Some shows get cancelled before their time
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 […]
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When Hollywood Attacks!
There was no movie in 2012 that I looked forward to seeing more than Prometheus. It was being produced by Ridley Scott, the same man who produced Alien and Blade Runner. Unfortunately it wasn’t really […]
Amazing Stories to Publish David Gerrold Comic Script: Star Trek & Dr. Who Fans Might Collide with a Bang! Theoretically of Course
Ok, I’ll say it, if only to keep up with the current trend on the site: The Experimenter Publishing Company is pleased to bring you an Amazing First! Our first piece of new fiction, and […]
No. 6 – Theodore Sturgeon, The Next Question, Well-Meaning Scientists and The Evil They Can Cause.
2013 Feb 10 – Theodore Sturgeon, aka/Edward Hamilton Waldo, is best remembered for asking “What’s the next question?” In some portraits, you’ll see Sturgeon wearing a “Q,” with an arrow pointing forward, suspended from a […]
Why Science Fiction Poetry is Embarrassingly Bad
I have been bothered for a long time by what passes for science fiction poetry, at least the kinds of “verse” (I use the term hesitantly) that currently appears in the three main short fiction […]
Apollo’s Outcasts Brings Back the Space Adventure
Finally, we have an author not afraid to approach fresh innovative science fiction with an old-school style. Apollo’s Outcasts by Allen Steele is an inspiring throwback to the youthful excitement of space travel carved out […]
Christopher Nolan’s Inception as Shamanic Psychodrama
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 […]
Invasion of the Movie Snatchers
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 […]
Is Science Killing Science Fiction?
Gregory Benford shared this on facebook, asking if this notion was true: Strahan, Jonathan, “Introduction,” Edge of Infinity, Solaris, 2012. This is just a short introduction to Strahan’s latest book of short stories, but he […]
The Galapagos Frontier Thesis
The formative American experience was the conquest of the western frontier. Would science fiction and fantasy exist without the frontier model? What does Japan’s parallel conquest of Hokkaido tell us about the legacy of colonial expansion?
The Top Ten Roleplaying Games of All Time
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 […]
Elementary, my dear Watson-bot 2.0!
Crime and punishment. Both words are synonymous with genre fiction. Whether it is the flashy superhero racing to stop the next crisis or the “I’m too old for this shit” beat cop who stumbles upon a global […]
All I Want For X-Mass/Hanukah is –
Two front teeth? What strange, horrible and twisted things happened to that kid that all she wanted was body parts? Me? All I wanted was every darned space, army and action toy they could cram […]
The Lazy Apocalypse
One of my usual rants is that science fiction writers are lazy. (And greedy, but that’s another story.) Of course, both accusations are not true when you look at the careers of specific writers and […]
“I Like Science Fiction, It’s Got Like Giant Robots and Stuff, Right?” Science Fiction’s Self-Esteem Problem Part IV: To Boldly Go Where No Fan Has Gone Before
Over the last three weeks I have discussed the sources and causes of Science Fictions self-esteem problem. The genre’s inability to shed it’s pulp roots and ongoing pulpishness, the relative obscurity of SF to the […]
The Virtual Truth of the Bloodlight Chronicles
The Bloodlight Chronicles by Steve Stanton revives originality in today’s science fiction with a complex cyberpunk series.
Machines that Think Are Improbable
Intelligent robots have been part of the SciFi lexicon since before Fritz Lang’s seminal file Metropolis. While it’s fun to imagine what the world would be like with intelligent machines, the sad truth is that […]
Dress for the Occasion 2: The Decked-out Heroine
Previously I blogged about that favourite trope of SF & Fantasy illustration: The Scantily Clad Female. That topic generated a lot of comments, so let’s look at the opposite end of the spectrum and see […]
A Kepler’s Dozen
NASA’s Kepler mission has been watching a swath of the Milky Way watching for the signs of stars being eclipsed by planets in orbit around them. This takes patience and favorable geometry, but Kepler has […]
E-Zines vs. Dead Tree Zines: the more things change…
I have been producing fanzines off and on since 1976, shortly after encountering science fiction fandom and this particular aspect of that hobby interest. As anybody who has ever pubbed (that is fanspeak for “published”) […]
Raptor Rapture
2013 sees the twentieth anniversary of Jurassic Park. To celebrate, a 3D version will be released in the USA in April: https://www.jurassicpark.com/index_splash.html. Dinosaurs are hotter than ever before and that’s good news. Their snapping jaws […]
Judging A Book By Its Cover (Art)
The old axiom about not judging a book by its cover notwithstanding, I am going to judge the merits of various book covers that wrapped editions of heroic fiction. This is not a scholarly article, […]
Am I A Science Fiction Writer?
Now that’s an interesting question. We’ve just launched my first novel, Shh! It’s a Secret: a novel about Aliens, Hollywood, and the Bartender’s Guide, at Arisia. It got written up in both Publisher’s Weekly and the […]
The First Poem Written in Space
The real scandal is that it took anyone this long to write a poem in space. The solution is easy.
Horrorcast: The Drabblecast
If you love to start your day with photos of catacombs and bone chandeliers, or listen to ectoplasmic psychodramas while doing your grocery shopping, then quality genre-related newsfeeds that bring you the best art, fiction, […]
Fiction and the Happy Brain
STORY HORDER As a child, I was a story horder. I couldn’t get enough of them. I was very fortunate to have parents who read to me, and looking back, they were saints in this […]
No. 4 – H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and the Social Impacts of Science
I suspect what most people remember most about H. G. Wells gets confused with Orson Welles, the actor. You know, that infamous radio announcement? When the radio started blaring out reports on Halloween, 1938, that […]
A New Generation of Star Wars
A couple of months ago came an announcement that caught many of off-guard. The announcement I refer to is that of the Star Wars franchise being sold to Disney and the plan of a new […]
“I Like Science Fiction, It’s Got Like Giant Robots and Stuff, Right?” Science Fiction’s Self-Esteem Problem Part III: Robots, Reboots and Remakes. How Hollywood Kills Serious Science Fiction
The only time the public pays attention to Science Fiction is when that great machine of mass marketing and “entertainment” called Hollywood inundates the collective consciousness with that most dreaded of phenomena: the Summer Blockbuster. But […]
Art + Fandom ≠ Fan Art: Definitions
Before I get properly rolling with this blog, I thought it might be worth taking a moment to stake out the territory I plan to cover. This website, and these blogs, are all about fandom, […]
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