a lot of them in between the fantasy, science fiction, and historical adventure.  While I may have been put off by some of the things Eddie encountered, I’d ride along with him again any time.

Finally, I want to say a word about Hard Case Crime.  For something like six years or so now, publisher Charles Ardai has been bringing out some of the best old and new noir-style crime novels by established Grandmasters (can you say Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake?), forgotten pros whose names should be better known, such as Cornell Woolrich (it pains me to put him in this category) and Charles Williams, to nwer writers who are worth keeping an eye on (think Dominic Stansberry for one).  And the cover art is something to behold.  You can see all of them here.

Their printer and distributor has been Dorchester Books, which earlier this year announced they were switching to ebooks.  What that means is that volume 66, Brett Halliday’s Mike Shayne novel Murder is My Business is the last Hard Case book you’ll see in mass market paperback for a while, maybe ever.  Volume 67 is scheduled to be released in hardcover through Subterranean Books, and there are plans to continue the line, although details are sketchy.  Also the Gabriel Hunt mens’ adventure series (an offshoot of Hard Case), the Cosmos collections of the weird fiction of Robert E. Howard, and the Leisure line of horror are now gone.  As in off the shelves.  At least in the chain box stores like Barnes and Noble.  And they’ve probably been pulped, which means copies will become more and more collectible as the years pass.

I had to order the Hard Case and Gabriel Hunt volumes I was missing from two different independent booksellers who specialize in mysteries.  I have all the Hard Case and the first five of the Gabriel Hunt.  I don’t know if the sixth Hunt will be published on schedule this month or not.  I tend to doubt it.  Hopefully it will see print someday soon.  I’ll take a look at the Hunt books here in the future as I can fit them in.  But I do want to thank Charles Ardai and his team for bringing me so many hours of reading pleasure throughout the last few years.

The Natural History of Calamity
Robert J. Howe
Black Gater 14, $15.95

The current issue of Black Gate is so thick, and has so many stories in it, that I want to look at another one before moving on to other venues to examine short fiction.  Next up in this series of posts will be something seasonal (a ghost story), probably followed by something science fictional.

Anyway, on to the story at hand.  This one concerns a female private investigator, one Debbie Colavito, who works as a karmic detective.  She has the ability to detect a person’s karma, and, although it’s not exactly explained how, she can make changes in that karma.

Now the whole concept of karma is one I’ve never bought into.  At all.  So right off the bat, I had a hard time getting into the story because I couldn’t accept its basic premise.  However, since I had made up my mind to examine the story here in my Long Looks at Short Fiction series of posts, I decided I would try to put my prejudices aside and give the story a try.  Fortunately, that wasn’t as hard to do as I thought. 

The story opens with Debbie being visited by a prospective client, Will Charbonneau.  Seems Will’s lady love, Becky, has suddenly up and dumped him for a car salesman.  Will and Becky met in the Peace Corps, moved in together after they both returned stateside, and are working as high school teachers.  Will is clearly heartbroken and confused over Becky’s sudden change of heart.  They were talking about getting married, after all.  Can Debbie check into things and help him understand why this has happened?  He’s seen a feature about her in the paper, so he knows she’s a karmic detective.

Debbie takes the case, albeit with a little reluctance, since she’s sure that Becky’s decision to move out was made without any influence from the car salesman.  That is until she discovers the car salesman is Micheal, someone she dated in high school until he raped her on a date.  She hasn’t seen or heard from him in years.  As they used to say, from this point on, the plot thickens.

Howe gives Debbie Colavito a distinctive voice, one that’s part wise-cracking PI, part single woman making ends meet on her own.  Now I’m a huge fan of traditional PI stories, especially those told in first-person.  I don’t care how cliched some people consider the trope to be, it’s always been one of my favorites.  And Howe does a good job with this one.  There’s a genuine mystery here.  Not all the people or situations are as they appear.  Even if I did have trouble buying into the whole karmic detective angle, Howe develops Debbie’s character well and made her someone I cared about. 

He does a good job of writing a woman’s perspective.  Conventional wisdom is that many men can’t write from a woman’s viewpoint effectively.  While I don’t completely buy that I idea either, (people are people no matter what their gender) I don’t completely diasgree with it.  Men and women are wired differently mentally and emotionally.  Debbie is not simply a male detective in drag.  She is able to bond with Becky, whereas a male detective in a more traditional PI story would probably end up in bed with her.  Which is not to say Debbie is completely sexless.  She finds Will attractive.  She just doesn’t try to manipulate his emotions to get in bed with him.  In fact, when a situation arises in which she could, she deliberately doesn’t.

The writing is in the story is smooth, and the action flows.  The characters are individuals.  Howe has an easy to read style, probably due to his journalism background.  I don’t know if Howe has written any other stories about this character.  The author bio doesn’t mention any, and Black Gate does a good job of listing previous installments in a series.  While it wasn’t what I would consider exactly my cup of tea, I would certainly consider reading more about this character.

It’s been over a week since I last posted, which is longer than I would prefer.  To make up for it I’m going to post two reviews over the weekend, plus this post.  I guess that makes 2.5 posts, since this one is going to be brief.

Part of the reason I’ve not posted has to do with travel.  I’ve been trying to a get a former residence fixed up (anybody wanna buy a house?), and that took me to the other side of the state.  Texas is a big state.

Anyway, since I posted the review about Nomad The Warrior, I’ve done some further thinking (six hour drives are good for that).  Specifically about how religion is portrayed in the movie.  There’s some ancester worship and shamanistic beliefs shown on the part of the Jungar.  The Kazakhs refer to the Almighty, and this is what intrigues me.  Whether they mean Allah, Jehovah, or someone else is never made clear.  I may be wrong, but I’m fairly certain by this time that the Kazakhs were Muslim.  Much of the story takes place in Turkestan.  The photo I posted from my visit there was of the Kodzha Achmed Yosavi Mausoleum, which dates to the 14th century, well before the events of the movie, and is considered to be the Mecca of the East in the Islamic world.  In other words, the hero of the movie should have been muslim.

I’m not sure why the movie referred to the deity of the Kazakhs as the Almighty.  Maybe this was a holdover from the Soviet days, but I don’t think so.  It could have been a result of translating the movie into English.  On the other hand, it could have been done to make the movie more palatable to American audiences by omitting any overt references to Islam and thus making the hero more sympathetic to US movie-goers.

I haven’t had time to watch the Kazakh version of the movie, but I understand in places there are some significant differences in the dialogue from the English version.  I need to make time to watch the Kazakh version and see who the Kazakhs pray to.