Search Results for: anna smith

Fantasia 2021, Part X: Tin Can

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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…

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

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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…

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

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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…

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

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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…

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Board Game Review: The Captain Is Dead

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Anyone else feel like we’re living in a Golden Age of board games? Or have I just been playing more because of COVID? We’re spoiled. Gone are the days of cutting out your own cardboard counters and coloring in your own dice with a crayon. What, none of you ever played Metagaming MicroGames? They were pretty great. I think Sticks and Stones was the first time I experienced a point-buy mechanic. But enough GenX 80s nostalgia. The latest in my…

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Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu Part Twelve

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Master of Kung Fu in 1978 was in the process of finding its footing again. Paul Gulacy’s departure from the title left an enormous hole for the series’ two new alternating artists, Jim Craig and Mike Zeck to come up to speed and offer readers a comparable level of accomplishment. Just a few years earlier, martial arts mania had swept much of the Western world on the strength and charisma of Bruce Lee. Marvel had quickly responded with the creation…

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Charles Saunders, Father of Sword & Soul, July 1946 – May 2020

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“I started reading more about the history and culture of Africa. And I began to realise that in the SF and fantasy genre, blacks were, with only few exceptions, either left out or depicted in racist and stereotypic ways. I had a choice: I could either stop reading SF and fantasy, or try to do something about my dissatisfaction with it by writing my own stories and trying to get them published. I chose the latter course.” –Charles R. Saunders…

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Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu Part Eleven

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Master of Kung Fu was a critically acclaimed series in 1977, but one which was burning out its creators in their efforts to maintain the high standard of quality in an industry that required juggling numerous assignments each month in order to earn a living. Artist Paul Gulacy had recently departed over the pressure and writer Doug Moench was struggling to keep up with deadlines as well. The series had just concluded an epic eight-part story arc with issue #51 that…

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Jetpacks and Bazookas: Jonny Quest

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Who was the most influential person in the history of the American fantastic imagination? Was it a founding father like Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, or Nathaniel Hawthorne? Or could it be a golden-age great like Robert A. Heinlein or Isaac Asimov or the editor who shaped their early careers, John W. Campbell? Certainly, the big three of Weird Tales, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, have set the pattern for countless imitators down to the present…

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