Search Results for: the battery

The Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava, October 25, 1854, Part I of II

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Introduction At 11:10 a.m., on October 25, 1854, one hundred sixty-one years ago, the almost seven hundred men of the Light Brigade stood waiting. The Brigade moved forward when the officer’s trumpeter sounded the “Walk.” It was immediately taken up by the regimental trumpeters to the right and left, so that it could be heard by the whole body of cavalry. When the first line was clear of the second, the order came to “Trot.” The bugles sounded again and…

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Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction of the 30’s edited by Damon Knight

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Windy City Pulp and Paper is a fabulous convention and, as its name implies, it’s focused mostly on vintage magazines and paperbacks. Wandering the vast Dealer’s Room is like stepping into a Cave of Wonders for fans of pulp science fiction and fantasy. But it’s also a den of surprises and a pleasant one awaited me while browsing a table piled high with pulps and digest magazines. A hand-written sign proclaimed all items were “3 For $10,” so I decided…

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I’ll Look Down and Whisper “No”: “Before Watchmen”

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Last Wednesday, DC Comics announced a new publishing venture: “Before Watchmen,” a set of related miniseries that would act as a prologue to the best-selling and critically acclaimed Watchmen graphic novel. The news was met with a considerably mixed reaction. Alan Moore, writer and primary creator of Watchmen, has spoken out against the project. Personally, I’m not going to buy any of DC’s new series, and I want to explain why. First, some more details. From The Beat website, a…

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Hi-Tech Lo-Tech: Alphasmart NEO

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My MVP Award for Writing in 2008 goes to a miniature machine that has made this year one of the most productive of my life: The Alphasmart NEO Behold a piece of technology that uses all the miniaturization and power-saving abilities available today to make what is essentially the typewriter of the new era. The Alphasmart NEO writes. And that’s about it. It weighs as much as a 8” x 10” spiral notebook. It runs for seven hundred hours in…

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Post Convention Musings

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Good afterevenmorn! I am writing this post rather late, having just woken up from the longest sleep in the history of sleeps following my last convention of the year. Actually, my only convention of the year. I don’t really count Ottawa ComicCon. Anyway, I digress. As always, I found it a great time.

Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines

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September-October 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and the Summer issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, NASA, and Mondolithic Studios The big news this month is the arrival of the new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, after a nearly 8-month hiatus. In the pages of the new issue, publisher Gordon van Gelder reports that “Ongoing production problems have led us to skip the Spring issue…

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Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: Welcome to Kanawha Spa – The Wolfe Pack 2024 Greenbrier Weekend

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So, last month, I joined fellow Wolfe Pack members for a long weekend at The Greenbrier Resort, in West Virginia. It was the fifth trip there for the group, though my first. It’s only a four hour-plus drive, which isn’t much for a Midwestern guy who also lived in Colorado and Texas. Too Many Cooks is the fifth Nero Wolfe novel. I think it’s better than the four prior ones, and it’s the first where the series really starts to…

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Long, Long Time: The Last of Us, Episode Three

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And we’re back with the next episode of The Last of Us. As I outline this piece, the episode has aired a few days ago (vastly different from when this article will be published, I know), and the internet is absolutely buzzing. Most of the chatter I hear is about how devastatingly wonderful this episode is, which makes for a nice change. I’ve curated my social media well. Let’s get into it, shall we?

When You’re Lost in the Darkness: The Last of Us, Episode One

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Hello! It’s me. Your wildly introverted author/gamer, who is very excited to be sharing my thoughts with you regarding HBO’s recent adaptation of The Last of Us from the perspective of someone who absolutely loved the game on which it is based. I’ll be examining each episode independently. Unfortunately, due to my working an obscene amount, I have limited time, so I’ll only be able to post every second week or so. For that reason, though they’re written shortly after…

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Galloway Gallegher — Kuttner’s Sauced Scientist

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Robots Have No Tails (Lancer, 1973). Cover by Ron Walotsky Try this one on for size…you go to sleep one night and have a lively dream. You see yourself doing wonderful things, creating new devices based on principles so advanced you can’t even image how they could be. You don’t question the fact that it is a dream because you know that, normally, you could never build such fabulous, world-changing technologies. It’s all kind of fuzzy though — what you’re…

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