Monthly Archives:
sSENSOR SWEEP: Unsympathetic Protagonists, Self-contained Worlds, Nightmare Territory, and Indian Stuff You Shouldn’t Bother
Monday , 13, March 2017 Sensor Sweep 13 CommentsPulp Revolution (Benjamin Cheah) ‘Gritty’ and ‘Realistic’ SFF Isn’t — “In the dark SFF style championed by Abercrombie and Martin, we only see the unpleasantness. A Song of Ice and Fire is marked by murder, betrayal, rape, intrigue, incest, rape, atrocities, war and of course, rape. SFF books in a similar vein feature unsympathetic protagonists with […]
FROM THE COMMENTS: “I’m Just Reporting What I’ve Seen”
Sunday , 12, March 2017 Appendix N, Before the Big Three 13 CommentsDaddy Warpig’s recent posts are generating a great deal of discussion. Well, discussion may not be quite the right word for it. As Alex has noted, it reads more like an all out brawl set to the fight music from season two of classic Star Trek. People are triggered. Cherished illusions are being mauled before their […]
The Atomic Age Narrative: Half-Baked Posthumous Psychoanalysis
Sunday , 12, March 2017 Uncategorized 11 CommentsL. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000) was another writer who went from writing fiction to book reviews, non-fiction articles and books, and biographies. If you look at his bibliography, non-fiction essays appear to outnumber the number of fictional stories he wrote. De Camp was part of the Campbellian revolution in the pages of Astounding Stories/Science Fiction […]
We know Sci-Fi is in the ICU, stabbed through the kidneys with a poisoned blade, barely clinging to life. Thanks to the brilliant work of yours truly, Doctor Warpig, we even know who shivved it with a shank. But how do we save it? Let the Doctor show you the way.
The Best SHORT Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2016
Saturday , 11, March 2017 Short Fiction 17 CommentsNovels get the glory. Movies get the eyeballs. Television gets the binge-watching. And video games are probably bigger than all three put together! But for my money… short fiction really is where the action is. That really is the most striking things about how times have changed since the seventies. Tabletop games of the period are […]
Welcome back, true believers! It’s time for Part Two of my magnum opus! Doctor Warpig is in the house, and it’s time to play Diagnose that Disease! Let’s start with eradicating some fuzzy wishful thinking. “Well, people just don’t read anymore!” Dan Brown argues otherwise. As does JK Rowling. Also Stephenie Meyer. Fact is, people […]
When I criticize contemporary science fiction fantasy, it is almost entirely from a cultural angle. If something is done almost exactly the same way practically everywhere, I will absolutely light it up. This seems to summon some sort of Greek chorus that has stick up for Hollywood and Big Publishing. Not sure why that is, […]
The first number produced by the extrapolated algorithm was off by one-ten billionth. There were nine zeros behind the decimal point. It was a tiny error, all but impossible to detect unless one was looking specifically for it. The second number was off by twice that. Two in ten billion. Or, rather, one in five […]
Short Reviews – That Mess Last Year, by John D. MacDonald and Galactic Heritage, by Frank Belknap Long
Friday , 10, March 2017 Book Review 12 CommentsThat Mess Last Year, by John D. MacDonald and Galactic Heritage, by Frank Belknap Long appeared in the October 1948 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find complete scans of this issue. If I do, though, or if someone else posts them, I’ll update with links. I’ve said for a while […]
People complain that I only pick on Blue SF. Fair cop, especially as it’s not the only form of SF that damaged the genre. EVERY age after the Pulp-driven Golden Age did its part to drive the audience away, and put Science Fiction on life support. Silver Age: Removed heroics and adventure. Bronze Age: Removed […]
In the early days of the role playing hobby, particularly in the rapid expansion days when the craze was really starting to hit in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, there was a lot of jumping on the bandwagon. Games were rushed out not fully tested or other types of games had role playing elements […]
A. Merritt Defends the Scientific Accuracy of his Stories
Thursday , 9, March 2017 Appendix N, Before the Big Three 8 CommentsYou know the story. In the early days of science fiction, nobody really cared about getting the science right. But then John Campbell came along and changed all that, and a Golden Age ensued. It’s bunk. Science fiction authors were concerned with scientific accuracy even in the bad old days. And there were plenty of readers cruising […]