Scide Splitters: The Night Life of the Gods by Thorne Smith
Now largely forgotten, Thorne Smith was possibly the wittiest writer of the fantastic in the 1920s & 1930s.
Film Review: Space Station 76
A 1970’s sci-fi dramedy? Oh yes….
Ooky Spooky Animanga Part III: The Titilating Terror of Junji Ito
[Note: The following post contains some images that are visually disturbing. It is recommended that the reader use caution.] Do you like your comics with heavy inking? With a bit of body horror? With gruesome forays into the darkest parts of the human psyche? With afterwords that border on slapstick? If so, allow me introduce […]
Review: Destination: Planet Negro
It’s 1939 America and the Black community’s greatest minds are searching for the solution to the “Negro Problem.” One answer? Build a spaceship, fill it with all of America’s Negroes, and fly to Mars, with the help of George Washington Carver’s peanut/sweet potato–based rocket fuel. And, like many plans, this one goes awry. Word gets […]
Shaun of the Dead
Brad Pitt’s $200 million dollar zombie extravaganza World War Z just opened, and despite the reported problems producer Pitt had getting the film made, including extensive rewrites and shooting of several additional scenes after test screenings, the reviews indicate it’s not the total disaster that everyone expected. Not sure if I’ll drag myself to the theater to […]
Crossroads: The Importance of Parody to the Speculative Fiction Genre
Last week, we talked about how every piece of humorous speculative fiction inevitably gets compared to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But as I outlined, Adams’ comedy of the absurd operates very differently from the vast majority of humorous speculative fiction out there. Most funny speculative fiction squarely operates within the realm […]
CROSSROADS: Right Place, Time, and Tech – The Hitchhiker’s Guide
Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (itself spread across five books with a six written by Eoin Colfer), with its friendly, green warning against panic, casts a huge shadow over the field of humorous speculative fiction. Though it is far from the only explicitly comedic science fiction (and far from the first), it […]
CROSSROADS: Make ’em Laugh – Humor and Speculative Fiction
Hello, folks! Now that I’m back on my feet, I find that April’s here. A few days ago was April 1st, also known as April Fool’s Day. And while I may not be clever enough to come up with fun jokes for April Fool’s Day, I can at least appreciate the humor. There’s something about […]
Yeah Rite by Michael Penney
One of the things that has always been perfect for short films is that you can take a known property and play with it for a while. The perfect example of that is the classic Hardware Wars by Ernie Fosselius. It’s just so simple to do gags and play with characters in a shorter format. […]