Sorry the blog’s been quiet! Not because nothing’s been going on… just that it’s been going on in other forums. One day I’ll get around to updating the bibliography and other pages, but in the meantime they’re like a peek back. Hard to believe the first posts are nearly 10 years old, moved here when I switched to WordPress all the way back in 2008!
RSS supporting our friends at Black Gate- Goth Chick News: Cosplayers, an Author Exclusive, and a Zombie Tramp, or Our Trip to C2E2 2022Two weekends ago, Chicago’s largest convention space, McCormick Center, played host to over 100K attendees to the 12th annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2 for you cool kids), and I am once again reminded why Chicago ranks in the top cities for people-watching. Amidst the oodles of MCU, Star Wars, and anime merchandise, aisles of comic illustrat […]
- Random Reviews: “Twelve-Steppe Program,” by Esther FriesnerLast week’s story, “The Birth of A.I.” was a humorous short story which led up to a single punchline. This week’s story, Esther Friesner’s “Twelve-Steppe Program” is a longer humorous short story that rather than serve as the delivery system for a joke, focuses on the situations Friesner establishes to find its humor rather than punchlines. The eunuch Nir Mu […]
- Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: They Might Be GiantsThe Giant of Marathon (Italy/France, 1959) When you think of Italian cinema, probably the first thing that comes to mind are its great dramatic directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Federico Fellini. But you wouldn’t be reading this fine website devoted to genre fiction if the second thing wasn’t Italy’s action films, the Spaghetti West […]
- Robert Bloch’s Pocket History of Science Fiction FandomThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1954. Cover by Mel Hunter I’ve spent the last few days putting my book collection in order, and yesterday I came across this, the first sf magazine I ever purchased: the March 1964 issue of F&SF, from a little shop in the town of Port Credit, Ontario. J.G. Ballard, Kit Reed, Oscar Wilde, Avram Davidson’s […]
- A (Black) Gat in the Hand: The Murdering Spinsters“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun) In Brooklyn during World War II, a pair of black widows were luring men to their deaths. They preyed upon older, lonely men […]
- In Hell, Everyone’s Pants are on Fire: A preview of Liars in HellIn Hell, Everyone’s Pants are on Fire! Faux News and Big Lies might feel like a contemporary pain, but rest assured, dear reader! Your curse has been shared. Liars have been meddling with humanity throughout history. Here ye the accounts of their eternal demise journaled by the damnedest writers in perdition. Note, that each themed entry in the Heroes in Hel […]
- New Treasures: The Siren’s Song by Andrew Paul WestonAndrew Paul Weston has described himself as a “Former Royal Marine, Police Officer & Crime & Intelligence analyst, cursed with an overactive imagination.” His muse and expertise drive him to write action-adventure that spans genres. Black Gate’s Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed his internationally bestselling IX Series, military sci-fi that transports t […]
- Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Fantasy: Volume One edited by Paula GuranThe Year’s Best Fantasy: Volume One (Pyr, August 16, 2022). Cover by Liu Zishan Paula Guran edited ten volumes of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror for Prime Books between 2010-2019. She brought the series to Pyr in 2020, and it’s done well enough that this year Pyr launched a companion volume: The Year’s Best Fantasy: Volume One, also with Paula’s c […]
- Random Reviews: “The Birth of A.I.,” by Cynthia WardSometimes the roll of the dice produces a story that isn’t really all that easy to discuss. This week’s story, “The Birth of A.I,” is a (very) short humorous story about the birth of artificial intelligence by Cynthia Ward. The story originally appeared in the third issue of Xoddity in 1998. Ward’s story is quite short, taking up about a page, and it mostly […]
- IMHO: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF SWORD & SORCERY AND HEROIC FANTASYThe Evolving and Cloned Barbarian Conan, King Kull, Cormac, Bran Mak Morn — names that conjure magic, characters often imitated, but never duplicated. These creations of Robert E. Howard (circa 1930) started the Sword and Sorcery boom of the 1960s and early 1970s. Then there are the barbarian warriors inspired by Howard — “Clonans,” as one writer recently re […]
- Goth Chick News: Cosplayers, an Author Exclusive, and a Zombie Tramp, or Our Trip to C2E2 2022
SC Bryce 