I haven’t done a What I’m Watching this year, so here’s a new installment. DANGER! THERE BE SPOILERS I’m talking about shows I’ve watched. I won’t give away anything huge, but in the context of the discussion, there will probably be spoilers. You have been warned. STAR TREK PICARD: SEASON THREE Prior to Strange New Worlds and the terrific job that Anson Mount continues doing as Captain Pike, ST: The Next Generation, was my favorite Trek series. I wrote about…
It’s installment number five in Bob’s Shelfie series. This time, I’ll do a shelfie for my favorite fantasy author (Tolkien is second) – Robert E. Howard. He is of course best known for his Conan the Cimmerian (the movies made it ‘the Barbarian’). They are terrific sword and sorcery stories. If you only know the movies, you should read some of the stories. On the bottom left are the Del Rey volumes, covering most of his writing. Howard struggled to…
It’s here! You probably know that back in 2019, many of the leading Robert E. Howard experts and fans contributed to a terrific series here at Black Gate on REH’s Conan stories. Prior to that, Black Gate’s own Howard Andrew Jones, along with Bill Ward, had over on his own blog, done a deep dive into each story as well. Jason Waltz and his Rogue Blades Foundation combined those two series’ and added much more content. Now, Hither Came Conan…
I’ve done three shelfies posts. If you missed those (shame on you!), I’ve been posting shelfies, with comments on some of the books, over in a bookshelf subreddit. With over 2,000 physical books, I’ve got a lot of shelves. And to me, if you’re talking about a shared universe, you gotta start out with Thieves World. I own a (non-RPG/comics) almost complete library; including one few folks know about, let alone have. THIEVES WORLD The first Thieves World book came…
Official continuators of a literary series can engender mixed emotions. Some folks are happy to see more stories of a character they like – even if the creator has died. Others feel that only the original author should write that character and they should lie in the grave together. Characters eventually enter the public domain. Though exactly when varies in different countries; and it’s not always clear, regardless. But the rights holders (often the family of the author, or their…
I enjoyed last week’s 10 Things I Think I Think. And it got some comments, which is kinda the goal of blogging. So, following up with 5 More Things I Think I Think. 1) THREE PINES is a Prime Original, based on a books by Canadian author Louise Penny. The series is at 18 novels and still going! Alfred Molina is Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the Quebec Surete homicide department. It’s a French-Canadian murder mystery with a little bit…
1) THE MANDALORIAN remains the best Star Wars property going. My son loves The Bad Batch, and it seems cool. But as I wrote here, the mix of innovation and fidelity; and simply all-around awesomeness, I’ll take this over just about any Star Wars of the past few decades. I liked Boba Fett – and it didn’t hurt that it was like a subs-series for The Mandalorian. I quit Battlestar Galactica, as it put me to sleep. But I’m a…
I’m going to write a post on G.M. Ford’s Leo Waterman series. Waterman is a Seattle-based PI whose dead father was a Tammany-Hall style politician, and he uses some alcoholic bums as his Baker Street Irregulars. Ford wrote six in the series, took a long break, and returned to Waterman and wrote six more books. As with Robert Goldbsorough’s Nero Wolfe continuation novels, the break damaged the series. While Goldsborough’s second run is, simply, not good, the second batch of…
If you’re a FB friend of mine (and why wouldn’t you be?), you are aware that I like to play ‘I Know that Actor’ there. I even wrote this post about it for Black Gate. It started with my love of Columbo. I would snap a screenshot of a guest star, and talk about that character, and other roles I liked them in. Other folks would often leave a comment about that actor. I’ve ‘played the game’ with many other…
Been writing and reading a lot of Nero Wolfe lately (when I’m not re-watching Columbo before bed). Just to channel Archie, I like to have favorite detectives visit Wolfe’s office. For some fun, I’m well over 5,000 words into a story with Groucho (Rufus Flywheel) and Chico on a case with Archie (and Wolfe) at The Big Store. I’ve tinkered with Dirk Gently (my favorite Douglas Adams character) using Zen navigation and Archie confronting him in front of the Brownstone….