Search Results for: book club

Now Streaming: The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

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A friend of mine has often joked that I am his go-to source for television series which were cancelled during their first season. I believe that the series I recommended to him that cemented my reputation was The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., which ran on FOX for one season in 1993 and starred Bruce Campbell in the title role. His support staff included Julius Carry as Lord Bowler, Christian Clemenson as Socrates Poole, and recurring characters Professor Albert Wickwire…

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Fantasia 2021, Part LXVI: It’s A Summer Film!

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“School Radio to Major Tom” (“こちら放送室よりトム少佐へ”, “Kochira Housoushitsu yori Tom Shosa e”) is a bittersweet story that becomes a tearjerker by the end. A 10-minute short written and directed by Chisaka Takuya and set in 1989, it follows Eisuke (Tokuma Kudo), a teen who broadcasts and records his own science-fictional radio drama about a certain Major Tom every morning at his school; one day he comes in to find a girl (Chika Arakawa) who attends night classes has added a…

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19 Movies: If It’s the 1950’s, It Must Be Radioactive

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  This time around we’re focusing on films containing the most common theme in 1950’s sf films: radiation. This installment contains just a sample of films exploring that theme, so we’ll certainly revisit it at some future time. Kiss Me Deadly [1955: 9] Often cited as one of the great noir films, this strange blend of hard-boiled detection and sf chronicles Spillane’s Mike Hammer seeking the “whatsis.” Right from the backward scrolling opening credits you know you’re in for an…

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Nazi A-Bombs, Alien Invasions, and Monsters Under the Bed: September/October 2021 Print SF Magazines

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September/October 2021 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Eldar Zakirov, Kurt Huggins, and David A. Hardy The September/October print magazines are still on sale for a few more days, which means there’s still time to grab them before the November/December issues push them off shelves. Here’s a few reasons to do that. We’ll start with Victoria Silverwolf’s Tangent Online review of the current Asimov’s. “Sleep…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Sinbads Three

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Son of Sinbad (USA, 1955) Sinbad movies loom so large in the history of fantasy film that it’s remarkable there weren’t more of them — only six or seven live-action features from the Forties through the Seventies. Before the sword-and-sorcery boom of the Eighties, if you wanted to watch a film of heroic fantasy, the first thing you reached for probably had Sinbad in its title. We’ve already covered three of them in this series: Sinbad the Sailor (1947), The…

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“We Don’t See Pure Sword and Sorcery Anymore, So I Wanted to Try to Revive It” – An Interview with John Shirley

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A Sorcerer of Atlantis (Hippocampus Press, 2021). Cover by Daniel V. Sauer John Shirley is a true renaissance man. He won the Bram Stoker Award for his horror tales, has written over 40 books, and has been a lyricist for the legendary Blue Öyster Cult. Mr. Shirley is also a successful screenwriter who has scripted such various Television shows and films as The Real Ghostbusters, Deep Space Nine, and many others. John co-scripted, with David J. Schow, the Brandon Lee…

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A Top-Notch Wordsmith, and a Master of Speculative Fiction: The Best of John Brunner

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The Best of John Brunner (Del Rey, 1988). Cover by Barclay Shaw After several years, I’m finally gotten to the last of the Del Rey Classic Science Fiction Series! The Best of John Brunner was published in 1988. But is this book even part of that series? The previous installment, The Best of James Blish was published 9 years earlier. And though The Best of John Brunner is indeed a Del Rey publication, and it says “Classic Science Fiction” on…

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Vision Terrania: Perry Rhodan NEO, Volume One by Frank Borsch & Christian Montillon

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Perry Rhodan NEO (J-Novel Club) As you might deduce from the title, Perry Rhodan NEO is a newer rebooted take on the original Perry Rhodan series. It’s not so new in its homeland of Germany, where this version has been running since 2011 — although printed in its native language, of course. Having this particular series available digitally in English however, is definitely a brand-new development. Despite its status as the world’s longest-running serialized science fiction story, it’s relatively unknown…

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New Treasures: The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

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The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman(Tor Books, May 2021). Cover by Marie Bergeron Christopher Buehlman has accumulated an impressive rep with some powerful horror novels over the past decade. Those Across the River was nominated for the World Fantasy Award, The Lesser Dead won the American Library Association’s award, and The Suicide Motor Club made The Best Horror Books of 2016 list at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog. His latest is an interesting departure — the kick-off for an…

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Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #3: Tricks of the Trade and Reflections

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Lin Carter is above all else good company. He’s looking back one generation to what is now our genre’s Heroic Age, a wild and woolly era of unbounded creativity separated from us by a gulf of a century — I am reminded of when, as a teenager, I bought a drink for an elderly jazz musician, who in turn told me about going out on the town with Fats Waller, and the perils of playing for Jelly Roll Morton.