A Tale of ConQuesT, Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem Part 2
At last the day arrived, and I broke the seal on my compression chamber, releasing an exotic blend of oxygen and nitrogen with a bold taste of helium into the atmosphere. I confess to feeling […]
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Your Majesty, I’m So Over You
Ranks and titles are powerful tools in the fantasy writer’s toolkit. What a shame they are used so unimaginatively in general. I offer some inspiration alongside your weekly dose of young fogeyishness.
The Trouble With Definitions; or, Not All Anime Fans Watch Hentai
[Author’s Note: The following post discusses hentai, which is a type of animated pornography. No lewd images are present; however, there is a link to an erotic woodblock print. The author asks that readers use […]
The Fantasy of Fashion
The clothes make the fan. Is extreme fashion a form of fandom? I say yes, but hesitate to approve of it.
Superheroine Movie
Imagine the teaser trailer. Peeks at the iconic costume, a villain’s growled one-liner, the title looming suddenly out of the darkness with THIS CHRISTMAS or SUMMER 2014 beneath it. Imagine the interviews in Entertainment Weekly: […]
A Tale of ConQuesT, Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem
While riding my keyboard and mouse across the infinite electronic pathways of the world, I discovered something quite surprising. At first when I stumbled upon it, I sloughed it off as just another coincidence. But […]
East vs. West: Comic Book Showdown
Though my position here, such as it is, is that of “anime blogger,” I think that my real interest in media from the Land of the Rising Sun is comic books, otherwise known as manga. […]
Nuevos trabajos de ciencia ficción en español
Como parte del proyecto de este blog, pretendo realizar una vez al mes una sección de ”novedades”. En esta sección informaré sobre nuevos números de revistas, nuevos libros, películas o lo que aparezca. Es por […]
What’s Your Type?
Does fantasy fiction feed racism? An important distinction between literature and film is often elided. Arthur Conan Doyle on the classification of peoples and my thoughts on the Boston Marathon bombing.
Electrons for Everyone
As I sit wandering the internet for fresh tidbits of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, I find them flourishing everywhere. Perhaps flourishing is not the right word. Flourishing leads me to images of well-manicured flower […]
Number One at the Box Office, and Still a Failure.
The movies have changed a great deal in the last twenty years. One of the most interesting changes is that it’s not that unusual anymore for someone to review the number one most seen movie […]
The Real Manga Blues: A “Me and the Devil Blues” Review
Of all the potential stories to succeed phenomenally in manga form, not many people expect a story centering around blues music in the deep American South to qualify. Even less likely is a story about […]
The Artful Collector: Are Conventions Good Places to Find Art? (Part 2)
Once upon a time, science fiction and fantasy conventions were great places to find, and buy, original art – and, in time – reproductions of art created by the best professional illustrators in the field […]
Why I Don’t Like My Heroes
When I first started out as a published writer of science fiction in 1978 and sold my first novel in 1979, I started going to local and national science fiction conventions. Mostly I felt it […]
Who Do You Blame in a Science Fiction World?
Blaming someone for something is part of human nature. Domestic Batterers blame their victims. Evangelists blame the devil, or sometimes God for bad things happening. Even Christians often blame God, remarking “How can God let […]
All Aboard for Mars! A True Story
This is not fiction. Your mission, should you accept it, is to go to Mars and die there. I get a bit cynical about this sort of thing,
The Alternate History Masterpiece You’ve Never Read
Satire is no longer being written in America. It’s still on television via Saturday Night Live, South Park, and the great, unsung animation series Squidbillies. (I’d lump Superjail in there, but it’s not for the […]
Hide and Seek with Marvin the Martian
Ignorance is never better than knowledge. – Enrico Fermi When I was just a little tyke, driving to Logan Airport in Boston meant, as today, enduring the unavoidable traffic jam. Conversing in the family car […]
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
Why don’t American kids dream of being astronauts anymore? In Japan, interest in space is at a historically high level. I get slightly snarky about AKB48.
On Fatherhood
When I was around six or seven, I discovered my father’s old comic books. He’s an archivist and his closet reflects this–it is a meticulously organized trove of his interests, packed away in folders, binders […]
Zero-Magic Fantasy
Zero-magic fantasy is a growing subgenre. But can it ever rise above the level of thought experiment? And what are the tradeoffs?
Sequential Wednesdays #10 – Bos-Con: The City-Wide Adventure of Levity
The past week endured by the city and residents of Boston has been extraordinary and bizarre, affecting pretty much everyone in the vicinity. Thanks, and often less than thanks, to media outlets, social networking, and […]
The Rising Tide of Alien Languages
Be warned, this post contains spoilers for this week’s Game of Thrones episode “And Now His Watch is Ended”. This morning I sat and watched Daenerys Stormborn finally grow up as she unleashed hell upon […]
Steampunk: An Overview of an Up and Coming Genre
Strap on your goggles, fire up the boiler and let’s lift off toward adventure. Its time to tackle the wonderful world of steampunk! So what is steampunk exactly? Surprisingly it is difficult to describe, even […]
The Artful Collector: On Holding Dual Citizenship (Inside and Outside the SF Community)
The world is changing, but some things stay the same. And are perfect just the way they are. The sky, my two little puppy dogs, and many symphonic works are like that. Whether SF/F conventions […]
The Meteor That Never Fell
Just kidding! Putin didn’t really ride that meteor! But it was an uneasy thing to watch, and it prompted uneasier thoughts about other things that fall, and why I crave stories with endings.
A Visit To A Cinema Pub
My family used the occasion of two close family birthdays as an excuse to visit a Cinema Pub. I don’t know how common such things are in other regions of the country, but in the […]
Acceptance or Exploitation?
Author’s Note: The following post will discuss depictions of sexuality in media. As such, content may not be acceptable for young children. Please read responsibly. In light of Zach’s recent post, I’ve decided to finally […]
Book Review: Hope Reborn by S.M. Stirling and David Drake
Hope Reborn by S.M Stirling and David Drake Baen Books 2013 978-1-4516-3877-6 (Trade paperback) Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that has long been the mainstay of Baen Books. True, Ace has […]
The Artful Collector: In Praise of Tangibility
First, and let’s get this out of the way right at the start: I would never say that digital art isn’t Art. I have never claimed that digital artists aren’t “real artists” – as some […]
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