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sYouTube Red is not great. It’s pretty pricey—$10.00 a month—and has a very thin roster of content. And the content it has? Not very good. Last week I reviewed Cobra Kai, the single best show on YouTube Red. So, just for the heck of it, I decided to watch some other shows and see how […]
Sensor Sweep: Shannach- The Last, Hero Kids, Solo, E. R. Eddison
Monday , 14, May 2018 Sensor Sweep 4 CommentsBooks (Haffner Press): “Picking up where Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances left off, this volume collects the final 17 stories of strange adventures on other worlds from the undisputed “Queen of Space Opera.” Drawn from the last years of pulp magazines such as Planet Stories, Startling Stories, and digests magazines like Venture Science Fiction, Shannach – The Last: Farewell […]
The Pulp Swordsmen: Corun of Conahur
Sunday , 13, May 2018 Pulp Swordsmen, Short Fiction 18 CommentsSword and sorcery fiction was a casualty in the pages of Weird Tales magazine when it went bimonthly and had a new editor in 1940. The sub-genre did live on with some entries in Unknown/Unknown Worlds. Less known are some stories that showed up in Fantastic Adventures and Planet Stories. The stories that appeared in […]
New Release Roundup–12 May 2018: Science Fiction
Saturday , 12, May 2018 Just Released Leave a commentSpace dragons, the King of Space, legions of space marines, caravans of space refugees, and the deadliest unpaid intern in the galaxy feature in this week’s roundup of the newest releases in science fiction. Bandwidth (Analog Novel #1) – Eliot Peper A rising star at a preeminent political lobbying firm, Dag Calhoun represents the world’s most […]
Time Heals by Poul Anderson appeared in the October 1949 issue of Astounding. It can be read here at Archive.org. I know what I said about Poul Anderson stories, but I would be remiss if I did not thoroughly review issues of Astounding to give as complete a picture (snapshot, really) of the publication. Time […]
In addition to science fiction and fantasy, Castalia House also publishes thought-provoking non-fiction. Here is an excerpt from anthropologist Dr. Hallpike’s conclusive demolition of evolutionary psychology, among other things, DO WE NEED GOD TO BE GOOD? ‘Evolutionary psychologists’, who claim that our human abilities and traits are very specific adaptations to the problems of pre-historic life on […]
The primary focus of my contributions to this, the best darn science-fiction and fantasy blog on the internet, have been to search out and find the hidden gems of independently published sf/f novels for you to add to your growing “wish I had time to read it all” stack of titles. My initial role as a […]
“Ratatouille”: A film that would be bad if anybody but Brad Bird made it
Wednesday , 9, May 2018 Superversive 8 CommentsBrad Bird is a genius. Now I have made it abundantly clear that the greatest living animated director – perhaps director period – is Hayao Miyazaki, but as far as western animation goes there are several directors in competition for the title – John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich… In other words, Pixar. […]
One Shot. One Kill. One sniper to strike fear in the heart of alien invaders. Hoffman’s Strike Marines pursue enemy agents across a wintry world, desperate to stop an insidious threat festering in the heart of the Terran Union. Their hunt is disrupted when the fanatical Kesaht invade and the team is split across the […]
Lost in Space, Netflix’s revamp of the classic SF TV series, is so abysmally bad that there’s no end to the possible critiques one could lodge against it. The biggest complaint—and, ultimately, the only one that matters—is that it’s boring. Tedious. Excruciatingly bland and stupefying. In fact, the only thing that broke up the boredom […]
Sensor Sweep: ERB fonts, Robert Bloch Vampires, Mouse Wars, and The Punisher
Monday , 7, May 2018 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentPublishing (Recoverings): “It’s the nature of fandom. Every fan wants to hold his or her hobby close, be part of it, and contribute to it in some way. Writing, drawing, researching about action, the exotic worlds, the beautiful women and heroic men, the incredible beasts and unknown races are the life’s blood of many an Edgar […]
E. Hoffmann Price (1898-1988) is remembered today as the guy who met H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith in person. Price had served in the U.S. Army during WW1 in the horse cavalry, with postings in the Philippines and France. He never saw combat. After the war, he attended the U.S. […]