Author Archives : Carey Ballard

Chain Reaction: Three Stories about Immersive Realities


Among the many accusations leveled against the Internet is that too much of life takes place online. Between Facebook, Instagram, other social media sites, MMORPGs, and a host of other distractions, one person can spend a lot of their waking hours (and supposed-to-be-sleeping hours) online. (I’m not even going to talk about data mining and censorship.) But, truth: the “ignoring…

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Chain Reaction: Space Travel Is Boring — Or Is It? Science Fiction and Music


Talk about Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and someone inevitably hums or whistles that famous five-note sequence created by John Williams for the film. A recent viewing of the film got me thinking about other intersections between music and science fiction. Music abounds in fantasy: Alex Bledsoe’s Tufa series King Rat, China Mieville The Name of the…

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Chain Reaction: Stories Outside the (In)famous Superhero Canons


If 2000 was the year X-Men launched a wave of superhero films, then 2018 is set to be the year of the superhero blockbuster. Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, New Mutants, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Ant-Man 2, Deadpool 2, The Incredibles 2, and even Venom will hit theaters, in addition to an animated Spider-Man movie starring Miles Morales. That’s a lot.…

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Imagination Without Boundaries: Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story


The Neverending Story (1979)  Written by: Michael Ende Translated by: Ralph Manheim (1983) Genre: Fantasy Pages: 377 (First Edition Hardcover) Publisher: UK/Allen Lane Why I Chose It: In January 2017, I resolved to reread The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. That seems so long ago and at the same time just yesterday, because this year rolled by pretty fast. I…

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Chain Reaction: Jingle Hell: Cozy Up to Holiday Horror


Although getting everybody together for the holidays can be hell in and of itself (see also: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Planes Trains and Automobiles, and your Uncle Ralph’s perpetually mandatory Christmas dinner, etc), there’s a nice sub-sub-sub-genre of horror movies and stories centered around holiday traditions. What better time to scare people than when they are supposed to be merry?…

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Chain Reaction: Wanna Neck? An October List of Vampire Stories


To me, Halloween is way more exciting than Christmas. The entire month of October is just a holiday that just happens to end in an actual holiday. (It’s not just for kids!) My friends and I are free to read horror stories, scare ourselves by watching horror movies, dress up as our favorite characters, and/or flout homeowner associations by decorating our…

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