Interesting article, and as an action/fantasy writer, one I can certainly appreciate. (I'm not actually a martial artist of any sort, so I can't really say much, but it looks good.)

I'm noticing that both of the styles described here so far are from Asia. Presumably Europeans, Africans, Native Americans and everybody else had similar needs? Anybody know why we never hear about them?

One guess I have heard is that, like Wushu and sports-Sanda described here, they became too staged to be useful in a serious fight, but went a lot farther than the east-Asian martial arts did. I've heard that boxing falls under that description, along with pommel horse: originally used by cavalry soldiers but since evolved into a similar thing, after the soldiers no longer had a use for it.

Interesting column so far, but a few requests: Krav maga from Israel and Bartitsu from the UK (sort of the forgotten granddaddy of MMA).

Another Well-Known Practictioner: Some Star Trek character I don't remember, but who may have been Sulu, from the Original Series novels.

Cool, though. I've seen Escrima used repeatedly in a bunch of books (the aforementioned Star Trek, the Phule series (Robert Aspirin), and a bunch of others; but I never had any idea where it was from, or if I did I forgot it.

Also very helpful in describing it if I ever want to use this. Keep going.

i like this!! I'm a martial artist myself so i found this to be very interesting!! Please continue!!

Well-written and useful, especially since I'm absolutely ignorant in this department.

Which might not be the best endorsement for this thing's usefulness, but still, it's excellent as far as I'm concerned.

I recently discovered that I don't write (unarmed) combat worth shit, so it's REALLY helpful. Or at least so far. I eagerly await a wider range of info.

Glad to see more information on realistic CQC. One book you may want to look into is Rex Applegate's "Kill or Be Killed," a book of WW2 Combatives and CQC. I personally have some experience in MMA and some military combatives (mainly US MAC, some Krav maga, and seeing some MCMAP). For this, are you going "combative" styles (IE like Krav Maga, Keysi Fighting Method (like Batman used), etc.) or notes on realism of certain things? A thriller series I enjoy for realistic depictions of close combat (among other things) is Barry Eisler's "John Rain" series. My own attempt crashed and burned some time back. Glad to see another person is trying to do this. There's too much BS in martial arts nowadays.