Blog Archives

The Wasteland (Barbarian Book Club) The Western Canon — “My college experience was even more disappointing. The few English, Literature, and Creative Writing classes I managed to take were disappointing. I remember an introductory literature course where the dreadlocked grandma professor informed the class on day one that she would only focus on feminist literature […]

A Look from the Outside (Kairos) Superversive vs. PulpRev — “Though my work doesn’t meet the ideal of either literary movement, I’m sympathetic to and have friends in both camps. For those who are unfamiliar with the Superversives and the #PulpRev, the former seek to overturn the rampant nihilism in contemporary SFF from above with […]

D&D (Cirsova) D&D Alignment Part 2: D&D’s Cosmology — “Picking an alignment which fits your character’s personality and shaping the cosmos around those characters’ alignment choices is doing it backwards, which is why many people find alignment rules baffling. Unless you are actually using AD&D’s implied setting and cosmology, of course, there’s no mechanical reason […]

Pulp Revolution (Kairos) PulpFail — “There are people whose lives have no other meaning than Star Wars. They are legion. And now their last common cultural touchstone is being strip-mined of all value. It’s like some kind of memetic disease. They pay people who hate them to be insulted. Delude themselves into thinking they enjoyed […]

Appendix N (Cirsova) Reviews on Issue 5, CL Moore & Hugos — “I’d read some Moore, but I’m just now getting around this classic anthology edited by Lester Del Ray. I was left a bit unimpressed by her collab with Kuttner on The Last Citadel, but I gave the grande dame another chance when I […]

Traveller (Tales to Astound) An Improvised Classic Traveller Convention Game — “And I type all this up to say–the game was written and designed to play this easy, fast, and loose play–and you can play this way too. No long, detailed introduction by the Referee about politics that the Player Characters can’t influence anyway. No thoughtfully […]

It Can’t Happen Here (Gaming While Conservative) Why Boys Don’t Go To the Movies Anymore — “Box office receipts are a tenth of what they were just a short decade ago, but this decline has nothing to do with the quality of the product. A host of excuses were proffered ranging from boys being stupid to […]

SFF History (The Pulp Archivist) The Age of Despair — “By the time ‘The Cold Equations’ killed off the Campbelline Revolution in 1954, science fiction sales had plateaued and most of the Campbelline authors, to include Asimov, the Kuttners, and Heinlein, had either abandoned science fiction entirely or sought out more lucrative markets. Science fiction […]

Appendix N (RMWC Reviews) Appendix N Review: The Ship of Ishtar — “There’s so much going on. Action, magic, ancient Babylonian gods, a superhumanly strong drummer named Gigi, a badass redheaded Persian warrior named Zubran, and a Viking named Sigurd who swears blood brotherhood to Kenton and Zubran. In true adventure fashion, the stakes keep raising […]

Pulp Revolution (Jon Del Arroz) Behavioral Observations In Science Fiction — “Think about it. Six years of working hard still can’t get a person accepted and embraced without a miracle, four months of chatting with some folk online create unbreakable friendships. I’m the same person in both situations, so are you. There’s nothing different there other […]

The Inklings (The Telegraph) Secret theme behind Narnia Chronicles is based upon the stars, says new research — “Dr Ward made his discovery in 2003 after reading The Planets, a poem by Lewis which refers to the influence of Jupiter in ‘winter passed / And guilt forgiv’nl – a theme echoed in The Lion, The […]

Movies (Seagull Rising) The Rock of Bronze — “Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but what I read between the lines there is that the production team is planning one of those ‘hilarious’ deconstructions. This isn’t a case of making a perfect specimen of mankind and then giving him the glaring weakness of having zero social skills, […]