So I noticed that the movie Zootopia is on Netflix now, and it reminded me of a little fan theory I developed back when I saw the movie in theatres. If you’ve seen it, you may have noticed something that differentiates this film from the typical Disney (or any) “funny Read more…
Late to this party, but apparently science fiction publishing has a major race problem. The study does the requisite bean counting and discovers, as if it was some sort of surprise, that black authors are underrepresented in traditional SF publishing. The problem is that’s all it discovers. When your survey finds only Read more…
If you follow me at all, you know I’ve been at this for quite a while now. I’ve written about my first novel, Forests of the Night a couple of times now, but in both cases I talk more about the story than how it was published. Back in the Read more…
How many of you remember the Tobe Hooper film, Lifeforce, from 1985? It’s probably the only piece of genre pop-culture from the 80’s that Stranger Things didn’t pay homage to— possibly due to the combination of full-frontal nudity and zombies. Lifeforce hasn’t gotten the same love from posterity as Tobe Hooper’s other Read more…
Just finished watching Stranger Things on Netflix, and it is fantastic. By now you’ve probably heard that it is a nostalgic throwback to 1980’s cinema, and you’ve probably heard people name-drop Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and John Carpenter when describing it. This is all true; we have a host of Read more…
I’ve finally seen the most recent Star Trek film and it has my enthusiastic approval. No it’s not the original series. But, IMO, that’s a plus. The major weakness of the first two post-reboot movies were the ham-handed attempts to tie this Star Trek to that Star Trek. This is Read more…
If you were following me on Facebook you know I attended Libertycon 29 this past weekend. I had a blast. Even though it was a bit outside my normal stomping grounds, I found no shortage of folks to talk with— no small thing for an introverted cave-dweller such as myself. Read more…
A couple of days ago, Toni Weisskopf posted a link to this letter from Edgar Rice Burroughs to a young Forrest J. Ackerman. It’s a pithy letter, shorter than most blog posts, but is a prescient rebuttal to this hot mess of a Guardian article appearing almost exactly 84 years Read more…
Those people on the other side of the debate, the ones you attack with such righteous fury, who called down your wrath by acting in such an asinine and nasty fashion. . . they’re you. They’re called to this genre by the same love of different worlds and different realities, Read more…
Fuck this shit! Up to now I’ve been pretty quiet about this, but you all have finally pissed me off. I’m seeing all sorts of grandstanding, self-congratulatory, “I’m so fucking proud of fandom,” nonsense all over the place. This is some sort of high-water mark for the genre. Schadenfreude for Read more…