Lisbeth Salander

We’ve been having some pretty wild weather here in the Wairarapa lately, which meant that I’ve been sitting without power for over 24 hours earlier this week. While sitting around waiting for the contractors from the power company to turn up and put me back on the grid, I’ve managed to read myself through a substantial chunk of Stieg Larsson’s “Millenium” trilogy*: finally! I should say!

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Walter Popp

I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about old science fiction art, particularly pulp magazine art and artists. My knowledge is not so vast, however, that there aren’t still some surprises and new discoveries to be made.

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Crossroads: Tripping the Noir Fantastic

Last week, we talked about some of the tensions between science fiction and noir. Fantasy, which relies on metaphor even more than science fiction, has an even more challenging time of it. Its traditional themes […]

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Scale: Ideas vs Characters

Crossroads: A Genre Darkly

World-building, extrapolation, analogy, conceptual breakthrough, thought experiment – these are science fiction’s basic methods. Other genres might occasionally borrow them, but SF has sharpened them to a razor’s edge. So what happens when this set of tools works alongside the themes, styles, and plot structures of noir?

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Wooden Signpost at the Crossroads

Crossroads: Where Genres Meet in the Night

Speculative fiction’s ability to stay fresh is a direct result of its ability to blend with other genres: the mash-up, the hybrid, the literary crossroad are where science fiction has always found innovation. We’re a magpie genre, and I think that should be celebrated and explored.

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