With a 7 year old daughter, a 13 year old daughter, a 40-something year old wife and myself in the house, it is often difficult to find something we can all watch on TV together- […]
Pull the blinds and turn off the phone, it’s time to head to the Game Room and lock in on some hardcore meta-gaming action. In the Game Room we will explore the world of gaming […]
As with every hit TV show there becomes a trend of similar shows appearing on our screens. And fairy tales set in the modern world seem the latest trend. Last year we welcomed Grimm and […]
Thanks to the mainstreaming of genre it’s no longer disreputable in many parts of academia to declare an interest in and love of genre. While too much interest in genre might once have marked a […]
Reading Michael D. Sellers’ fascinating book, John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, we learn all the reasons why John Carter, Disney’s film version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, failed at the box office. […]
Hello there! I’m going to be doing weekly discussions of current sf anime episodes and previews of upcoming shows in this slot. Since we’re going to be dropping right into the middle of a few […]
The spotlight last month fell on the special effects wizards who make SF monsters come to life. The crowning glory was the award of the Best Picture Oscar for Argo. This spy drama focuses on […]
Ever notice that fictional sorcerers always seem to have long, grizzled beards? Ever wondered why? Well, probably you haven’t, but you’re about to find out. The sorcerer “look” originally comes from a real-life sorcerer named […]
I had given some thought to doing an Oscars recap this week, tallying the various gains and losses of the science fiction and fantasy fields within that most prestigious of movie awards ceremonies. But given […]
If there’s a recently popularized term that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, it’s “webisodes.” This demeaning and fun-sized determination of quality stems from the misconception of tacked-on extra content pumped out in the […]
“Mortal, you have angered Shaka-sama and now Pigsy will eat your face.” This is one of the improbable lines that is never spoken in the foundational saga of Buddhist fiction. Many other improbable lines are. Further out on the improbability spectrum: Shingo Katori costumes up as a monkey.
When I was a little kid, three things terrified me. Bugs, Gargoyles, and Zombies. My fear of Gargoyles came from an early 70s movie of the same name. A scene where the people are driving […]
The man behind hit TV shows and films such as Lost, Cloverfield and Armageddon (yes he was involved in the script writing for the latter) is bringing a new show to our screens – Revolution. […]
Vampire flicks have been all the rage since Twilight flooded the box office with sticky, coppery crimson in ’08, and have proven a solid moneymaking strategy ever since, with each of the saga’s four sequels […]
Over on my own blog I wrote about eight science fiction tropes of convenience, mainly about unlikely or impossible technology or assumptions that are made not because they make sense, but because they’re convenient for […]
Troy Boyle reports that he’s been sending completed pages to the inkers, letterers,colorers and who knows who else at a breakneck pace! We’re closing in on sending this book to the printers and may even […]
Looking back at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear disaster of 3/11/2011, I ask more questions about Japanese robotics. Baudrillard and M. John Harrison are roped in to help. Also, we bought a Roomba.
On Monday Skyfall was released on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK. Tomorrow Cloud Atlas will open in UK cinemas. Two films, poles apart. Skyfall, the 23th entry in probably the world’s longest running and […]
Wonder Woman is one of the shows I can’t wait to see on TV. The original TV show was pre-me (I’m a child of the 80s) but I do recall it being on TV. I […]
For a number of years I wrote The Crotchety Old Fan blog. One of my favorite posts to write was finding new and interesting ways to bring the older works to the attention of new […]
I’ve never read The Walking Dead but I love the TV show and watch it religiously every Monday morning. Series one enthralled me because of the likeable characters who unfailingly seemed to die just as […]
Science Fiction from its earliest incarnations has always featured some sort of futuristic weaponry. From H.G. Wells’ martian heat-ray to the most modern charged particle beam of Alastair Reynolds, SF weapons astound, confound and amaze […]
(Or, Why Your Beloved Franchise Is About to Become More Powerful than You Could Possibly Imagine.) Since the news that J. J. Abrams will be directing the seventh installment of Star Wars hit a couple […]
There are some people who think that a movie based on a video game should automatically be considered mindless trash. Good science fiction movies, they say, should be based on loftier sources, such as the […]
I always hate getting in to a show and then it suddenly gets cancelled before it gets to even begin its story (Firefly is a key example). You might say that I should just not […]
A few weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing which films should be considered science fiction and which shouldn’t. He claimed comic book/superhero movies should not be called SF. I claimed that Inception isn’t […]
We live in a cinematic age of remakes, reboots and re-imaginings. Even new movies like The Hobbit feel like pictures that have gone before. This is hardly a new experience. Long before he became President […]
With zombie rom-com Warm Bodies opening to strong reviews and good box-office last week zombies have moved out of the horror ghetto into the PG13 friendly mainstream. This is a remarkable development, but what is […]
Now, I’m never one to say a film or TV adaptation of a book is ever as good as the read itself. I’m not much of a reader as I’m more of a visual person, […]
I have mentioned elsewhere that my participating as a contributor to the new Amazing Stories feels like one of those Six Degrees of Separation experiences. Once upon a time I worked for a technical publishing start up, The Cobb […]
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