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sAnthony Marchetta (SuperversiveSF) “This is the best novel that Mr. Wright has ever written, young adult or not. If you’re a fan of any type of classic young adult fantasy, from the Narnia books to ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ (which isn’t really a fantasy but often reads like one), you owe it to yourself to […]
Guest Post by Zachary Wood: “Loki’s Child” by Fenris Wulf
Thursday , 20, October 2016 Book Review Leave a commentPeople are behind pop stars and their latest hits, perfecting their sound with technological wizardry. That’s the premise of Loki’s Child. Sinister yet comical, the book is witty and brazen to the point of bawdy; snark is offered in a touching, flowing dance that reminded me of a slow-motion, slapstick trainwreck captured in all its […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: Guerilla Checkers, Sekigahara, and Warstuff
Wednesday , 19, October 2016 Wargames 3 CommentsBrian Train has an interesting post up on Guerrilla Checkers (which I’ve covered here) being used in the training of real life officers: He reported that it went over well, but as so often happens with this sort of thing a lot of time is spent in explaining the game to people who are unfamiliar […]
REVIEW: “In the Days of the Witch-Queens” by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
Tuesday , 18, October 2016 Short Fiction 1 CommentSo you want more old school swords and sorcery fiction in the same vein as Thune’s Vision and The Last Witchking? This is it! I know it’s tough these days. Fantasy is ubiquitous, but the sort of raw barbarism that Robert E. Howard captured is nowhere to be found. In the Days of the Witch-Queens […]
SUPERVERSIVE review: The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
Tuesday , 18, October 2016 Superversive, Uncategorized 5 CommentsI vaguely remember a sitcom called Perfect Strangers when I was young. I remember enjoying it, but it either must not have aged well or it must have been more or less terrible if you had two digits in your age, because since then, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of it. If this seems […]
SUPERVERSIVE: “Futurama” explores the big ideas while avoiding message fiction
Tuesday , 18, October 2016 Fiction, Superversive 7 CommentsThere will be spoilers to endings of episodes. The subject of the post happens not to depend so much on twists, but even so, I recommend watching the show first before reading my review. In any case, all spoilers here on in are unmarked. You’ve been warned. The more I think about it, the more […]
Superversive Press is here, and for their first offering they serve up a bit of short dystopian fiction for your edification. Who is the author lampooning: Soviet Russia or the Pacific Northwest…? And what is the titular “product”? Is it pulp fantasy or vintage role-playing games? (Oh come on, you know it could have been!) […]
There’s no nice way to put it. Oh, I suppose I could invoke differing schools of thought on how this sort of thing is done. I could call one an “old school” approach and another the “new school” way. The latter would still be taken as derogatory. The former would provoke testimonials from people claiming […]
The 2016 H. P. Lovecraft Re-read: The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Sunday , 16, October 2016 Fiction 4 CommentsLovecraft followed up “At the Mountains of Madness” with “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” He wrote the story in November 1931 with a few different drafts. The story is 27,026 words long, so it is a little longer than “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Lovecraft wrote a story not about cosmic entities from other dimensions this time. […]
SUPERVERSIVE ROUNDTABLE: Do Conservatives and Liberals write Sci Fi differently?
Sunday , 16, October 2016 Superversive 1 CommentIt’s a big, rambling conversation that touches on decades worth of film, comics, fiction, and politics that you won’t want to miss! And if you were hoping for a good, hard and fast answer to this… well… this isn’t it. Several points about this question can be accounted for as a function of genre binning, […]
We keep playing this and making slight adjustments between sessions. Progress seems nonexistent and sometimes I wonder if an earlier incarnation of what we were doing might have been better. But looking at the initial outline for this scenario, I really can’t believe what’s not on it…! We had a problem with the game devolving […]
Short Reviews – Stalemate in Space, by Charles L. Harness
Friday , 14, October 2016 Book Review, Uncategorized Leave a commentStalemate in Space by Charles L. Harness appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. So far, I’ve read plenty of stories with great dames who are gorgeous, brave, competent and excellent foils for their male counterparts. But Stalemate in Space is the first Raygun Romance I’ve […]