50 films that I dug up on Tubi. Enjoy! How to Make a Monster – 1958, AIP As a slight deviation from our usual programming of themed lists, here are the results of a deep dive I recently undertook, pushing Tubi to the limits. So here we are with How to make a Monster, a follow-up of sorts to the two spectacular schlock movies, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and I Was a Teenage Werewolf, both released a year earlier…
Between October and December of 1969, Keith Laumer’s novella The Seeds of Gonyl were published as a serial in the magazine Worlds of If. The story was published the following year in a hardcover by G.P. Putnam & Sons under the title The House in November, and in 1971 as a paperback by Berkley Medallion. In 1981, Tor reprinted the novel as part of its “Jim Baen Presents” series, but, apparently deeming the novel too short, it paired it with…
The Bright Sword (Viking, July 16, 2024) With no disrespect to J.R.R Tolkien, the King Arthur legend is arguably the inspiration of much post World War II medieval-based fantasy. You’ve got your out-of-nowhere claimant to the throne, a magic sword, court intrigue, some side stories, romance, sorcery, betrayal but yet a kind of redemption. All the key ingredients. Sure, Game of Thrones was based on the very real English Wars of the Roses, particularly the also very real violence and…
You need a good laugh right now. How do I know this? I know this because I need a good laugh right now. Everyone I know needs a good laugh right now, so it stands to reason that you need one too, doesn’t it? So… where to go for that much-needed laugh? Well, there are standup specials on Netflix and the other streamers, you’ve got SNL, there are the many late-night topical jokemeisters — all the usual suspects. Now if…
March-April 2025 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock The big news this month is that all three print science fiction magazines, as well as the mystery magazines owned by Penny Press, have been sold to a new buyer, a consortium of fans who have have ambitions to maintain and grow all five. Here’s an excerpt from the announcement at Locus Online. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s…
This post packs two punches: A showcase of the New Treasure A Clockwork’s Dreaming: And Other Tales by Claude Moreau and Scott Oden (January 2025, 134 pages, Kindle and Paperback). An exclusive interview with the deceased author Claude Moreau, the living translator Scott Oden, and special appearances of Laurent Dupont, editor of the literary magazine Les Petites Merveilles. Yes, this article is historic and magical. Read on to learn how this came to be.
Dilvish, the Damned (Del Rey, November 1982). Cover by Michael Herring Roger Zelazny was unquestionably one of the great American fantasists of the 20th century. That’s not to say he was perfect. His woman characters were often 2-dimensional, and he paired an unwillingness to work with an outline (“Trust your demon” was his motto) with a fondness for projects that really needed an outline. But perfection is boring. Zelazny rarely is. Much of Zelazny’s work is on my always-reread list,…
The Borrowers and The Borrowers Afield, by Mary Norton (Odyssey/Harcourt, January 1998). Covers by Marla Frazee I’ve done four posts in a row on Edgar Rice Burroughs, with more to come. But right now it’s time for a change of pace. It’s going to be a big change for this particular post. It’s about The Borrowers. In my late teens, after I learned Andre Norton was a woman, someone told me she’d written books under her own name of Mary…
Yesterday was the 100th birthday of Edward Gorey, one of the most unique, unclassifiable artists that this country has ever produced. Though he died in 2000, he has a continuing cultural presence; he certainly lives on in my life and in the lives of a great many people. Back in the incumbency of Jimmy Carter, when I was studying theater and living in the dorms of California State University Long Beach, one year I had a roommate named Scott. Scott…
Above are my Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar books. Tarzan at the Earth’s Core goes with this series as well, although I included it in Part II of this series, with my Tarzan collection. In these stories, Pellucidar is a hollow area at the center of the Earth. There are openings into it at the North and South poles, but in the initial book, At the Earth’s Core, an American named David Innes reaches the interior by riding inside a giant…