May 22, 2018
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…
April 24, 2018
I’m deviating from my usual format to talk about something that I can’t stop thinking about since I saw the most recent Tomb Raider movie (see Shara’s Sound Off). Specifically, the lost island trope. And while I enjoyed the movie (kudos to Alicia Vikander for playing Lara Croft as if she were a real woman [sorry Angelina]), I kept thinking…
March 27, 2018
It’s March! It may be two more weeks before we can work in our yards, and there may be snow in the East, but let’s talk about growing things. Because spring. We all need something to look forward to. Reading stories about people with green thumbs, and the business of magically growing things, ought to help usher in that necessary…
February 27, 2018
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…
January 23, 2018
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.…
November 28, 2017
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?…
October 24, 2017
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…
September 26, 2017
I am a total fan of Stranger Things. I know very few people who aren’t. To each their own, but I am looking forward to October 27 and the second season of Stranger Things. It’s impossible to talk about this series without talking about Stephen King, and maybe that’s one reason I love it so much. It exists at the…
August 22, 2017
Yesterday’s solar eclipse was the first total solar eclipse in the U.S. since 1979, and it was a pretty big deal because of both that and because the path of totality ran from coast to coast — from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast United States. Such a long path meant plenty of opportunities for eclipse viewing. Trips, buses, hotels,…
June 28, 2017
Star Trek: The Next Generation was the first TV series of which I devoured every episode. So I was stunned when ensign Tasha Yar was killed by a telekinetic entity. I didn’t know characters could die in TV series. I refused to watch any TNG episodes after that — so much for the Enterprise’s continuing mission! — but my friends…