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July – 2014 – castaliahouse.com - Page 2

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Second Amendment supporters, cyborgs, Star Trek references, Heinlein references, aliens that look like Skitters from Falling Skies, some serious action against Iran, a US president quoting Ayn Rand… Sometimes you need some suspended disbelief to enjoy a work of fiction, with books like this one you also need some sense of humor. It all begins […]

Many have commented on the current brouhaha between Amazon and the Big Five publishers led by Hatchette. Regardless of who wins – and it will almost surely be Amazon – one future battle that remains to be fought is who determines the status of a bestseller. Consider the difference between the current Publishers Weekly top […]

There are many things that science fiction has traditionally done very well, but, just as Ender’s psychological “flaw” is critical to his “Game,” and just as every Death Star seems to be remembered for its version of an exhaust port, sometimes it is important to take a hard look at the genre’s fail points, and […]

You know that time in the Firefly pilot when the IAV Dortmunder showed up just as the heroes were knee deep in a salvage operation…? The cruiser was firing up the gunships just as the crybaby lit off, Kaylee was warming up the engines while the loot was being stowed, and then, just as they begin to get away, Wash […]

You can find many inexpensive indie science fiction books at Kindle store. And that’s always risky, particularly if it’s the author’s first novel. A Sword Into Darkness is well worth the risk. In the near future, 2023—just ten years after the book’s publication—an aerospace tycoon is trying to convince NASA that an alien ship is […]

At Black Gate, Matthew David Surridge examines the Locus readers’ polls from 1987 through 2012 and reaches a few interesting conclusions: Fully half the picks from 1987 didn’t make the 1998 list — McCaffrey’s White Dragon, The Shining, A Spell For Chameleon, and Lord Valentine’s Castle (in 2012, those books would rank respectively 126, 47, […]

Motion pictures have a long history of capitalizing on marketing by issuing a novelization. Traditionally, the vast majority of these books are simple work-for-hire contracts and had their heyday in the 1970s, prior to the advent of home video. Following the theatrical run of a movie, the only way to enjoy its experience again was […]