Search Results for: anna smith

Goth Chick News: If I Could Buy One, I Too Would Be a (Sort Of) 2021 Bram Stoker Award Nominee

Comments 0 Comment

Well, you can’t blame me for trying. Every year around this time, The Horror Writers Association announces the nominees for the annual Bram Stoker Awards, which recognize superior achievement in horror and dark fiction. Also, every year, I go on an Internet search for one of these amazing awards for sale somewhere. I mean come on, people have sold their Oscars, which admittedly are not this cool and are probably not this difficult to get. A general search got my…

Read More Read More

Slapdash Slapstick: Ron Goulart, January 13, 1933 – January 14, 2022

Comments 11 comments

Ron Goulart in 2009 Contrary to popular opinion, comic science fiction didn’t start and end with Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The humorous mode has a long and honorable history, exemplified by writers like Stanislaw Lem, Harry Harrison, R.A. Lafferty, Frederic Brown, Robert Sheckley… and Ron Goulart. Ron Goulart, who died on January 14th, a day after his eighty-ninth birthday, was an insanely prolific science fiction and mystery writer, especially in the 70’s and 80’s, when…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Modern Classics of Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois

Comments 5 comments

Modern Classics of Science Fiction (St. Martin’s Press, 1992). Jacket illustration courtesy of NASA Back in October I wrote about Gardner Dozois’ 1994 anthology Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, saying it was one of my favorite fall reads. I noted at the time that it was part of a trilogy of books Gardner did for St. Martin’s that also included Modern Classics of Fantasy (1997), which I called “a book that makes you yearn to be stranded on a…

Read More Read More

An Anthology to Help End Violence Against Women: Giving the Devil His Due edited by Rebecca Brewer

Comments 0 Comment

Giving the Devil His Due (Running Wild Press, September 2021). Cover uncredited I’m getting word from a number of readers that a recent charity anthology, Giving the Devil His Due, is well worth a look. Published in September by The Pixel Project in partnership with Running Wild Press, it contains reprints and new fiction from Stephen Graham Jones, Kelley Armstrong, Nicholas Kaufmann, Nisi Shawl, Peter Tieryas, Dana Cameron, Jason Sanford, and many others. It was compiled by ex-Ace/Roc editor Rebecca Brewer;…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois

Comments 14 comments

Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994). Cover by Kim Poor When I talked about Gardner Dozois’ 1997 anthology Modern Classics of Fantasy a few years ago, I called it “a book that makes you yearn to be stranded on a desert island” (or anywhere you could read interrupted for a few days, really.) That description applies equally well to his 1994 volume Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, a book that over the last few decades…

Read More Read More

Fantasia 2021, Part X: Tin Can

Comments 0 Comment

The Fantasia International Film Festival does a good job matching genres when they bundle a short together with a feature. So Tin Can, a feature-length claustrophobic near-future science-fiction film, came with “Death Valley,” an 11-minute tale of a future of environmental devastation; both about isolation and both featuring protagonists isolated from the world. THe short, written and directed by Grace Sloan, follows a woman in the future living in space who is determined to travel to Death Valley on a…

Read More Read More

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

Comments 7 comments

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…

Read More Read More

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Appaloosa – Hardboiled Western

Comments 3 comments

You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun) I enjoy a good Western on the screen. Tombstone is my favorite, with Rio Bravo not too far behind. And I usually watch at least a little if it’s got Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: The Stoker Awards Are Back, And I Need One

Comments 2 comments

Gather round friends – as we’re all still stuck at home, we can at least take consolation in the idea that writers all over the world continue to have plenty of time to create stories with which to entertain us. And as always, the end of January gifts us with the most awesome reading/watching list of the year: the annual preliminary ballot list for the coolest award ever. The Bram Stoker Awards have been presented annually since 1987, and the…

Read More Read More

Alien Warfare, Gunwrights, and Cyborg Hobos: January/February Print SF Magazines

Comments 0 Comment

I haven’t had time to jump into my plaguemobile and navigate all the pandemic roadblocks and decontamination checkpoints to get to Barnes & Noble to pick up the latest print magazines. But according to what I’ve read online, I don’t have any choice… looks like these are can’t-miss issues. Here’s what Michelle Ristuccia at Tangent Online said about the latest issue of Asimov’s SF. American combat veteran Sylvia Aldstatt is the only person on Earth who can search dead criminal…

Read More Read More