Steve Fahnestalk

Christopher Rice is the son of best-selling fantasy writer Ann Rice, whose tales of vampires in the Deep South sparked a renewed interest in the genre. His new book (from Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster) arrived on October 15, and I have to say that, despite a few weaknesses, I enjoyed it more than some of his mother’s works.

I found out just yesterday from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database that November 1979 marks the first fan column I ever published in Amazing magazine, the print version. My column was titled “Fans, Prose and Cons”—a somewhat obvious three-way pun. That means it’s been 34 years since I started writing for this magazine.

Does Dr. Sleep stack up against The Shining?

This essay on Letters of Comment is definitely not a WAHF

V.E. (Victoria) Schwab’s people are called EO, for ExtraOrdinary people; people with something extra. These abilities are not genetic, nor are they the result of spilled chemicals (The Flash), extraterrestrial birth (Superman) or encounters with supernatural forces (The Mask); EOs gain their powers by an unfortunate encounter with mortality.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the film. I had expected a half-decent SF movie, and what I got was maybe a quarter decent.

What the heck is a “slanshack”?

I’m going to cheat a little, and review a movie that’s not really a genre movie. Well, as far as I’m concerned it is, because the movie’s about magic—and many fans are very much interested in magic—and also because the underlying theme of the movie is very much “sense of wonder,”

Fan Fahnestalk takes us through dead tree 'zines, 'live pixel' zines, IBM Selectrics, toner feel and more in this personal fan history.

I won’t say it’s the best SF film I’ve seen lately—it's certainly one of the best-looking, however; but it’s deserving of a second look if you’ve been hoping for a moderately good science fiction film to watch this summer.

Fanzines, continued: Okay, Mr. Smartypants, what’s a “sercon” zine? Actually, I’m glad you asked that question. It’s another of those annoying (well, to an...

Fanzines: What the heck is a ‘zine, anyhow? Well, ‘zine (usually abbreviated without the apostrophe) is short for fanzine, which should be self-explanatory. Unless...

Movie Review: “Cloud Atlas,” written and directed by Tom Twyker and the Wachowski siblings, Andy and Lana, from the book by David Mitchell. Before...

Let’s give cons a rest for a bit and talk about one of science fiction’s greatest writers. Terms like “greatest writers” are usually somewhat...

And I’m still not done talking about cons! Continuing with our talk about cons that have grown out of the SF con, we have...

This blog is not a fan history, although I will cite some fan history. There are actual fanhistorians who guard our culture. If you...